I am very much obliged to you for writing to me as you have. I should value an opportunity to review with you the conditions of the extremely difficult problem to which you refer. It is not likely that we have succeeded in devising a perfectly satisfactory solution of this problem, but in what we have done we have tried hard to apply to it the lessons of experience that I have gained in thirty-five years of practical dealing with problems more or less of a similar character. Although the shore work is now nearly blocked out, the surface and planting work is hardly begun and we should be grateful for any help that you could give us in improving the point of view from which we are regarding it. I greatly regret that just now it is impossible for me to go over the ground with you, pressed as I am with closing duties preparatory to my autumnal review and advanced study of plans on the ground for certain works at a distance.

You will like to know that among the most important of these is the Biltmore Arboretum, the primary study of plans for which you may have seen, as we left our preliminary drawings for some weeks last Winter for review by [846]Professor Sargent and obtained his formal approval of them from the scientific point of view.

What is the problem of Jamaica Park? Probably we should differ somewhat upon this question, but I should hope that it would not be so widely that discussion upon the subject between us would be useless.

I have not the literary art to define my own view of it satisfactorily, but something of it can be stated in saying that it is to bring about such a reconciliation as is practicable, under all the conditions and chances for the future of city government, of two requirements. One of these may be briefly referred to as that of the charm of rural scenery. The other is that of adequate provision by which this charm may be made conveniently available for the conservation of health, morality and civility of the mass of the people of Boston. These will then be mainly town-bred, and among them widely varying tastes and habits will prevail. Some are to be unprincipled, undisciplined, uncivilized, indisposed to submit to such control of their movements in their park as the development and preservation, even in a moderate degree, of conditions of rural charm will require. People, nevertheless, whose weight with respect to the future management of this public property is liable to be greater than that of zealous lovers of Nature; greater certainly than that of such lovers of Nature as will make themselves of importance in politics.

The problem is to bring about such a reconciliation as is possible of means for meeting these two requirements, a long way in the future, when the population of Boston shall be much greater than now, and when the center of residence of this population is likely to be much nearer this park than it is now.

At that time a dense population will be closing about the place. Many of the now living elements of sylvan beauty will have passed away because of natural decay or accidents. The existing sky line, with all below it, will be greatly changed. It is impossible to retain the present landscape. The question of design is mainly what shall the landscape of the future be?

Imagine, if you can, what change of conditions has occurred in the site and surroundings of the Central Park of New York in the thirty-three years since the problem of that work was first taken up. There are buildings about it now many lofty stories in height; some of ten stories; where, then, there was a background of woods, pastures and lowly dwellings. I removed four hundred one-storied structures from within the boundary of the site. There are now eight railroad approaches where there was then but one. A thousand carriages pass through the ground for every one that then came near it. Several thousand people walk in it for recreation where one walked then.

It is our first duty to foresee the change of circumstances of like character that is likely to occur about Jamaica Park, and to weigh well the consequences of it. No plan will be a safe one to follow that is not devised with laborious prevision, not of just such changes as have occurred in New York, but, nevertheless, of very great changes. Where thousands of people may [847]reasonably be expected to pass during the next five years, many times these thousands must be looked for when the city’s bonds now being sold to provide for the work will be redeemable. The question, under these circumstances, is very far from being: What would now, or what ten years hence, will be most pleasing? It is: What forty or fifty years hence will have come to be most serviceable with respect to the essential purpose for which, under the name of public parks, the proceeds of these bonds are to be used; the promotion of the health and well-being of the mass of the population of a much larger town than Boston now is?

Take one item of the problem of design. This pond will bar all public transit across a space of the city one quarter of a mile in breadth. People wishing to pass along the border of the park, not as a means of recreation, but on their ordinary business, will be concentrated on routes of travel on the shores of the pond.

Other people, seeking recreation, have also to be concentrated on these shores. Adjoining the ground where this concentration must occur the water on one side of the pond is very deep; and just here, near the shore of the pond, there are valuable private houses and properties. The necessary space for convenient passage of the two classes of travel that must be here provided for can only be obtained by encroaching upon the shore of the pond, making a complete, newly constructed shore. The water of the pond is at this point very deep. The cost of making a shore of primarily natural aspect by filling out upon this deep water would be very great. After much consideration, we proposed to the Park Commissioners that a retaining wall should be built to support the necessary street constructions, and to provide standing places and root room for trees by which the houses back of the street will be screened from the opposite shore of the pond, and to provide back of the necessary retaining wall on the shore a body of soil in which foliage would grow to fall over and obscure that necessary retaining wall. In the end, not a foot of the wall now so offensively conspicuous is expected to be visible. The surface of the water in the pond is now seven feet below the line to which, at certain periods every year, it rises, and which, in composing landscape scenery about it, we must have in view.

Of course, if we had had it in view to make the place as ugly and unsuitable for rural recreation as we could, we should hardly have taken more effectual measures for that purpose than we have. But the design of a house is not to be judged from what is to be seen of its underpinning, framework and scaffolding. In the corresponding stage of every park enterprise with which I have had to do there has been a propensity to take such judgment of it, and sometimes a loss of public convenience has thus been brought about, the results of which have been extremely regrettable.

Looking over what has above been printed, I perceive that there is nothing in it replying to your observation that the “entire bank” on the Prince [848]Street side of the pond has been staked out for paths and drives. You are mistaken. Trial lines to aid study have been staked out for two distinct alternative systems in this quarter.

The aggregate breadth of the drive and walks of one of these systems is sixty-five feet. The breadth of the space that would be left verdant between the pond and the boundary of the park, where this space is narrowest is one hundred and thirty-five feet.

A fortnight since, at our request, made in a report setting forth the facts, the Park Commissioners walked over this part of the park under my personal guidance, in order that the question between the two propositions might be more intelligently considered by them. The trees that a satisfactory construction and drainage of the proposed roads and walks might require to be removed were pointed out individually; their number, size and prospective landscape value stated, and my opinion of the comparative value of those of them requiring to be removed in each case, given to the Commissioners on the ground. Calling particular attention to a few of the older trees, I stated that there was in my mind some doubt what effect would result from the severance of certain of their roots and from changes which the construction of the road would make in local drainage conditions; and, because of this doubt, I afterwards advised that the question which of the alternative plans submitted should be adopted, be left open until Professor Sargent’s opinion on this point could be obtained. This advice was adopted and work on that side of the pond has, in consequence, been since suspended.

Yours Truly