I have not written sooner and shall make no formal report to the Commission upon your scheme because I have not found myself ready to give you any definite advice upon the few points on which I am not fully satisfied with your scheme and on which I have not already sufficiently expressed my views.

I do not feel that I have mastered the conditions which should be controlling or that I can help you much until you have a better map of the proposed (main) park property

I have not taken hold of the matter as I should had you chosen to place upon me a definite professional responsibility and, going about, as I have under your lead, in a desultory way, taking up the various matters to [193] which you have invited my attention from the point of view to which they had been previously carried in your minds, without having approached them by the same road, the lack of what has thus been excluded from my consideration by which I am compelled to look mainly at the positive & not the comparative value of what you have selected, is embarrassing.

I will however, briefly review the matters which you have more particularly asked me to consider.

The proposition of the Charles River Embankmnt I regard with unqualified satisfaction. I would advise no more and no less than you propose.

The outline of the ground between the Embankmt and the main land, below the Parker Hill Reservoir, as sketched when I left on your map shows the minimum of what should be taken with a view to a park. The area would be desirably enlarged especially at the broadest part. If necessary from considerations of cost to contract it, it would be better to change the motive and substitute for the park a broad park way.

If any of the ground marked to be taken on the last sketch on your map, between Francis Street and Fisher Avenue must be dispensed with I should advise the reduction to be made at the West end at the nearest point to Tremont Street. If by throwing out land at this point you could enlarge the gap at Bumpstead lane I should advise you to do it.

The Jamaica pond plot is unquestionably very desirable. The chance that such a pond in the midst of a dense neighborhood will become pestilential and the certainty that if defended and used as you propose, it will be a great sanitary advantage is conclusive.

As to your main park, the locality seems to possess more advantages for the purpose than any other I have seen near Boston and some of these are of great positive value, while the negative advantages—mainly in the fact that so large a space can be found so near the center of population, so little occupied & expensively improved, are remarkable. The topography has defects and presents difficulties which to overcome without excessive cost will require much consideration and in the attempt to select and aggrandize the more valuable opportunities of the site I apprehend that some adjustment of its boundaries both by contraction and expansion will be found necessary This is the only ground you propose to take on which it is practicable to form a park properly so called and the advantages of a park can be obtained upon it much sooner and the value of it will be much greater acre for acre if you take as much land as you propose than if you try to get on with a smaller amount. There are some circumstances about it (so far as I now see necessary circumstances) which are not satisfactory but in the whole the possibility of obtaining a tract of land so near a large city equally well adapted to be formed into a park, and so free from costly improvements is a rare piece of good fortune and if advantage should not be taken of it in all probability the city would hereafter be compelled to go further and fare worse with much greater expenditure. The Elm Hill and adjoining properties might I believe be in some way turned to [194]

[195] good account for the improvement of your scheme in this particular but you cannot make an approach through them that will not assume the character of your most important approach and establish the grand entrance to your park and for this purpose I can shape out nothing in my mind as yet that does not lack artistic completeness.

I have little doubt that something better than I now see can be done but it will probably require an adjustmnt of boundaries.

On the whole if you were compelled to reduce your scheme at all materially, I should prefer to leave out the Elm Hill property to any other—especially would I do so rather than reduce the size of the park or run any great risk of being compelled to reduce it or of failing in your immediate purpose.

On the other hand if any enlargmt of the scope or costliness of your scheme were now admissable I should advise greater liberality in the new park ways and bolder and more sweeping improvemnts of existing streets leading toward the park, than you seem to contemplate.

The most defective part of your scheme certainly is that of the approaches to the park. It must be reached from all distant points by very indirect routes, such as in any other of our cities but Boston would be regarded as intolerable. Those from the denser parts of the city, which are the least open to this objection, though more or less agreeable at present, will after a few years, be (comparatively speaking and with reference to the purpose) mean streets, cramped inconvenient and awkward.

I am much afraid that your plan of a Park-way without side roads will not prove satisfactory. A back yard is an indispensable part of a house and I can see no way of arranging a domestic establishmnt with your plan for the streets, that will not defy many prejudices and have great economical disadvantges.

You have a precedent for it, I know, in the arrangmt of the villas about Regent’s Park but even if the plan is there regarded as satisfactory the difference between the social conditions and customs of London and Boston render the experience of little value. In the approaches to the Bois de Boulogne a different and I think a much more available theory was adopted and certainly works well.

I must, therefore, suggest, with all deference to your judgmnt, that it would be better not to be bound to this feature. It is at least open to objections that may bring prejudice against your whole project.

You will see from all I have said that in whatever degree you are disposed to be influenced by my advice I should still be chiefly anxious that it tended to keep the boundaries of the various plots as far from an exact determination as possible, leaving them to be adjusted after the general theory of a plan for laying out the ground had been sufficiently developed to allow it to be done more intelligently & judiciously than I should imagine would be possible at present.

A private citizen under ordinary circumstances must take land as he can find it, that is as it may have been platted off by others without reference [196]

[197] to his particular wants. In laying out grounds so obtained, one must, of course, generally make the best of what thus happens to be available. It should be possible and it would be much better in your case to let your land be chosen more definitely with reference to your ideal after this had been in some degree defined by a plan accommodated to the topography of the neighborhood