You inform me that some of the present Park Commissioners, not having been members of the Board when the plans for the improvement of Tompkins Square were first discussed, feel imperfectly informed as to the reasons for the works which have been started there; and you ask that, when I report, under the instructions of the Board of the 31st of May as to the northwest arbor, I will reply also to the question: What is the need of such expensive operations as have been undertaken, and why would not something more of the ordinary kind be better adapted to the locality, more readily appreciated, and more nearly conform to public demands and expectations?

There is an idea abroad, to which, I presume, the last branch of this inquiry is to be referred, which seems not to be based on any examination of [211] your drawings or other authentic information, but chiefly on surmises as to the possible purposes of what is called a “hole in the ground,” found in the Square. Such an excavation being unusual as a preliminary to a gardening work, it is conjectured that something is to be attempted of an extraordinary, sumptuous and extravagant character, which will be much out of place in this locality. I refer to it only that I may at once say, that in looking at the plans, now on the table of the Board, it will, to avoid prejudice, be well to bear in mind that the ordinary attractions of a Park are so far prohibited by the necessity of occupying the larger part of the Square with the Parade Ground and its accompaniments, that the Department cannot acquit itself of its duty to the people of the locality without getting out of the ordinary rut. There is one small and not very expensive group of details of the design, which cannot be quite clearly described or shown in the drawings, and with regard to which, if they appear fanciful or over-refined, something must be trusted to the common sense, taste and practical knowledge of his business, of the designer.

I shall, however, describe this, as well as all other features of the plans, as fully as I can in the present report, and that their leading motives, at least, may be clearly understood, shall explain the circumstances under which they originated.

Partly with this object and partly to show how far the Department would be from meeting its responsibility as the trustee of the permanent interests of the city, if it allowed itself to look no further than to the active public demand of the day, in matters of this class, I shall give a slight introductory narrative of the experiences which the city has already had in dealing with this piece of its landed property.

The site of Tompkins Square before any improvements were made upon it was low rolling ground, into which extended shallow water from the East River. It was for this reason, first laid out as a public market place, with the intention of making a canal through the lowest ground, of sufficient breadth and depth to furnish material for bringing all other low ground to a satisfactory elevation, and to allow produce to be floated directly to the heart of what was then expected to be the great centre of trade of the city.

In the progress of years this idea was lost sight of, and at length a speculation in the land about the Square occurred, with the belief that it might be brought into successful competition with that about Washington Square as the fashionable residence quarter of the city. Some houses built in furtherance of this scheme are still to be seen in the vicinity.

With the same object in view the low ground was, about 1836, filled in, all the natural inequalities obliterated, and what was then the “regular thing” for a park in all respects done with it. It was enclosed, that is to say, with a high fence, against which, on the inner side, a border of shrubbery was planted; straight walks were made through it, and rows of trees planted.

Rules to preserve the turf and trees from misuse were of course posted [212] about, as a part of the due furniture of such a ground, but the idea then prevailed that the people who were the true owners of the property could not justly be interfered with in making such a use of it as they thought proper; and if some superserviceable public servant ever construed literally the orders formally and gravely given him, and which he was sworn to enforce, by making an arrest on account of a disregard of those rules, public opinion called him a Jack-in-office, and even magistrates were more ready to reprove his officiousness than to punish the offender.

It naturally followed that the life was soon stamped out of the perennial grasses of the turf, and that annual grasses and weeds took their place; bare streaks and patches followed, and at last the whole surface took on the dreary character of a neglected waste.

The trees and shrubs also were slowly mutilated, starved and murdered by accident, by wanton injuries, and through the desire to find employment upon them for men incompetent to fight the battle of life without the aid from the city treasury which they thus obtained grounds for claiming.

When its condition became intolerable, and it could no longer be regarded from the point of view of a pleasure ground, a third appropriation was made of the property. This time it was seen to be just the place for a parade ground. (Washington Square had in the meantime been a parade ground, and while so, had moved ahead and become a centre of fashion.)

The trees in Washington Square had been found in the way of its use as a parade ground; when, accordingly, Tompkins Square was to be improved for the purpose, so much of its original plantation as remained alive, the trees being then about thirty years old, was mainly cut away, a few trees only being left along the outside. The Parade Ground proper was to be a clean, smooth, green field.

After three years, it was found that turf could not stand the necessary wear, and it was concluded that the best exercise ground for soldiers would be a simple flat table with a hard uniform surface, black as night, and free from all suggestions of ease and lassitude. The high fence was accordingly removed and the remains of the effeminate turf overlaid with pitch and sand. When the latter operation had been extended over about half the surface of the Square, however, the conviction obtained that it manifested too much of a brutal martinet spirit for citizen soldiers. A border ground of trees and shrubs was therefore planted, an orchestral pavilion and two dainty sentry boxes were built, the half of the interior not yet plastered with pitch was graveled and a sort of rim introduced to the parade, formed of a composition of which coal tar was the principal ingredient. Finally the whole was again enclosed with a very handsome new Gothic stone and iron fence.

[213]

Except in the matter of the fence and the little wooden buildings, the work done on Tompkins square was all of that plain, easily understood character, which, by virtue of its simplicity, is commonly assumed to be economical. Before long, however, the black composition upon the parade proved not only to be a plain, straightforward piece of work, but cheap, fraudulent and nasty, creating a nuisance more intolerable than the dust and mud it had been expected to abate. The border planting was too thin, too hastily done, in insufficient and unsuitable soil, and no adequate precautions were taken to protect it. The costly fence was for this purpose worthless, because it covered but one side of the border; the other was left to the guardianship of the keepers, for whose comfortable rest the pretty little sentry boxes had been provided. The border was half a mile in length, and when a few hundred boys gathered in the Square, as they did not unfrequently in the evening, the keepers were powerless to prevent them from trooping over it.

Feeling before long as if in some way advantage had been taken of their ignorance, the residents about Tompkins square now adopted the idea, as those in Washington square had previously, that the Parade Ground itself was an unjust imposition upon them, and began to demand that it should be moved, and the Square laid out solely with a view to use as a pleasure ground again.

Between 1872 and 1875, the Department of Public Parks was frequently urged, in the newspapers, by formal addresses, and by much verbal representation of the demands of the people, to set about a sweeping and comprehensive improvement of the Square. It was alleged that the quarter of the city in which it was situated was further removed from parks than any other; that the property holders were taxed for parks by which their property had not at all been benefited, and that the people of this vicinity, on account of the close manner in which it had been built up and the number of its crowded tenements, stood in greater need of a park than any other, and this claim was sustained by reference to the statistics of mortality, especially of nursing infants during the summer.

One of the addresses to the Board, to which I above refer, was in the form of a petition from the mothers of the vicinity, pleading for their little children.

It was admitted that the Parade Ground served the boys tolerably as a [214]

[215] place for athletic sports, but it was asserted that with reference to women, children of tender years, invalids, convalescents, and all those to whom a park should be most attractive, it was simply repulsive and dangerous.

In 1873 the Park Commissioners ordered the replanting of the strip of shrubbery near the fence, which was done with much more care to secure proper conditions of growth than before, but the result was not regarded with satisfaction by the people, and with reference to the usefulness of the Square as a place of recreation, it had in fact no particular value.

The following year the demand for more radical measures accordingly became stronger. The Mayor, the Common Council and the Legislature were appealed to on the subject. In the Legislature a bill was introduced providing for the abolition of the Parade Ground, and the formation of a park upon its site. It was defeated or withdrawn late in the session upon representations that the Department of Public Parks had the question of the improvement of the Square under consideration. As the Department, however, afterwards took no action, a bill with the same object was introduced early in the session of the succeeding year, and the Department was advised that its passage was imminent. The Department adopted the position that a ground in the lower part of the city which could be used for military exercises and various other purposes for which Tompkins Square was suitable, was a necessity; that no other place could be found for it; that it would be imprudent to abandon it; and, admitting that there was reason for the demands which had led the Legislature to consider the question, the Department argued that it would be possible to provide some valuable means of recreation upon the ground without appropriating all of it to the purpose. A copy of a letter to the Mayor is appended in which this position is more fully set forth. The Mayor promptly acted on its suggestions; and upon the strength of his statements, and those of the Commissioners, that such changes were to be made in the Square as would meet the essential needs of the people living near it, the bill was no further pressed.

In accordance with the understanding thus reached, the Legislature was then asked to provide the Department with the sum of $60,000 for work to be done on the Square during the year 1875, and it did so.

Thus was determined the sixth project for making this piece of property useful to the city, each having a purpose in view of a distinct character.

I recapitulate them as follows:

I.	—A grand central market-place;
II.	—An enclosed green grove for a promenade and airing ground;
III.	—A meadow for parades;
IV.	—An unenclosed, paved place-of-arms;
V.	—An enclosed pleasure-ground parade;
VI.	—A place-of-arms, with detached arrangements for the refreshing rest of women, little children, convalescents and others specially needing [216] relief from the generally surrounding conditions of foul air, heated pavements, &c.

The Department now had to meet the following problem:

To find room in Tompkins Square, without materially impairing its value for the exercise of arms, for such provisions as would supply a grateful and healthful relief to the class more particularly proposed to be benefited.

The first proposition, devised to this end, was declared by Major-General Shaler to be entirely inadmissable. He stated that, to answer any valuable purpose of the National Guards, a square of ground was required of which each side should be as long as the existing Parade Ground. A second proposition was afterwards contrived of quite a different character, to which at length the General’s somewhat reluctant consent was obtained. This proposed a field of square form which, within the area strictly under the Department’s control, was of less than the requisite dimensions. It was shown, however, that by taking down the useless fence at its angles, a military line might upon occasion be extended to the length which had been stipulated, and that by making a special provision for spectators elsewhere, the area for military occupation would be practically scarcely less than it had been before. The new square for parades was so placed that outside of it there remained four small triangular spaces. One of these, as a necessity resulting from the requirements of the military, was appropriated to the use of spectators of parades, refreshments, storage and latrines, a second to the orchestral pavilion already built and other requirements of promenade concerts.

There remained, then, but two small places, each somewhat less in area than the oval of the Bowling Green, within which any special provisions for the recreation, in the Square, of women and children of tender years were to be confined.

There are two conditions under which the discomforts and dangers to invalids and weakly people of a visit to a garden are liable to outweigh the pleasure and benefits received. One of these is that of chill, windy weather in the spring and autumn, the other that of midsummer heat, when it is difficult to escape from the sun. The parade ground being essentially treeless and bleak, and its main object of military exercises requiring that it should remain so, it was thought best to provide separately, within the two triangles, for these very different conditions. In that at the southeast corner accordingly, the surface of the ground was designed to have a dell-like form, the lower parts to be several feet below the adjoining plain of the parade, a broad walk was to be carried through it with a loop, and ordinary park seats were to be placed facing the centre, where the adjoining streets and parade ground would be out of sight. The central part was to be a small lawn, with a few groups of shrubs and spring flowers; the outer parts to be planted more densely, so as to form a screen from the wind and secure an aspect of semi-seclusion. No part of the enclosure was intended to be hooded over by trees to the complete exclusion of sunshine. [217] No construction was designed to be introduced except the seats; and the plan was as simple and as inexpensive to execute as any that could be proposed with an intelligent purpose to accomplish what had been undertaken.

The little triangle in the northwest corner was left to be planned and in it all that was yet unfulfilled of the duty of the Commissioners to the people of the locality, was to be provided for.

Should it be treated in a similar simple way with the southeast corner just described, Tompkins Square would offer not a single additional object of that class, which to many constitutes the only entirely tangible and sure source of attraction in parks, such as fountains, monuments, statues, pavilions, rockworks, cascades &c.

During the extreme heat of summer, when the bare ground of the parade would be not only forbidding in aspect, but glowing with fervent heat, and when it would be most important that mothers especially should be drawn away from the turmoil, bustle and glare of the streets, as well as from the foulness of crowded houses, there would, in the middle of the day, be no place to which they could resort; there would be nothing to be seen to gratify even the simplest tastes without discomfort, and even danger, and the Square would be hardly of more use than it had been before the Department was charged with its improvement.

In devising how the deficiencies thus indicated could best be economically met within the narrow limits of the northwest triangle, the difficulty and cost of maintaining any arrangements in tolerable order in this locality was a matter of at least equal interest with that of the immediate expense to be incurred for construction.

It was required, then, in the northwest triangle, to provide shaded seats and something pleasant to the eye to be enjoyed from them, and to accomplish this by means as much as possible beyond the reach of wanton or accidental ill-usage.

The arbor, which is to be the principal provision for this purpose, is approached from each side by a walk sixteen feet wide, which descends towards it between rocky and steeply inclined banks. By this means not only is the bare, heated parade ground to be the sooner and more completely lost [218] sight of, and a shady glen-like seclusion, under partially overhanging shrubbery, made possible, but a barrier against straggling where straggling might otherwise do serious injury is to be gained.

These walks are to lead from each side, by two transepts, to an aisle, floored with concrete, one hundred feet long by twenty wide, with over two hundred lineal feet of fixed seat room at its sides. The space is to be walled in on three sides to a height of six feet, and is to be covered by a trellis, which is to be overgrown by the foliage of vines trained upon it from the beds on the outside of the wall, and inaccessible to the public. The object of shade by foliage for so large a space can thus be obtained with certainty in two years, while, by planting nursery trees, it could not in ten.

The whole structure, with the exception of the hard wood slats of the seats, is to be iron and concrete, and the vines with which it is to be veiled are to be nowhere within arms’ length of a man on the floor.

The danger of both malicious and careless injury of the essential conditions of beauty and comfort within the arbor, if not thus entirely removed, are at least studiously reduced to a minimum.

Every advantage is also secured for cheaply keeping the place clean, and there is nothing to be put out of order.

Except in the foliage overhead there is, however, no beauty, and, as before suggested, something seems desirable to be added which will be gratifying not only to good taste but to the popular liking for objects of spectacular or scenic interest. For this purpose there is to be placed at the end of the arbor furthest from its entrance, a grotto, separated from its floor by a pool of water, guarded by a railing. The grotto is to be formed with walls and three successive recesses, the visible openings of which diminish in size as they recede from the spectator in the arbor. The walls are to be laid with natural rock, covered with mosses and fernlets, and the whole is to be kept damp and rendered slightly misty and mysterious by small fountains of fine spray in the recesses. The banks of the pool in front are to be faced with rocks, and to be overgrown with ferns, ivy and small water-edge plants. The trellis of the arbor is to be extended over the pool and the light from above obscured, in such degree as may be found desirable, by vine foliage.

All these arrangements are to be inaccessible to the public and are studied with a view to cheapness of maintenance as well as protection against pilfering and wanton abuse.

Both the grotto and the arbor are planned, by a graduated reduction in size of all the parts and otherwise, with a view to produce a slight ocular deception, increasing the apparent distance and depth of the misty recess in which the vista is to terminate.

The water of the pool is to be lighted through a hidden opening below the surface, and is to be clear and stocked with gold fish.

The slight fall of water from the grotto to the pool, the dropping of [219] water and spray within the grotto, and the escape of the overflow, are expected to furnish the musical effect of a small tinkling and murmuring mountain rivulet.

The amount of water needed will, nevertheless, be less than is required for the fountains in other small city parks.

Attractive places for free birds, with water, feeding-ground, and nesting-boxes, inaccessible to the public, are provided adjoining the arbor.

The effect of the grotto will depend on the skill and care with which the details of the work are handled; but the materials proposed to be used being all simple, and their arrangment and association natural, somewhat gross mismanagement will be required to produce either a ridiculous or a wholly commonplace result.

The ground below the floor of the arbor is to be thoroughly drained, and its surface concreted; the trellis is to be carried on double and asphalted walls, and harmful dampness is not to be apprehended.

The whole triangle within which the grotto is to be situated is enclosed by a strong high fence, and is designed to be closed at night when shade is unnecessary and the beauty of the plants cannot be enjoyed.

The Board sometime since directed the excavation and foundation work for the arbor to be done, and some progress has been made upon it; the drainage and fencing is almost complete. It is estimated by the Superintending Architect that the completion of the arbor and grotto above the foundation-work, will cost about $10,000. The facing of the grotto and the planting could not be sufficiently described in specifications to be let to the lowest bidder, but should be done by men of special aptitude for such work, under the immediate direction of the designer.

None of what may be regarded as the more fanciful details of the arrangement described are of an expensive character, and probably nine-tenth of the expenditures required will be for ordinary materials, in ordinary mercantile forms, to be contracted for in the open market under active competition.

With regard to the expenditures which have been made upon the Square as a whole, and those which will be required, I beg to say that it was never represented to the Board, nor, so far as my knowledge, recollection or belief goes, was it ever represented to the Mayor who favored the appropriation, nor to the Legislature which authorized it, that a sufficient scheme of improvements could be carried out for $60,000.

I recommended that the sum of $50,000 should be used for the first year’s operations, and stated that, with this expenditure, all parts of the work might be expected to be so far advanced as to give the public use of them, except the tribune for spectators, which could wait a further appropriation.

Of the sum of $60,000 which was to have been expended last year, $25,000 remains. This is probably short of what will be needed to accomplish [220] the results expected from ten to fifteen per cent. The reason the work so far done has cost more than was anticipated is not to be given in a word. At least five causes or classes of causes have plainly contributed to it:

1.  Parts of the work have been done by the day, which it was presumed would be contracted, at rates based on lower wages for labor.

2.  Foremen and men have been employed who were newly recruited and organized, and these have been more or less demoralized by doubts whether they were legally employed; whether they would be paid, and whether their employment would continue.

3.  The work has lacked a continuous, responsible engineering supervision, the organization for the purpose having been broken up in order to reduce salary expenses.

4.  The force of laborers employed has been very variable, and has been more than once suspended at an unfavorable moment.

5.  The work has been unexpectedly impeded and its management embarrassed by quicksands and floods, the effect of which has been aggravated by the suspensions and irregularities above noted.