A Suggestion for Utilizing Blackwell’s Island, N. Y. 
Blackwell’s island as a municipal focus of greater new york 
Designed by T. J. George , Architect 
part of his plan he contemplates the construc¬ 
tion ol three new bridges, two to cross Black¬ 
well’s Island above the one now building, 
and one below the island, parks stretching 
along the river fronts of Manhattan and 
Long Island City, a great viaduct encircling 
the island and connecting the bridges, and 
crowning all, opposite Seventieth Street, the 
municipal building, seven blocks long and 
surmounted in the center by a tower six 
hundred feet high. There is no denying 
that it is impossible to have a truly monu¬ 
mental building in or near City Hall Park. 
The effect of any building in that locality 
must certainly be marred, if not ruined, by 
the high and ugly office buildings of that 
section of the city. At Blackwell’s Island, 
no such surroundings, Mr. George points 
out, could ever exist. The park on each 
side of the river would not only afford a 
magnificent view of the municipal building 
and bridges, but would insure the perpetual 
maintenance of an open area adequate to the 
dignity and grandeur of the scheme. 
Necessarily Mr. George recognizes condi¬ 
tions as they exist. He submits his plan as 
an idealistic suggestion, while advancing very 
practical arguments in support of its adoption. 
As for the cost of execution, he has attempted 
no estimates. At least twenty years, he 
thinks, would probably be required to carry 
out his idea, but that fact in itself would tend 
to lessen the burden of cost because of the 
distribution of expenditures over a compara¬ 
tively long period. 
It follows, of course, that, having in view 
a dominant group of buildings and monu¬ 
ments with related gardens and esplanades, 
Mr.George would make the proposed munic¬ 
ipal building on Blackwell’s Island the center 
of a series of avenues and parkways. His 
plan includes sweeping vistas, which should 
have the six hundred-foot tower of the pro¬ 
posed City Hall on the island as the culmi¬ 
nating point in one direction, and the new 
public library in Bryant Park, and the Metro¬ 
politan Museum of Art at Eighty-second 
Street at the Manhattan end of two of them. 
Both of these buildings suffer greatly by their 
proximity to the street. By opening broad 
diagonal streets and parkways across the city 
from the Pennsylvania Railroad Station at 
Eighth Avenue and Thirty-third Street to 
Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street; from the 
east side of the Grand Central Railroad Sta¬ 
tion along a line passing through the center 
of the high tower of the suggested municipal 
building on Blackwell’s Island ; from the 
center of Park Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 
Fifty-ninth Street, along an imaginary line to 
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