In accordance with your resolution requesting me to visit parks in Europe, I left New York on the 28th day of September, and arrived in Liverpool on Saturday the 11th of October. The same day I visited Birkenhead Park, and obtained full particulars of its construction, maintenance, and management. On Monday, the 13th, I visited the Birmingham Sewerage and Filtering Works, in company with the Engineer, who subsequently furnished me with details of construction and working drawings. They are intended to relieve a park in the vicinity from a nuisance which had occasioned legal proceedings against the town, are ingenious and effective, and furnish valuable suggestions for the Central Park.

The same day I visited Aston Park, and called on the Secretary in charge, who supplied me with all desirable information. Some points in its management being peculiar, I subsequently called on the Mayor of Birmingham, who gave me his judgment with regard to them, and furnished me with police statistics by which he considered them justified. The following day, the 14th, I visited the Park and Gardens of Chatsworth, including the private grounds of Sir Joseph Paxton, whom I regretted to find absent from home

The next day I visited the Derby Arboretum, on the 16th the Botanic Garden of Birmingham, on the 17th the Royal Park and Forest of Windsor; on the 18th I reached London, early, and spent the day in the West-end parks.

The following day I was engaged in delivering letters and in correspondence, but, finding none of the gentlemen in town to whom I had been especially accredited for the purposes of the Commission, on Monday I introduced myself at the Office of Works of Her Majesty’s Palaces and Parks. I was received with the most frank and generous kindness, and the same day orders were given to the Superintendents of all the public parks in the vicinity of London, respectively, to hold themselves at my disposal whenever I should visit their grounds, and to give me information on every point, without any reserve. I was also offered the use of documents and plans at the office, and, indeed, all assistance which I could desire was at once given to my purpose.

During the following fortnight, I was engaged every day upon the parks of London, some of which required several visits. I then proceeded to Paris, being detained one day on my way thither by a violent gale which prevented the boats from crossing the channel. At Paris I met Mr. Phalen, formerly a Commissioner of the Central Park, and yet retaining undiminished interest in the work. By him I was presented to M. Alphand, head of the government department of[235] Roads and Bridges, under which the suburban improvements of Paris are carried on, who kindly supplied me with such information as I required, and directed an Engineer to attend me in my visit to the Bois de Boulogne. I remained a fortnight in Paris, examining as carefully as practicable in that time, all its pleasure-grounds and promenades, also visiting the parks of Versailles, of St. Cloud, and the wood of Vincennes, the improvement of which is now being prosecuted under the general direction of M. Alphand. To the Bois de Boulogne I made eight visits, four of them in company with either Mr. Phalen or Mr. Bigelow, of New York, whose previous observations upon the customs of the ground were of value to me.

On the 11th of November, I proceeded to Brussells, in the park and gardens of which capital a single day was most profitably occupied, owing to the great kindness of Dr. Linden, the director of the horticultural department of the Horticultural and Zoological Garden, and of Dr. Funck, the director of the zoological department and chief editor of the Royal Belgium Horticultural Journal, both of whom evinced great interest in the Central Park.

On the 12th I visited the gardens, parade-ground, and promenade of Lille, and proceeded the same night to London. I remained again a week in the vicinity of London, visiting the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, the superintendent of which, Sir William Hooker, I found extremely interested in the Central Park, expecting my visit, and ready to furnish me with most valuable advice; the Crystal Palace Grounds at Sydenham, recently completed under the direction of Sir Joseph Paxton, the Secretary of the Company furnishing me with important information; the Royal Botanic Garden and the Garden of the Zoological Society in Regent’s Park, to the kindness of the Secretary of which I am also much indebted; and several public and private grounds of minor importance in and near London.

During this week, I was also engaged with Mr. Parsons in selecting a valuable collection of trees and shrubs to be shipped for the Central Park next spring; in examining the police department; and in obtaining plans, drawings, and photographs of English parks.

The following week, I visited the park at Elvaston Castle, which has the finest plantations of evergreens in Europe; Trentham, the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, which I believe to be the best private garden in England; Biddulph Grange, a private place, remarkable for its rock-work; Stoneleigh Abbey, a very ancient park; Peel Park, and the Botanic Garden, at Manchester; and other less noted parks and gardens in the Midland counties.

On the second of December, I crossed to Ireland, and on the third, visited Phoenix Park and the Zoological Garden of Dublin. On the fourth, I went to Cork, from whence, on the fifth, I took the Cunard steamer for America.

During the greater part of my stay in England and in Paris, the weather was most unfavorable for my purpose, there being three weeks of almost incessant rain. Nor did my health for a time permit great exertion. The objects had[236] in view by the Commission in requesting me to visit European Parks could not have been well attained in less time than I employed. In addition to public parks, merely, I was offered special facilities for examining several Zoological and Botanic gardens, and thought it right, in view of the intentions of the Commission, to obtain all the information I readily could with regard to them.

I am indebted to the liberality of Sir Richard Mayne, the commissioner and commanding officer of the Metropolitan Police of London, for an opportunity of studying the whole management of that admirable body, and to the Superintendent of the division patrolling the West-end parks, and the instructor of recruits, for very detailed information, which I trust will be of value on the Central Park, and well compensate the time employed in obtaining it.

Meeting Mr. Parsons before he had executed orders sent him some time before my journey was contemplated, to purchase trees for the Central Park, I thought it right to spend a short time in assisting him, and incidentally in more fully informing myself of the value and the cost of the varieties of trees and shrubs recently introduced.

I return with greatly improved health, and with a satisfaction in my duty increased by a contemplation of the finished work abroad. I am much impressed with the value of a close study, and the constant superintendence of details by a cultivated eye, in a work of the kind placed under my charge.

Grateful to the Commission for its past confidence, and willing to give my best endeavor to the execution of any duty which it may require of me, I think it proper at this time to express the conviction that the Park would be much benefitted if the duties which the chief executive officer of the Board has hitherto been forced to personally undertake were of a more homogeneous character. The Board, it is true, has not prescribed duties for the Architect-in-Chief and Superintendent, except in special cases, but for that reason, every duty for which the Board has not appointed some other officer is understood, by all who are not employed in the Park, to devolve upon him.

Every citizen, therefore, who wishes to have dealings with, or employment upon, or information about the Central Park, applies personally to the Architect-in-Chief and Superintendent. If it were practicable to refer the greater part of these applications to a subordinate officer, the demand upon the time and the temper of the Architect-in-Chief for this class of duties would [not] be excessive. But courtesy and policy require that a great number of those who call should at least be listened to with attention, until the special object of each is fully understood; generally explanation in return, and debate, is necessary.

The consequence has been, that the Architect-in-Chief has had no hour in which he could be secure from the harassment of discussion, conversation, or correspondence, upon topics utterly at variance with his [most] important duty, the execution of which involves a calm exercise of the imagination, and a just consideration of beauty and a large economy. It is impossible, without effort too great to be long sustained, to do justice to the opportunities offered by[237] nature in designing the work, and to properly oversee and direct its progress, when at any moment it may be necessary to listen to a story of the calamities which have forced an individual to apply for employment, or to read the letters which have been procured by such an one from any charitable person able to write, whom he may have been able to persuade to assist him, or, what is worse, to recollect, at any time afterwards, the exact grounds on which an application has been rejected, or to recall the evidence and debate with an indignant friend the propriety of the discharge of a poor man who has been deemed insufficient in the duty which had been assigned him.

I think I do not underrate the importance of duties of this kind. On their proper performance the popularity of the Park is greatly dependent. But their performance is hardly compatible with the proper performance of the other and even more important duties of the Architect-in-Chief, who should be at liberty to spend a large part of his time upon the ground and in the offices of the work, watching, and personally directing the work, especially as it approaches the form in which it is to be left.

These more important duties, by the pressure of the other class of duties (chiefly connected with details of management), have therefore been necessarily performed almost by stealth, never, except as storms or holidays gave rare opportunity, with any possibility of the deliberation and absorption of mind to which they were entitled. The less important class of duties have, consequently, of necessity been attended to with some impatience, and with even less of the deliberation to which they were entitled.

The great kindness and readiness to give time and labor to furnish the information which I have desired, at every office in Europe at which I have called, has made me more conscious of what I deem a defect in the organization of the service of the Commission.

The new duties devolving upon the Superintendent, as portions of the Park come into their final public use, will hereafter make it still more difficult for him to give his personal attention to details connected with the mere supply of the labor of the rudimentary construction. It is certainly desirable that he should control individuals, directly or indirectly, so far as is necessary to make sure that the ideas of the design can be executed by those employed, and to prevent waste through the continued employment of incompetent persons. I submit to the generosity of the Board, also, that he should be allowed perfect freedom in selecting those who are to be his personal aides, or whose work must be personally superintended by him, and on whose capability and efficiency he is entirely dependent, in his endeavor to accomplish the primary purposes of the Board.

The rule that no one should be appointed to any duty in the Park whose application is not endorsed by a Commissioner, has not operated to the injury of the Park, because no one of the present Board has ever hesitated to endorse an application at the request of the Superintendent. If that rule had operated to prevent the Superintendent from selecting, and appointing, or advancing individuals[238] without their otherwise gaining the interest of a Commissioner, the Board would have failed of the service of some of its most valuable employees.

There is but one man on the Park to whom I have had confidence to trust a certain kind of work, unless this work were at every moment carried on under my own eye and personal direction. The man is one of ten thousand for this purpose; he may have no talent for any other; he came upon the Park a laborer, without any recommendation whatever—without interest with anyone in the city, so far as I know. His skill, and ready comprehension of my purpose, was discovered accidentally, and [my] confidence in it [was] obtained gradually by experience. It would evidently be a mistaken policy which withheld from the Superintendent the power of freely employing a man in such a case as this, in such particular office as he chose. Yet it could only be through confidence in the Superintendent’s discrimination of character and talent that a Commissioner, or any citizen, could be satisfied that he was right in appointing him to his place instead of any other man in whom such Commissioner or citizen had been for any reason led to take a personal interest.

In saying this, I speak for my office, and not for myself. I may refer, on the other hand, to several instances in which I have been induced by strong and urgent recommendations to nominate persons for the Police force of the Park, who, although I had myself most carefully described to them the duties which would be required of them—warned them of the irksomeness of the measures of discipline enforced, and informed them that of my own judgment I should doubt if their character adapted them to engage in the duties with satisfaction—were decided in the assurance that they could cheerfully and zealously engage therein. Those who recommended them, and who claimed in some cases to have known them long and well, were confident that I judged their character wrongly, and as I could give no defined reason for my opinion, if I had refused them a trial, it would have appeared unfair and impolitic to do so.

Yet, in the cases to which I refer, these persons have, after a period varying from one night to three months, voluntarily, and generally, without any dissatisfaction with the rules, or the manner in which they were enforced, offered me their resignations. The wages paid to these men were entirely wasted for the Park. There have been not less than six cases of the kind; and one other, in which, after three months’ service, I have felt it my duty to dismiss a man who had not been charged with any distinct neglect of duty, but the inadaptation of whose character for the proper performance of his duty was too apparent to be overlooked longer.

My object in referring to these instances is not, I need hardly explain to the Board, to commend my own discrimination of character as superior to that of its members, but to remind it that, with attention daily given to the manner in which various duties are performed by different men, and with the sense of personal duties and responsibilities to be delegated to those to be selected as the[239] direct assistants of the chief executive officer of the Board, it is unsafe and uneconomical to directly or indirectly prevent this officer from a perfectly free exercise of his judgment, unbiased by apprehension of anything but [his] inability to carry out the requirements of the Board, through the inadequacy of the agents upon whom he is obliged to depend.

I take this opportunity, then, before resuming the duties with regard to appointments, from which I have been, by the favor of the Board, temporarily relieved, in my personal capacity, to request, and, as my professional duty, to recommend, that the office of the Architect-in-Chief and Superintendent may have attached to it the unqualified power of selecting the individuals who must be immediately responsible to it, or with whom, in the nature of the case, the person holding it, however they are appointed, must deal directly, and that it may be relieved from the necessity of its occupant’s personally superintending and answering for the details of the employment of all other persons in the service of the Board.

To prevent misapprehension, I desire to say more explicitly, that the responsibility to the Board, of employing an effective and economical working force, is not what is found incompatible with proper attention to other duties, but the incessant demands upon the Architect-in-Chief and Superintendent, to answer personally to individuals, for all the details of the duties growing out of the responsibility of recruiting and disciplining the working force of the Board.

In cases authorized by the Executive Committee, I have this week given permission to persons to sell refreshments and hire skates upon the pond. I have delayed furnishing them with formal licenses from an opinion that such licenses should be made a source of revenue, and doubting if I should be justified in inserting a provision for that purpose, without express permission from the Board.

The offices at Seventy-ninth street are now extremely inconvenient, and will soon be scarcely tenable. I request permission to make the necessary arrangements for their removal to the building at Mount St. Vincent.

In my journey in Europe, the whole amount authorized by the Board was expended. A collection of plans, drawings, photographs, documents, and books, purchased for the use of the Park, will be received from the Custom-House this week.

I recommend that an expenditure of one hundred dollars be authorized for mounting the plans, and arranging the collection in a safe and convenient form for reference.