I have the honor to submit the following observations in reply to your letter of the 27th ultimo.

For many years before the City of New York had a Park Department, it was carrying on various public works which were well known as works of engineering. Some of these had governing boards, as, for example, the Croton Water Board, the President of which was a distinguished Engineer. The plans of the works which these Boards supervised were invariably prepared by [863]Engineers, and Engineers were invariably made responsible for the carrying out of their plans. The chief executive office of each of them was called the Engineer’s Office; the occupant of it was called the Engineer and was a man who, before he was placed in that office, had acquired reputation and professional standing as an Engineer. There was no ambiguity in the use of the term. There was no question of its significance; none of its application. There was no alternative term.

But in the year 1857 a public work was begun independently of any of these engineering departments. It was placed in general charge of a Board, no member of which was an Engineer. The plan of the work to control which this new Board was constituted was not devised by an Engineer. The men employed to organize its working force were not Engineers and were not officially styled Engineers. They were called Landscape Architects.

The plan of organization adopted provided for the employment of engineers subordinately to the Landscape Architects. There was not an Engineer on the work who did not receive his appointment either directly from the Landscape Architects, or from the Board acting upon the nomination and advice of the Landscape Architects. There was not one who did not receive his pay upon the certificate of the Landscape Architects.

Under this arrangement several million dollars were expended with results that were then, and have since, for more than thirty years, continued to be as satisfactory to the people as those of works planned and managed by Engineers.

Nevertheless, after a few years, during the period known as the Tweed administration of the City Government, this original Commission was superseded, a new Commission established and a new organization of the work effected. Under this new organization it was provided that Engineers should no longer work subordinately to the Landscape Architects, but should receive their orders directly from, and report to, the Commissioners.

This notion of the new Commission was not for a time communicated to the Landscape Architects. Their first knowledge of it came to them when they found that their instructions were systematically disregarded and that the work was proceeding in a manner for which they could not allow themselves to be responsible. Thereupon they presented their resignation and at once withdrew wholly from the work. In a few months the results of the new arrangement more than justified the course that had been taken by the Landscape Architects, and the fact that they did so became, a little later, so obvious that public opinion compelled, not simply an abandonment of the arrangement, but the breaking up of the second Commission and, substantially, the re-appointment of the first. As soon as this had been accomplished, the Landscape Architects were asked to return; several works which had been undertaken in the interval were abandoned; buildings which had been begun were torn down; plans which it had been intended to graft upon the original plan of the Landscape Architects were given up; details of the original design that had been discarded [864]were re-adopted, and great efforts were made to recover ground that, during the absence of the Landscape Architects, had been lost. These efforts, it may be observed, were not wholly successful and the Central Park is to-day of less value by some million dollars than it otherwise would have been, while it has cost the tax-payers some million dollars more than it would otherwise have cost.

The facts that have been thus recalled surely do not indicate that the Park Commissioners who have had the largest share of public confidence, and whose work is, to this day, most valued by the people of New York, took a view of their duty under which Landscape Architects, as such, would be employed simply to devise pretty trimmings to be applied to the surface of engineering constructions.

But I may be asked if this work to which the name of THE SPEEDWAY has been given is not so far exceptional that it is to be dealt with primarily as a work of engineering, and but subordinately as a work of landscape? I can only answer that this question seems to have been decided by the Legislature when the work was given in charge to your Department. If otherwise, must it not be concluded that the Department of Parks is a superfluity? Are the Engineering Departments of the City not allowed to decorate their works? If they are not, how are the sculptures and the plantations of trees and shrubs and the flower beds of the Forty Second Street Reservoir to be accounted for? Have these decorations not been paid for out of funds appropriated to a work the distinctive purpose of which it is the distinctive professional function of Engineers to deal with?

It is my opinion that the end with reference to which your Commission was organized in 1857 was not an engineering end, but an end to which engineering ends were intended to be subsidiary. It is my opinion further that if it had been intended that THE SPEEDWAY should be made a work of engineering to which some supplementary work of gardening decoration might be afterwards applied, the business of making it would have been given to a department of the City Government which would be classed as a Department of Engineering, not as a Department of Parks.

In my interview with the Board, on the 23rd November, it plainly appeared that a majority of its members regarded THE SPEEDWAY as a work of engineering to which ornamentation might be applied, and that they wished my services only with reference to this ornamentation. As I cannot take this view of the function of my profession, I respectfully decline the invitation of the Board.

Your obedient servant;