In accordance with instructions we made yesterday a preliminary examination of the lands at Fall River appropriated to park purposes, also of the Town farm property and of the Ridge Road and eight rod road improvements and having had the opportunity to confer freely with your Commission and the Mayor, we are led to make the following suggestions.

The preeminent advantage of the Bay Park seems to be the views across the water to the North and West which it commands. The opportunity [375]

Fall River, Massachusetts

[376]

The outlook from the North or Cherry Park will be upon back yards of dwelling houses as the boundaries are at present defined, this is a disadvantage which should be remedied if the property is retained either by the opening of new streets or the acquisition of additional territory. On the high ground of the town farm to which our attention was directed, there is a site a few acres in extent that commands a noble prospect up the Taunton River and it is a question for serious consideration by your Committee at this time whether the section of the city especially interested in a North Park would not be more decidedly benefited by an improvement and extension if necessary of the desirable portion of this property rather than by a retention of the Cherry Street location which has no marked attraction of a landscape character.

As the Ridge Road now laid out forms an agreeable drive and connects directly with the town farm property it would give that locality an additional advantage as a site for the North Park. A new road might probably be with advantage laid out from a point a few rods West of the town farm line to connect the Ridge Road with Main Street by easy grades, the intention being that the improvement should take the place of the present line of road directly up and down the hill which is much too steep for pleasure travel.

Although the natural advantages of your city for refined and healthful out of door recreation are very great, they seem thus far to have been singularly disregarded and the wealth which exists in them wasted. Your narrow streets and the habitual confinement of a large part of your population within walls during the greater part of the day, makes it particularly desirable that some such comprehensive scheme as we have suggested should be adopted.

It will be seen that the object of the above general suggestions is to draw your attention to the desirability of securing for the city in some judicious way a circuit of pleasure travel that would include in one scheme the several improvements already contemplated, Main Street being the central line with the Bay Park, the eight rod road and Cook’s Pond on one side and the North Park & the Ridge Road on the other, and we hope it may commend itself to your favorable consideration.