I have received your note of the 15th instant, and am sorry that I could not reply sooner.

I would like to indicate the point of view from which I regard the proposition to sequestrate a part of Central Park for a Speeding Track.

Thirty-five years ago, when I lived several months in London, most of its people could yet, by less than an hour’s walk from their homes, get into charming fragments of rural scenery, saunter in lovely lanes, or by old footpaths through fields, and find many pretty wild flowers. On Sundays, I have met thousands of its people rambling with their children in these places. Last year an English physician visiting us told me that all I had known of this sort had been long since destroyed; that the eating up of the rural suburbs went on much faster than the increase of population, and that it was already useless to look for a wild flower within twenty miles of Bow Bells. Henceforth, a large part of the people of London would live and die without ever having seen a suggestion of rural beauty, except such as might be provided in public parks.

Because of the great space occupied by waters, and for other reasons, before New York shall have nearly the present population of London, a much larger territory will have been dis-ruralised.

It is now generally held to be desirable that cities growing to be great should {make} timely provisions through which their future people shall not be compelled to go out from them to obtain some degree of soothing rural influences.

It is now also held, but as yet less generally perhaps, that such cities should be possessed of open areas adapted to be used for various sports, or manly and blood-stirring recreations.

Provisions suitable for one of these purposes are not to any considerable extent suitable for the other. On the contrary, the preparation of a given piece of land suitably for one of them makes it unsuitable for the other.

It is unfortunate that the word park, without any discriminating prefix, is popularly applied to pieces of ground used for various and incongruous purposes. When a man says: “I am going to the park,” he may mean to a base ball park, a deer park, a racing park, an oyster park, or a park proper, that is to say, a rural park. So if a man chooses to say a park is not complete unless it has provisions for all sorts of sports, he is not to be put down with dictionaries.

An astute, successful and wealthy gentleman said to me a year ago:

“You have provided in the park means of recreation of different kinds for a good part of the population; for those who like to walk; to ride; loiter in slow-going carriages; for those who like boating, skating, curling, tennis, ball-playing, and even for children who like to use merry-go-rounds, scups and goat [258]carriages. Now, I and certain other citizens and tax-payers do not care for any of these. Our form of recreation is the driving of fast horses with light vehicles at a much faster rate of speed than is allowed, or than would be safe on the crooked roads you have made in the park. Why should we be discriminated against? Why have we not as much right to be provided with facilities for the enjoyment of the one form of recreation in which we are interested as those who have taken up tennis, or skating, or cycling, or pedestrianism, or driving slowly, or riding, for their recreations?”

And the view thus indicated is undoubtedly held by many intelligent citizens of New York. But it must have been adopted thoughtlessly. It has no legal foundation. The fact is, although I cannot show you verse and chapter for it, or any clear, legal records, the territory of the park was bought, the plan of the construction of the park devised, and many million dollars spent upon the park, with no purpose of making it a place of general, miscellaneous out-of-door recreation, as thus assumed, but for the purpose of making it a place of rural recreation. The roads have been laid out with the object of developing and exhibiting the rural capabilities of the territory to the utmost. Thirty costly archways and {bridges} have been built exclusively with the same motive. i.e. to provide for the convenient passage of great bodies of people through it in various directions without making the lines of passage excessively conspicuous or otherwise smoothing out unnecessarily the natural {irregularities}. The same is true of the Ride, the walks, the buildings, the boats, as well as the modeling of the ground and the planting. I do not mean to say that there was, at the outset, not the least confusion of mind on the point, much less that there has never been any confusion since, or that there has never been {any} waste of money in consequence; but I do say that all such confusion has had, as yet, no general effect except such as would result from occasional {misuse} of the main current of purpose.

How then is it to be {accounted} for that provisions should now be found on the park for playing base ball, skating, tennis, for archery, music, the menagerie, and so on?

I answer that it has been thought that, to a certain extent, provision for these sports and these other forms of recreation might be made incidentally, subordinately and harmlessly to the provision made for the main ruling purpose of the park. I admit that the question has often been a practical one, to just what extent provision should be made for some of these sports without lessening the value of the park for its controlling purpose, and that, in my judgment, there have been errors in this respect, but, with perhaps one exception, these errors have been errors of judgment, not intentional repudiations of the main principle. They have established no ground for the assumption that the park is not fundamentally an institution for providing, as far as practicable under the circumstances, that enjoyment of rural scenery of which the growth of the city was rapidly depriving its people.

Ground having been taken by the city for this particular purpose, and [259]having been fitted for this purpose, at an outlay of many million dollars, that ground is reasonably to be regarded as an institution established for that purpose. Those given charge of such a property are then Trustees for that purpose. Because a respectable or a powerful body of citizens think that it would be a good thing to break into this property and apply some of it to another purpose, those Trustees have no more right to yield to this view than they have to sell parts of the property and apply the proceeds to any other purpose. To do so is a distinct breach of trust. It is by far the most important duty of the Commissioners serving as Trustees to defend the property against all such movements.

Bodies of officially irresponsible men who have thoughtlessly adopted a different opinion have always been besieging the Park Commissioners to appropriate pieces of the park for all sorts of other purposes, more or less obviously antagonistic to the preservation of its rurality.

In the last thirty years I do not think that there has ever been a period of two years in which there has not been a strong and respectable movement to destroy some part of the park for its original purpose in order to establish provision for some other form of recreation than that for which it was established. At one time it is a Military Parade Ground; then a Zoological Garden; then a Botanical Garden; then a Palm House and Winter Garden; then an Arboretum; then a Sub-Tropical Garden; then a Museum of History; then an Exhibition of Fat Cattle; then one of Rhododendrons, and so on.

Many of these schemes, through the influence of specious argument, and because of presumed political necessities, have been very nearly successful. The Commissioners have more than once voted favorably to some of them. But, after due deliberation and consultation, they have all been at length defeated with the single exception that a large piece of ground (not essentially a part of the landscape of the park) was once given up to an Art Museum—an act now generally regretted.

If half of these schemes had been successful, the park would before this have entirely lost its designed rural character. It would have been sub-divided into a hundred sections, each appropriated to some special sport or amusement, with only decorative trimmings of foliage and flowers; lacking all unity; lacking every element of breadth, repose and sylvan composition.

A purpose more clearly apart from, and inconsistent with, the original comprehensive purpose of the park could hardly be devised than this of a Speeding Track. A place which would have been less likely to be chosen for such a purpose than that proposed, were land to be bought for it, could hardly have been selected on the island. No one would have thought of it if it had not been for the chance of stealing the necessary land out of the park and so saving the expense of buying a suitable site for it.

The demand for a Speeding Track has not been as long continued, nor nearly as popular and strong as the demand for a Rotten Row, or as that for widening the East Drive with the object of making an ampler place of parade for carriages. Fair provision for both of these latter projects might be made [260]with much less outlay, and with much less injury to the rurality of the park, than for that of a Speeding Track.

If you yield to the demand for a Speeding Track, you yield the principle, adherence to which has thus far alone prevented the complete ruin of the park for its established purpose. It may be asked: Would not provision within the city for athletic recreations be more valuable than provision for a sauntering place for the enjoyment of rurality of scenery?

I think not; but what if they would? Would any man in his senses have chosen the site of Central Park for them? A site in which, there was not an acre of flat ground, or of ground not broken by outcrops of rock? All these sports require pieces of flat surface and of even a somewhat elastic surface. The places for them must in no case be crossed by people not engaged in the sport. A Speeding Track a mile and a half long (from 71st St. to 101st St.) on the west side of the Park, to be adapted to the purpose of a Speeding Track, would not only require the destruction of valuable existing natural scenery and the blasting out of an immense quantity of ledge rock, but also either the closing of eight of the present entrances to the Park, or a great amount of ugly tunnel and bridge building, to carry travel over or under the Speeding Track. After all had been done, it would be a poor Speeding Track and movements would follow in a few years for additions to it and for improvements upon it, involving great further cost and great further injury to the rural character of the Park.

You ask if there is any other locality in which a Speeding Track could be made. I answer, none where the acquisition by the city of the necessary real estate would not involve large expense.

Is it practicable to get the city to stand this expense at this time?

You can judge of this better than I can, but I should say that an attempt to steal a strip of the poor, narrow Central Park site shows that the movers for the Speeding Track have no confidence that it would.

But there is a larger question, and it is easier to get the interest of the public of New York in a large question {than} in one affecting the {interest} of any comparatively small piece of the population. The larger question is, whether it {is expedient to the design} {…} {…} {secure for} the city, south of the Harlem at 155th St., a place adapted to sports and athletic recreations, including whose to which a Speeding Track is necessary, and which would also supply a place for great assemblages and for exhibitions of value to the city, but not desirable to be placed on broken, rural ground?

A few years ago I felt quite sure that it was, and I have often advocated such a project. The land that I have had more particularly in view for it was the Harlem Flats north of the Park. But I suppose that the necessary area there has already become of such value that it would be a bold proposition to acquire it.

Is there a suitable site to be had anywhere at a cost that would not stagger the city?

I have lost touch with New York now too much to answer that question offhand.

[261]

I think that if I were in your shoes, I should be inclined to draw up a paper setting forth the great desirability of at once providing a place for athletic sports and recreations, {recognizing} that the constantly growing demand for such a {place} cannot begin to be met in Central Park, except by a repudiation of its present leading purpose and a costly destruction of what has been gained {from} it, and concluding with a draft of a resolution directing the appointment of a Committee to ascertain where a site for such a ground could be had, south of 155th St. at the least cost, with a plan for the ground adapted to the site and an estimate of the cost of the real estate and of its construction.

Any action less thorough and comprehensive than this will be paltering, shuffling, dilly-dallying and makeshift. It is a thousand times better to deal with the whole problem squarely than to have it coming up piecemeal, as hitherto it has been every year.

Such a Committee should be empowered to employ good real estate experts, a special clerk, et cetera.

Very Truly Yours,