Dennis Bowen Esqr Buffalo

I shall send you by Express a preliminary study of a plan for the City Hall grounds which I will thank to examine and return to me with comments. I see two particulars in which work already done would perhaps have to be undone in carrying out this plan but they are not of weight against the advantages to be gained. There may be necessities to be accommodated, [169]

Plan for Riverside Avenue with Addition of Riding Way, March 15, 1875

[170]

I have had four principal considerations in mind.

1st   that under ordinary circumstances the more important business of the City Hall is of a quiet, orderly, bureau character, with reference to which a certain degree of seclusion of the building from the streets and of elegance in the grounds would be convenient, fitting and in accordance with what is customarily attempted, but

2d   that the building is nevertheless one for public business and should appear open and free to the public; that business is liable to be done in it having great popular interest and on certain occasions the grounds and even the streets near it will need to serve the purpose of outer lobbies. Public guests may at times be received at the building and reviews and receptions if not meetings held before it. More liberal and spacious arrangmnts of standing and passage room should for this reason be provided all about the building than if it were designed for private residence or trade or even for ward or district public business.

The City Hall in the old world is nearly always placed in the midst of an open public place, usually a noisy market place. In our own country small parks are more commonly formed around or at least in front of such buildings. These at first are neatly finished and their appearance satisfactory but I do not know a case where in a populous town they have long remained so—in which, that is to say, the edgings of the walks have not been soon obliterated, and the trees, shrubs and turf sadly abused or the ruling expression of which has not in a few years become one of inefficient governmnt, seediness and delapidation. I do not think you will need to look far to find illustrations of what I mean.

If you want to avoid a similar destruction of your work you must see to it that wherever there is likely at any time to be much public pressure, no kind of decoration is attempted that will not bear rough usage or which, after the tramping over or about it of a turbulent crowd, cannot be made as good as new with water and a scrubbing brush.

3d   a very important item in the cost of the construction of your City Hall is for means of securing an elegant and imposing exterior effect. You want some degree of seclusion and sylvan beauty about your building but you do not want this architectural effect to be lost in a grove of trees. On the contrary any foliage should be so disposed as not merely to reveal but to fix attention upon the more important architectural elements from those points of view and at the distance at which they will be seen to the best advantage.

4th   It is not desirable that the building should seem to have been thrust abruptly through a flat bed of turf. The grounds should be so arranged [171] as to obviously be one in design with it and to support it. This is particularly necessary because the building is so tall and straight and independent of other buildings. It not only needs a verdant drapery to set it off but solid outworks that will have the effect of a pedastal in connecting it with the ground.

You will see that each of these four considerations conflicts more or less with the others and that you will recognize that they cannot be expected to be reconciled except by means more substantial and expensive than we find in every day use nor without a very nice and accurate adjustmnt of the different provisions to be employed. I expect to furnish you with elaborate working plans and specifications and it will be important that they be strictly adhered to. Hence I shall be anxious to have the preliminary plans cautiously scrutinized before their adoption.

The studies are on a small scale and only indicate the larger features of the design but you will see by a little comparison of the different sketches what sort of detail is intended and, as I think, to detect the motive of everything proposed. You will observe the distinction between trees and shrubs & will see that the few fine lawn trees and all the shrubs and turf proposed are to be guarded from injury by means which are designed in strict harmony with and as auxiliary to the architectural effect of the building. At the same time the more striking parts of the building are exhibited to the best advantage and all the arrangments, even to the street, will have, as I hope, a broad, spacious and hospitable effect {such as in my judgment should distinguish the locality of a building for business of importance to the whole community of a city.}

I have thought it necessary that provision should be made for removing prisoners by or receiving them from a carriage and also for receiving needed materials for repairs & other purposes in freedom from a crowd. I have therefore arranged a small closed court in which a waggon can stand and turn and in which materials may be piled, mats & carpets cleaned etc. without being seen from the street or obstructing the public passages.

There will be no occasion for anyone to enter the purely ornamental grnds except in careing for them and they may with little labor be kept as nicely as the daintiest private garden.

I do not know that the architect has intended that the building shall be so terraced about as to hide the basement but if not I have no doubt that on reflection he will see that it will gain much by such an arrangement as I propose. At least to me it would appear more firmly placed, its position more commanding and its proportions more agreeable to the eye {rising from an unbroken base}.

[172]

Plan for Grounds of City and County Hall, Buffalo

I wish to submit a proposition to the Board and that its bearings may be better understood to briefly introduce it.

An important branch in the organization of almost every civilized [175] government of the world but our own is that relative to the conservation of Woods and Forests. That this subject will soon be one of great national concern to ourselves cannot be doubted. Our sources of supply for all productions of the forest are rapidly shrinking, while the demand for them on the whole is prodigiously increasing.

The cultivation of trees for decorative purposes alone is already an important business and with the growth of the country in wealth and refinement of taste will be much more so. At present a very consider-

* * * * * *

{dis}eases to which they are otherwise subject and even brought from an un-inhabitable condition to support a large and prosperous population.

What are the special properties by which trees act in these cases; in what degrees different trees possess these properties and under what conditions of soil, climate and culture they may be developed and made available are questions which open fields for scientific investigation of great promise and the exploitation of which is barely begun.

The chief discouragement to the scientific study of trees and the chief obstacle to their intelligent managmnt is the slowness with which individual experience is acquired. An entire life history of most of the plants we cultivate is witnessed every succeeding summer, while the natural life of our more valuable trees is extended much beyond that of mankind. Hence the value of public provisions for continuous observations upon trees and of the careful preparation and safe transmission of public records and statistics of the effects of disease, accidents, temperature, culture and other conditions upon the growth & value of trees.

From these general considerations I ask the Board to turn its attention to the opportunity offered in this respect by the Central Park.

Although so young and although it has some striking deficiencies there is no other collection on the continent of equal age containing examples of so many species and varieties.

Specemins of the greater number of them have been growing where they now are fifteen years or more and a record of the more important conditions to which many of them have been subject from the seed to their present stage of growth, the manner of their planting, their subsequent treatrnnt, the meteorological conditions by which they have been influenced, their health and rate of growth, is still possible, all having been planted under my superintendence and the more immediate supervision of Mr Fischer your present Superintending Gardener.

If the considerations which have been referred to, or the experience of all other civilized peoples should have weight with the Department, it will be regarded as a matter of some national interest that such a record should be made and hereafter presented and continued. The Central Park would then form a Museum of Arboriculture arranged and catalogued suitably for profitable [176] study. Its value for this purpose would however be greatly increased by an adjunct collection of various matters illustrating the growth, management and uses of trees, with suitable books of reference.

I have, with the assistance of Mr Fischer, taken some preliminary measures toward this end, a small collection of tree sections and other material, having been made, and data collected for such a record as has been indicated.

I had last year prepared a report on the subject with a suggestion that the Board should authorize a simple and inexpensive arrangement for the furtherance of such a project as I have indicated, but the action of the Board of Apportionment and the resulting embarrassmnt which has come upon the Department in regard to all its business has led me to defer presenting it.

As the Centennial Commission of Philadelphia has recently undertaken a somewhat similar collection to that proposed I have also thought it might be best to avoid any apparent competition with it in this respect.

I have nevertheless thought it desireable to bring the subject to the attention of the Board and to ask, if it should be thought fit, that some action may be taken whereby Mr Fischer & I may be justified in quietly soliciting gifts, collecting information and speaking and writing with reference to the object as are sanctioned by the Department and officially committed to us.

Such an inchoate and purely provisional arrangmnt may prove of trifling value and may lead to nothing better but there is also a possibility that what the Department would gain and hold under it would form the necessary inducemnt to the foundation at a later period of an institution of no little importance.

To give a more definite idea of the character and value as a popular educational entertainmnt of what might be hoped soon to result, I append a form which I had prepared with a view to a public invitation for voluntary aid in the matter.

The Board of Commissioners of the Department of Public Parks of the City of New York, contemplate forming as an adjunct of the plantations of the Central Park, a collection of matters of interest relatively to Forestry, Aboriculture, and Landscape Gardening.

The collection is designed to be of a practical character with reference to the following purposes:

1st  The propogation, culture, managmnt, transportation and manufactures of and from trees and shrubs with reference to

(a)  Commodities in the form of timber, fuel, paper, cordage, dyes, gums, perfumes, drugs, clothing, food, drink, and otherwise, or (b) to their [177] use while living for sanitary and decorative purposes, as for road side planting, for screens and for landscape gardening.

A collection of illustrations is desireable for each species and distinct variety of tree and shrub, and especially of each growing in the United States, as follows:

1st  a section across the trunk of not less than 6 nor more than 10 inches in thickness. This will be ordinarily best obtained by sawing with a two hundred cross cut pit saw. Care should be taken to preserve the bark.

2d  A billet plank or board 18 inches in length, showing the grain of the wood from the heart to the bark: if valuable for cabinet work, an additional billet showing the same polished.

3d  A slab or strip of the bark. This will desireably be 1½ foot in length by 1 foot in breadth.

4th  Specemins of the fruit, nuts or seeds, and seed vessels.

5th  Specemins of the foliage;

6th  Specemins of the flower;

7th  Specemins of various forms of the commercial products;

8th  A portrait of the living tree photographed, drawn or painted.

9th  Pictorial illustrations of its landscape character singly or in groups or masses.

10th  Pictorial illustrations of various conditions and processes of treatment of the tree and its products.

11  Illustrations of its physiology and especially its diseases and their effects, and of remedies for these and their effects.

12  Illustrations of insects and vermin affecting the tree while living, of their effects and of modes of preserving it against them and of counteracting their attacks.

13th  Illustrations of insects and other agencies of destruction to its timber or other commerical products and of modes of preventing and counteracting the same.

Illustrations of shrubs of a similar character, are also desired. Where the trunk of trees or shrubs is less than six inches in diameter the sections may be 18 inches long and split sections will serve in place of billets.

Contributions to the Collection are especially desired in any of the above forms.

Those coming under the 1st 2d 3d 5th 9th 10th 11th & 12th sections will be much increased in value if accompanied by exact memoranda of facts & observations of all special conditions by which the growth, constitution and landscape character of the tree may have been affected, such as, the soil, sub-soil, climate, exposure, and situation with reference to moisture and prevailing winds of the locality in which the tree has grown. If the tree is known to have been artificially planted, transplanted, grown from suckers, cuttings, or been irrigated, lopped, pruned or grafted it is important that the fact should be stated.

[178]

Those proposing to make contributions are requested when practicable to communicate with the undersigned before doing so, in order that an excessive duplication of specemins may be avoided.

Resolved that incidentally to the main object of the Central Park the opportunities which it affords for instruction in the science and art of tree culture and landscape gardening are valuable to the public and it is desireable that nothing which will increase their usefulness should be lost through inattention.

Resolved that the Board approves the proposition of the Landscape Architect for increasing the value of the park in this respect and that he is authorized with the assistance of the Superintending Gardener to prepare such records of the plantations of the park as may be practicable, to provide for the continuance and preservation and for such collection and arrangmnt of materials and means of information on the subject of forestry, arboriculture and landscape gardening as may be found desireable and practicable without special expense to the Department.