Paper on the {Back Bay} Problem and its Solution
Read Before the Boston Society of Architects

[April 2, 1886]

I have been asked to give you some account of the public work at the outlet of Back Bay.

The central purpose of this work is simply that of a basin for holding water, as an adjunct of the general drainage system of the city. With this basin a variety of arrangments have been planned to lessen the unseemliness and inconvenience of an affair for such a purpose in the midst of a residential quarter, the more important of these being expedients for controlling the movements of water in the basin and to it and from it.

How it happens that it is universally called a park, criticised as a park and the beauty and usefulness of a park anticipated for it I will explain presently. It might as well be called a dry dock or rural cemetery or a cathedral close, and discussed from a corresponding point of view, and the persistance with which it is thus held to be what it is not, never was and never can be, is an interesting illustration of the absurd difficulty that a professional man must be prepared to find sometimes standing in his way of getting a fair hearing from the public.

It occurs to me that the most instructive aspect in which this work can be presented to you as architects, is that in which it will appear as an illustration of the advantages that may be had from professional combination.

The professional fields respectively of the Architect, the Engineer, the Sanitary Engineer and the Landscape Gardener or Landscape Architect are in the main well-defined. Yet, at certain points, one merges into the other in such a manner that they may be regarded as so many convenient subdivisions of one field and each profession as a branch of one trunk profession. You see engineering journals giving plans of buildings, and architectural journals discussing plans of drainage of bridges and of parks. But as yet there is much {less} disposition to ready and cordial cooperation between these branch professions than is desirable for the public interests.

At a very late stage in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the trustees of that work concluded to employ a board of architects in consultation with their engineer. The result is to be seen by walking through some of the narrow streets that pass under the inclined approaches to the bridge proper, and it is a very interesting result. By and by, when the granite gains the tints of age, the painters and etchers will find it out and instruct the public about it. As yet it is almost unknown. Suppose that the great engineer who [438]

[439] [440] planned the main structure had been led to seek the cooperation of the same architects in planning the towers of that edifice and all other parts of the structure, how much the public would have gained.

There is a bridge over the Schuylkill planned by another eminent engineer, in which, as it is really a part of the great park of Philadelphia, much effort for magnificent effect is evident. There is not a member of this Association who if he had been consulted by the engineer before the plan was fully conceived would not have shown him in a moment how much a greater degree, of the effect he desired, could be obtained, with no addition to the cost of the bridge.

As an illustration of the reverse practice, the employment of Mr Hunt at the suggestion of General Stone, the engineer of the base work of the Bartholdi statue may be referred to.

This work of Back Bay is instructive of the advantage of interprofessional cooperation in another way. That a landscape artist should have been associated with a sewer engineer in the planning and superintendence of a public work, and of the two should rather have been given the first place is certainly remarkable. Supposing it to be a wise arrangment you may be curious to know how it could have been brought about through the working of our present methods of city government. The best way to explain it will be by a narrative which would be unduly personal, egotistical and confidential if you had not done me the honor to make me an honorary comrad, and I were talking to you at any other time than after dinner.

In 1876, three gentlemen of notable position and character, of great commercial ability, liberal & public spirited were appointed Park Commissioners of the city of Boston with the duty of considering a variety of projects for the advancement of which there had been more or less public demand. As is apt to be the case in the early days of any such undertaking there was a disposition with these gentlemen to enter as soon as possible upon some scheme, the practical results of which would not be very remote. The scheme that first engaged their attention, and with reference to which there seemed to them to be the most immediately pressing demand, was the project of a pleasure ground within or adjoining that quarter of the city toward which fashion was setting, and in which there was the most activity of trade or speculation in real estate. Anything else the Commission could have in contemplation seemed by comparison, distant and obscure.

They therefore soon advised the City Council to authorize the purchase of 100 acres of land for a park on Back Bay. The City Council was not disposed to comply but under various influences, an order was at length adopted which permitted the Park Commissioners to buy, if they could, not less than 100 acres of land within certain defined limits, provided the whole could be obtained at a sum not exceeding $450.000, or at a rate of 10 cts a foot. This success was not brought about without some log-rolling and compromising among the members of the Council, and the order would not have [441] been passed, it is said, and I have no doubt truly, had not some of those who voted for it felt quite sure that it would be impossible to buy the required amount of land at the price fixed.

After a great deal of skillful bargaining, however, the result was accomplished, a little being picked up here and a little there, until finally an area was obtained of 106 acres of the singular shape that you see.

If you ask how it came to take such a shape, the answer is to be found in the circumstance that the principal part of the ground the Commissioners were able to purchase at the fixed price, was a gulf of mud and water of such depth that the cost of filling it up and preparing it to be built upon would be so great that it offered no prospect of a return for the needed investment. The substance of the locality was not like that found in those parts of the Back Bay that have been built upon, but was a flowing mud. Its surface was in considerable parts 20 feet below the grade of Commonwealth Ave and at one point soundings could be taken in it twenty feet deeper so that the solid ground was 40 feet below street grade.

Another circumstance was that the owners of the property wanted as large a frontage of lots as possible, consequently the more extended the outline of the park in proportion to its area, the better for any sellers who could retain a portion of their land.

By the way, you will here please reflect that the disadvantages which these circumstances established with reference to building purposes, applied almost equally to what are ordinarily and rightly understood to be the purposes of a park. In my opinion the whole scheme of a park at this point was an illconsidered one. As Mr Davis the City Engineer afterwards told the Commissioners: If the state of Massachusetts had been hunted over, a space combining more disadvantages for a park could not have been found.

Having obtained the land, or rather the space of marsh, mud and water, they had sought, the Commissioners went through the usual form of conciliating an ignorant public opinion, which is called a Competition for plans. They did so I have no doubt in perfect good faith, more or less sharing the delusion of the public with respect to this expedient.

Now I come to my personal narrative. I was in Europe at the time this competition was entered upon. I returned about the time it ended, and immediately received an invitation to assist the Commissioners in selecting the prize plan. I declined to do so and when pressed, told the Commissioners that I considered that the terms of the competition were thoroughly unfair and the result could not but be most unsatisfactory and prejudicial to their undertaking. I predicted certain misfortunes which, do the best they could, must result from it. Misfortunes for which I was unwilling to bear any responsibility.

Several months afterwards the Commissioners sought me again, and said: — “It is turning out just as you said that it would. We realize that the Competition was unfortunate. Not one of the twenty odd plans comes near [442] to suiting our views. We have only raised a swarm of hornets to plague us. Now we want to see what you can do. Will you make us a plan?”

“I will not,” I first answered. “The only possible justification that can be made for your inducing a score of educated men to direct their ambition and spend their brains for some months in preparing plans for you for which they would receive no compensation, is that by such a course you might be helped to pick out from among them the man best fitted to advise you in the matter. If you don’t like your prize plan, nevertheless you have found the man who comes most nearly among twenty to meeting your ideas. Take him into council, and you will soon obtain what you want. That is due to him.

They answered, “That we shall never do. The man would not suit us. We have paid him $500, and he is perfectly satisfied. He wanted nothing more.”

After turning the matter over for a week I saw the Commissioners again and said, “I will not make you a plan to be accepted or rejected as you may be disposed, but for certain considerations I offer to become your professional counsel in this matter for a period of not less than three years. I will discuss the subject of a plan with you and will aid you to advance such discussion to profitable conclusions by means of drawings, until a plan is attained that shall be satisfactory to you.”

An engagment was made on those terms, my office being entitled that of Advisory Landscape Architect.

Three successive studies were made and finally a plan was reached acceptable to the Commissioners. I had before, more than once, suggested that it would be a good plan to call the City Engineer in consultation with regard to the project, and 1 now advised that the plan should not be formally adopted without a conference with that officer, and this was assented to and a meeting arranged for the purpose.

At this meeting the City Engineer said, “I never have seen how it was practicable to have a park in the locality that you have chosen, and if you had given me an opportunity I should long ago have pointed out what I think to be insuperable difficulties in the way of it. But the question is one in which the Superintendant of Sewers is better prepared in some respects to advise you than I am. You had better send for him.”

This was done and there followed a discussion of four hours at the end of which the Engineers retired, leaving the Commissioners fully convinced that all their movements in the matter had been precipitate and that all the labor given to a park on Back Bay had been wasted.

The fact to be faced was this: —

Within the territory of which they had obtained possession, there was an estuary formed by the coming together of two streams, one being the Muddy River which flows through Brookline; the other Stony Brook flowing through Roxbury, and of which you have some knowledge from the full accounts of it given in the Press during the Freshet of last February. At the [443] ebb of the tide the water of both these streams moved steadily into Charles River under a bridge upon the mill dam road. But as the tide rose there was a back set, the banks of the estuary were overflowed, forming mud flats. Beyond these there were plateaus of sedge and salt grass, over which the tide occasionally flowed, and in time of freshet, especially if at the same time there was a spring tide and an Easterly wind, a district about 300 acres in extent was flooded. There was thus a natural tidal basin of this extent.

For some time before and after full flood of the tide, the body of water set back in this natural basin was at rest and under these conditions it became a settling basin. Both the streams flowing into it had long served the purpose of main sewers for the people of a large territory, and the matter brought down by them, being constantly precipitated, had been incorporated with the mud of the estuary. The water moving over it became exceedingly filthy so that even eels could not live in it. Then, as the water went out with the tide the mud was exposed to the sun, and a stench arose that became an insufferable nuisance to people living half a mile away.

These conditions you will consider existed at a point toward which population was moving more rapidly than any other and close about which there was soon to be an irresistable demand for building ground as soon as the nuisance could be abated.

What could be done? The tide could be shut out by a dam. But the dam that would bar the tide at high water would also bar the outflow of the streams at low water; and at such junctures as have been referred to, of which the freshet of last winter affords an example, a great accumulation would occur before the tide would fall so low that it could be let out through a gate in the dam.

A basin to hold it, then, was a necessity, and if there was to be a reasonable development of the neighborhood as a residence quarter, it was necessary that it should be one of much less extent than the natural basin and one of much less disagreeable aspect.

The regular thing to do under these circumstances would, I suppose, be to form a basin like that at Providence — a basin in which the water would be allowed to rise to a height of perhaps 15 ft above low water, and its extent made sufficient to hold all the water likely to accumulate while the tide was too high for an outflow. It would be formed by a retaining wall of stone and the city could be built up closely about it. Such an arrangment would be very costly and would be far from an attractive circumstance in the Back Bay quarter of the city. Its character being realized, the prospect of it would not advance the value of neighboring real estate or enlarge the basis of taxation.

But being the simplest thing to be done and, so to say, the normal engineering idea of a basin, it was the natural starting point for the discussion that now ensued between the City Engineer and the Landscape Architect, and which proceeded from step to step, somewhat in this way.

[444]

“Can sewage matter be kept out of the basin?”

Answer, “yes, by intercepting sewers.”

“But the ordinary flow of the streams will yet be often foul; can this flow, except in the emergencies for which the basin is needed, be kept out of it?”

Answer, “Yes, by conduits of moderate dimensions laid outside the basin.”

“That being the case, can the basin when not required for its main purpose be kept clean and sweet?”

Answer, “yes, by flooding it as far as necessary for the purpose with salt water, letting this move in and out enough to avoid stagnation.”

“But suppose we go to the very expensive expedient of high retaining walls, will not the deposit that will occasionally be made above these, when the water subsides after a flood, leave a slime upon them offensive both to the eye and the nose, and would not their aspect be in all respects unpleasant?”

Answer, “It could not be otherwise.”

“Sloping earthen banks instead of masonry would answer the purpose of holding the water, what would be the objection to them.”

Ans. “The slope would need to be as nearly level as that of a sea beach, or, to be pitched with stone in all that part liable to be flooded and for some feet above it. Otherwise it would be undermined and washed out by waves beating against it. Such a slope for the necessary depth would require a great space of ground and it would not have a pleasing appearance. Moreover such a lining of stone would be open to the same objections as a vertical wall of stone.”

“Suppose the wash of waves could be avoided, the lining of stone dispensed with, the margin of the water be made inoffensive, could a basin of sufficient extent be formed within the area now under control of the Park Department?”

By calculation it was found that it could.

“By taking care that there shall nowhere be any great breadth of water for the wind to act upon, we may avoid the liability to waves of destructive force. By taking care that the slope of the bank between high and low water level, shall be at an inclination of about 1 to 6; by making the breadth of ground to be flooded during freshets so great that the difference between high and low water need not exceed four feet and by providing for a growth of foliage on the banks, not liable to be flooded with salt water, that will obscure the margin, should we not have a result that would serve all the engineering requirements as well as they would be served in a basin of masonry and be much less objectionable on the score of taste?”

Ans. “We should.”

“And would not a basin of this character cost much less than a basin of masonry?”

[445]

Ans. “It would.”

Thus we came to the problem of which the plan now being carried out was finally accepted as a tolerably satisfactory solution.

I will give you a description of the apparatus for controlling the movements of the water, reading most of it from a paper prepared for the Boston Society of Civil Engineers by Mr Howe, the Assistant Engineer in Superintendence of the work, and printed by the Society. This was written five years ago, and as you will see under the influence of the habit and the popular understanding which still with the public generally leads the locality to be called a park and any water in it a lake. He is describing the intentions which have since been carried out.

Muddy River is to be taken to Charles River by an independent conduit. A conduit is to {be} made for carrying the ordinary flow of Stony Brook also to Charles River, but as the water in Charles River would be liable to rise at times so as to back up the water in this conduit about the street level in parts of Roxbury, a lower outlet for such occasions must be provided.

The ordinary area of water within the basin will be 30 acres with its surface at 8 feet above city datum. In times of freshet the water of Stony Brook will be turned by an automatic arrangment into this basin, and the water as it rises will spread over an area of fifty acres — p. 130

So much for the appliances for regulating the flow of the water.

Now as to the design of the basin; this is the drawing of the plan originally presented to the Commissioners. You will see that a public street is carried all around the territory and at several points across it. This was required by the City Council and the space needed for the streets was to be taken, as you see that it has been, out of the 100 acres to be purchased. These streets are broader than ordinary city streets; they have very broad side walks and between the walks and the wheelway, planting spaces. On one side of the basin provision is made for a riding pad in addition to the wheelway, and half a mile of this is guarded from being crossed either by carriages or by people on foot so that a gallop can be safely taken upon it.

The basin lies within these circumferential highways. The water within the basin at its ordinary height is ten feet below the level of the highways, and the distance between the edge of the highways and the high-water line is about seventy feet on an average but constantly varying in most parts from forty to a hundred feet. Where it is ordinarily liable to be flooded, the surface of the bank has an inclination of about one vertical in six horizontal. Above that it has an ogee section until a swell is formed generally a foot or two above the surface of the highways to the border of which it is brought with another ogee.

Such a section constantly varying in its curvature, corresponds with that naturally formed on the banks of streams, where the soil is moderately friable but somewhat variable in density.

[446]

The visible bottom of the basin is to have the character of a salt marsh, through, and on the border of which, a tidal creek flows in rapidly winding courses, there being nowhere any straight reach. The object of this crookedness is to prevent the surface of the water from being raked by the wind for any considerable distance and consequently to prevent a swell from [447] forming. The ordinary level of the water will be from three inches to a foot below the level of the salt marsh but, it can be readily raised when necessary to keep the sedge and salt grass in flourishing condition.

When floods come and the tide is up so that there can be no outflow from the basin, the water will rise rapidly until it reaches the salt marsh level, [448] then, having double the area to spread over, more slowly. Very rarely, according to the calculations of the engineers, will it rise more than a foot above the surface of the roots. The sedge tops will generally be more than that height above the roots, and with the obstacle they will provide, it will remain impossible for the wind to raise a destructive swell over the enlarged water surface. If the water ever rises still higher, which it may do once only in several years, the space of time before the tide outside will have fallen so that an outflow can again be had will be short, the swell raised above the sedge cannot be heavy and the damage to the banks is likely to be slight and readily repaired. With these conditions in view the engineer yielded the point of a formal zone of stone for the protection of the bank, which would have destroyed all possibility of giving the basin a picturesque or natural aspect.

The further treatment of the banks became then an ordinary question of landscape gardening under certain motives that need not be here particularly explained.

---

The best result that can be hoped for is that after trees have grown and nature has in various ways not to be minutely anticipated come to our aid, and in effect adopted and given a truly natural character to the details of the salt creek and salt marsh elements, it will appear that there is nothing artificial about the affair except the roads and bridges required for convenience, but that the city has grown up about the locality leaving all within its boundaries in an undisturbed natural state.

For convenience, I have confined my account thus far exclusively to the Basin proper. What will have been more conspicuous to any of you passing near the locality is the outlet or passage between the basin and Charles River. There are special local features in this part of the work of which the more important, being that of the causeway and arch, will not need description. The outline of these having been established, I requested the Commissioners to employ an architect for designing them and they engaged Mr H. H. Richardson for the duty. My intention had been that the causeway if built at all of stone, should be of field stone so laid with pockets and with a heavy batter in the manner of the wall built in Franklin Park that it would be much overgrown with foliage and its artificial character except at the parapet be unobservable. Mr Richardson fell in with this idea, and his first plans for the Boylston Street arch were for a very picturesque structure of field stone, harmonizing in character with the proposed plan of {the} causeway. The cost of the work on the whole would have been much less if this had been adopted but the Commissioners were afraid to undertake anything so out of common, and so we had to come to what you now see. It is very agreeable as a matter of general outlines and of color, but I think it would have suited the circumstances better if it had not been quite so nice.

[449] [450]

As to the treatment of this outlet district in other respects I will read from my published report for 1884. (page 14)

The work is now so far advanced and in respect to its hydraulic apparatus so far in operation as to have already been fairly tested with respect to its main purposes. The flood of last winter was an extraordinary one and all the conditions were as unfavorable as they are ever likely to be. The great destruction of property which it caused in the valley of Stoney Brook is evidence of this. But within the field of our operations not the slightest disturbance occurred. The whole self acting apparatus did its work smoothly and continuously. The water in the basin rose at no time while the tide was too high for an outflow as much as four feet above its ordinary level. There was no wash of consequence.

There has been some question whether we could succeed in making an artificial salt grass or sedge meadow marsh. If you look over the Western parapet of Mr Richardson’s bridge, you will see that we have done so on a space of several acres, quite sufficient to show that our plans for the purpose are practical. We have tried two methods, one by sodding and one by sowing; both are successful.

Where we are not successful as yet is in establishing any satisfactory vegetation between salt sedge and a line about three feet above it, within which salt appears to be deposited probably by evaporation of salt water, carried up by capillary attraction, but until last year we had no proper organization for planting, being dependent on a contractor, and I am confident that we shall yet succeed. Even if we fail, it is but a question of time when this zone will be obscured by overhanging foliage from the trees and bushes growing above it.

It has been thought that the place would be a breeding ground for muskitoes. No evidence that it was so appeared last summer.

It was thought that our plan would not overcome the filthiness of the locality, that the stench would not be relieved and that the water in the basin would be always disgustingly foul. The air was perfectly sweet all of last summer, and notwithstanding the fact that steam dredgers were at work in the upper part of the basin and a steamboat with scows loaded with mud was often moving in the lower part, the water was generally fairly clean. I have no doubt that it will be perfectly so when the work ends.

The plans for the Basin having been adopted, I asked the City Engineer, “what are your plans for dealing with the Muddy River above the Basin?”

“We have none.”

“What are you likely to have there eventually — a big conduit of masonry to carry the flood, several miles in length, and intercepting pipes for the sewerage from both sides?”

“That is not unlikely.”

“Such arrangment will be very costly and will be delayed many years [451]

[452] because of its cost. Meantime and before many years the Muddy River valley will be very dirty, unhealthy, squalid. No one will want to live in the neighborhood of it. Property will have little value and there will grow up near the best residence district of the city an unhealthy and pestilential neighborhood.”

“All that is not improbable.”

“Why not make an open channel there and treat the banks of it as we are going to treat the banks of the Basin. Would not that be an economical move?”

“I don’t see but it would.”

“Then the roads leading up that valley to Jamaica Pond would be the beginning of a Park-way leading from the Back Bay to the Arboretum and West Roxbury Park.”

“They might be.”

“Suppose then that we put our two professional heads together again and see if we can’t make a practicable plan for that purpose and get the city to adopt it.”

“Agreed.”

And from that conference came this plan which you will see is essentially an extension of the Back Bay Plan, and has been fully adopted by {. . . ) Brookline and Boston.