“A Railroad Beautiful ’ 
“A RAILROAD BEAUTIFUL.” 
T HAI' the “railroad beautiful,” where it 
traverses a great city and its suburbs, 
should be a goal, considered and worked for 
by sane business men who have invested in 
the “soulless corporation,” would seem to 
be a dream of the faddist or the theorist’s 
whimsical claim. Not that railroads are be¬ 
yond the need of beautifying, nor that their 
black and cindery course is hopelessly uglv ; 
but that railroads, with their strictly utili¬ 
tarian purpose and common ugliness seem 
naturally at the antitheses of esthetic en¬ 
deavor. And 
yet the effort 
to improve 
esthetical 1 y 
the appear¬ 
ance of the 
railroad’s 
right of way 
and to beauti¬ 
fy stations 
and their sur- 
roundings, 
has m a d e 
almost as 
rapid a pro¬ 
gress with us 
in recent years 
as have the 
forward strid- 
incr efforts in loncwood station 
& 
city and town 
improvement. Instead of a faddist’s dream 
or the whimsical claim of the theorist, the 
purpose to beautify the railroad is a matter 
of common observation and knowledge, the 
principal systems of the country now having 
their landscape architect as certainly as their 
roadmaster. 
A pioneer in the work was the Boston 
and Albany road, and the story of the begin¬ 
ning is of not a little interest. The Penn¬ 
sylvania and Old Colony systems, indeed, 
began the task of beautifying their station 
surroundings at about the same time, but 
the Old Colony has not carried the matter 
very far, and the Pennsylvania has adopted 
a more conventional and less excellent plan, 
while of all the roads in the country the 
Boston and Albany, by the degree to which 
it has developed the project on the so-called 
Newton Circuit— a short stretch of road that 
makes a round of Boston’s pretty western 
suburbs, touching at twenty-one stations 
before the terminal is reached again—offers 
the most complete and perfect object lesson 
available of what “ the railroad beautiful ” 
may be. The opportunity was an unusually 
good one, for the stations are close together 
—often with barely a mile between them— 
the country is rolling, fertile and picturesque, 
and the towns have long been remarkable 
for their beauty and orderliness. 
About twenty years ago E. A. Richardson 
was baggage- 
master in the 
littlestation at 
Newton vi lie. 
He had not 
had a gar¬ 
dener’s train¬ 
ing, but he 
loved order 
and he loved 
flowers, and 
though his 
station is said 
to have been 
no worse than 
the others on 
the line he set 
himself the 
task of mak- 
BOSTON & ALBANY R. R. j n g jf better. 
His first en¬ 
couragement came from an assistant engi¬ 
neer of the road, who furnished him with 
loam and sod, and then it attracted the atten¬ 
tion of the Newtonville people generally, for 
the contrast, even though mainly of aspiration, 
was striking at that time of uniformly ugly 
station yards. Some of these public-spirited 
townsmen brought the work to the notice 
of Professor Charles S. Sargent, who, as a 
director of the road and also of the Arnold 
Arboretum, had a strong natural interest in 
a project for railroad gardening. He saw at 
once the importance of working for a desira¬ 
ble distant end instead of expending energy 
upon a more showy but less valuable imme¬ 
diate accomplishment. Through his interest 
the possibility of improving the aspect of 
the grounds of all the stations on the road, 
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