I.
The Valley of Mill Brook, From One Hundred and Sixty-First Street to Fordham Station.

This section, included between Third avenue and Webster avenue, is and must always remain, preëminently a business district.

It is traversed from end to end by the Harlem Railroad, which now furnishes communication with the Grand Central Depot twenty-six times each way daily, the trip occupying from twenty to thirty minutes. The result of these facilities for intercourse with the city is shown in the fact that the narrow strip on the east side of the railroad which has been laid out in streets by the owners of the property, contains 765 houses, most of which are occupied.

The corresponding strip on the west side of the railroad is hardly settled at all.

This is due principally to the fact that through it runs the Mill Brook which is liable to freshets which overflow the low ground on each side.

For a distance of nearly two miles southwardly from Fordham Station, five avenues traverse the section. Four of these are continued southwardly to One hundred and sixty-first street.

The two exterior avenues, Third and Webster, the lines and grades of which were established by the Board in 1876, are, respectively, 80 and 100 feet wide.

Of those intermediate, Madison and Washington avenues are each 50 feet in width. Both are extensively built upon. The houses are in most instances set back from the street line, and the sidewalks lined with trees which have attained considerable size.

By the plan, these avenues will be widened five feet on each side, but the additional width thus obtained will not increase the roadway, which is now of the proper width for a sixty-foot street.

The effect of the widening will only be for the present to prevent encroachments by stoops and areas on the present sidewalks, which are now not wider than is needed for pedestrians.

The New York Ordinances, which by the Annexation Act are made applicable to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Wards, prescribe a definite width of sidewalk for each width of street, and no new curb can now be set on either of these avenues at the distance from the house line at which the present curb stands; a conformity with the ordinances would therefore, unless the avenue is widened as proposed, bring the fine trees which line the streets into such a position as to render their removal necessary for convenience of travel.

Few existing buildings are required to be set back in order to accomplish the proposed widening.

The fifth avenue in the section was laid out by the original owners of the property immediately along the line of the Harlem Railroad.

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It is difficult at this day, in the light of the experience gained on the Fourth and Eleventh avenues in New York City, to understand the motives which influenced such an arrangement.

As a highway such a road is unsafe and uncomfortable, and will be used neither for business nor for pleasure when other routes can be found, nor does it make the land fronting upon it desirable for residence purposes.

In a suburban district the disadvantages of the arrangement are not felt to so great an extent as where population has become more dense, and, consequently, travel on both the railroad and the street more frequent. But even in this section its effects can plainly be seen by a comparison of both the number and the character of the buildings erected on the Railroad avenue, with those of buildings on streets of no greater natural advantages, but situated away from the railroad.

Thus on the Eastern Railroad avenue, from One hundred and sixty-fifth street to Fordham, with a frontage of 12,011 feet, lots amounting to a frontage of 7,554 feet are unoccupied, while immediately in the rear of these the properties fronting on Washington avenue which are unoccupied have an aggregate frontage of only 3,800 feet.

But when such a street becomes more thickly occupied, one of two results must follow:

Either considerations of safety will compel a reduction of speed in the steam travel, (as in Eleventh avenue, from Thirtieth to Sixtieth streets, where thirty heavily laden trains pass daily, creeping along at less than nine miles an hour, and even then causing frequent accidents,) or else the magnitude of the nuisance will compel the expenditure of an enormous sum to put the road out of sight, and where it cannot be entered upon or crossed by the public.

The first remedy is not to be thought of at this day.

As regards the second, it must be borne in mind that if the public compel the expenditure by a corporation of a large sum, the corporation will by some means or other take care that the public bears its full share of it. It may do so either by procuring the payment by the public at large of at least a portion of the cost of improvement, or by forcing the payment of excessive fares for travel, or by furnishing meagre and shabby accommodations: or by all three methods combined.

Another serious objection to a railroad street is that it is only one-sided, and that therefore the expense of its construction and maintenance is twice as great to the abutting owners as that of a street which is improved on both sides.

These considerations lead to the conclusion that it is better to make at the outset such provisions for rapid transit that enormous additional expense will not be called for in a few years; and from this conclusion springs naturally the decision that the street along the Harlem Railroad ought to be [344] discontinued, and a street substituted for it which is out of sight of passing trains, and both sides of which will be available for occupation.

In the particular case now under consideration the possibility of encountering legal obstacles has induced a reconsideration of the plan first suggested to the Board, which was to close the Railroad avenue, and substitute for it a street 100 feet from the railroad and 200 feet from Washington avenue.

Several years after the Harlem Railroad Company had acquired title to the land which they now occupy, the owners of the adjoining lands on the east divided at different times their properties into lots and streets, laying out a street fifty feet in width adjoining the railroad land.

The tracts so divided were five in number. The most northwardly, the Thomas Bassford farm, was sold in parcels by W. C. Wetmore, as executor. The deeds executed by him conveyed to the grantees in express terms the fee to the centre of the street on which the several plats abutted.

The second tract was sold in parcels by Ida E. Bassford, the guardian of the infant heirs of Abraham Bassford. The deeds conveyed the property to the line of the street only.

The third tract, known as Upper Morrisania, was sold in lots by Gouverneur Morris, the lots being bounded by the streets laid down on a map referred to in them.

The fourth tract, or Central Morrisania, was sold under somewhat different provisions.

On January 10th, 1851, Charles, John and Alexander Bathgate executed an agreement with Nicholas McGraw to sell to him, or to such persons as he might designate, all the land included within certain lots designated by numbers on the map, together with the land contained within the streets and avenues designated and described on said map.

On December 1st, 1855, Nicholas McGraw executed a certificate, which was duly recorded, acknowledging that the Bathgate Brothers had fulfilled their part of the above agreement, by conveyances dated May 1st, 1851.

The fifth tract, called the Village of Morrisania, was sold under still other provisions.

It appears from the records that—

(1.)   Gouverneur Morris agreed, on June 20th, 1848, to sell to J. L. Mott, N. McGraw and C. W. Houghton, the whole tract.

(2.)   He failed to fulfil this agreement, but had the land laid out in streets and lots, and conveyed away the lots (September, 1848) by deeds, the descriptions in which bound the property by the streets and avenues.

(3.)   To satisfy Mott et al., he agreed, on November 8th, 1848, for the consideration of $100, to convey to the town of Morrisania, by warrantee deed, all the lots designated on the map as Parks, Schools and Public Squares, and to quit-claim all his title to the streets on the map, to whomsoever might [345] be authorized to receive the deeds, for the benefit of the inhabitants of the village of Morrisania.

(4.)   He afterwards executed these deeds.

In examining the tenure of the land under these various conditions of sale, it appears probable that the whole of Railroad avenue, as laid out, would, if closed, revert to the abutting owners on the east side in the fourth and fifth tracts.

In the first tract, it might be questioned whether the westerly half of the avenue would not revert to the original owners.

In the second and third tracts, the question might arise as to whether, in the absence of any stipulation, the abutting owners on the east had any rights further than to the centre of the avenue, and if not, whether the railroad company had any rights as abutting owners.

The necessity for a solution of these questions may be avoided, as proposed by the plan, by retaining the westerly half of Railroad avenue as a public alley, 25 feet wide, for access to the rear of existing lots and for certain advantages for drainage which would thus be secured.

The street or avenue for travel, and for giving a frontage to existing lots, is laid out 120 feet from this alley, and is made 60 feet wide. This gives the property fronting on Washington avenue another front, and leaves the block between the two avenues 140 feet in depth.

Although this arrangement may operate hardly upon a few of the present owners, it is believed that it will be found much more advantageous on the whole than the present block of 300 feet in depth, with one front on the railroad.

All crossings of the railroad are by bridges over the track. The injury to existing improvements will be slight.

II.
West of Webster Avenue and South of the
Morrisania Town Line.

This section is almost entirely unimproved, and is owned in large tracts.

It was laid out by the Commission of 1868, in rectangular blocks, without regard to its topography. The cost of construction of the streets, on the lines then proposed, would exceed the value of the land, and the grades of the cross streets would prohibit the movement of heavy loads.

In preparing the present plan, the attainment of light grades, with slight cuttings and fillings, at moderate cost, has been aimed at, rather than adherence to straight lines or directness between distant points. Wherever practicable, ranges of straight and parallel streets have been introduced for the subdivision of property, but very long and straight avenues, either longitudinal [346] or transverse, have not been sought where their introduction would involve heavy expense. As a matter of economy and of convenience, the straight road is often the dearer, although it may be shorter. On a street of 80 feet in width, to be paved and sewered, and furnished with gas and water, every foot of cutting which can be saved in construction will admit of an increase of over 5 per cent. in length of street without increase of cost, and with increase of ease of travel. This estimate does not take into account the saving in the cost of preparing the abutting lots for occupation.

The only objection to curved streets which has been made by any person out of more than four hundred who have examined the plans, has been that under the usual method of selling city property, the sale of rectangular lots is more easily managed. This view of the matter neglects all consideration of the cost of improvements.

The original owner is expected to make all the profit, and the unfortunate purchaser is left to be taxed and assessed until his means are exhausted, and his property taken from him under a foreclosure suit.

The object of the study bestowed upon the plans now submitted, has been to avoid this result, and to produce a system of roads adapted to the progressive improvement of property at the minimum of cost, with a certainty that when the operations are completed the gradients will be easy, and communication as direct as possible.

The topography of the section makes it impossible to procure without steep ascents and heavy cutting and filling, perfectly straight lines from the railroad to Jerome Avenue, and where such lines have been previously planned, they have been abandoned.

On the summit of the ridge a space of about twenty acres has been designated as a park.

III.
From the Morrisania Town Line to the Jerome Park
Branch Railroad Route, West of Webster Avenue.

In the division of this section into independent villages, the proprietors provided no continuous lines of road from North to South, and the few transverse roads from Jerome Avenue to the Harlem Railroad were laid out without regard to directness or ease of travel.

This, in itself, is not remarkable, but it is a little surprising to find that within a short distance of each of the steep old roads leading from the bluff to the valley, and at the intersection of which with the railroad, important stations have been established, routes heretofore neglected exist, by which access can be had from these stations to the elevated land, on easy grades and at slight cost of construction.

On such routes the plan establishes main thoroughfares with no gradient exceeding five feet in 100.

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For longitudinal travel, good routes are generally attained by following existing streets and introducing connections. In the plots which lie intermediate to the main routes thus established, the existing divisions of property are in most cases retained. Two small plots are reserved for public greens near Fordham and Tremont Stations, and at the southerly extremity of the district, a particularly desirable tract of about twenty-five acres, which has never been subdivided, is reserved as a park.

IV.
North of the Line of the Proposed
Jerome Park Branch Railroad.

In this section the land is still owned in large tracts and is now mainly used for farming purposes.

The ground is high; in some parts nearly level, in others broken and undulating. The views are entirely inland, overlooking the Bronx and Mill Brook Valleys.

The treatment of this section is governed almost entirely by topographical considerations. There is considerable variety in the subdivision, parts being rectangularly laid out, and other parts being divided so as to admit of a more rural character of roads.

On its southern limit, a natural water course of considerable importance gives opportunity for the continuation of the Parkway and chain of small parks which, with those already adopted, will connect the Hudson and Bronx Rivers.

As a summary, the plan submitted provides for business sections in the valleys of Mill Brook and Cromwell’s Creek; for a section for residences on the elevated ground along the centre of the district, for a section for suburban homes at the northern limit, for avenues of easy grade, opening into small parks at suitable distances, traversing the whole length and breadth of the district, and for routes for present and prospective steam travel, so placed that they will not interfere with other roads.