I have just returned from a journey and find yours of the 19th, to which more particularly I wish now to reply.

You are right in supposing that if it had been written earlier, I should have understood your motives better, and perhaps have taken a slightly different course from that I have, but I think the result would have been essentially the same in the end. I wish you to be fully assured of my thorough sympathy with your motive, and that you may be, let me say that I, also, lost my first-born child by cholera infantum, and that for thirty years, the value of fresh air as a means of combating that disorder has been very strongly impressed upon me. I have known a child, after its life had been despaired of by the physicians, taken to the park and kept there in gentle motion for several hours, and return with a tendency to recover well established; in the words of the physician—it was “snatched from the hands of death.”

In 1866, after careful study of the subject, I induced the Park Commissioners of New York to establish a pavilion with special reference to the convenience of mothers with small children, exactly in the line of your purpose. It was nearly circular in form, 110 feet in diameter, situated upon an eminence, but so placed as to be out of the more frequented lines of public movement on the park, and although it is a very large affair, and greatly used during the hot weather by women and children, I do not suppose that one in a hundred of all the visitors to the park has ever seen it. Provision has since been made, under my advice, for the same purposes, in four other parks, not including the great circular three-decked, pier-head pavilion now under construction, [108]of which an illustration was given in the last annual report of the Boston Park Department. I was, for several years, vice-president of a society in New York, having for one of its objects the improvement of the condition of the tenement house population. At one time, I prepared a circular which was sent to every physician and clergyman in New York, calling their attention to the ease with which the children of the poor could be taken to the park by several lines of street railway, and to the conveniences there provided for them, with special reference to the danger of cholera infantum. I did the same thing in Brooklyn, and in both cities I had printed notices to the same effect distributed by the thousand and conspicuously posted in every tenement house in these cities. You will see, therefore, that I have given the subject not a little thought, and so far as I find it my duty to express a different opinion from you on points of detail, it is far from inconsiderately.

Any pavilion placed on the knoll north-east of the reservoir will be a very conspicuous object; will be the center of attraction for that park; all roads and walks will lead to it, and it must necessarily be an affair for the whole public. To get a structure there that will provide all the standing, sitting and moving room that it must have, if crowding, hustling and disturbance in various ways is to be avoided, and that can easily be kept clean and preserved in good order; to do this within the limit of cost fixed, it is necessary that it should be so planned as to give the largest amount of free floor space, especially in all the outer parts, that can be got out of the materials used, and that everything should be eliminated from the scheme that is not absolutely necessary to its success. I think that it is open to demonstration that the circular plan meets these requirements much better than any plan can with rectangular outlines. I cannot see the force of your suggestion that the circular outline would be unpleasant because of the association of ideas which it would provoke with a locomotive house. Hardly anything could be less like the solid brick walls and slate peaked roof of a locomotive house than the veranda construction proposed. There is a much greater likeness between the railroad round-house and the Castle of St. Angelo, or the drum of the dome of St. Paul’s.

I do not think that I quite understand your idea of the fans, but I suppose they may be considered as a part of the furnishing, rather than of the essential structure of the pavilion, and that they can be attached to the ceiling of the house in any form. I should have thought that in a building so placed upon an eminence, a slight movement of air from the south-west would be found in the hottest weather, and that a very slight natural movement of air would not only be more grateful than any that could be easily produced in the manner you propose, but that it would almost prevent it from being felt. I have seen punkas used a good deal in the tropics, but never in a pavilion completely open on all sides.

I do not think a jet d’eau in the center of the pavilion desirable. To make anything of it worthy of the position would be costly and, at the best, it would be extremely puerile by comparison with the jet in the adjoining [109]reservoir. A fountain is so much more beautiful where it springs into sunlight within a shady enclosure, like that of a {Moorish patio,} that the comparative deadness of a fountain under the circumstances proposed would not be very pleasing. A very moderate wind would blow spray from the jet over the adjoining floor of the pavilion, making it sloppy, and the strong tendency which all children have to dabble with water would be a source of constant anxiety to mothers. But if a fountain is thought to be of essential value to your scheme, it can be introduced.

I enclose a copy of a letter addressed to Mr. Barry, containing suggestions that I hope you may approve. We feel sure that everything should be kept out of the pavilion that will not positively and directly help those who are to enter it to benefit much more than they otherwise could, by shade from the sun, shelter from showers, openness to breezes and advantages of outlook to a distance. We are also convinced that everything that it is necessary to these purposes should be within the pavilion, should be so placed and arranged as to favor free movement and circulation in those parts of the structure where people wishing to face the breezes and command the outlooks will naturally aim to place themselves, and where, consequently, there will be the most liability to crowd and jostling.

Yours Truly