Your Board has asked us to report upon a communication from Robert Sprague Hall, Esq., embodying suggestions for a different plan for laying out the property recently acquired for a public pleasure ground in Charlestown.

It is not necessary that we should consider the proposed features and details of this plan. The main question raised by Mr. Hall is, in effect, whether, having a steep hillside to deal with in the midst of a town, it would not be better to adopt a formal and architectural motive in laying it out, rather than such an one as is embodied in the plan which has been adopted by the Commission.

Having in view the magnificent effect of a formal treatment of hillsides sometimes seen in Southern Europe, this question is one which must naturally occur. And before the plan which has been adopted by the Commission was at all developed, it received due consideration.

A formal plan, to have at all satisfactory results, even at the outset, needs to be very substantially carried out and to have abundant accessories of an elegantly artificial character. It needs much skilled labor to be maintained in suitable condition. It depends for pleasing upon an obvious display of art in all its parts. At its best, it is to be enjoyed as a spectacle. As a spectacle, it is marred by anything to be seen in close association with it that is at all homely or notably unsymmetrical and inconsistent with its leading masses and outlines.

We do not think that it would be practicable to carry out a design of this character, or to maintain the result in a satisfactory condition, on the site in question, unless at an expense that would not be justified. We do not think that a ground of the character proposed, however well its design should be realized, would be satisfactory in the midst of such irregular and inconsistent masses of buildings as there are likely permanently to be on the private properties closely adjoining it and rising above it.

There is this further objection to the proposition: that while, if admirably carried out, the result would be very striking and effective and give much pleasure to observers seeing it upon infrequent occasions, it would, as a place of daily resort for the people of the neighborhood, be soon found monotonous in character and comparatively tiresome.

Yours Respectfully