Lately, while on a long journey in the South, I saw a newspaper statement that we had been engaged as landscape architects to the Brooklyn Park Commissioner. It was not exactly true at the time, and I undertook to write you what the facts were that had led to the statement. My impression is that I did not complete my letter, but as I cannot find it in my port-folio possibly I did and sent it to you. I think not, however, and therefore will briefly tell you what I had intended, and what has occurred since.

[757]

Some time ago; perhaps two years; I was asked if I would become the professional adviser of the Brooklyn Park Commission. I replied that I would only in association with you, and that ended the matter for the time. A few months ago, while I was absent, an inquiry came to our office as to whether we knew of a suitable man for superintendent of the Brooklyn parks. In answer, Ulrich, whom we had had at Chicago was named. Ulrich was afterwards engaged and is now in Brooklyn. When I came home, it seemed to me that our unqualified recommendation of Ulrich was a little imprudent and it might be given a significance that had not been intended. I accordingly wrote a note adapted to relieve us of responsibility. Then came a note from a gentleman who had married a relative of ours saying that Commissioner Squier was a neighbor of his, and had expressed a wish to see me. I was passing through New York a few days afterwards, met my relative and accepted an invitation to dine with him. At his house I met Mr. Squier whom he had asked to come in to see me. I was given to understand that Mr. Squier would like to engage our firm if he could do so on satisfactory terms, but that he did not want you. White, of McKim, Mead & White, had been employed on the park and Mr. Squier intended to further employ him as architect. The implication was that to bring you in would make the arrangement too complicated. When I reported this conversation to my partners, it was thought that we ought to treat with Mr. Squier. A proposition was therefore submitted to him. Ten days ago, on my return from my long journey in the South, John and Eliot met me in New York and we spent the best part of a day with Commissioner Squier and Ulrich looking over the ground, and were informally engaged, or assumed to be engaged as Landscape Architects Advisory. The engagement has not yet been made in any documentary or written form. What we saw in going over Prospect Park was melancholy and perplexing; wide and erratic variations from our plan having been made, and work being in progress in still further and more radical variation from it. This work we have formally advised to be arrested. It is doubtful if it will be, because the Commissioner is very anxious to meet the pressing demands for giving men employment; while we can as yet only advise him {at} what points to stop work and reduce the small force he now has employed.

The difficulty of the problem is such and the expectations and demands as to what should be done are such that if I were to consult my own comfort and convenience I should have nothing to do with it, but the opportunity to return to our original design as far as possible under the changed circumstances, and to prevent any further waste of advantages which have been gained for carrying it out, is one that I have not felt that I could rightly discard. It is evident that certain radical changes of design have been already made and that the ground lost by them cannot be recovered. Other changes are contemplated and some must be made in consequence of what has been done. I am disposed to put what limit we can upon them. I have not seen White with whom it is apparently expected that we shall be in consultation.

[758]

Since writing the above we have recvd a letter from a gentleman representing property holders on the West Side, seeking our assistance in respect to planning, or to the revised planning, of Riverside Park, as desirable because of {…} on its Western Boundary &c.&c. I have written advising that those he represents should call on you, and implying that we would have nothing to do with it, except at the request of the Park Commission, in association with you.

Sincerely Yours

Our opinion has been asked by the Board as to the expediency of a proposition that the charge of the older part of Commonwealth Avenue should be transferred to your Department.

Your Department was not formed to supersede the office under which the older public grounds of the City had been laid out and superintended, but since it was formed, propositions have from time to time been advanced [760]for transferring to it from that office the care of one or another of these older grounds.

In the discussion of these propositions, which, in the end, have been invariably decided against, it has appeared that those by whom they were urged have recognized no good reason why certain of the City grounds should be in charge of one office and certain others in charge of another. They have looked upon the division as an arbitrary one and have been apt to assume that at the bottom of it there has been a purpose of dividing political patronage.

The real ground for a division lies in the fact that there should be in every large city two classes of public grounds to be distinguished one from the other accordingly as one or another class of motives has ruled in the selection of sites and in the devising of plans for them. The leading purpose of one of these classes of grounds is to add to the beauty of a city as a city. The leading motive of the other is to provide means of escape from the city as a city.

The distinction thus indicated between two classes of public grounds we believe to be a radical one. Yet it is not generally understood, and, when understood, is difficult to be kept clearly in mind. Hence where the two classes of public grounds are placed under one management, evidence is very apt to appear of confusion of purpose and consequent wastefulness of resources.

In considering whether any particular public ground will be more suitably managed by an organization formed with a view to the one or the other of the two objects, the question must be whether the practical value of that ground is to be found in the enjoyment of scenery, or in the enjoyment of particular objects and of limited local compositions of these objects.

It is to be recognized that the line of division between the two classes of public grounds thus defined cannot be sharply drawn; one class may merge into the other. Yet we believe that the difference is sufficiently plain for practical purposes and that it justifies such a division of the control of the public grounds of Boston as actually exists. We believe that grounds of both classes are better managed than they would be if the attempt were made to bring them under one headship.

Your Commission has willingly taken charge of several public grounds which in themselves are of limited extent and which might at first thought seem to be improperly regarded as places for the enjoyment of natural scenery. Among such grounds, for example, may be named the Charlesbank; the proposed North End Public Ground and the new Public Ground in Charles-town. It will be seen that from each of these a broad and extensive distant rural prospect is commanded, and in the design for the laying out of each of them it has been a ruling motive to make the most of the outlook from it, and to avoid, as far as practicable, inharmonious and ineffective foregrounds to this outlook.

It may be further explained that while grounds of one of these classes are adapted to the healthful recreation of citizens through their observation of objects, as, for example, trees and bushes as they may be presented individually, or in compositions of a defined and limited local scope, the other is [761]adapted to serve the same purpose by bringing under observation similar objects chosen and disposed with a view to their merging and combining together in a manner adapted to have the effect of more or less extended passages of rural scenery, enjoyment of which is largely dependent on intricate variations of light and shade, on the result of reflected tints and of the blending of such tints, and generally on such conditions as are better brought to mind by the term beauty of scenery than by the term garden beauty.

While the difference between these two classes of public pleasure grounds is of a radical character, nevertheless the line which separates them may be vague so that it cannot invariably be said at a glance: Here is one; here the other. Here is a tree that has been selected to grow where it is with regard to one of the two ends in question; here is a tree selected with regard to the other of these two ends. Hence, the difference between the two classes of grounds is not usually had in mind by those not specially trained to be discriminating in this respect, and much comment on the management of public grounds is misleading because the same standard is applied to one class as to the other. This is no more reasonable than that a sail-maker’s work should be judged by the standard of a woman’s dressmaker, or a jeweler’s work by the standard of a stone-cutter. Criteria of good work in the one case are very different from those applicable in the other. It follows that men accustomed to work with reference to one standard are not likely to work with equal efficiency or economy with reference to the other. An organization adapted to serve one is not likely to equally well serve the other.

We have thus tried to explain theoretically a conviction which is not the result of a pre-formed theory, but to which we have been led by large experience and by the study of practical results in numerous cities.

In our judgment, Commonwealth Avenue is now well managed. We do not believe that it would be better managed under your Board.

We think it much better that the responsibility of your Board should be limited as clearly as practicable to grounds for the selection, acquisition and the laying out of which it has been distinctly responsible.

Respectfully,