I hope my last reached you safely and found you pretty well. I wish you were nearer at hand. I met Green today in the street, he told me, as if it were a matter of course, that all further proceedings in regard to the gateways had been stopped. He was painfully mild and I expect there have been some unpleasant scenes, perhaps Moses H. did not like the erasing comment. If he objects I will quote the direct forgery of my name in enclosed wood cut signed by me, Olmsted & Vaux Landscape Archts, but he will not object. I am very gentle with him except when he tries to frighten me and says that I am making the members of the Commission inimical. I then say in distinct terms I expected that and I [361]

View of Bow Bridge Area, Central Park

I am not committed to Brooklyn and mean they should see my letter first. Green recommends Rand as Engineer. I approve as Rand is satisfactory to me. I told him I did not want Grant. Pilat says Grant has been unfaithful to our interests. I think it very likely that he has and if it has not been done in a mean way, I naturally enquire what our interests have done for him that he should not be unfaithful to them. But I expect he has acted queerly. Pilat is a gentleman & a trump and deserves all we can ever do for him. I should expect to get him a position at Brooklyn if he were inclined to take it. He may be docile but I would not have referred so particularly to that if I had been you.

It certainly is not disadvantageous to us to have the Boulevard & the Zoological Garden in the hands of the Central P. C. and you may remember that I wrote you that it accorded with my views. It is as well to have things where you can lay your hand on them. The Goats have eaten up most of the trees and the Dandelions prevent the grass from being seen and Pilat says the lawns will have to be ploughed, the playground also wants to be occupied, &c &c.

You have never given me much moral support in the plan of campaign that I recommended and have adopted. You know I always argued that if we could but get the money spent on our plan that then we should be independent of the Commission. Your theory was different [362]and I always felt that it would be a most dangerous ground to take. Management against management at that intermediate stage for the C.P.C. must be management or nothing. I am not going into this now for it is too delicate a subject with you who have such strong feelings in regard to it, but what is the state of the case today. I am mixed up in these affairs and am proceeding in a very half and half sort of way for alone I am a very incomplete Landscape Architect and you are off at the other end of the world, depriving the public of your proper services as I argue. My position is that the art element ought to have been the controlling one from the first. I have always striven to sustain that view and I felt that you were the head artist in the park matter. Art against Commission is easily understood. Now we can say take your Reports and account books. We will take our Park. I have always upheld your art position hoping that you would someday realise that it was your best foundation to build whatever you want on. You were in too great a hurry I think. The Commrs saw too much Archt in Chief signature and were induced to listen to Green who of course could represent this view and get them to leave things in his hands. Now what is the state of things?

I have tided things along and take a strong position for both of us today, although we are both supposed to be dead and buried two years ago. I mean my letter. As I told Green, before it was printed when he asked if anything would come of it, “It marks an era in Park matters.” Hitherto they have been living on what they found in the houses of the murdered men, but the day for that ceases and the cloven foot appears. Now comes our opportunity. My object has been to make a clean connection and an intelligible statement before the public when the hour arrived. That is why I resigned. We must preserve our record clear for the day of battle. Your management business is just as capable of lucid statement. Hitherto you have failed to find in these matters a congenial outlet for your ambition and rather pooh pooh plans &c. I attribute all this to the lack of experience you have had. The Brooklyn Park is all our own. I shall tell them that I intend to ask you to go into it with me anyway & will write to you what bargain I make. I consider the C.P.C. in a very weak position but it may take longer than I suppose to bring matters to a crisis. Our right unquestionably is to control matters from Washington Heights to the other side of Brooklyn—a nice view of the sea we get from the additional ground taken in.

17th Green has been in to see me, nominally in reply to my enquiry as to Rand purposely made to give him a chance to talk. You see it is now several weeks since my letter to the President and no reply or notice taken of it. There is of course no dodging it, it stands in their path and if the design is not erected we succeed. He feels a little better as no more whacks have been administered since and evidently hopes that very few people have happened to notice it. He asked me what next &c, and [363]in the end, I said that we were going to defend the design either in the Commission or out of it. He said he did not see how we could be appointed Commissioners &c. I said we did not want to sit with these gentlemen particularly but we could stand it if they could. I said all this because it is the only logical way out of his difficulties. We are all right. The Commission is all popcock and only needs a few punctures to let people see that it is A.H.G. under another name. I recognized his claims to consideration and said that I had always said with you that if he must have the position, he had earned it. I did not of course go much into this. I always felt you know that you were a little insatiable in your ambition and that your theory left no room for Green or anybody else—and that we ought to have provided for him. I recognise your claims exactly as you and I have agreed on and want to see you in the right place again, but have always contended that the park is not a proper boundary. I wonder if you think any differently or like our work any better as a permanent thing than you used to. After the first seven years you gave me Leah; after another seven, will you give me Rachel.

I only value these affairs as opportunities to develop the earnest convictions of my life and I believe my convictions coincide with yours to some extent. It was right that this work should help artists to take a true position. It has not yet, but it is planned to achieve that result. I want to make a “frightful” example of the Commrs and have always had this as a theory so that in the end all the dirt we have had to eat may result in something tangible and these moneyed men may find that artists are their masters. For this, patience is necessary. You do not quite see that now. Your artist capacities are the most needed. The country wants artists. Hitherto you have been a little deceived by mere names. Take it and make it is a good motto. I always liked the title Landscape Architect because—the specialty was fairly embodied. A title that could as easily be transferred to an inartistic public work is not as satisfactory. You see that my position is that our affair was one of long duration and that we are just beginning work. I cannot of course go on forever in this way. I have upheld your art position as well as I knew how and have done enough to show you that success is possible. In the next twenty years Landscape architecture is the thing needed as much as anything. I should rejoice in an entire and complete success over the Commrs for artistic and other reasons not personal but, I do not know enough to triumph singlehanded.

Who are they to get? Who will the public trust?, for their Boulevard and their Zoological Garden? With you we ought to get them. $5000 per annum & $10,000 back pay.

I never expected that this thing would ripen all at once. If you were here now you could. help along travely but of course. It would be of no use to take up the idea with the limited notion of flooring Green and making a name as Park A in C or superintendant. All that must come [364]in as subsidiary to a larger aim to be a benefactor in this matter to the people generally, and this I think with the years of peace before us is as sound a scheme as any you can connect yourself with. I am perhaps deficient in personal ambition—but I can feel for it in others. If you do not see that you are honored by developing this fitness for art work of course—don’t come. It must be art of landscape architecture and art of administration combined. Think this over. We are neither of us old men you know. To me it seems & always has seemed a magnificent opening. Possible together, impossible to either alone.