I have been asked for a contribution to the public discussion of the question of a park for the people of my old home. The form in which the question immediately presents itself I suppose to be:- Can Hartford afford not to have a park? I invite those who wish to give this question fair consideration to glance with me at the history of parks in this country.

Thirty years ago the first park had but just been begun in New York, and one of the daily papers of that city expressed a not uncommon opinion in saying that it was a foolish project, foreign to American social conditions, and one that would never be popular. Ten years afterwards, three other parks had been begun and the first, though yet very crude and incompletely realizing its purpose, had come largely into use and obtained great celebrity. But it was yet visited chiefly as a curiosity, and one thing that made it curious was its enormous cost. It was now, however, commonly thought that a park was a good thing for a great metropolitan town, and perhaps not a bad speculation for a town aspiring or pretending to assume that position.

After another ten years the census-takers recorded forty parks in the United States, some bodies of land being probably included in the enumeration that ought not to have been classed as parks. Since then, the older parks have ceased to be visited, except by strangers, as objects of curiosity, and have become settled domestic institutions, in a great degree fulfilling the proper functions of parks. They are no longer thought of by well-informed people as a special form of luxury of great cities, and many towns of less population and wealth than Hartford have entered upon park undertakings. Of such that occur to me as I write there are Trenton, New Jersey; Wilmington, Delaware; Lynn and Quincy in Massachusetts, and Cansfield, Ohio. Lynn has acquired possession of a thousand acres of rugged land not half a mile out of the town. Quincy’s park land is comparatively small, but so situated as to practically include large and attractive bodies of water. The Wilmington park ground has a similar advantage, taking in half a mile of the Brandywine River. Similarly, [123]the ground just acquired by Rochester for parks includes two miles or more of the Genesee River.

The Earl of Meath, Chairman of the Park Committee of the Council of London, last Summer examined a large number of American parks. Writing, a few weeks ago, to the London Graphic, he said:-

“England justly prides herself on her magnificent parks but her finest ones are private property, unless the Royal ones may be considered public. If they who have charge of her municipal pleasaunces do not desire to be distanced in the race by the conservators of public parks in America, I warn them that they must look sharply to their laurels.”

It is plain that public parks are no longer to be considered as foreign to American social conditions. Nowhere in the world are parks as much used by the people as in America; nowhere as harmoniously, as profitably, as gratefully.

It is foolish to assume that the rapid spread of the park movement of late years is the progress of a fashion, or that it shows merely a disposition of imitation or of rivalry. It is mainly the consequence of the large dividends which the owners of the older parks—not one of them yet of nearly full growth, or in full working order—are receiving for what they have put into them. I say this with confidence. In a directing or consulting capacity, I have had something to do with most of them, and I have been at some pains to follow the history of others and watch their development and the development of the popular use of them. Mistakes have been made in all, and in some there has been atrocious blundering, or worse, but I do not know of a park that has yet come at all fairly under trial, that is not generally considered by the tax-payers interested to have been a profitable business operation.

In fact, since the people have come to realize what a park does for them, strong popular movements have occurred in many towns, looking to an increase of their park advantages. This has been markedly the case, for example, in New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago and St. Louis. New York, since it has learned the use of its first park of eight hundred acres, commonly regarded for some years as extravagantly large, has taken land for additional parks to the extent of four thousand acres, and this with the general approval of those among its tax-payers who had been most bitter in denouncing its original park scheme as silly and extravagant. Brooklyn has a park of five hundred and fifty acres with five miles of parkways, two hundred feet wide. In no town has a park been more violently fought, or, for a time, more commonly regarded as an imposition upon the tax-payers. In consequence of the opposition of citizens holding it to be so, it was for several years disgracefully neglected and ill-used. Nevertheless, it has gradually become so useful and has developed such a public want, that this year the city is moving for a large increase of its park advantages. The Brooklyn Eagle of the 10th instant has an editorial advocating the project, in which it says of the original park that it “is [124]an inestimable public possession, the worth of which must increase with the gathering years.” The move for an additional park is not sectional, or, in an invidious sense, speculative, but general and substantial. In the discussion of the subject, I observe that a gentleman is active who used to live in Hartford, and is known there as a conservative business man; Elijah Kennedy. I quote from him:-

“I will take for granted that there is need for an extensive addition to our parks. That there is, has often been declared and never denied.”

From another publication of Mr. Kennedy’s I take the following:

“All are agreed that the project of another large park in Brooklyn is a desirable one.”

Writing last month to a Detroit paper, the venerable H. W. S. Cleveland said of the experience of Minneapolis:-

“The opposition to the park movement was so strenuous that many invaluable opportunities were lost and the park commissioners were so apprehensive of being thought extravagant that they failed to secure desirable areas, some of which have since been purchased at an enormous advance on what they might at first have been had for, while others have passed beyond their power of purchase. All opposition has long since been silenced. Every citizen is proud of our park system and if the question were now open of doing away with our parks and boulevards, on condition of restoring their cost to the city treasury, not a vote would be cast in its favor.”

Minneapolis, at my last visit, had about 1400 acres of parks, and several miles of broad, tree-lined “park-ways” outside of the parks. Since then, I believe that additions have been made to the system. Two of her parks look upon natural lakes that stretch far beyond them.

In a paper signed by the mayor and by several ex-mayors of Buffalo, and by the principal merchants, bankers, and heads of financial institutions of the city, after reference to the intense opposition made for a period of years to their park—opposition that sadly curtailed and injured the scheme—it is said that, after a fair trial, all objection to it has vanished.

“The city is now proud of it and grateful for it.”

“Broad avenues from different directions have been opened to it, and a street railroad constructed expressly for the use of visitors to the park.”

In explanation of its present popularity, with the more conservative and cautious citizens, it is said:-

“It is believed that through the increased attractiveness of the city as a place of residence, the rise in the value of property adjacent to the park and its approaches, and the additional taxable property invested in land and buildings in the vicinity of these improvements the outlay for the park has lightened the burden of the tax-payers.”

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There is a general conviction among good people in every town that has been provided with a valuable park, that resort to the park takes the place of harmful forms of recreation to a degree that adds appreciably to the wealth of the town. With indirect reference to this consideration, these Buffalo gentlemen say of their park:-

“Its chief value lies in its ever-growing capabilities of usefulness in the future.”

As to the disadvantage of being without a park, the conviction is coming to be prevalent that it practically affects the prestige of a city, such as the lack of a water supply or of a sewerage system would affect it. In other words, a park, properly so called, is now generally felt to be a necessity rather than a luxury of city life.

As to the economy of a procrastinating policy in respect to a park, one or two facts of my experience may be stated. I was once asked to examine a body of land which a commission of citizens had selected as the site for a park. I reported favorably, but the property was thought to be too costly, and the project fell through. This was nearly twenty years ago. The town is yet without a park. There is not another in the country that is in more need of one. But the tract of land formerly rejected is no longer to be thought of, while to secure any site that would tolerably answer the purpose, it would now be necessary to go far out of town and pay a much higher price for it than the rejected site was offered for. The difficulties of the case increase every year, but the town cannot be brought to face them. No doubt it will do so by-and-by, and will pay hardly for its earlier lack of courage.

In another case, an excellent site for a park was found which could be obtained at a cost of five hundred dollars an acre. The project was defeated by self-seeking politicians who could not look beyond the next annual election, and, three years ago, when I was consulted as to a new project of a park for the same city, I found the site first in view so occupied that it was not to be thought of. I was told that $10,000 an acre would not buy it. I am now laying out a park for this city two miles further from the center of the town.

In another case where, ten to twenty years ago, I examined bodies of land proposed to be taken for parks, I saw reason to advise that certain scraps on their borders should be added to them. In every instance where this advice was not taken at the time, experience has made the mistake of neglecting it so apparent that the scraps in question have been afterwards acquired at a price from five to ten times greater than it would have been necessary to pay for them when the advice was given.

Advising against unreasonable delay, I must add that there is no public work that should be gone about more deliberately and cautiously than a park. There are cities that could have had a park of greater value than that they have at half what they have paid for it, had the choice of a site been made with good knowledge of what is needed and what is to be objected to in a park, and had [126]the entire business been from the outset under the control of a board wholly disconnected from and independent of other departments of city government. I may add a word on the latter point. There is not a park worth having in this or any other country that has been obtained under our ordinary methods of doing city business. I do not say this because I believe that for us there are any better methods for most of such business. I do not. But there are good reasons why parks should be treated exceptionally—why our ordinary political business methods applied to them must have ruinous effects. As far as I know, every park in this country has been obtained mainly by means of a fund from long loans administered by a board of unpaid trustees acting in the manner of the Trustees of Public Libraries, Hospitals, or other endowed institutions. The best of such boards have been composed of men of both parties, have been non-partisan, and have had long terms of office.