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SKETCH SHOWING ARRANGEMENT FOR PARK-WAY WITH
PARK-WAY WITH ADJACENT STREETS AND BUILDING LOTS.

BUILDING LOTS

200 FEET.

the excellence of the taste displayed in dwellings and ornamental grounds. For the sake of securing space and pure air, an important proportion of persons engaged in daily business in the city are permanent residents in these adjacent towns. In driving through the many charming roads which wind among the hills and valleys of Arlington, Belmont, Watertown, Newton, and Milton, Boston appears to be already surrounded by a succession of parks supplied by private enterprise; and it has been suggested that, for this reason, the city has no occasion to create any parks of her own. This view is entirely fallacious. Beautiful as these roads now are, they are, year by year, losing their rural character; their roadside hedges are giving place to sidewalks with granite curbs, and the adjacent grounds are being cut up into house-lots. Every five years perceptibly crowds back the rural line farther from the old city. Many parts of the villages are losing their rural quality, without the compensation of city constructions. Even if this inevitable change were not steadily progressing, a change keeping pace with the prosperity of the community, the enjoyment of these roads is limited to a very small proportion of citizens. The mass of the people who are in the greatest need of what a park, properly speaking, supplies, rarely get among country roads; and when they do, the sight simply of fine grounds, from which they are as completely excluded as from the dwellings themselves, is rather tantalizing than refreshing. The agreeable sensation of freedom experienced in the atmosphere of parks is quite the opposite of that felt in looking over an enclosing wall into pleasure-grounds, no matter how beautiful and extensive.

Many families leave the city for nearly half the year, living in their distant country houses, or at the hotels among the mountains and at the sea-shore. For this class, comparatively independent as to their domicile, city parks are personally not essential. During the part of the year in which the city is the least attractive and parks the most so, they are away among the best of New England scenery. To them the city has become a place to live out of. Nothing in the way of pleasure grounds can altogether change this, nor would it be desirable if possible. But the city can do something better by giving to the whole people common pleasure-grounds, finer in every way than the private park of the wealthiest citizen, upon the borders of which will be sites for dwellings, having the advantages of open space and pure air, and with a degree of permanence not to be found in the neighboring villages. The city will then become a place to live in. If the location of parks had been under

taken a few years since, at the time, for instance, when the other large cities of the country secured theirs, certain eligible tracts nearer the city proper would naturally have been taken, which are now unavailable, having in the mean time become occupied by dwellings and streets.

The lands recommended in this report will in their turn be so occupied unless appropriated for public use; and whenever, subsequently, the city shall acquire parks, it will be necessary to go still farther from the centre of population, and presumably to fare worse.

BOUNDARIES.

The boundaries of the park-ways, and in some instances of the parks, have been run with only such precision as was required for the purposes of the work at this stage, the expense of thorough instrumental surveys not being deemed necessary. Whenever, through the action of the City Council, the Commissioners are authorized to purchase or take lands, as provided for by the Act, these boundaries will be surveyed with accuracy, and such minor variations as may be found to be advantageous, for the sake of economy in land or cost, will be made, and duly submitted for your approval or otherwise.

SECOND SERIES OF SUBURBAN PARKS.

The Commissioners are not prepared at this time to make any recommendations for locations of parks in that part of the territory lying between the six and eight mile circles, for the reason that in making such locations the co-operation of several towns will be required, in order to secure a systematic and comprehensive scheme. No such authority now exists. on the part of the towns; but, whenever it does, liberal reservations of land for an outer series of parks and parkways should be secured without delay, though they may remain, with but slight improvements, for many years.

The present unimproved condition and low value of the wild lands within these circles admit of such a scheme more complete and satisfactory (excepting only as to distance from present centres of population) than was possible in the one presented in this report, unless at altogether too extravagant a cost.

POPULARITY OF PARKS.

While engaged in this work, the Commissioners have observed with pleasure the enlightened spirit in which other

American cities, some inferior in population and wealth to Boston, have within a few years established their park system.

These public pleasure-grounds immediately became popular resorts to an extraordinary degree, far beyond what was anticipated, and are already justly a source of local pride with all classes, who would not now part with them for any possible money consideration.

They have added a new element to the lives of the people, bringing to the doors of many a previously unattainable reservoir of health and pleasure, and have greatly increased the fame of the cities of which they form a part. No one, speaking generally, now goes to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, without visiting Central, Fairmount, or Druid Hill parks.

SCOPE OF PLAN.

The plan now presented by the Commissioners has neither been limited by the needs of the city of to-day, or by the temporary unfavorable condition of business affairs, nor has it, on the other hand, undertaken to anticipate what parks will be required for a population as vast as that of London.

Boston, though an ancient city in comparison with most of the principal municipalities of the country, is still in its infancy; and the Commissioners would, they believe, have failed to apprehend the importance of the work intrusted to them (already too long delayed), had they not acted under the conviction that the future growth and general prosperity of the city is to be as brilliant as its past history.

LOCATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS.

URBAN PARK SYSTEM.-CHARLES RIVER EMBANKMENT.

Boundaries. Beginning at the westerly corner of Leverett and Charles streets, and running southwesterly by said Charles street, about 2,076 feet, to Cambridge street; thence westerly by said Cambridge street, about 109 feet, to the Harbor Commissioners' line on Charles river; thence southwesterly by said Commissioners' line, about 2,015 feet, to the angle in said line on the passage-way in rear of house No. 98 Beacon street; thence southwesterly again by said line, about 5,870 feet; thence westerly by a curved line, with a radius of 2,050 feet, about 900 feet, to a point distant 200 feet perpendicular from the said Commissioners' line; thence westerly again by a line, tangent to said curved line

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