The Herald of today publishes statements, in one of its peculiar playful slang-whang articles, which doubtless misrepresents the intention as well as the action of the Commission, but which contains some good suggestions, as these articles generally do, and also presents certain ideas which you gave me to understand in our conversation a few days ago were favorably considered by a majority of the Commissioners. For convenience’s sake, having no clearer statement than the Herald’s, I want to take that as a text for some observations upon them.

The Herald’s first notion, though not directly expressed, evidently is that the high and picturesque grounds of the territory to be laid out should be made to take a peculiar character, different from the adjoining flat land and from the rest of the island. It proposes that each should constitute a department by itself, or, there being three great hills, that there should be three departments, each with a departmental road.

This road, to refer now to your suggestions to me, as the Herald is less particular in certain respects, is to be comparatively narrow, so it may be cheaply built by taking advantage of natural terraces or the flatter parts of the ground along the steep sides of the hills.

The remaining ground of each department will, says the Herald, constitute a park; a park, only the ground will be studded with private demesnes and handsome villas, and all owned by private individuals in parcels of various forms and sizes (precisely as at present).

This sounds pleasantly, and possibly, if carried out, the name of Fort Washington Park would, under the idea that it must mean something pleasant, attract some attention from those who wished to suit themselves with a site for a villa near the city.

Imagine yourself a dozen years hence, a stranger to the district, and that I am a real estate broker to whom you have applied to assist you in your search for a fine villa site. As agent for the Fort Washington Park land-sellers in general, I drive you out over the new 40, 50, or 60 ft. road. We enter the park somewhere near the Deaf & Dumb establishment and have got up into the vicinity of what is now the Fort Washington road.

“When shall we come to the park,” you ask.

“Oh,” I reply, “We are in the park, have been in it these ten minutes past.”

“Indeed! I did not observe any gateway.”

“No, there is none.”

“No gateway? Then there can be no special regulations enforced by which any nuisance can be excluded.”

[260]

“Well no, not upon the road. You see, it was necessary that there should be a road in this part of the island, open for all purposes of an ordinary public road.”

“Then in fact this road is not really a part of the park?”

“No, it only runs through it, but, you see, as the park lies on both sides of it, it gives you a pleasant drive to your residence, if you should have one out here.”

“That certainly is an advantage, but what security is there that the property on each side here will remain in its present condition?”

“It is so steep that it is absolutely worthless for any purpose except to maintain a distance between the residences on the flatter ground above and those on the flatter ground below and the road.”

“What is the market value of this steep ground?”

“It cannot be sold except in connection with some of the flatter ground; hence it might just as well be public property, for all the benefit its owners derive from it.”

“But here the slope is less; what is this horrible bare spot we are coming to?”

“This was a piece of twelve acres that was sold to Mr. Abbott, who when it began to be a rage to build in the park, intended to establish a ladies’ university on it. He got up a company for the purpose, and they went so far as to cut off the trees, and to layoff the steep slope in terraces and grade the upper ground, but Mr. Abbott died, and the subscribers did not pay up and the hard times came on, and so the work stopped. Then in the spring there came a storm just as the frost was breaking up, and the terraces not having been sodded, there was a land-slide. It tore up the road and quite destroyed a gentleman’s place on the lower side. When they repaired the road they had to build a regular retaining wall 40 feet high on the river side, as you see.”

“Yes, it’s rather an improvement to have the trees removed on that side, it opens up such a fine river view. But what is it smells so like a pig-sty?”

“I believe there are some large pig-sties down there under the wall.”

“How is that—in the park?”

“The fact is there is an Irish settlement just down below there, but it’s only temporary; they expect to have them cleared out.”

“How did they get their shantees stuck in here?”

“Oh, they are only squatters, I believe.”

“But how is it there are squatters in the Park?”

“Well, they got in here when they were rebuilding the road, some of them. Then there were a lot of Dutch people that got in afterwards when they built the great cellar of the Tiger brewery. This is it on the right. This is the outer wall of the cellar. It is eight feet thick and fifty feet high, and there is another wall inside of it. Then there are great vaults which come under the road, and subterranean passages to the buildings below on the wharf. It is the greatest Lager [261] brewery in the world. There is a garden up above and on Sunday they sometimes have 15,000 people there. There is an observatory on the highest ground 300 feet high & it’s a great place for target shooting & balloon ascensions. They have an artillery target and two of the new rifled ninety-eight pounders for practice. Cerrin pays a thousand dollars a year for this wall to stencil advertisements upon.”

“This part of the park won’t suit me. I should think the brewery & garden would destroy the value of land for residencies in the neighborhood.”

“Indeed it does. Land is wanted here for nothing but Dutch boarding houses and groggeries, and but little for those. It’s all held on speculation & will hardly sell now at any price.”

“Why did they allow such a monstrous nuisance to get into the park?”

“The gentleman, a rich Cuban by the name of Torres, who bought this ground, had agreed with Mr. Abbott that they should have a private road running so as to accommodate both places. They had to buy a right of way of a man who held some land in the rear in order to get a road to suit them, because the difficulty of this brewery place was that it was not conveniently accessible from the departmental road. They paid a great price for the right of way, and Mr. Abbott was going to remove a ridge of rock that stood in the way of the private road to get material for his terraces. After his work stopped, Torres got disgusted with the delay and sold the place to the Gemeau Company. Several persons who had bought about here with the intention of building gave it up when it came out what was going to be done with the place. In fact several law suits grew out of it, and that, I suppose, is the reason that that pig-sty settlement has been allowed to grow up down below there. ”

“There are some very common houses.”

“Yes; after they built the brewery and those stores near it, it got to be unfashionable just here, and as the land would not sell for villas, the owners got tired of holding it as dead property, and put up cheap tenement houses on it.”

“There is a fine old house; it is sadly out of repair though, & the grounds are gone to waste.”

“It’s too good yet to be pulled down, you see, yet too near town, at least too near the brewery, to be fashionable, so it remains as it is, and is used for a boarding-house. ”

“Here is another dreary spot on the hill-side.”

“Yes, this is a minor’s estate, and there is some dispute about the title, and it has been neglected; and there’s another nest of Irish folks down there at the foot of the hill who keep their goats on it and get in at night & steal the timber.”

“What is that drumming?”

“I suppose it is a target company going out to Conrad’s.”

“What’s Conrad’s?”

“That’s Bennett’s old place, you know; my horse is a little restive, don’t know as I can drive him by them.”

[262]

It is no matter; I do not care about going any further. The fact is, although it is called a park, I don’t see that there is any difference between this region and any other suburb of the city. I remember very well when Bloomingdale road below Manhattanville and Jones’ Wood was in this way. All the old villas had not been given up. Mayor Wood, and the Clendennings & Chestermans and Doctor Williams and a few other people held on to their old places—but most of the good houses had got to be taverns (One was called the Claremont, another Elm Park, another Burnham’s, but all had been fine old country places), and the road was lined with shantees and mean little temporary houses.”

Are such glimpses, my dear Mr. Elliott, of the possible future of Fort Washington at all more improbable, than a view of the present state of things in the central part of the island would have seemed to you, when you first visited friends on the Hellgate, Old Boston or Bloomingdale roads? How can it be prevented? By narrow or crooked or steep roads? What is to prevent a future legislature from forming a Commission to straighten, widen and re-grade roads, to open streets through your villa grounds to accommodate the brewers & grocers and coal merchants on each side of them? There is nothing to attract commerce to the heights, you say. What attracts commerce to Jones’ Wood? The river shores cannot be docked, and they are yet grading streets far south of it thirty or forty feet deep through solid rock. A very few years ago it contained the choicest residencies on the island, with circuitous private roads laid out as the Herald proposes they should be on Washington Heights, according to the needs & tastes & whims of the individual proprietors of the Wood. There is not a factory, nor a store or grocery, on it to this day so far as I know, but do gentlemen of fortune who desire a luxurious country residence within convenient reach of the Exchange and the Opera House, go to Jones’ Wood to look for it? If Jones’ Wood had been named Jones’ Park, it would have been all the same, would it not? If you wish further assurance of this danger, go to Staten Island. Certainly Washington Heights can claim no advantage over the heights of Clifton and New Brighton in respect of inaccessibility from the city. Yet where five years ago there was nothing but elegance & fashion, you now see unmistakeable signs of the advance guard of squalor, an anxiety to sell out on the part of the owners of the finest villas, no sales except for public houses, and an absolute deterioration in value of property. Look again at the Brooklyn suburbs. Jersey City. See the process repeated at Philadelphia & Boston.

You ask me if there are not cases abroad where roads have been laid out in the suburbs of a town, as a landscape gardener would lay them out if the adjoining ground were a park, at St. George’s Park in Liverpool for instance, and where the ground has on this account become rapidly occupied by villas and gained a value for villa residencies too great to leave any danger that it will be encroached upon by shops, etc.?

St. George’s Park is a picturesque road, with gates at each end, with a [263]real park, or space of common pleasure ground beautifully laid out & kept on one side, while the ground on the other side is held in parcels of considerable breadth and depth, each built upon & occupied by an individual proprietor. The park, however, is permanently common to all, is controlled no more than the road by any individual, and lies between all of the villas and the nearest public road or street. There are other similar instances. It is frequently to be seen that a comparatively small bit of planted ground—or an attractive promenade in any form, which secures an appearance of elegant seclusion to the vicinity—has served to permanently establish a neighborhood or quarter of handsome private residencies.

The expedient most commonly used abroad to secure seclusion for residencies in or near a town, is that of building in what are called crescents. A crescent is a series of villas, or a range or block of buildings, the front or fronts of which form a curved line, concave towards the public road. In front of them is a bow-shaped piece of ground, and the wood of the bow will represent a private road by which each front door is approached; the bow-string, the public road or street; and the space between the bow and string, a piece of planted ground which screens the houses from the street. A large proportion of the recently erected houses in the most fashionable part of London are thus planned. Another method used in London is to build houses pointing upon a cul-de-sac, or a street entered from a great thoroughfare, but closed at the other end and with no other opening.

The essential point aimed at by the Herald, and probably by the Commissioners, is to establish an elegant rural character for the three districts or departments, and to offer some assurance to those who wish to build villas that these districts shall not be bye and bye invaded by the desolation which thus far has invariably advanced before the progress of the town. Is this possible? Not by the Herald’s plan of adding the word park to the name of a locality, running a rural road through or around it, and leaving all difficulties to convenient subdivision and closer occupancy to be solved by necessity. Nothing would be more certain than such a lazy and temporizing plan to accomplish the contrary purpose, namely to make sure that [ways of meeting] numerous local necessities should arise, which would after a time be compromised and combined upon new plans which would introduce new elements into the district, entirely at discord with those upon which its occupants had previously built.

Is it possible to have it otherwise?

Only by making all the ground, in the first place, of more value for villa residencies than for anything else, and in the second place, by securing such solid special advantages for this purpose that a class of residencies shall be planted on it, too good ever to be given up to any other possible use, and too good to be superseded even by fashion.

How can this be done?

This we can answer by considering what goes to make ground essentially [264]valuable for villa purposes, and whether our heights possess or can in any feasible way be given this primarily essential value; and second, whether special substantial advantages can be given to these heights which can not be had elsewhere, so that for villa residencies they will permanently stand absolutely beyond competition.

To begin with, the heights offer the essential rural requirements for villa residences. But there are other things a rich and cultivated family want near their residence. They want the advantages of society, of compact society, of the use of that professional talent in teachers, and artists and physicians and mechanics, which can only be adequately paid for and maintained in the midst of a compact society. They want to be served in a regular, exact, punctual and timely manner with superior comestibles and whatever else it is desirable to have supplied to a family, freshly, frequently or quickly on demand.

The Northern heights of the island possess these advantages perhaps more than any other ground which can be put in competition with them at present—yet by no means in as great a degree as is desirable and as may be secured.

What else is essential in a villa residence? The grand advantage of the villa over the town mansion is that the villa possesses tranquility and seclusion—freedom from the turmoil of the streets—and means and opportunities for amusement and exercise which can not be had in a town mansion, certainly not without the liability of observation from neighbors or the public in the streets.

It is when this tranquility and seclusion can no longer be had in a villa residence that it becomes irksome to its owner & unattractive to anyone else, when it can no longer be had in what has been a fashionable villa road or district that the character of this road or district changes to that at present possessed by the Bloomingdale road or the Jones’ Wood district and which Clifton Avenue, Staten Island, is just beginning to unmistakably take on. Nobody will think now of buying land on either for a villa because they no longer possess an aspect of tranquility or seclusion. Yet there are many essential advantages for the residence of cultivated & luxurious families on the Bloomingdale road which were wanting when it was a fashionable villa quarter. Every advantage of compact society is far more accessible than formerly. Churches, operas, balls, may be enjoyed, for instance, with far greater frequency & far greater convenience, by reason of closer vicinity and of paved & gas lighted roads; butchers & bakers will call more frequently & regularly & serve better; doctors and teachers, piano tuners and stove pipe setters, are nearer at hand when wanted. Water is better & more abundant. All these are undoubted advantages. Yet its old inhabitants flee from it, and those who demand luxury in their residence shun it.

Why? Not because of these metropolitan advantages surely, but because the road on which these villas face, by which they must be approached, and which passes close beside their walks and lawns, has become a common business thoroughfare; and inasmuch as butchers and bakers and tinkers and dramsellers [265]and the followers of other bustling callings need to expose their wares and advertise themselves by signs and place themselves so they may be conveniently called upon without requiring their customers to go out of the way, the ground not actually occupied by villas fronting upon this thoroughfare has been extensively built upon for these purposes, and this has given employment to numerous mechanics & laborers and so occasioned a demand for cheap tenement & boarding houses along the road; and so gradually from a quiet & secluded neighborhood, it is growing to be a noisy, dusty, smoking, shouting, rattling and stinking one.

What helps a road or street, and what hinders it from becoming such a thoroughfare? Steep grades do not, as anyone knows who has been in Boston, Liverpool or Edinburgh. Neither does narrowness of roadway; it only impedes the passage of vehicles which would otherwise pass through the road, so as to make it more crowded, more noisy, more destructive of quiet and privacy to the neighborhood. Moreover, steep grades are bad for the carriage as well as for the cart, and if purposely established, detract from the essential advantages of the neighborhood of the road for villas as well as for anything else.

In proportion as the following rules apply to a road on the outskirts of a town, I think you will perceive that it is sure to become a business thoroughfare: First, it shall lead directly toward the business part of the town. Second, many streets or roads not themselves business thoroughfares shall open upon it. Third, these tributary roads shall approach it upon an angle leading toward the town. (If any of these tributary roads have other and more distant roads opening upon them, the effect will be greater.) Fourth, there shall be no roads, or few roads, running toward town from the same quarter.

To prevent a road from becoming a thoroughfare, these rules must be reversed: First, it shall not lead with special directness toward the town. Second, it shall have few, if any, public streets or roads opening into it, and such as do lead into it shall be short. Third, tributary roads shall not approach it from a direction opposite the town. Fourth, there shall be at no greater distance from it a road or roads running approximately parallel to it, but more directly toward the town.

If the 11th Avenue is extended as far north as practicable and the 10th Avenue is extended through the island in a straight or nearly straight line, and if cross roads can be arranged to enter these avenues at frequent intervals, especially if they can be arranged to lead from all other parts of the territory toward these, and with an inclination toward the town, these avenues will answer all the requirements of the first series of rules. If then a road is laid out on either of the heights on courses at all adapted to the contours of the natural surface—that is to say, circuitously or indirectly between any two distant points—and if the public roads opening upon it instead of being tributaries to it shall be rather outlets from it leading toward the straight avenues—that is to say, toward the town—then such a road will answer all the requirements of the last series of rules, for long [266]roads cannot lead into it from the side opposite the Avenues on account of the nearness of the rivers.

Thus it will not be difficult at the outset to give a peculiar character to the heights, favorable to their occupation by villas, and giving a certain degree of assurance that this occupation may be permanent. That is to say, business will be perfectly accommodated without using the heights’ roads for any other purpose than to supply the wants of the residents. Even for this purpose the principal road would be very little used, for supposing a tradesman’s cart were going to a house some distance from the south end of the heights road, it would be quicker & easier to drive up 11th Avenue until the diagonal tributary road were reached, the other end of which, upon the heights road, was nearest to the house. If, however, the tradesman and others whose business led them or their wagons often to the heights should long remain in considerable numbers at a considerable distance townward, there would be danger that more direct access would be demanded for them, and that the property holders of the South part of the district would be tempted, by the prospect of selling small lots at high prices for stores, to move for an extension of the 12th Avenue, or that other projects would get afoot for more direct roads leading into the district for business purposes.

It is also certain that the road, if laid out as I have supposed, especially if lined with well kept grounds, would soon be much resorted to for pleasure driving. This is not to be objected to—for pleasure driving, so long as its road is not crowded, is not open to the same objections with the ordinary business street traffic, and nothing is more likely to enhance the value of the property for residencies and thus withhold it from other occupation than its being voluntarily visited by great numbers of people of leisure or possessing the necessary means for pleasure driving, and its becoming associated in the minds of these with their pleasure & with the frequent recognition of friends of their own class.

This very circumstance of its becoming resorted to for pleasure driving would undoubtedly bring many persons to it who would not be desirable, and would suggest to many the establishment of taverns and shops and stores upon the road, and at any rate the quality of seclusion would diminish. As the land grew more valuable it would be divided into smaller lots for sale, and if you consider the character of the ground, you will see that even if sold in pieces of not less than five acres and a frontage of five hundred feet upon the road, it would in many cases be quite impossible to have a private carriage entrance from the public road, as it would be necessary, in order to get easily up or down the declivity to a comfortable distance for the house to be situated from the road, to turn the approach road so frequently as to entirely destroy any landscape beauty of the grounds. This would only be avoided by the clubbing of neighbors, that is to say by the terrace-arrangement on a large scale. In this case the ground outside of the terrace-road would be virtually common ground, and if fenced off from the terrace road, might for all practical purposes just as well be public-ground.