Part First.

I.—The Occasion For Discussion, The Matter Of Discussion, and Its Importance

II.—The Prime Economical Difficulty Of Park Undertakings in General, an Ill-Defined and Unsteady Policy. Why So?

III.—Aggravating Circumstances For Detroit

IV.—The Unusual Difficulties To Be Met. The Educative Function of a Park, and the Economy of It

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V.—Necessity To Economy Of Concentrating Early Outlays on a Few Popular Measures, to Success in Which, at Moderate Cost, the Conditions of Site are Specially Favorable

VI.—Illustrations Of This Economy

VII.—The Necessity Of Consistency Of Style To Economy

Part Second.

I.—The Key To All Improvements Of Belle Isle Must be Found in the Character of its Existing Wood

II.—The Question Of Drainage

III.—Immediately Indispensable Surface-Drainage. Interior Water-Ways

IV.—Opening The Woods

V.—Access, Landings, Vestibule And Auxiliary Arrangements

VI.—The Essence Of The Park. The East Park

VII.—Greensward Unpastured. Campus

VIII.—Opportunity For A Great City Fair

IX.—The North Park And The Far Fields

X.—Constructions

I.

The Occasion for Discussion, the Matter of Discussion, and its Importance.

If, upon the Commission’s application, the Common Council consent to the preliminary operation advised for the improvement of the wood upon the island, nothing is to be gained through completing the general plan much before the next working-season. Something may be gained by deliberation and discussion.

A report of progress, for the information of the Council and the people, may, however, be desired of me. Such a report at this stage can but present the less popularly interesting parts of a plan,—the framework of principle, purpose, and method, upon which it is to be elaborated. Even this it can do neither very briefly nor prepossessingly. It can therefore serve a good purpose only as it may challenge a deliberate consideration of the lasting interests of the city in the matter.

Map-like drawings, however attractively they may present what it is practicable to exhibit by them of a plan, hardly give to most intelligent men a [72]better idea of what a park to be formed upon them is to be, than a map of Michigan of the character of its people. The more attractive such drawings, the less are they apt, in fact, to hold general attention to the more important issues to be settled. It is possible, then, that, if patience to read a sufficiently full verbal explanation of some such issues in the present case can be commanded, it will better serve a sound public opinion than discussion of a finished drawing would do.

Taking this view, I shall steer clear, as far as I can in the present report, of the technical side of the subject,—shall address the common sense of the city, and shall urge nothing upon which immediate action is required. If my argument shall seem over-labored for the occasion, it will be because, after watching the growth and fluctuations of public opinion in twelve cities with whose park projects I have had more or less to do, I believe it unlikely that for many years to come there will be any matter of local public business brought before the people of Detroit, haphazard views of which will be more costly.

II.

The Prime Economical Difficulty of Park Undertakings in General, an
Ill-defined and Unsteady Policy. Why so?

What Detroit most wants in a park, as I am often advised, is economy. In every case within my knowledge, the most serious slips from economy in city park-making have been due to devious courses of management, such as would not have occurred had anything like a clear, common understanding been had, from the start, of the objects to be attained, and of what the purpose to attain them economically excluded.

The short history of this project of Belle Isle does not show that Detroit is starting upon a more secure footing. It was apparently the consideration, that, under private ownership, something was liable to be done with the island harmful to the interests of the city, that turned the scale of public opinion favorably to the project. Yet, when to the question “What can the city do with it?” the answer “Make it a park” was accepted, it must have been with varying and generally vague imaginings of what a park would be.

The more common central idea, undoubtedly, was that of a place away from houses, devoted to cheerful, rural recreation. Yet the first things afterwards proposed to be put upon the island were, I believe, two houses, each for a purpose as irrelevant to the purpose of cheerful, rural recreation, as any that could be thought of,—a mad-house and a pest-house.

It is plain, that, wherever such buildings should intrude upon the park proper, the value receivable for every dollar invested with a view to its main purpose would be less than it would otherwise be,—as the value of the capital invested in a concert-hall would be lessened by the introduction of any noisy machinery in an adjoining building; of capital in a girls’ school, by a lease of rooms under the same roof for a police court.

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That nothing like this often happens when any other special form of public work is to be set about for the first time, even in a newly-formed community, is due to the fact that knowledge so much more prevails of what in a general way has been established by experience in hundreds of older communities. Although upwards of fifty millions of dollars are already represented by our American park properties, not one of them had even been planned six and twenty years ago: hardly yet is the plan of one fully worked out. They so much differ in character, moreover, that numerous objects may be found prominent in the plan of some, that are not at all recognized in the scheme of others.

Hence, in so far as any understanding of what should be done with a piece of public property set apart for objects no better defined than they are by calling it a park depends on what is generally known of this brief, incomplete, and inconsistent experience, it is no wonder that it should prove an inaccurate understanding. It is no wonder that sensible men often imagine themselves at the end of a discussion upon it when they have only arrived at a beginning. Nor can it be held strange that men’s judgment of what should be done with such a property, or with funds appropriated to its improvement, should vary from time to time with the interests that at any moment may happen to hold their attention.

It is not to be asked that the hurried people of an American city, sprung within the lifetime of men yet living from the condition of a frontier trading-post, shall stop to think much of what interest their children and their children’s children may possibly have in the far-off results of any of their public works; but the sentiment that led to the building of the Detroit City Hall in a manner so much more substantial than any immediate profit could have been generally seen to warrant, may be appealed to against this common unsteadiness of public judgment in park business more pertinently than may be generally realized.

In several of the town parks of Europe formed from one to three hundred years ago, no material modification of general design, or enlargement of scope, has, from the beginning of them, been made. The population using them has increased several fold: it has changed its forms of government, its forms of society, in some cases its forms of religion; it has changed its forms of building; it has widened, and lengthened, and sewered, and paved, and lighted, most of its streets; it has demolished its most solid constructions in walls and fortresses. In nothing else has so little change of general design occurred as in its parks; in nothing else so little been done, beyond the unnoticeable removal and repair of the results of decay, and wear and tear. While most other costly constructions have been losing in fitness and value for present use, the parks are recognized by all to have been, on the whole, gaining. In nothing else, then, that the people of one generation can leave behind them for others, is the economy of a steady pursuit of well-considered ends better established than it is by long experience in parks. I would not ask overmuch [74]thought for this consideration. I would ask only that in a young and healthily-growing city,—rapidly enlarging in building-area, in population, in trade, in wealth,—the danger that the economy of what may be done in any single year upon a great park may be too much measured by the resulting, generally obvious, instantaneous dividends, shall not be overlooked.

III.

Aggravating Circumstances for Detroit.

It remains to be pointed out, that, however this difficulty in the way of sustained economy may be estimated as common to park undertakings in general, it is greater than usual in the case of Detroit, because of the unusual way in which she is taking hold of the business.

Having in view the fact that the value of parks under proper management increases with age, and that the immediate return for their first cost is comparatively small, nearly all large towns hitherto, both in Europe and America, when about to enter upon works of this class, have begun by obtaining a special fund for the purpose by some means not involving a very heavy immediate addition to their taxes; generally through loans secured by mortgages on the land to be improved. A part of the earlier outlays have been soon regained, also, by assessments on the adjoining lands benefited by the improvements. In some cases the same result has been accomplished by the purchase of such lands before making the improvements, and their later sale with profit. Again: these park works have in part supplied themselves with funds by the rapid advances to which they have led in the taxable value of neighboring property.

Not one of these expedients has been adopted in Detroit; and unless the tax-payers of the city are unusually confiding and considerate, not only must the work proceed slowly, but no appropriation will ever be proposed for the park without giving occasion for efforts to head off, in some particular, any well-considered policy of operations.

Yet again: it has been the custom, in undertaking a park, to provide for a less indirect, complex, and confused system of responsibility than would otherwise have obtained, by delegating with respect to it most of the duties commonly exercised by common councils in other city business to a board of citizens selected for their supposed special capacity and trustworthiness, serving gratuitously, from interest in the park enterprise.

These boards have been authorized to employ forces; make contracts; start, press, restrict, or suspend parts of the work, according to their judgment of advantages offered by the season or the markets of the day; to enact ordinances, make regulations, and employ a special police,—all on their own unrestricted responsibility, rendering only annual account of their doings and outlays.

Generally, with these advantages, much work has been done rapidly at [75]wholesale prices, so as to bring important features of the park soon to completion in a way adapted to impress the public with the true grounds of their value.

By thus bringing considerable parts and features of a park rapidly into a condition of complete fitness for use, the public of all classes has been influenced to cheerfully accept at once whatever rules were necessary to the proper enjoyment of it, and thus to fall easily into customs, habits, and demands, harmonious with its design.

In Detroit it is arranged, I believe, that the outlay shall be limited from year to year by concurrent votes of both branches of the Council, to be taken in the midst of the park working-season; so that those in charge, when setting about work in the spring, will be uncertain of their means for carrying it on. It is further arranged that those in charge shall report, from month to month, of their doings, outlays, and intentions, and shall wait the concurrence of both branches of the city legislature, and of the mayor, before the determinations of their own judgment in the executive direction of the park-fund for the year can be made effective. It has already occurred this summer that a vote on an important proposition from the Park Board has failed to come to a final vote after two months, and the object of the proposition has been lost through the delay. More than once the decisions of the Park Board have, on review by the Council, been reversed.

There are doubtless compensations to be seen for the loss in efficiency that cannot fail to occur through such a division and attenuation of responsibility, and unfixedness of purpose; and no question is here raised of the wisdom of the arrangements on the whole. The difference between them and those employed in other cities is pointed out with two objects: first, that the importance, with reference to forming an economical park, of establishing as far as possible a fixed public understanding as to what shall, and as to what shall not, be attempted in it, may be better seen; second, that the necessity of a wide departure in this understanding, from what has been elsewhere generally attempted, may be more readily appreciated.

IV.

The Unusual Difficulties to be met. The Educative Function of a Park, and
the Economy of it.

To fully realize how wide this departure may probably be, it must be considered that the ground to be operated upon is larger than that of most [76]parks, and that, to respect at all the various classes of public demand, the annual outlay will necessarily be much scattered, and can at no point make a striking show, except through uneconomical meretricious work.

Under these circumstances, it will certainly appear to many, no matter how prudent the management shall really be, that their money is being frittered away to little purpose; and the usual difficulty of pursuing any well-considered plan of operations to large distant results, confidently, resolutely, and steadily, will not only thus again be greatly aggravated, but it will be especially difficult to secure such a use of the park site, during this long preparatory period, as shall lead on to customs fitting the ultimate design of the park.

Now, one of the more important elements of value in a park, never to be lost sight of in a study of its economies, lies in its power to divert men from unwholesome, vicious, and destructive methods and habits of seeking recreation, and inducing them to educate themselves in such as are, at the worst, less costly to the general interests of the community.

It is known, for example, that a large resort of young men to a park on Sunday means a falling-off in the back-door business of dram-shops, and resorts for petty gambling. Of what value this shall be, depends much on the pleasure such young men shall find in the park, consistently with a rigid exclusion of provocations to indulge in dishonest, destructive, blackguard, or law-outwitting smartness.

This consideration may be best brought home by again citing Detroit’s own brief experience.

Something was spent last spring in preparing temporary accommodations for visitors upon the island. Every dollar so used was a dollar the less available toward obtaining well-ordered permanent and substantial provisions for like purposes. But the numbers resorting to the island during the summer were, on occasions, much larger than the Commissioners had reckoned upon, and their over-frugal provisional arrangements proved, in consequence, unsuitable and insufficient; so much so, that there reasonably followed some public dissatisfaction, and the Common Council (holding the purse-strings, and taking sure back-sight where the Commissioners had acted on uncertain foresight) advised them of its disapproval. But the more important effect was not that, thus recognized, of the momentary public inconvenience that resulted: it was that some seed of rude and wasteful practices was thus scattered, the products of which must add to the cost, and lessen the value, of the park.

How so, will appear from the single fact, that, in that part of the island most favorable to efficient police control, not one of the benches for public use, set clear of the buildings, failed, in the course of the summer, to be torn from its fastenings, violently broken, bruised, shattered, befouled, or vulgarly cut and marked. These were not the only or the most significant incidents teaching the same lesson.

It must be a poor park that does not, through the impression of its fitness, and the adequacy and completeness of its provisions for public comfort, [77]inspire enough respect to serve as a check upon the propensities thus evinced; and I have never seen one, moderately well equipped with reference to any tolerable standard of public service, in which the degrading tyranny that may be exercised, under circumstances favorable to it, by a few unfortunate scamps over a community of fortunate decent people, was as plainly exemplified.

In reckoning, therefore, the cost and difficulties to be overcome in acquiring a park, as is proposed in this case, by small annual instalments, with a complicated system of checks and rechecks, reviews and revisions, the necessity of putting up for years with cheap, temporary, inadequate arrangements in certain respects, and the drawbacks to public pleasure, and consequently to public support, of steady, economical, systematic courses, that will occur through the demoralizing effect of such makeshift arrangements, must not be left out of account.

V.

Necessity to Economy of Concentrating Early Outlays on a Few Popular
Measures, to Success in which, at Moderate Cost, the Conditions of the Site
are Specially Favorable.

In determining the character and settling the primary plans for a park for Detroit, it is much less necessary to ask what the city can afford to pay as the first cost of the improvements proposed than what it can and will be willing to pay in the way of subsequent constant housekeeping expenses, and for annual repairs.

At the rate per acre of the cost of maintenance of the Buffalo park (independently of outlays for construction raised by loans), the annual tax for keeping up a park of the size of Belle Isle would be twenty thousand dollars a year; at the rate for the New-York park, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year; at the rate for the Common and Public Garden of Boston, five hundred thousand dollars.

It is significant, that, where the expenditure is largest, there is plainly the least success in what is attempted. Great complaint has been made through the press of Boston, this last summer, of the dilapidated, shabby, ill-kept, and misused condition of the Common; and the superintendent has published long statements to show that the means allowed him are quite inadequate to supply what is called for. It has been much the same in New York. It is evident in both cases, as it is in many others, that a character of park is attempted to be assumed that the tax-payers will not allow to be creditably maintained. Economical management is constantly baffled between the cross currents of popular demand. The result is too much of shabby gentility.

If now, any still suppose that Detroit has but to follow a well-marked trail, only at a slower pace than has been customary with those who have gone before her, in order to obtain cheaply what they may have acquired [78]extravagantly, in parks, the delusion will be dissipated upon more closely considering the unusual character of the site to be operated upon.

The area of the island is not materially less than that of the Central Park, and is greater than that of any single park of the more populous and richer cities of Brooklyn, Boston, Baltimore, Montreal, Buffalo, or Chicago. The average elevation of its surface above that of the surrounding navigable waters is little more than two feet. Large parts are covered with well-grown wood, with much close underwood, beneath which (the subsoil being a retentive clay), after every summer shower, there are puddles that gradually disappear more through evaporation than filtration. Other large parts are marshy; and in these there are constant pools, with rushy and bushy borders.

Conditions could not be chosen more favorable to the breeding and nursing of mosquitoes; and denser swarms of mosquitoes are nowhere to be encountered than in quarters of the island sheltered from the breeze. The pools, in September, I found discolored, and covered by bubbles and a green scum; and there was putrescent organic matter on their borders. They are thus available to the propagation of typhoid, malarial, and other zymotic poisons; and it may be questioned whether the city is justified in allowing, not to say inviting, ignorant people and children to stray near them. Being in such relation to the city, even if the island had not been purchased, and was not desired for a park, common sanitary prudence would soon have suggested efforts to remove the danger they involve to the public health. Fortunately, as will be explained later, a complete remedy for all these evils would not be very costly; and the more serious may be at least greatly mitigated, if not fully removed, cheaply and speedily.

Looking all its disadvantages fairly in the face, it may not unreasonably be thought that they are outweighed, with reference to the more important common requirements of public parks, by the advantages offered in great numbers of promising trees of species the most valuable that could be selected, by openness to breezes, cooled and ozoned by passing over the adjoining flowing waters, and by the independence of many difficulties of management which will be secured by the isolation of the park from public streets and other affairs.

But what should be most firmly fixed in mind, as the more important result of a comparative review of the site, is the plain fact that Belle Isle has as little as possible in common with the little that is common among the sites of other American parks.

To bring this consideration to bear on the question of an economical plan of operations, it has only to be considered, that, if economy lies in a close adaptation of means to ends, it equally lies in a close adaptation of ends to means.

Suppose a limited sum to be available for your park,—no more than is necessary to attain, within a given period, certain results: then the attainment of these results will be hopeless, if within that period you apply any part of this sum to the attainment of other results. This is but another form of the [79]first lesson in arithmetic for a child,—“You cannot have your cake, and eat it.” But it is none the less certain, that, if the public opinion of Detroit can apply that lesson intelligently and steadfastly to the business of the park, a degree of economy will have been secured that cannot otherwise be approached by the most exacting comptrollership of accounts, the most intricate system of checks, and the most cunning and microscopic legislation of details.

But suppose it to be possible to start off next spring upon a plan adapted to this view: there will necessarily follow a critical period, during which the advantages to be attained by it will not be known by experience; when they will be wholly imaginary, and will be taxing imagination in fields far outside of the ordinary business experience of most Detroiters; when the taxation in behalf of the park will inevitably be large relatively, not only to the benefits immediately available, but even to those plainly recognized to be distantly coming due. During this period, consequently, there will be a pressure to turn the outlay that shall at any moment be available to results not essential to the plan, but temporarily pleasing,—a pressure such as it is hardly to be hoped can long continuously wholly fail to influence those in direct control of the business.

There comes, then, another condition to be met by the plan; namely, that to limit, as much as practicable, the liability to waste through unsteadiness, some of its designed permanent excellences shall be attainable in a degree popularly appreciable, in short time, and at moderate cost,—attainable, for instance, I will say, within three years, by a steady application to them of the larger part of such appropriations as may be hoped for.

VI.

Illustrations of the Economy of this Policy.

The suggestion that a plan can be devised, promising, in important features of a park, excellences such as have not been attained by much larger outlays for the purpose in other parks, may be received with incredulity. As popular faith in this respect is essential to sustained economy, I think it best, before going further, to demonstrate the working of the principle I have last been advocating by reference to an experience as plainly open to the examination of citizens of Detroit as any not directly under their eyes could be.

It will stand in the form of a comparison between two of the parks that have been named, the most costly and the least so,—New York and (Detroit’s nearest neighbor with a park) Buffalo.

In New York numerous objects have from time to time, and many intermittently, been had in view, upon a site unfavorable to a realization of them at moderate cost. Many of those first taken up are not yet fully attained; and work with reference to them is suspended in favor of others since taken up. Because of the position of this park in the midst of a great city, and because, also, of a certain yielding to a temporary epidemic of public taste,—of which [80]in other things a spurious, so-called decorative aestheticism is the ridiculous outcome,—a general style of keeping is weakly attempted, approaching that suitable to lawns and gardens opening from drawing-rooms.

In Buffalo fewer objects have been had in view. They have been mostly pursued exclusively, and with a steady hand, upon ground fairly suitable to them, and with a simpler ideal of general effect. It is twenty-five years since work began in New York; fifteen since it began in Buffalo.

While I was last in Detroit, I heard the opinion of a gentleman, who would be selected by competitive examination as one of the half-dozen best qualified non-professional judges upon the subject in all the country, to this effect: that in respect to the more quiet, tranquillizing, and simply wholesome and refreshing forms of recreation,—in beauty of water, meadow, and woodland, which is the soul of a park,—Buffalo had already more of value than New York.

The Buffalo Park has some distinguishing defects: notably, in that the larger part of it lies upon a mass of flat rock covered with but a foot or two of soil, and is liable to become excessively dry; its ground available for picnic parties, is, because of a falsely economical curtailment of its original scheme, so contracted, that the numbers of those resorting to it cause great destruction, and make it so shabby that before many years there is danger that people of refined taste will keep away from it, and it will become a purely rowdy resort; it has no proper park police force, and practices are growing in the use of it destructive, demoralizing, and burdensome to its maintenance; lastly, its style of keeping is as yet a compromise between two ideals, and some of the results are consequently poor, relatively to their cost.

But, conceding all this, I cite the opinion above quoted, that I may not be thought unreasonable in saying, that, in the more important qualities of a park, that of Buffalo compares favorably with that of New York.

Look, then, at the following comparison as to costliness. For land, New York, $7,000 per acre; Buffalo, $400. For construction, New York, $15,000 per acre; Buffalo, $1,300. For maintenance, New York, $400 per acre; Buffalo, $30.

The style of house in which men live, of the furniture they use, of the clothes they wear, of their streets, schools, jails, vehicles, even their creeds, morals, and manners, is mostly determined by currents of example and fashion. So is the degree of repair, and the method of use and keeping, of most of [81]these possessions. But, while the more the experience of other cities is studied, the higher the simpler elements of a park will be valued as a self-preserving institution of society, the plainer it will be, that to allow the style of park for Detroit, or the style in which it shall be kept, to be determined in the same drifting way, will be ruinous. It will be equally plain that the circumstances give opportunity for obtaining a park of distinctive style and merits with great economy.

VII.

The Necessity of Consistency of Style to Economy.

A park will have value mainly as the minds of those using it are acted upon by the different objects that come before their eyes; and the degree and method of this action will be more determined by the order, sequence, and relation one to another, of different objects, than by their intrinsic qualities. Different objects may be so used as to be counteractive, or to be co-operative; that is to say, to lessen or enlarge each other’s value. The same principle of economy that leads to the keeping of parlor furniture and kitchen utensils in different divisions of a house, will lead to certain general, though less abrupt and definite, divisions in the planning of a park.

But the principle of economical consistency will carry us much further than this. When a woman of good taste, and thrifty, housekeeping qualities, sets out to furnish a room, the first article she buys for it, though but a single chair or table cover, settles much as to everything else. No curtains or wall-paper can be afterwards brought in, that are violently out of keeping with the table-cloth. No tawdry carpet can sustain a chair upholstered with light satin. Bring but one such chair, French polished and spindle-legged, into a room that has before been thoroughly respectable for its purpose, with cane-seated birch-timbered chairs, matted floor, window plants in red garden pots, and home-framed lithographs, and the room never appears satisfactorily afterward till it has a waxed and rug-strewn floor, Morris hangings, De Morgan vases, and, in short, an entirely new outfit. And this is but the beginning. To keep it satisfactorily, ten times the former care will be required; and if this is at any time remitted, if dust comes in at the windows, if the chimney smokes or the roof leaks, it will soon be less satisfactory than before the improvements began. Such a difference accounts for the constant complaints of shabbiness, and the futile attempts to relieve it by additional finery, in certain parks.

There is a well-known public ground in Europe in which it is not quite true to say—as, in order to convey an idea of the precision of its style of keeping, it is often said—that the police are required to arrest every falling leaf before it strikes the ground. There is one of our public parks in which, without approaching the same standard, men are now being paid at least twenty [82]dollars a day to gather and hide the leaves that drift upon its surface; going over the same ground again and again in the duty, and this in parts where, for the thrift of the plantations, they would much better be allowed to lie.

If one takes a walk in natural woods at this season, he finds beauty and pathos and poetry in the dying leaves. Why not in a park? It is a question of consistency. When you have been mowing and raking and watering and rolling a lawn all summer, have set out upon it exotics and bronzes, and other choice and elegant things, equally suitable to marble floors and frescoed walls, you cannot help regarding fallen leaves as so much dirty litter.

I am nearing one of those technical questions of which I meant to steer clear. But I will let a man you can better trust pilot you by it; and this man shall be one who, it is not unlikely, has done more to educate us all in the domestic enjoyment of the beautiful, and in increasing the value of what we buy in furniture, than all the royal academies and art associations in the world,—a poet, an artist, but also, if you please, a “practical man.” It is a poor thing to say of him; but the prejudice is so common that a man of exquisite habits of thought is not likely to be practical, that, though not a chapter in the history of civilization fails to contradict it, before putting the helm in this man’s hands, it may be well to recall the fact that he is a singularly successful manufacturer and trader, and that it is not in picture-frames alone that you see his art, nor between book-covers that you find his poetry: it is on sale in your shops by the yard; it is under foot and overhead (more or less adulterated) in your churches. It is a poor cottage that his pencil has not touched; and there is hardly a man in Detroit, there is hardly a civilized man in Colorado or Australia,—in the uttermost parts of the earth,—so favored by fortune that he can afford not to buy something that has come from him.

Bearing in mind, then, the analogy just now pointed out between park and household economy, apply to your park policy the spirit of the following advice:—

“We must clear our houses of troublesome superfluities that are forever in our way,—conventional comforts that are no real comforts, and do but make work for servants and doctors. If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it,—

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

“And, if we apply that rule strictly, we shall, in the first place, show the builders, and such like servants of the public, what we really want,—we shall create a demand for real art, as the phrase goes,—and, in the second place, we shall surely have more money to pay for decent houses.

“Perhaps it will not try your patience too much, if I lay before you my idea of the fittings necessary to the sitting-room,—

“First, a bookcase with a great many books in it; next, a table that will keep steady when you write or work at it; then several chairs that you can move, and a bench that you can sit or lie upon; next, a cupboard with drawers; next, unless either the bookcase or the cupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving, you [83]will want pictures or engravings (such as you can afford, only not stop-gaps, but real works of art) on the walls, or else the wall itself must be beautifully painted with some beautiful and restful pattern. We shall also want a vase or two to put flowers in, which latter you must have sometimes, especially if you live in town. Then there will be the fireplace, of course, which in our climate is bound to be the chief object in the room.

“That is all we shall want, especially if the floor be good. If it be not (as, by the way, in a modern house, it is pretty sure not to be), I admit that a small carpet which can be bundled out of the room in two minutes will be useful; and we must also take care that it is beautiful, or it will annoy us terribly.

“Now (unless we are musical, and need a piano), that is quite all we want; and we can add very little to these necessaries without troubling ourselves, and hindering our work, our thought, and our rest.

“All art starts from this simplicity; and the higher the art rises, the greater the simplicity.

“I have been speaking of the fittings of a dwelling-house,—a place in which we eat, and drink, and pass familiar hours; but, when you come to places which people want to make more specially beautiful because of the dignity of their uses, they will be simpler still, and have little in them save the bare walls made as beautiful as may be. St. Mark’s at Venice has very little furniture in it, much less than most Roman-Catholic churches. Its lovely and stately mother, St. Sophia of Constantinople, had still less, even when it was a Christian church. But we need not go either to Venice or Stamboul to take note of that. Go into one of our own mighty Gothic naves, and note how the huge free space satisfies and elevates you even now, when window and wall are stripped of ornament; then think of the meaning of simplicity, and absence of encumbering gewgaws.”

I have quoted these sayings of William Morris, because the principle they urge is as applicable to a park as to a sitting-room or a cathedral; because they enforce with highest authority the one principle that must be held to steadily, year in and year out, if you are to succeed in obtaining a valuable park at moderate cost. You must have a few simple, distinct objects in view, and must provide for these in a liberal, strong, quiet, and thoroughly satisfying way, guarding with all possible care against inconsistencies and discords. Remember that the costliness of catchpenny, smart, “decorative” things, is not in what you first pay for them, or even in the labor of repairs and keeping that they bring upon you directly; but it is chiefly in the injury to everything else which comes with their introduction.

One word more of caution before we turn from principle to practice. A park is less fittingly compared to a dwelling than to a great public hall, attached to the main apartment of which there are several dependencies, vestibules, ante-room, cloak-room, refreshment-room, a counter for the sale of fans, lorgnettes, photographs, books of the music, and so on.

What is the great room that gives the whole this name of “park”? What is the difference between the entertainment to which it should invite us, and that of a concert-hall or an opera-house? It is a place in which to enjoy, instead of musical story-telling, dramatically or otherwise, the harmony and melody [84]and poetry of actual nature; and it is just as important in the one case as the other to avoid bringing fussy, disturbing business into the main hall.

Every great park is valuable in proportion as it is the realization of an idyllic poem. As far as other objects are entertained upon the ground, economy requires that they shall be so pursued as to avoid disturbances, interruptions, and discords of the poetic theme.

I.

The Key to all Improvements of Belle Isle must be found in the Character of the Existing Wood.

The leading object of all operations of improvement for the island being a consistent, harmonious, poetic entertainment, what shall be the general tone and character of this entertainment? Shall it, for example, be fine, delicate, and subtle, like most written poems, or shall it have more of the quality of Burns’s verse, racy of the soil? If we are truly seeking lasting economy, there can be but one answer,—it is determined by the condition of that element of the property, in which, with reference to a park, lies at present the larger part of its value.

To see this plainly, consider that the value of every large public park depends wholly upon the ultimate value of its sylvan elements. For example: take away the half-grown bodies of foliage which have already been formed in the New-York park, and it would be a ridiculous thing, wholly unfit for its purpose. The number of trees and bushes set out upon it exceeds three hundred thousand. Taking the preparation of soil with the cost of plants, planting, nursing, feeding, thinning, pruning, and guarding from injury, these plantations will have cost perhaps a million of dollars; but their actual value upon the above consideration is much greater (the value of what has cost fifteen million dollars, and is held to be well worth more than it has cost, being so largely dependent on them).

The area of wooded ground that you possess in Belle Isle is a little larger than that planted for the Central Park. So far as the woods upon it can be turned to good account, there is so much already paid for. Examining their present condition, comparatively few completely fine, and many distorted, decaying, and sickly trees, will be found. For convenience and safety in the park use of the ground, most of the latter must be taken out, and, by the removal of these and others, those of choicer qualities left to stand singly or in clusters, and further treated with a view to the development of pleasing forms, and compositions of healthful and luxuriant foliage. If this process is well [85]managed, it is safe to say that you will have within ten years, in Belle Isle, elements of sylvan scenery of a far nobler type and character than in that time can have been attained from the original plantations on the New-York park at a cost of perhaps a million.

But the trees to be left for this purpose having gained their present size and form in a struggle from infancy with a crowd of older trees, while they can be gradually led to acquire much more graceful forms, and more fulness and luxuriance, have taken on characteristics that will always distinguish them from trees originally springing up apart, or in small groups in the open, and grown each with all the food and elbow-room and sunlight it could ask. There is nothing bad in these characteristics, but they are less expressive of lawn-like luxury, dressiness, and fine accomplishments, than the characteristics of most celebrated park trees; and the principle of economic consistency will consequently compel you to improve and furnish your park throughout with a more careful avoidance of a finical character than good taste might otherwise permit.

We have no terms that in their ordinary use convey a sound idea of the general character that should thus distinguish Belle Isle Park from others; but the only reason we have not, is that the terms “picturesque” and “rustic” have come, by misuse in respect to gardening matters, to suggest slight imitations suitable to go with the painted scenery of a theatre, rather than such elements of actual scenery as are substantially and permanently admissible.

As my present object, however, is to point out only the general direction in which departure should be made from the more common style of our American parks, if you would make a park of Belle Isle that the Detroit of today may be proud to give to her children, I will name an older and more beautiful park than any of them,—the Royal Park of Windsor. I name it simply that I may say, that, if you can be satisfied with the general style of furnishing and housekeeping of which it is an illustration, the question “Can Detroit afford to maintain so large a park as that proposed on Belle Isle?” is answered. Large numbers of cows and sheep, as well as deer, are appropriately and profitably pastured in Windsor Park; and a reduction of the pastured area would lessen, not enlarge, the profits with which they are kept. Their presence does not prevent the royal family from walking through the park: it does not prevent the enjoyment of it by large picnic parties of working-people from London.

With an equal extent of roads and other structures to be maintained, the larger the area of a park upon which there can be good herbage closely cropped, the less, not the more, will the expense of keeping it be. It costs no more to build five miles of road within five hundred acres of park than within one hundred; no more to build two houses of given capacity, two miles apart, than one mile. The movements of a given number of people will cause less damage, and give occasion for less outlay for repairs, if they scatter over a large space, than if they concentrate on a space more limited.

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Observe that the difference between the style of park thus suggested, and that more commonly seen in our city parks, corresponds to that between what is called the kept ground, and the outer ground, or park-proper, of those princely estates from which the idea of a park has indirectly come to us.

What is the reason for such a division? It is that the grazing animals, that keep the turf of the park-proper close and fine, and that form such a beautiful adjunct to its scenery, would be out of keeping with the distinctive beauty of a lawn opening from a drawing-room window, and would be destructive of such adjuncts of a drawing-room lawn as fine shrubbery and flowering plants. The animals are therefore fenced out, at least on one side, from the near vicinity of the palace, castle, or hall, which forms the central feature of the whole affair.

The principle is perfectly applicable to Belle Isle. You have no palace to build; but you may want a comparatively small area of the island nicely prepared, and kept for tennis, croquet, and other purposes in which ladies and children are more particularly interested. For this let there be such kept ground as may be desirable, and as can be afforded, but beyond it, the park-proper, which, once brought to a suitable condition, should be a source of income rather than of expense.

I know it will be thought that I am arguing the point at greater length than is necessary; but I know also, that, start with what strength of conviction you may, the chances are, that scrappy ideas of style and keeping, inconsistent with this, will, before many years, be pressed, or the means necessary to consistently realize this idea resisted, and that it cannot be too firmly planted.

Bear with me, then, while I point out again that the advantages of keeping park-surfaces by pasturage rather than by lawn-mowers or scythe, or, what is worst, not keeping them tidily at all, is recognized by the general practice of exhibiting a few cows and sheep in some parts of the larger city parks. This is done in Hyde Park, Central Park, Brooklyn Park, and Buffalo Park, for example. The reason the practice is not more generally and economically extended, is that where a park is entered from all sides directly from public streets, to be lined with stately buildings, and is designed to adequately accommodate within its limited space all who may at any time come to it, it must be much cut up with roads, and occupied by other artificial structures. In this case, convenience and congruity of aspect require in large parts of it a more garden-like quality; low-branched trees, underwood, and fine shrubbery ; and it is difficult to arrange fences and gates with a view to the pasturage of any part without making them ugly features, costly to keep in order. Even to the extent in which they are now used in the London parks, they are conspicuously ugly.

With an area to be dealt with so much larger, relatively to the population, than is generally the case; with no embarrassments from the occupation of the surrounding properties; from crossing streets, and numerous carriage entrances,—this difficulty of a pasturage style of keeping is likely to be little [87]felt on Belle Isle. I need only add that an attempt to half carry out the idea will have bad results. The pastured ground must be well stocked, and the business should be large enough to profitably employ a good plant in all respects.

If a sufficient suggestion of the general character prescribed by the circumstances has thus been given, a few of the more important features of a plan may be outlined.

II.

The Question of Drainage.

The site of the great park of The Hague was a swamp, and presented, in an exaggerated form, every objection that lies against Belle Isle. The ground has been made dry; fitted for a royal residence, and for a general public health-resort, by a system of drains the discharge of which is effected by wind or steam pumps.

It would be a much simpler process to drain Belle Isle equally well. The advantage to be gained by it, and not otherwise to be gained, would be practically an addition of probably three months to the season in which the park would be an attractive and wholesome place of general resort; a more thrifty growth of trees; and a simplification and cheapening of various maintenance operations.

As park enterprises are ordinarily managed, the cost would not be formidable. It would not, for example, necessarily be a quarter the cost per acre that was incurred in the drainage of the Central Park.

It must be assumed in a plan that the park will finally be so drained. But this thorough system is not at once essential to a proper and wholesome use of the park; and it would be such a great and permanent misfortune to allow customs of using it in a bad way to be more firmly established through lack of suitable provisions for immediate public use, that I shall assume that all the money the Council will be willing to appropriate can for a few years be better used in other operations.

III.

Immediately Indispensable Surface-Drainage. Interior Waterways.

With reference principally to immediately indispensable superficial drainage, but also to other advantages, channels should be opened by means of which currents would flow through the several deeper pools in which water now stands permanently, stagnating in summer, and the bottoms of which are too low for drying by surface-drains. These channels, or rigolettes, should be so laid out as to serve as outlets for the minor surface-drains for which there would otherwise be insufficient fall.

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Boating is likely to be a more generally popular means of recreation at Belle Isle Park than at any other nearer than the island park of Stockholm.

Persons unaccustomed to boats, timid people, invalids, and children, would find boating upon these proposed shallow and sheltered park-waters very enjoyable. Forty licensed boats are found, at times, insufficient to meet the demand for a similar diversion on the still waters of Buffalo Park. Close alongside the open lake in Chicago there is a little sheltered park-pool, the boating of which yielded over eight thousand dollars of profit last summer; by so much diminishing the tax for park maintenance. The proposed rigolettes of Belle Isle might, in a few years, be made incomparably more attractive. They would be highways of pleasure, in which boats would be used instead of carriages.

The cost of what appears barely necessary (see cut) to relieve the park, by this means, of conditions dangerous to health, and consequently imperative to be immediately set about, may be estimated at five thousand dollars; but as the work would be done by machinery, and by contract, there would be economy in connecting with it other desirable though less imminently necessary work; and this, with a proper disposition of material removed, and some piling at entrance-ways, would call for double that amount. This simply for wholesomeness. Later, ten thousand dollars more might be well spent in extending the system, giving it more interesting outlines, adding to the boating convenience, and to the attractiveness of the banks.

IV.

Opening the Woods.

With a view to driving off the mosquitoes; to the enjoyment on all parts of the island of the breeze from off the water, and to efficiency of police supervision—all thickets should be removed, and all dense, low woods should be opened. The object generally to be sought in park plantations, of variety and picturesqueness through bodies of surface foliage, being thus excluded (as to be held or developed only at a cost greater than is warranted in this work), the following objects should be had in view as of immediate importance: (1) To give light and air to the ground with a view to more rapid drying of the surface, and establishing pasturage; (2) To remove dead, decaying, and badly-grown trunks, so as to allow of the development of a finer class of trees; (3) To gain a certain beauty of [89]grouping and landscape composition throughout the woods,—all to be attained by a suitable thinning, and by grubbing and cleaning of the surface. The value of the timber and firewood should compensate for the labor needed to accomplish these results; and the sooner, the more economically they will be gained. The public should have considerable benefit from the work before next July.

V.

Access, Landings, Vestibule and Auxiliary Arrangements.

Among American parks, Belle Isle will be unique in its means and methods of access. In Stockholm only, where the most picturesque and the most locally popular public park in Europe is to be reached exclusively by boats, can anything corresponding be found. Even when Belle Isle shall be connected with the mainland by a bridge, the more favorite approach will be by boats; and to the mass of the population it will thus be more conveniently and pleasantly accessible than any other city park I know. A bridge is a matter for the future. When the park shall have been once well fitted for its purposes, and its value for those purposes generally realized, a bridge may be had with little direct outlay by the city.

The shorter the distance to the principal park-entrance from the centre of population of the city, the better. The shorter the boating distance, and the shorter the bridging distance, when the bridge comes, the better. This consideration would fix the main entrance, not, as at present, at the south-west, but at the north-west, point of the island. There is nothing in the way of placing it there at once but the expense of a new wharf. The necessary outlay, taking timber from the island, need be little more than a thousand dollars. But a great improvement will be gained by dredging a channel between this proposed wharf and that now used; so that boats may call at the first, and pass on without delay to the other, and up the river, to points on the south shore. A contract for this work can be made at this time for about seven thousand dollars: later, it will cost more.

Parties to be made up to go to any point of the island will be apt to gather first near the principal entrance. In uncertain weather, visitors will wait near the entrance to determine their plans, and to watch for friends arriving. When rain begins to threaten, visitors in all parts of the island will tend toward the entrance. Near the point of entrance above proposed is the highest and driest ground on the island. It is also the freest from mosquitoes, it is the breeziest, and it has the most animated and generally interesting outlook. For all these and other reasons, artificial shelter is here required; and nearby should be the principal promenade, or place of social gathering.

By “auxiliary arrangements” I mean those commonly to be met within parks, but to which trees, turf, rural beauty, and open air, are not essential. When such provisions are scattered through a park, they seriously injure its [90]proper rural character. Of this class, are shows, exhibitions, arrangements for games and other entertainments requiring buildings or tents, of all which the germ is already established on the island under a rental or license system. The more all these can be kept together within reasonable limits, and the shorter the transportation between them and the town, the less they will cost; the more economical and efficient will be their police supervision; the less will be the discord between them and the more essential rural elements of the park; the less they will interfere with the proper quiet enjoyment and the distinctive economy of management of these elements; and the less will be the cost of their special water-supply, drainage, sewerage, roads, and walks. For all these reasons, ample space in the western part of the island should be reserved for provisions of this class. Such proposed reservation I will hereafter refer to as “The Fair Ground” (See diagram, A.)

For the class of auxiliary arrangements thus brought in view, no immediate outlay need be made by the city. If nothing of the kind had been established, it might be better to contemplate nothing for a few years to come. For the present, temporary provisions, costing the city only about what they will return in rents and license-fees, need be considered. It may be hoped practicable, however, to obtain, later, a large investment of private capital upon this ground, for purposes and on terms advantageous to the general trade and repute of the city, and so used as to add largely to the value of the park-proper. The suggestion, which will be further developed, is made here, only that, in blocking out a general plan and policy, opportunity for such possible arrangements on a large scale may be held open. Provisions of the class in question—made from time to time, and often under the push of small speculators, or men of hobbies, with little reference to any comprehensive scheme for them—are sure, in the long-run, to become offensive, embarrassing, and demoralizing.

I have presented these considerations, in favor of making large reservations of ground in that part of the island nearest the city for auxiliary park constructions, with a view to the observation that the required provisions for shelter and promenade, near the main landing, should be laid out on a larger scale than would otherwise be necessary; that they should be well built, and suitable to stand before large concert, exhibition, and refreshment buildings, such as may hereafter be wanted. Whatever is to be built for the purpose for a few years to come should be either a section of such a fine, permanent construction, adapted to subsequent extension, or it should be of a plainly rough and temporary sort, evincing intention of its early removal and supersedure. A [91]finished, cheap, showy affair, to answer immediate purposes, will be in every way uneconomical.

VI.

The Essence of the Park. The East Park.

The essential element of a park is the enjoyment it offers of the beauty of natural sylvan scenery. Take everything else away that money may have procured in any park,—roads, walks, structures, play-grounds, menageries, circuses, race-courses, floral and other decorations,—and there will remain a park. Take this away, leaving all others, and there will be roads, walks, structures, a play-ground, a menagerie, a race-course, and a garden—but a park only in name; nor will any and everything else that may be added be as valuable to the people of a city as this single essence of a park.

To obtain this element in a high degree, it is, under ordinary circumstances, necessary to secure the foil and vantage for perspective of broad openings of unbroken greensward: to obtain a high degree of picturesque interest, it is necessary to have variety of surface, and desirable to have rocky prominences and declivities. The first is unnecessary in the instance of Belle Isle, because the purpose is served by the broad expanses of water with which its woodland scenery must be associated: the second is simply out of the question, since the result of any attempt, though at the cost of millions, would be but puerile, and serve only to call attention to what is naturally lacking. Such picturesqueness as is attainable must be attained with less obvious effect and affectation, in the disposition of the woods, the direct, truthful vigor of necessary constructions, and the refined fitness of details. But the essential merit of the park will lie in the extent, purity, congruity, and unsophisticated quality, of its main body of woodland; and the principal enjoyment of this will always be had in the depth of summer. The highest degree of it is to be obtained only after thorough drainage, by a gradual process of development of beauty in groups and masses and single outstanding trees, with glades giving light to them; but a good degree of it in summer is to be had soon and cheaply. The main thing to be insisted upon, both for the present and the future, is that a body of ground shall be managed exclusively for this purpose, sufficiently large to make a sustained consistent impression. This can rarely be afforded in a town park. There is not one in the country that has as large and adaptable a body of wood as that you possess on Belle Isle; and it needs only a trimming and growing process, with facilities for reaching it, and passing through it.

The broadest mass of this wood lies in the eastern part of the island, and it looks upon the broadest and least disturbed body of water. (Let the imagination add fifty years to the growth of the best of the trees, and then remember the last of the words quoted from Morris, p. 31.)

The proposition to which all these considerations have been intended [92]to lead up, is this: that in that part of the island farthest from the city, and nearest Lake St. Clair, now occupied by one unbroken body of natural woodland, no object or motive of improvement shall at any time be entertained that will be unfavorable to that of unsophisticated sylvan scenery; such thinning out and trimming of the trees only being permitted as shall be aidful to a healthy, moderately open, and scattered but sturdy and umbrageous forest development, and such roads, walks, and other artificial constructions being introduced as are essential to the health, convenience, and comfort of visitors making the simplest use of it, and to economy of administration.

The space in question is less than a quarter of the whole space of the island. Its average elevation is not more than two feet above the river-level. The water off the shore on which it ends is the shallowest, and the locality is the least desirable for landings, of any on the island. For all these reasons there is no present temptation to encroachments upon it. But efforts to break in upon it with “improvements” inconsistent with the above proposition are as sure to come as there are sure to be found in the future of Detroit some men of immature tastes combined with pushing and persuasive ability.

VII.

Greensward Unpastured. Campus.

There is an area of land that has been in cultivation, lying in the southern half of the island, next west of the last woodland district. It has a suitable soil, and can be quickly and at little cost made into an unbroken green, or campus. It is low and moist and poachy in the spring, but, when covered with turf in summer, would, even without drainage, sustain a great deal of foot-wear uninjured, and would then be almost perfectly adapted to military parades or great field foot-sports. It would be faulty only in its crooked, northern outline, and narrowness relatively to length. Both objections can be removed by some clearing of the adjoining woods. The entire ground should be kept in tillage for one summer, after which one year should be allowed for the growth of grass. Supposing the clearing to be done this coming winter, by July of 1884 it might be in order for use,—the largest and best parade-ground by far possessed by any city in the country.

I have not now the necessary data for an estimate, but think that the cost of the operation would be within two thousand dollars.

The proposition is, that a plain of turf should be formed about eighty acres in extent, and large enough for the deployment of a brigade in line of battle. Its situation would be on the south side of the island, east of the second wharf. When not in use for parades or other large exhibitions, this ground would appear a simple meadow, with an umbrageous border on one side, and the river on the other. (See diagram, D.) It would be separated from the adjoining parts of the park by the rigolette, which would [93]serve as a fence for it; and the excavated material from the rigolette thrown into an embankment would form a platform for spectators overlooking the parades. I shall advise that this eighty acres of grass be preserved from all intrusion from the opening of the spring till about a week before the local haying season usually begins; that the grass then be mowed before its seed has begun to harden, and made into hay for the support, during the winter, of the summer. Mowed at this stage, by the 4th of July the field would be in good order for reviews.

Between this ground, which I will here call the Prairie, and the Fair Ground along the south shore, there will be an intermediate district now cleared, and grassy or swampy, which will be most readily turned to account by a similar treatment to that of the Prairie. Not being held for hay, however, it would be available earlier in the summer. The western part of it would be useful for baseball and other athletic sports, being the nearest point of the island to the city, adapted to these purposes, breezy, and with convenient shade. (See diagram, C.)

VIII.

Opportunity for a Great City Fair.

There would be no definite division between the district last considered and that before proposed to be held as a Fair Ground. This term was used as slightly suggestive of a concentration of a class of provisions more or less found in most parks for some small trading and handicraft business in connection with means of amusement, as in old English fairs, our own agricultural fairs, the Dutch kermis, and French village fêtes. An opportunity would thus be left for setting a large building beyond the limits of the original Fair Ground, should one ever be required, of the character of those used in national expositions, such as that last year held at Atlanta, this year at Denver, and next year proposed at Boston, Cincinnati, and The Hague.

It will not be premature, perhaps, to refer to the fact that several large cities have been recently provided with such buildings,—not for national, but for local industrial exhibitions,—and that a tendency is apparent throughout [94]the civilized world, as one of the results of the yet rapidly developing facilities of locomotion, to a return to a principle of commercial economy which has for some time been in a great degree left behind. I mean to that which in past centuries, as far back as authentic history goes, led to the drawing of an extraordinary amount of trade and of pleasuring together, to certain large towns at a particular period of each year; such gatherings being known to us as fairs. One of the more notable of them is held upon a green in the midst of the great suburban park of Copenhagen,—the Dyrhave.

The increasing number and magnitude of trade conventions and expositions at points of general gathering, like Niagara and Saratoga, where there have been half a dozen this year, is one illustration of this tendency. Another is that of the wonderful confluences of people, brought together from distances hundreds of miles apart by steamboats and railroads, at such resorts as Nantasket, Martha’s Vineyard, Newport, Narragansett Pier, Coney Island, Long Branch, Ashbury Park, Cape May, Round Lake, and Chatauqua Lake. A temporary local population larger than that of Detroit is sometimes thus gathered; and the trade so concentrated amounts annually to millions of dollars. Still another, in the multitudes of people drawn together by a class of festivals, of which the Mardi Gras of New Orleans and “The Oriole” of Baltimore are marked examples. (See Studies in the South in “The Atlantic Monthly” for December.) The means for them are chiefly contributed by tradesmen, innkeepers, and transportation agencies, who find their profit in the trade they draw. The late Penn Celebration in Philadelphia was mainly of this order. Another is planned for this winter by the business men of Montreal. We have not yet seen the full development of the tendency, and it will cost Detroit nothing to keep in view the possibilities she holds with reference to it on Belle Isle. I know of no other point on the lakes, possessing advantages of comparable value for the purpose.

IX.

The North Park and the Far Fields.

The district between the Fair Ground and the park north and west of the Prairie (B, on diagram, p. 56) would be treated on the same general principles as the East Park, but for several reasons more openly, and with less of sylvan seclusion. The principal thoroughfares of the island giving access to, and communication between, all the other parts, would pass through it. Persons making short visits would be confined to it. By more thorough opening of the ground to light and air, and by better drainage, it would be available earlier and later in the season, and later in the evening, than any other part of the island. A main passage through it may be artificially lighted. On its northern side would be the regatta and bathing waters of the park, bathing-houses, boat-houses, and a grand stand, all branching from the Fair Ground, and in direct connection with the principal entrance: on its opposite side, the turf playing-grounds for [95]ball, and other athletic sports; running and bicycling courses; and so on. These may suggest crude ideas of arrangements, requiring much study before they can be presented as distinct and coherent propositions of a plan.

There remain the two great swampy districts on the north and south respectively of the east park. After thorough drainage, these may eventually be given an ordinary park-like character, being treated and used like the main park in Buffalo, the north meadows in the Central Park, or the larger part of Phoenix Park, Dublin. Pending that improvement, by the dredging of channels through them, as proposed under the head of “superficial drainage,” and the distribution of some of the dredged material along their borders, it is believed that they can quickly, and at small expense, be sufficiently relieved of water to sustain a wholesome and nutritious herbage. They would then at once form the principal pasture-grounds of the park. They are now pestiferous: they would be healthful. Speaking more definitely as to time and cost, I should think, that, with an outlay of from three to four thousand dollars, a tolerable result might be obtained after two years. (G and F on diagram.)

X.

Constructions.

Roads and walks will, of course, be proposed and located on the plan; but the study of them does not belong to this stage of it. They are no essential part of the park: they are but implements for making use of it, and are to be laid out and made only as other conditions direct, and when and so fast as necessary. Fortunately, there can at present be no large demand for wheel-ways; and great immediate expense for their construction may be avoided.

To provide means of rest, especially for invalids and children, shelters from showers, and well-managed retiring-rooms, a considerable amount of roofing will be required. It is economy to aggregate as much as practicable under one roof. It is economy, also, especially in respect to police arrangements, to avoid numerous points of gathering. Hence it will be desirable, first, as before suggested, as soon as possible to provide a shed stretching along the shore, south from the north-west landing, which will also serve as a vestibule [96]

“Belle Isle Park, Preliminary Plan” March 1883

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“Topographical Map of Belle Isle Park,” c. 1882

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The structures to be used in winter for the protection of the livestock could be made to serve, when necessary (in the emergencies of showers), for the shelter of large crowds. For this purpose they should be near the parade-ground, and on the east side of it, in the edge of the East Park, as best dividing the entire space of the island, with the shed at the north-west landing. The same vicinity will be best for all necessary farm-buildings, and for the superintendency. Here there should be also a house for a particular class of refreshments; namely, for the most part, milk and dairy products, to be sold at fixed low prices, it being desirable to encourage the use of them, as well as to make a cash home market for the products of the park stock. In connection with this establishment, there should be arrangements for gratuitously supplying boiling water and other requirements of picnic parties.