Before every spring and fall planting season I have gone over the ground anew, urged McMillan to have everything in readiness early and begged the Commission to take care that no work should be required which would not leave him individually free to give himself for two months exclusively to the personal direction of the men to be employed in making good the result of the original haste and lack of detailed oversight. At my request, a deputy superintendent was employed expressly to secure this end — and you personally and other Commissioners have repeatedly assured me that you would see to it that he should not be allowed to occupy himself with anything else while this repairing remained to be done. Nevertheless I have at the close of every planting season, fall & spring, had a letter from Mr McMillan telling me that some unexpected circumstances, orders and requiremts of the Commission had again obliged to postpone this most important work, and every time I have come to Buffalo it has made me sick to see the offensive objects growing constantly more offensive.

Last autumn enough was done to show how easily the Park might be vastly improved by good managemnt in this respect but the greater part of the work promised was still left undone. In the Spring scarcely anything was accomplished toward the desired result. This summer I have again had Mr McMillan’s repeated promise and assurance that all the work of the Summer should be arranged expressly with a view to devoting as large a force as could be managed in the fall to paying off the old scores. Yet such was my anxiety because of previous disappointments that it was the principle object on my mind in my last visit to Buffalo to go over the ground again and impress upon him a sense of the importance of what was to be accomplished and satisfy myself that nothing would again be allowed to interfere with it.

I returned as well assured as I could be, yet again was so anxious that last week I wrote him recapitulating the points in which I most dreaded neglect and urging him to take care that no possible means were lacking for starting the work at the earliest moment and putting its accomplishment beyond peradventure.

I receive now in return a letter telling me that all the funds now in the hands of the Commission must be expended on Fillmore Avenue. If this is the case I cannot but think it a perfectly scandalous piece of bad management nor can I help feeling a personal disgrace in it. It is not possible that having been so long in your employment I can be held free from responsibility for the persistent and systematic misuse of the large amount of preparatory work which is distorted and hidden by the hasty and imperfect premature attempt at a show of finish.

Of course I do not want to fight with the inevitable or cry over milk [232]

Plan of Buffalo Park System drawn up by Olmsted for Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876)

I write to you individually because I long ago pointed out the facts on the ground to you & you know all I say to be true, and also because you know better than I what can be & what needs to be said to the Commission on the subject.

Is there not something that can be sold by which a fund can be realized, [233] and if not could not those whose interests compel the Commission to proceed with Fillmore Avenue this Fall be induced by a frank statement of the facts to allow this vastly larger interest of the City to be dealt with more justly.

I don’t think it necessary to enter into an argument to satisfy you that it is the more important interest of the City for which I plead. As I have often said to McMillan the value of all the work which has been done on the Park — the dividend which the City is to obtain for all that it has invested — depends entirely on the refined management of its plantations. You might just as well go to all the expense of purchasing a vein of gold bearing rock, of opening a mine upon it, getting out the quartz and crushing it and then be careless in the amalgamating process, letting half your gold go down the stream, as to make a park and let the work on the plantations be rushed, wholesaled and slighted.

I hope it will be remembered that I long ago said this not only to McMillan but in effect before your Board.