Yours of 1st inst has only just now come to me having been first mailed unstamped.

I must confess that I would greatly prefer to drop the word Park and am disposed to stick to Back Bay. What you are to have is hardly more a park than it is a theatre or a market and to designate your salt marsh and water a park implies a feeling that the real thing is not as pleasant and favorable to the value of real estate as you could wish it to be. It is a puff and a wholly unnecessary puff, for the real thing will be better in the place, than any park could be. Then as to the park like margin the word park will be a constant invitation to unjust criticism and to demands for what may properly be demanded in a park but cannot be in a promenade with a sylvan border of the character designed.

As to Back Bay all that is to be said is that it is of the class of proper names which though prosaic at first or if regarded analytically are most permanently satisfactory such as Cornhill, Pallmall, High Gate, Brick Yards — (Tuileries), Long Branch, New Port, Cam Bridge, Dobb’s Ferry. (They tried changing the name of Dobb’s Ferry & for several years the P.O. there was Greenburg, but the public would not adopt it). Back Bay is not very euphonious nor a quite pleasant alliteration, but it is appropriate, sensible and of historical value.

Of the names you suggest I prefer that of Water Park. But I would much rather reverse the order and call the interior the Park Water — and give special names to different parts of the outside Park. I do not object as a prefix or descriptive term before another as in Park Way.

On the whole I advise you to call the basin part of the affair,

The Everglade.

Though we hardly know this term except as applied to the Florida glades, it is a descriptive and not a proper name meaning (see Webster) “a tract of land covered with water and grass”, that is to say exactly applicable to the locality.

However, if you think the association unpleasant, which I do not, then say

The Salt Glades

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“Preliminary Plan for the Back Bay Park,” February 13, 1879

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The Sedgeglade

The Sea Glades,

or

The Glade Water.

Then give different stretches of the banks and roads about it such names as the following.

Everglade Parkway,

(or Gladewater Parkway,)

Hawthorne Place,

Allston Road,

Aggasis Terrace,

May Flower Walk.

Boylston Bridgeway

Charles Gate

Sedgefare

Westland Cross

Westbay Terrace

Northbay Terrace.

Eastover Place.

Longview

Saltcroft.

Fair Leat

Bankshaw

Blooming Bank.

Lowell Road

Whittier Place

May Flower Road

Alden Terrace.