The following letter had been written before the sudden death of our partner, Mr. Codman, last January. My failing health and absence in Europe had obliged us at that time to depend so largely upon his personal presence at Chicago and some other points in the West, that an emergency resulted by which we were led to put aside for a time whatever we could that was not a plain obligation of our business. This letter to you was not a business obligation and perhaps, having been much of the time since absent at Chicago and elsewhere, I have been the more willing that it should remain pigeon-holed from the thought that the longer the sending of it was delayed, the less would it be possible for any other than the actual motive to be imagined for the writing of it.

Let me state the circumstances by which I am more immediately led to the writing of this letter.

On my return from Europe last Fall, I was surprised to find how long it had been since anything had come to us from you.

It is our experience that public park undertakings are apt to be slow in starting. It was five years after the Act passed to provide for the Central Park in New York before the plan finally adopted for laying it out was begun. In Brooklyn there was a similar interval of six years. It was five years after the appointment of the Boston Park Commission before the plan for laying out Franklin Park was adopted. We were consulted six years ago by the Commissioners of a smaller town than Wilmington who lately informed us that they were not yet able to provide the data required for the planning of their park. Such lingering at the start of this class of enterprises is primarily due to the fact that in almost every case the work to be done is a new departure in the affairs of the city, and that the Park Commission is a new department of the city government. Sometimes it has to wait for decisions of the courts, or for action on the part of other departments with which its functions are found to be complicated. Sometimes appropriations are delayed, sometimes negotiations for property or for water-rights, or proceedings for the removal of nuisances are unexpectedly protracted. We knew that you had been threatened by some [631]such difficulties. We knew that the Act under which you were proceeding was less favorable than those of most Park Commissions to your contending with them efficiently. Consequently, that you should be making little substantial progress was not remarkable. Nevertheless, I said to my partners that it was not right that we should be so long without information as to your prospects, and I should have written to you accordingly if I had not expected to be away from home nearly all the time until I should see you in Wilmington.

I was then planning two journies in which I intended to visit all our works: one of these journies to be a circuit of those at the West; the other, of those at the South. I had proposed to make Wilmington my first stopping place as I went South, but when about to start, I found that the trains were so arranged that if I should stay with you as long as might prove desirable, it would be difficult for me to meet engagements for visits on particular days at points further South. At the last moment, therefore, I changed my plan so that I could give you as much time as might prove to be required, without disappointing the expectations of others. While in Georgia, I heard that you had called at our office in Brookline, but when my partners wrote me of it, the special object for which you afterwards told me that you made the call was not known or suspected by them, nor did they imagine, or give me reason to imagine, that you had been looking to us for any service that had not been punctually rendered.

I tell you all this now that you may better understand that when I came to you in Wilmington, I was wholly unprepared for the disclosures that, in the course of the day, gradually opened to me, and that I was, consequently, so slow to realize the full purport of much that you said, that we must have been talking together a good deal at cross purposes. I am afraid, also, that for the same reason, I may have hastily made some statements that I should have refrained from making had I sooner known how directly counter they were running to what afterwards appeared to be your convictions. It was not until late in the day that I began to see how different a view from mine you were taking of the main subject of our conversation, or to recognize that there had been anything like a rupture of our engagement with you.

I then thought, and have since been thinking, that it was due to you, as well as to my associates and myself, that after an examination of our office records, I should submit to your consideration our view of the subject of the disclosures in question. You have for some time been going on without assistance from us. You have decided that you do not wish our assistance. We have no wish that you should change your mind in this respect. The sole object with which I shall write, therefore, is to give you reasons for thinking a little better of us than any men can who are holding such impressions of our conduct and motives as in our conversation at Wilmington you gave me to understand were held by members of your Commission.

These impressions, (I use the word because you used it) may be considered in three groups. A summary statement of one would be that we had [632]undertaken to devise a general design for your park, to be represented for your consideration in the form of a drawing; that long after this drawing was believed to be due, and when, in order to proceed intelligently with your duties, you needed to have it before you, it had not been received, nor had any explanation come from us of our failure to present it. It was known that in the meantime we had undertaken to provide a general plan for the World’s Fair at Chicago, and that we were directing on the ground an important part of that work. It was known also, that we were connected with several other public works in different parts of the country. Under these circumstances, our failure to provide the expected general plan for Wilmington Park continuing, and no other explanation of it being offered, your Commissioners came at length to imagine that we had found that we could not meet all our engagements, and regarding that of preparing the plan for Wilmington Park as one of comparatively small consequence, we had, to use your own word, “dropped” it. In other words, it appeared to you that we had repudiated our obligations in the premises, offering no explanation or apology for doing so.

A summary statement of another group of impressions under which your Board had been led to act would be that we had presented to you a plan for laying out a portion of your park site; that this plan had proved unsatisfactory to your Board; had been set aside and a plan obtained in its place which had been devised without our assistance. This experience had tended to confirm the impression that we were not to be depended upon to supply what you needed in respect to a general plan.

I find it difficult to summarize the third group of impressions because they were made known to me in a somewhat indirect and not very positive way. But I may say that you referred to the circumstance that there was no instrument by which our obligations to you were accurately defined, in a manner which seemed to imply that some of your Commissioners had been influenced by an idea that we had been disposed to bring about a condition of things which would tend to draw you into arrangements that might better suit our convenience and be more profitable to us than such arrangements as we had found you ready at the outset to adopt.

I wish to question the ground of all these impressions. Before referring for this purpose to particular circumstances directly bearing upon the inquiry, I wish, for a reason that I will afterwards state, to give you some idea of the course by which the business of our office has come to be what it is, and to be conducted by the methods and courses that it is.

Fifty-six years ago I became a pupil of a topographical engineer, recently retiring from the Coast Survey Service. He had undertaken to train me in competency for his profession. I remained with him three years. In all this time, and afterwards, I was led, in part by the influence of Mr. Downing, to consider the general question of means by which the enjoyment of a measure of natural scenery might be reconciled with the requirements of public convenience for a compact, civilized community.

[633]

Incidentally then to studies in engineering science, I pursued studies relative to this subject and formed a habit of observation and reflection by which in extensive journies in our own land, I was led to give much consideration to conditions of enjoyment in scenery. Afterwards I made two journies in Europe and there made several hundred visits to places used for public open-air recreation. I looked into the history through which the existing conditions of these places, and the customs, laws and rules of their use, had come to be what they were. Sometimes, also, I conferred personally with those who were leading authorities on the management of such grounds, and with experts in various ways contributing to desirable results in them. I had introductions and advice, aiding me in this respect, from such men as your friend, Dr. Gray, Dr. Hooker and Mr. Downing.

Shortly after my second return from Europe, I was surprised by an inquiry whether I would accept the superintendency of a large public park work. I had not before intended to take up park-making as a business, but I said at once that if I was thought to be qualified for the duty, I should gladly accept it. Three days afterwards I received the appointment. The results of this occurrence led on to other appointments, and I have since been employed as the counselor of many organizations in charge of public grounds. Generally, this has been in association with partners, each of whom I have thought to be better adapted to contribute some desirable elements of the required service than I have been. We have, from the first, maintained an attitude toward those employing us corresponding to that commonly taken by those acting as professional advisers to large corporations in respect to legal questions. We have had a standard of professional honor corresponding to that which should be expected of such professional confidential advisers. We have had the appointment of many thousands of men and many millions of dollars have been paid upon our certificates and vouchers. We have had to stand in antagonism to many selfish interests and have, of course, made many vindictive enemies. Not believing that we were governed by considerations of professional duty, those whose purposes we have thus crossed have several times obtained the appointment of legislative committees to search our proceedings. In no case has the result of the closest and most malignant investigations failed to vindicate not only our professional honor, but the judgment, policy and efficiency of our action upon the points in question.

We have been in professional supervision of more than eighty public grounds, the large majority of them being much smaller than the proposed Wilmington Park. About a third part of the whole number have been new undertakings, mostly of large extent, for which we have prepared designs, and for many of which we have selected the sites and enlisted, organized, disciplined and directed the working force required for carrying out those designs.

In none of these cases had we offered ourselves as candidates for the positions to which we were called until after we had been asked to do so by some of those by whom the appointment was to be made. We have in three [634]cases resigned our position, after finding that our clients were disposed to proceed in a manner showing a want of that degree of confidence in us that we believed to be necessary to the satisfactory meeting of our responsibilities. In each of these cases a change of opinion in our favor has subsequently occurred and we have been recalled. In but one case have we had a difference with a Park Commission that needed to be brought before a court. In that case the decision was in our favor and, an appeal being taken, the decision of the higher court was in our favor and we have since been re-employed by the same Commission. The Wilmington Park Commission is the first from which we have ever parted without receiving expressions of satisfaction with the manner in which we have accomplished the object for which we were employed.

The partners with whom I have been latterly associated have each passed through a larger and more severe special preliminary training for our profession than is ordinarily required for admission to the Bar or for enrollment in any of the better established professions. After pursuing special studies for several years they have made long journies in the study of American scenery; have afterwards spent from one to two years in professional study in Europe, and later have had extended practice in widely different parts of this Continent.

The volume of our duties fluctuates, as must that of any large office, and the force by which we are aided requires adjustment accordingly. At present our home office force numbers nineteen, and several trained men are working under our direction at various other points. Among the latter there are eight who have been educated at technical schools; who have had varied experience in the management of public and private works; who are members of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and who are known as Chief Engineers in supervision of the works proceeding under our designs. These receive instructions direct from us and report directly to us. From some of them reports come to us fortnightly, stating the force they are employing, the shifts that have been made of this force, the progress that has been made upon the work and so on. We are thus made responsible for the results to be eventually obtained, and measurably for the economy with which they are to be obtained. Each of the six cities in behalf of which we had our first important professional employment has, latterly, after twenty years experience of the results of employing us, sought our services with respect to new undertakings.

I have given you these particulars of the history of our business that you may consider whether, in view of them it was unreasonable for us to suppose that, before you took action, in your capacity as trustees for your fellow-citizens, to engage our services, you would have obtained a sufficient knowledge of the reputation to which they entitled us to guard you against adopting and acting upon such surmises as you have as to our conduct and the motives of it. If a tradesman fails to deliver goods ordered from him at the time they are expected, it is not usual to assume, without inquiry, that he has willfully failed in his duty. It is usual to consider the possibility of a misunderstanding or a miscarriage, and in view of such possibility to delay a dismissal of him until he [635]has had a hearing. With such knowledge of our character as it was your duty to possess, how can you have thought it right to treat us with less consideration?

If you had taken such a course with us as is usually adopted in affairs of common trade, what should we have had to say?

In answer to this question, let me refer, first, to the indirect implication that we have been disposed to draw you into an arrangement which would be more convenient or profitable to us than that which, in your understanding, had been established. I shall touch upon this point only to better clear the ground at the outset of any possible suspicion of indirect or disingenuous scheming on our part. I do not remember that we have ever before been employed by a Park Commission that we have not had some definition in written or printed form of the duty with which we were charged, and of the conditions upon which we had accepted it. The most probable explanation of the exception, which, to my surprise, I have found appearing in your case, is that at the time when we entered upon the study of your problem, your Commission had no legal existence, and that when, afterwards, it had been organized under a State law, we had been led to suppose that you were dissatisfied with this law; that you expected to obtain modifications of it, and that we thus came to regard it and your position under it as in some degree a provisional, rather than as a permanently settled arrangement. It appears to me probable that, partly because we took such a view of it we did not at first press for such a written agreement as it is our custom to obtain, and that our neglect to do so afterwards was an inadvertence. Is not this a more probable theory of our neglect than that upon which you have been proceeding? Does it not better consist with our established professional character and more nearly coincide with our customary methods of business?

Your next question would be one to this effect: In the absence of a written agreement, upon what understanding of our duties had we been proceeding?

To this question, our answer would be that it has appeared to us reasonable to suppose that, seeking our services, the services that you wanted were such as it is our profession, and as it has been our practice, to provide to Park Commissions in a situation similar to yours, and that you expected to obtain these services on the terms that other Park Commissioners had obtained those they had asked from us. Such was at first our supposition, and that we have been warranted in holding it would seem to be reasonably inferable from the fact that, according to our custom, at a stated time we asked you for a payment on account, and that, without inquiry, you made such payment on account. If this payment was not asked and made with reference to a virtual contract of the character of those usually made between us and the Park Commissions we have served, I cannot see upon what understanding of our obligations and yours it was asked, and with no apparent hesitation conceded.

Your next question would have been in behalf of those members of your Board to whom an impression had come that at a certain period of time [636]the general plan of your Park had been long overdue from us. Your question then would have been: Why do you not send us the plan? We should have answered that we believed that our obligation to furnish the plan at any particular time rested upon: First, our having, at a yet earlier time, received instructions from you on points not of landscape moment, and not in any respect technical to our profession, but which might rather be called points of civic policy, finance and economy, such, for example, as were to be determined by your Board in conference with other departments of your city government, or in treaty with railroad companies, mill-owners and others with whose affairs yours would be found to be in some degree interlocked. Second, upon our having received from you information as to conditions, topographical and otherwise, the adjustment of the plan to which was equally essential to its possessing any value for your purposes.

That this was your understanding as well as ours, we not only had no reason to doubt, but had some positive reason to suppose from various installments of instruction and information which you furnished us, and from your notifications to us that you expected to furnish us with additional installments; from your informing us that you had begun a topographical survey and from installments of the map resulting from this survey that you from time to time sent us. We have not yet received the last that was promised.

The question then is: At the time when you acted upon the impression that we had “dropped” our engagement to prepare the general plan you wanted of us, had you supplied us with all the information that it was obviously desirable in your interest that we should have obtained from you before entering upon this work? Had you supplied us with all the information that we had had reason to suppose that we should receive before entering upon our final study of the general plan?

This question may be considered in connection with a statement to which I have before referred, and that you made to me in our last interview. This was that we had offered you a plan for laying out one section of your ground, being the hillside on the right bank of the river and between the river and the city; that the Commissioners, after due consideration, had rejected this plan, and had proceeded, without assistance from or consultation with us, to lay out the ground in question on a different plan: a plan which they were convinced was in several respects a much better one. It was to be inferred that the Commissioners had found in this experience the confirmation of the surmise that we were too much occupied by other, and to us more important and profitable affairs, to give the time and study that they thought it their duty to secure for the planning of the work for which they were responsible.

Let me state the facts of this matter as they appear from our point of view.

What you refer to as our plan in this case was what in our business is called a preliminary plan or study, this being a sketch to aid discussion and show on what points instruction and information from our clients may [637]be needed before the framing of a final proposition of a plan can be judiciously begun.

As an illustration of this method of proceeding, I will mention that in 1870 we prepared for the Boston Park Commission three successive preliminary plans for a single section of their work, and that when the Commissioners were about to adopt the last as fully satisfactory to them, we expressed a doubt whether the instructions they had given us in regard to a certain question of city policy applying to it were quite sound, and we thus induced them to review their conclusions, with the result that they revised their instructions, and that we afterwards prepared a fourth and entirely different preliminary plan for laying out the same ground and brought it to them for further discussion before proceeding to prepare the plan which they finally adopted.

The preliminary plan which we prepared in your case embodied at several points ideas which we had been told were held by some of your Commissioners: ideas which we regarded as of questionable soundness and which we therefore wished to present for mature consideration by your Board before we entered upon our final study of the general plan. It was accordingly prepared, with a provisional acceptance by us of these ideas and of opinions in several respects that had been given us as to decisions that were likely to be made later by other departments of the city government, which opinions have since proved to be misleading. In these respects, and others, this preliminary plan was necessarily a tentative and provisional proposition, made, as I have said, and as was orally stated to you at the time, simply for the purpose of advancing discussion of points as to which it was desirable that we should have your mature, official opinion. It was an informal sketch, and when presented was labeled centrally, prominently and plainly, in capital letters: “PRELIMINARY.” The route for a road thus hypothetically suggested was staked out on the ground and it was left with you to consider several questions, upon your decision of which, to be in due time communicated to us, we should proceed further. The sketch was returned to us; we now have it, and we find that it bears notes made on the ground with a view to the subsequent preparation of a more maturely studied plan covering the same field of study.

Thus you will see that the preliminary sketch for the plan of a comparatively small part of your Park was considered with you on the ground, and that it came back to us with a perfect understanding on our part, and as we reasonably supposed on yours, that several assumptions upon which it was based were not yet to be considered as data for the study of the final general plan.

As this seems to be the point, more than any other, at which a misunderstanding between us began, I will give you one or two illustrations of the class of questions, your answer to which we thought you needed and wished us to wait for, and for which we were afterwards waiting before proceeding to the next stage of our duty.

First, the preliminary sketch showed an entrance from Market Street to the Park road along the river, which we had laid out, as had been [638]contemplated in all our conversations with you, through what we know as “the Bishop’s Place” and property adjoining. A doubt had been expressed by some of your Commission whether the land damages which the city would have to pay if these suggestions should ever be carried out would not be so great as to make it injudicious to pursue the course in question. As to this point of doubt, therefore, we wished to have your decision. At the time when you assumed that our engagement with you had ceased, it had not been communicated to us.

Second, at the time the preliminary plan was made, the line had been indicated to us on the ground which it was supposed would be taken for an elevated road crossing the Park, in part by a great bridge, which was to be built over the river independently of your Commission. But you had not spoken of this as if it was yet quite a certainty. As a matter of fact, if I did not misunderstand what you said to me when I saw you last, the position and plan of this bridge have, since that time, been changed; so changed that the information that had come to us for which we were waiting before we should begin our final study of the plan, we could not for a moment have thought of laying out the road as had been suggested in this preliminary plan.

Third, we had been told by some of your Commission that public convenience for other than park purposes would soon require yet another road and another bridge crossing the Park, under which the park roads would have to pass. But at the time this was told us, you were unable to state with any degree of precision where the road would be placed, or what the plan of the bridge would be. A determination of this question we had understood would be a matter of arrangement between your Commission and other departments of the city government, and we did not suppose you wanted a final plan of your park road to be made without reference to determinations yet to be reached, of so much importance as this seemed to us to be.

I might give you several other examples of questions, for the settlement of which we never imagined you did not expect us to wait before entering upon the preparation of a final general plan. But I cannot think it necessary that I should do so in order that you may see how little ground there had been for your surmise that we were either dilatory in our duty or were throwing up our engagement because, as it stood, it did not promise to be convenient or profitable to us to carry it out.

Faithfully Yours