I.
The District to be Lard Out.

The district lies within and forms the larger part of the great promontory, the shank of which is crossed by the line dividing Yonkers from New York, and which terminates three miles to the southward in the abrupt headland of Spuyten Duyvil. Its ridge line seldom drops much below an elevation of 200 feet, and its highest point, which is also the highest in the city, is 282 feet above tide.

Its surface is much broken by ledges, and there are numerous steep declivities on its hillsides which can rarely be directly ascended without encountering a grade of from 15 to 25 in a hundred. Its ruggedness has prevented [253] its being occupied for agricultural purposes, except very sparsely, and it is largely wooded and wild.

The only noticeable improvements have been made in connection with a number of private villas, and with a large convent and seminary, the grounds of which were also first prepared for a private pleasure ground.

That the district is not more generally occupied in this manner, is due first, to the uncertainty which exists as to how it is to be laid out and generally built over; second, to the fact that it is affected by malaria, of a mild type, however, and resulting entirely from superficial conditions easily to be removed; third, to its lack of suitable roads. The local scenery is everywhere pleasing, except as it is marred artificially. Generally, it is highly picturesque, with aspects of grandeur, and from nearly all parts, broad, distant prospects are commanded of an extended, interesting, and even very impressive character.

II.
The Unsuitability of the District for the More
Common Purposes of the City.

To what needs of the city is such ground as has been described, well adapted?

The authors of the five plans for laying it out, of which transcripts upon a uniform scale are herewith exhibited, all knew well, from much experience, the convenience of the ordinary city division of real estate, and each plan represents an amount of patient and ingenious study in fitting streets of rectilinear or nearly rectilinear courses, to the highly curvilinear contours of the topography, that can be fully appreciated only by those who have had some experience in similar tasks.

Under neither of these plans could any considerable part of the ground to which it applies be subdivided into building sites of the usual form and dimensions of city real estate, or be built upon advantageously in compact ranges. This may be considered as conclusive testimony that the attempt to lay it out with such a purpose in view, would be impracticable.

The ascent of the slopes will be nowhere easy, and two horses, on an average, will be required within it to accomplish the work, which, in most other parts of the city, could be done by one.

There will be no thoroughfares adapted either to heavy teaming or to rapid driving, and in none of the plans heretofore prepared, is a single shortcut proposed across the district.

On these grounds, it may be concluded that factories, (at least of heavy goods,) shops, warehouses, or stores for general trade, except possibly to a limited extent at the foot of the slopes, can be brought here only by some [254] forced and costly process. The city holds much better ground for them in large quantity elsewhere.

The nearest part of the district is ten miles away from the present centre of population, and within that distance, there is but little other ground in which the call for houses of low rent for families of small means, could not be more economically met. The cost of preparing each site for such a house, and rendering it accessible, would be excessive, and the average space which would be appropriated for each, would be much larger than would be elsewhere required.

III.
The Question of a Permanent Suburban Quarter.

There remains to be considered the question of its further general and permanent occupation by that class of citizens to whom the confinement, noise, and purely artificial conditions of the compact city are oppressive, and who are able to indulge in the luxury of a villa or suburban cottage residence.

What are the chances of its being occupied in this manner advantageously?

IV.
The Possibility of a Permanent Suburban Quarter.

Of course, although manufactories and commercial buildings on a large scale are not to be apprehended, a perfectly uninterrupted succession of private villas and cottages is not to be hoped for. Here and there a shop or a range of shops will be necessary, but being adapted only for local custom, they are not likely to be lofty or excessively obtrusive. Now and again buildings for other purposes would probably occur; a school with its play grounds, a church set in a proper churchyard; a higher institution of learning with its green quadrangle, academic grove or campus; a public hall, library or museum; a convent with its courts and gardens; a suburban inn or boarding-house with its terrace, commanding grand prospects over the Hudson. All who have lived abroad know how buildings of these classes and many others may come into a villa suburb (their sites being chosen so as to gain an advantage from appropriate natural circumstances), in such a manner as not to disturb but to give point and emphasis to its proper aspect.

The nearest approach to urban building likely to be frequent, if once the general character proposed is obtained for the district, would be what the English call a terrace, a range of dwellings set back from the public street and reached by a loop-road, the crescent-shaped intermediate space being either a quiet slope of turf, a parterre of flowers, a play ground for children, or, if the [255] topography favors, a picturesque rocky declivity treated perhaps as a fernery or Alpine garden. There will be, whatever the plan of roads, a great number of situations well adapted to such an arrangement, and which could be made suitable for no other except at much greater cost.

Old neighborhoods, more or less of the character indicated, are to be found near almost every great city of Europe, and there are towns like Bath, Leamington, and Brighton, and scores on the continent, noteable parts of which have had something of it for generations past, and hold it still.

But in none of these cases, except perhaps that of one of the suburban quarters of Edinburgh, were the natural conditions nearly as unfavorable for the more common manner of town building, and at the same time as favorable for a permanent, highly picturesque neighborhood, combining the conveniences of the town with the charms and healthfulness of the country.

It is not to be doubted that the promontory may, throughout its whole extent, be so laid out and occupied as to have an interest and attractiveness far excelling in its kind that of any other locality in America; nor that, if this result can be secured, it will hold great numbers of wealthy people within the city who would otherwise go away from it to find homes to suit them, and will draw many to it from without the city. Its effect will, in this respect, be similar to that which has been experienced from the Central Park, but with this difference, that the gain to the city will be in conditions the cost of which will have been mainly defrayed by the voluntary and self-directed contributions of the private owners of the land, not from the public treasury.

It may be questioned whether, even in a locality as yet so remote from dense building and so rugged in its topography, the demand for land for various other purposes will not, in time, crowd out all rural and picturesque elements, and whether, for this reason, it would be prudent to lay it out with exclusive reference to suburban uses? All that can be said in reply, is that thus far in the history of other great cities there is nothing to sustain such a doubt.

After a certain degree of density has been attained, the proportion of people who are disposed and able to live under suburban conditions, relatively to those who may be content or obliged to live under rigidly urban conditions, becomes larger the larger the town, but there is yet no city in the world so large that it has not luxurious suburban quarters much nearer to its centre than is the promontory, even to the outer part of New York as now densely built. London has fairly grown around and stretched beyond some clusters of fine old suburban residences without seriously disturbing them. There are private gardens in which the town is almost lost sight of at not many minutes walk from Hyde Park. Within a range from the heart of Old London of less than one-third the distance of Riverdale from the City Hall, there are hundreds of acres of gardens and villa and cottage grounds; and, with a city adding [256] much more annually to her population than New York, costly villas are every year built, and villa neighborhoods are steadily enlarged without becoming less distinctly suburban in character.

Districts of villas exist and others are forming also but a little way from dense parts of Paris. Under Haussmann, roads were laid out expressly for villas closely adjoining the grand route between the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne, every site upon which is now occupied by a semi-rural residence. Other and extensive districts of the same class have been laid out since with confident reference to permanence as an integral element of the attractions of the city.

V.
The Advantages Offered by the Proposition to the City.

It is reasonable to infer that New York will have such quarters. It remains a question whether they shall be formed by a co-operation of public and private work, or by private enterprise in making the best of unsuitable public arrangements. The importance of the question will be recognized if it is considered what a difference there would now be in the attractiveness, and consequently in the wealth of the city, if twenty-five years ago, when it was quite practicable, Fifth avenue from Madison Square to the Central Park, had been laid out fifty feet wider than it is, with slightly better grades, a pad for riding horses, broad sidewalks and an avenue of trees.

It will cost much less to layout and prepare the promontory admirably as a permanent suburb than to prepare it tolerably for any other use.

A given sum expended upon it for the purpose will have important results much sooner than if expended for any other.

All other purposes which the city needs to have in view can be provided for at much less cost and much more conveniently in other parts of its present territory.

Treated as a suburb, the district is likely to make larger contributions to the city treasury, and to begin to contribute to it in important amount sooner than if treated in any other way.

What is meant by treating the district as a suburb is, that the development of a distinctly suburban and picturesque character should everywhere be kept frankly in view as a source of wealth, and that the roads should be adapted to a population living less densely, and with which pleasure driving and walking are to be, relatively to heavy teaming, more important than in the streets of the compact city.

If the policy which has been indicated does not, upon reflection, fully commend itself to the Commission, the plan now submitted is not entitled to further examination. It is professedly adapted to no other.

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If, however, the soundness of the policy is accepted, the manner in which the district should be laid out, in order to its success, remains to be considered.

VI.
The Question of Laying Out a Specially Picturesque and Convenient Suburb.

The custom of laying out roads in the outskirts of cities only upon right lines, under any circumstances which leave it possible to do so, is so strongly fixed in our country that the Commission cannot entertain the idea of abandoning it before carefully weighing what is to be gained and lost by doing so. It should remember, however, that the custom is largely due to the disposition of land owners, to act on the imagination, by showing lots which, as represented on paper, differ in no respect from the most valuable in the city, and thus to feed the pernicious propensity which prevails among the ignorant for gambling on small means under the name of speculation in real estate.

Again, it is to be remembered that it is not customary to think of the laying out of any part of a city as a matter in the smallest degree of esthetic design; but, if the policy of carrying on a series of constructions in a manner sympathetic with picturesque landscape effects has any claims to adoption by the Commission, it necessarily involves a serious application, in however humble a way, of the laws and the spirit of art.

The more tangible and weighty advantage to be urged in favor of keeping as nearly as practicable to straight lines of road, is one commonly expressed under one of the following specifications:

1st.   That of the comparative ease and simplicity of the business of laying out the roads.

2d.   That of the comparative rapidity and convenience with which surveyors’ measurements and calculations are made when dealing with straight lines.

3d.   That of the greater convenience of a straight front when land is to be divided or described with a view to sale or mortgage.

It is not questioned that these advantages should be waived in the case of very difficult topography, such as must often occur on the promontory. (It will be observed that each of the six plans before the Commission proposes a considerable extent of curved line). It apparently follows that whether the straight street should yield to the winding road at any point, when it is otherwise desirable, is, at the worst, a question of employing surveyors competent to deal with curved lines. No plan has been proposed to the Commission for laying out the promontory, under which a local surveyor to whom curved lines were a serious matter, could honestly earn his living. The whole amount of the class of expenses in question, under the most difficult circumstances, [258] would be relatively inconsiderable, and if any essential, permanent advantage to the community is at stake, regard for them should not be allowed to obstruct the very best arrangement that can be devised.

The third specification above refers to the facility which straightness in a street gives for laying off properties in lots the dimensions of which may be expressed in two numbers, and to the convenience of the custom, to which this advantage is essential, of dividing property for sale in a series of parallelograms of uniform length of frontage, as in the case of city lots. As to this custom, it is to be remembered that if it should be generally adhered to on the promontory it would not affect the desired result favorably, but otherwise, for this reason.

In broken and rolling ground, and especially in rocky ground, sites for houses can be well chosen only with an intelligent consideration of local circumstances. If a hundred lots are to be laid off, each one hundred feet wide, and with the dividing lines all at right angles with the street line, in many parts of the promontory the dividing lines will so occur, that on not half the lots will an entirely satisfactory site for a building be found, and, on several, building will be impracticable until after much labor has been given to transform the natural surface. Let the same property, on the other hand, be laid out with a judicious adjustment of lines to the local conditions, and an equal number of lots may be made of it, each offering an admirable and conveniently approached site. Of course, however, they will vary in size.

As to the general attractiveness of the region, and as to the total or average value of all its real estate, there are certain well established principles by which men of taste throughout the civilized world, when living among rural or even rus-urban conditions are almost invariably guided when laying out the private carriage approaches to their houses. The motives growing out of well established experience which enforce this practice, apply equally in the case of a common approach to two houses as to one, and if to two, equally to twenty or to two hundred. Though the propriety may be questioned of advancing toward a house indirectly when it is situated on a plain, there is no question that in a hilly country the principles referred to always lead to the use in roads of winding courses in greater or less degree of correspondence with the natural surface.

VII.
The Economical Advantages of the Proposition.

The comparative economy of straight and winding roads is partly a question of what is desirable under given circumstances as to grades. The

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shortest line between two points is not always that which can be passed over at the least cost of time or in wear and tear.

A carriage load that requires two horses and a given strength of harness to be drawn over a road with grades by which one foot in elevation is overcome in ten feet of distance, as in the case of some of the present roads of the promontory, can be as easily and safely drawn by one horse and with a harness one-half lighter on a road in which twenty-four feet is allowed for overcoming the same elevation. If a man in haste at a given point wishes to drive a horse of ordinary quality with a light wagon to another point 180 feet higher on a hillside, he can do so in shorter time upon a curved road 800 yards in length than upon a straight road of 600 yards.

If the hillsides of the promontory are to be occupied chiefly by families in comfortable circumstances it is evident that for the great majority of occasions a road carried between two points, one at a greater elevation than another, upon a curve regulated by the curve of the hillside along which it will be passing, though longer horizontally, will be passed over in shorter time, and with less wear and tear, than a straight road between the same points. The straight road might, because it was the shortest, cost less for construction. The probabilities are, that ploughing straight through whatever was in the way, it would cost more. But, whether so or not, in running along an alternately swelling and retreating surface, the more unswerving the course the more it would be necessary in grading the road to cut through the protuberances and to fill across the depressions.

From this consideration it follows, that unless a level can be kept, which in this district it rarely can for any distance, access will be had from a road laid on natural lines to adjoining building sites with much less violence and at less cost, on an average, than it can from a straight road, and, again, that the amount of walling, sloping, turfing or other operations necessary to a tidy road-side, or the attractive presentation of the adjoining properties, will be less with the winding than the straight road.

VIII.
The Immediate Convenience of the Proposition.

One advantage to be gained by adopting winding and picturesque roads, as far as conveniently practicable, rather than straight and formal streets, remains to be suggested.

Formal streets, especially when far extended on a straight line at an even grade, their every line of curb, sidewalk and lamp-posts, being truly set, and when bounded by continuous walls of stately houses, have an imposing effect, and satisfy good taste. But in streets which, by alternate cuttings and embankments, are carried, here through woods, there across open fields, here are flanked by the ragged face of blasted ledges or raw banks of earth, there by a varied prospect, even when fine houses are occasionally built fronting upon [260] them, straightness gives no dignity and expresses little but incongruity and imperfection.

To make such a street tolerable to the eye it needs from the beginning as perfect lines and as perfect surfaces in its curbs, gutters and lamp-posts, pavement and flagging, as the densely occupied street of the city. If a cheap temporary wheel-way is made in it, or temporary sidewalks, any deviation from a straight line, or even any short flexions of grade in them are unsatisfactory. If trees are set between the walks and the wheel-way they seem out of place, and add to a general expression of untidiness, incompleteness, disorder and shiftlessness, unless they are evenly spaced in continuous lines parallel with all the other features. The slightest disarrangement of such a road, scattered patches of grass and weeds, a sucker growth of trees and bushes on the bordering banks, even the general heaving outward and inward of the fences that form its outlines, all claim attention as defects and shortcomings from what is attempted.

Nothing of this is true of roads laid out with a natural motive. The wheel-way may have a somewhat variable width, as economy shall require; its grade may dip and rise within a hundred yards; the courses of the walks may vary a little from that of the wheel-way, may rise a little in a cutting or fall a little on an embankment, may rise on one side and fall on the other; wild plants may spring up, here and there, in random tufts, or, again, the roadsides be all filled out (as some in the district now are), with a thick growth of low brambles, ferns, asters, gentians, golden-rods; roadside trees may be irregularly spaced and of various sizes and species, great opposite small, ash over against maple, elm bending to oak; fine old trees may be left standing, and, to save them, the wheel-way carried a little to the right or left, or slightly raised or lowered. It may be desirable, simply for convenience sake, to go to the expense of avoiding such conditions, but, as a matter of taste, they are far from blemishes; they add to other charms of picturesqueness, and they are a concession to nature, tending to an effect not of incongruity and incompleteness, but of consistent and happy landscape composition.

Hence, roads on natural lines, which may be so far worked, at moderate cost, as to meet the ordinary requirements of convenience of a considerable community, will much sooner and more uninterruptedly give results of a presentable, comely and attractive character. In this manner, indeed, the most agreeable roads in the world have been made.

IX.
General Requirements.

Adopting the general conclusion which has thus been sustained, there is still much room for difference of judgment as to the location of roads, their breadth and grades.

The existing divisions of land, the positions of houses, of fences, of [261]

[262] roads, have been determined without regard to such an occupation of the district as is now to be prepared for. Individual interests, based on existing arrangements, must necessarily be, in greater or less degree, at issue with those general and lasting interests of the public of which the Commission is the guardian. There must be limits within which the latter are so far paramount that not the least compromise between the two is admissible. To keep on the safe side of those limits, it has appeared to the undersigned best to perfect a conclusion, in the first place, as to what roads are necessary as routes, or links in routes, of extended, general and unquestionably desirable, in distinction from local and limited, communication. This they have done in the plan now presented, except that they have adopted the judgment of the Board, as heretofore indicated, on three points not materially affecting the general design.

X.
By-Roads.

If the Commission should substantially adopt the system, and afterwards think proper to consult the judgment and wishes of each land-owner as to cross roads or by-roads, it can do so with confidence, that no conclusions to which it may then be led can be seriously detrimental to the general interests. Anyone of the divisions left by the plan might even be subdivided, for example, by rectilinear roads without destroying the consistency and harmony or lessening the convenience, of the main system. If, on the other hand, such minor roads within any division should, in order not to mar a series of natural building sites, be made very indirect and circuitous, the worst result would be a slight inconvenience to a few residents within the division and those calling upon them, which, to these, would be compensated by the greater beauty and local convenience of the buildings. The public in general, keeping to the primary roads, would suffer no inconvenience.

It is believed, too, that the proprietors will be much better able to form a sound judgment as to the requirements of their own interests in the minor roads if they are allowed to become familiar with the proposed general system, and with the theory which it represents of the interest of the district as a whole.

XI.
Requirements of Detail. Planting Arrangements.

It should be recognized that to carry out a natural or informal system judiciously, so that a good share of its possible advantages may be surely realized, much study of detail is required. Both for economy and beauty local circumstances must be diligently consulted, and the treatment of the road adapted to them. Variety in this respect should be sought, not avoided. Every [263] turn should bring something of fresh interest into view within the road as well as beyond it.

In this detail very well-considered provisions should be made for road-side planting. Ordinarily in the suburbs of rapidly growing American towns, trees are planted most injudiciously and wastefully, ill-chosen as to species for the locality, ill-placed, ill-planted, and with no suitable provision for a continuous, healthy growth. Science is yearly placing a higher estimate on the sanitary value of street trees. Paris now maintains a great nursery with a view to the systematic supply of all the city with this means of dissipating malaria and infection. London is just entering upon a similar duty. The matter of supplying New York streets with trees has been much debated by her sanitarians. The difficulty lies in the fact, that the street arrangements of the city being all designed with no reference to the purpose, the introduction of trees, with the conditions necessary to success, would be very costly and inconvenient. In laying out a new system, especially for a quarter designed to offer a beautiful and healthful relief to the more general conditions of city life, this requirement should be thoroughly well attended to.

The tracing submitted represents the outline of a general plan, the adoption of which is recommended subject to such slight adjustments, immaterial to the essential design, as may be found desirable.

A drawing is also exhibited which will serve to indicate more fully the purposes in view.