THE FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM IN AMERICA VI 
By Frederick W. Kelsey* 
{Continued from the November Number of House and Garden) 
^ I ^HE change in control of the county avenues 
from the Essex Road Board to the Board of 
Freeholders was, as regards the manipulation by 
the corporations, a change in name only. The sub¬ 
stance of corporate dictation remained the same. 
In October, 1894, the Freeholders granted to the 
Consolidated Traction Company a perpetual blanket 
franchise for Park Avenue in Newark, East Orange, 
and Orange, Bloomfield Avenue, and Erelinghuysen 
Avenue. The “Call,” in its next issue, character¬ 
ized this action as completing “the surrender of 
the Road Board highways to the street railroads.” 
The prodigal liberality of that “surrender” to 
the traction 
company of 
that most val- 
uable grant 
of public 
property was, 
and is, amaz- 
i n g . The 
scheme was 
defeated on a 
technicality 
in the courts 
the same year, 
1894. 
In like man¬ 
ner, the East 
Orange town¬ 
ship Commit¬ 
tee ha'd', , on 
May I, 1891, 
given the 
Rapid Tran¬ 
sit Street Railway Company an equally favor¬ 
able perpetual franchise for Central Avenue from 
the Newark terminus to the Orange line. This 
was before the company’s lines were constructed 
in Newark; hence, prior to the leasing of that short 
line to the Consolidated Traction Company, as 
was afterward done, at a clear profit to the pro¬ 
moters and owners of “a round million of dollars.” 
The Rapid Transit finances were not then—1891— 
in a very flush condition. It was largely a paper 
company, organized to build and equip the road 
from the sale of bonds, and without the invest¬ 
ment of much money in promotion or construction. 
The company was advised that the franchise could 
be extended, or a new franchise had “at any time,” 
* Courtesy of the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 57 Rose St., New York. 
in East Orange, and Thomas Nevins promised 
the same result in Orange. The company for once 
failed to recognize the uncertainty of (franchise) 
human events or to appreciate “a good thing when 
they had it,” and the franchise was, therefore, 
allowed to lapse, and the rails, which had been 
distributed as far as Harrison Street, were after¬ 
ward removed from the avenue. 
Locally the party organization in East Orange 
in 1896 was yet so overwhelmingly on the Republi¬ 
can side that little doubt as to the authorities again 
lining up on the franchise-granting corporation side 
was entertained by the traction people or their attor- 
ney there. 
And they 
were right. 
After exhaus- 
tive public 
hearings by 
the Township 
Committee 
on Novem¬ 
ber 30, and at 
three public 
meetings i n 
Common¬ 
wealth Hall 
in December, 
1896, when 
the whole 
situation as 
to the needed 
parkways had 
been fully 
outlined by 
many repre¬ 
sentative citizens, and in a way explained by the 
Park Commission, the new ordinance franchise for 
a railroad on Central Avenue was passed on first 
reading January i8, 1897. In the meantime, 
at the meeting of the previous week, January ii, 
the request of the Park Commission for the transfer 
of the avenues had been, by unanimous vote, de¬ 
clined. This declination was based, as was then 
stated, upon “the reticence of the commissioners 
as to what they proposed doing with the avenues 
if they secured them.” Whatever the cause, 
when the railroad franchise was passed the town 
woke up. 
The awakening had been accelerated by the 
methods employed by the traction company. The 
property owners’ consents filed with the authorities, 
IN BRANCH BROOK PARK 
288 
