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FR Ai^KUIir PARK

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Sept., 1981

BRA

A publication of the Franklin Park Coalition
319 Forest Hills St., Boston, MA. 02130 • 522-7431

1925 Special Report

Review of the Boston

Park System

by Arthur Shurcliff

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BOSTON

PUBLIC

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TWO SPECIAL REPORTS OF THE PARKS DEPARTMENT 1924 and 1925

The Development of the Park System
The Future Development of the Park and Playground System

INTRODUCTION

The Franklin Park Coalition often speaks of bringing Franklin Park
into the 20th Century. This means control of motor vehicles. The two
Special Reports abridged in this issue of the Bulletin also address the
need to relate Olmsted's 19th c. park system to 20th century American life.
It includes detailed discussion on how to plan for motor vehicles. The
problems of 1925 are much the same as of 1981 with the glaring exception
that motor vehicles dominate all facets of American life today.

Mayor James M. Curley's several administrations are noted for the
building of many neighborhood playgrounds throughout the city, the famous
Rose Gardens in the Back Bay Fens and Franklin Park and for the first
public golf course in the city in Franklin Park (built in two stages
1915 and 1922). Mayor Curley took the opportunity of the upcoming
50th anniversary of the Boston Park Department to request that special
studies be made on the condition of the Park System (first planned when
Curley was one year old.) and a study on the future needs of the Parks.*

The Park Department turned to Arthur A. Shurtleff , Landscape
Architect, to write both reports. Shurtleff had been working for the
Park Department on various projects for 14 years beginning with the
Franklin Park Zoo of 1911. Arthur Shurtleff continued Olmsted's work on
the Boston Park System by carefully and sensitively changing the System
to meet demands for motor vehicles and active sports. The Back Bay
Fens as we know it today is more Arthur Shurtleff than Frederick Law
Olmsted. The construction of the Charles River Dam in 1910 ended the
salt water marsh which Olmsted had carefully designed in the Fens.
Shurtleff in the teens and twenties redesigned the Fens into a fresh
water parkland. He also made the Museum of Fine Arts Evans wing fit
well with the Park by designing the lawn and oval lagoon which set off
and mirror the long colonnade of the MFA.

Arthur Shurtleff was born on September 19, 1870, a contemporary of
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., also born in 1870. Shurtleff 's father was
an inventor and manufacturer of surgical instruments in Boston who wanted
his son to be a mechanical engineer. Young Arthur tried this field at M.I.T.
but a deep interest in country scenery (born from vacation trips around

*It is unfortunate that the centennial of the Boston Park Department
was completely ignored in 1975 during the Bicentennial celebrations.

New England) led him to study landscape architecture. This profession
was rapidly gaining popularity due to the publicity of the Chicago
World's Fair (landscaped by Olmsted) and through the writings of
Olmsted and Charles Eliot.

In 1896 he entered the Olmsted office as an apprentice and then
an employee. He stayed there until 1905 when he opened his own practice.
In 1900 with Frederick Law Olmsted Senior and H. Langford Warren, he
began the School of Landscape Architecture at Harvard, the country's
first 4 year landscape architecture school.

Shurtleff's career was long and varied. He became famous for his
outstanding work at the Colonial Williamsburg Restoration in the 1920's.
In Boston his design for the Charles River Esplannade in 1935 gave Boston
one of its finest parklands and one of its most important landmarks.
Shurtleff's work carried to completion the concepts of his friend Charles
Eliot who, in the early 1 890 's, was the first to begin work towards the
reclamation of the Charles River Basin.

In the Olmsted Park System, Shurtleff relandscaped much of the Fens
including the first footbridges in the southern basin. The ballfield,
fieldhouse and bleachers are his design also. The widening and re-
building of the Parkway system including the 3 rotaries in Jamaica Plain
are his work. (He alludes to this in his reports.) In Franklin Park
was his fine Zoo plan which is currently being destroyed for the new Zoo.*

Shurtleff was well aware that although change in urban parks was
inevitable, it nonetheless must be planned and should not be permitted
to destroy the fabric of the older parks.

"A very heavy responsibility rests upon anyone
who may propose to modify the design of [Franklin
Park], which was planned after devoted study
by the greatest master of landscape architecture."

Considerable attention was devoted in the reports to traffic; the section
on the Parkways is the most important in the 1925 Report. In his
recommendations, however, Shurtleff repeats that although rebuilding of
the Park drives and parkways are necessary,

"[they should] not go beyond limits which would
jeopardize the value of the park for general
recreative use or interfere with the enjoyment
of its landscapes by the distraction of moving
vehicles and by noise."

Arthur Shurtleff died in November of 1957, the same year as his friend,
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

Richard Heath
July, 1981

*The subject of the November Bulletin will be the Franklin Park Zoo Reports.

BOSTON, December 1, 1924

Hon. James M. Curley,

Mayor of the City of Boston

DEAR SIR. - The Park Department submits the following report which
reviews the relation of the Park System to recent park developments. The
report also describes important plans which are now under construction
or which are to be carried out in the near future in the Fens, at the
Zoo, at Castle Island, in the newer playgrounds and at Columbus Park
and elsewhere.* Inquiries are constantly made of this Department re-
garding the future development proposed for the open spaces of the City,
and the parks and playgrounds included in this report have been the sub-
jects of special public interest. This review of the plans and the
purposes of the Department will assist in giving desired information in
convenient form, and will also make a useful permanent record for future
reference.

The Department is making good progress with a special report on the
future development of the Park and Playground System of the City. This
material is being studied with the growth of the industrial areas and
the residence areas, in order to make an intelligent forecase of the
probable needs of the next quarter to half a century.

Respectfully submitted,

James B. Shea, Chairman.
Charles A. Coolidge, Commissioner^*
Myron P. Lewis, Commissioner.
William P. Long, Deputy Commissioner.
Daniel J. Byrne, Secretary and

Chief Clerk.
Arthur A. Shurtleff, Landscape

Archetect.

* Castle Island and Columbus Park, both in South Boston, are not included
in this reprint (ed.).

** Coolidge, with George Shepley and George Rutan, formed Shepley, Rutan
and Coolidge to carry on the work of H.H. Richardson who died in 1886,
Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge did considerable work in the Park System.

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THE BOSTON PARK SYSTEM

The Boston Parks deserve the term of "System," first because they are
physically connected by an unbroken string of wide and attractive connecting
parkways which lead from the Common at one extremity to City Point at
the other terminus; second, the term is appropriate because these open spaces
are laid out in a single style without conspicuous breaks of design
which would tend to divide the string into sections of different type; third,
the local parks and playgrounds which are by necessity detached from
this string are distributed methodically to provide, as far as possible,
equal recreation opportunities in the outlying sections of the City.

Though this system may be complete today, it cannot remain so in the
future without the constant acquisition of new park and playground areas
or the improvement of old areas. The constant growth of the City makes
this growth of the System necessary. This is not a theory upon which
the City might be urged to act, but it is a fact upon which the City
is constantly acting, and with special energy at the present day. There
never was a time when new playgrounds were being more rapidly acquired and
old playgrounds more generally enlarged and improved in their facilities
than at the present time.

The parks of Boston are rendered still more perfect as a System and
more useful individually through their relation to the outer ring of
Metropolitan Parks and parkways which were developed after the Boston
Parks were established. Each system is becoming yearly more essential
to the other. The question at once arises, have these recreative faci-
lities reached a point of development in which one group is duplicating
the work of other groups? A general examination of the actual use made
of these parks on Sundays and holidays, as well as on week days, indicates
they are all in intensive use. Many of them, like the bathing tDeaches
and the ball field areas, are unable to accommodate the throngs which
seek them. There are no idle parks or playgrounds. In the winter season,
it is true, greater use might be made of the wooded reservations and the
larger country parks by snowshoers, trampers and "nature study" parties.
This is a problem of education. In the summer season, however, the
call to the parks is natural and constant. The present need is to bring
the parks nearer to the homes by creating more recreation areas in the
residence districts. The doorsteps and the streets will continue always
to serve as play spaces on certain days, at certain hours, and at certain
periods in childhood and in old age, but the playground and the park will
be a public necessity always.

Transportation will probably never provide such rapid and such cheap
transit that the families of one neighborhood will go by preference to
distant neighborhoods for playgrounds. Consequently there appears to be
no immediate danger of duplication of local playgrounds. With regard
to the large country parks which should be spaced widely, a duplication

-3-

might occur if they were placed near together, but at present there is
no chance that such a liberal supply of these desirable open spaces could
be afforded. If our climate were more bitter and the waters of our shores
very cold, we might soon possess too many bathing beaches in a combination
of the Boston and the Metropolitan Systems, but with our present climate
and with our population of enthusiastic bathers, the hot weather crowds
overtax all the public beaches, and trespass upon the private beaches
from Plymouth to Portland. In the case of special recreative features
like zoological parks, special collections of plants or flowers, great
public stadiums, duplication may be possible in the future, but at present
the opportunities for special study or amusement afforded by these ex-
amples are still short of the capacity of Boston and the district to enjoy.

The Department, at the request of his Honor Mayor Curley, is now
making a detailed study of the future development of the local parks and
playgrounds of Boston. This study will indicate the districts in which
additional facilities of this kind are now needed, or in which they will
be needed in the future if the growth of the City continues at the present
rate. The study will also consider in greater detail the relation of
all the recreative facilities of the district to the population of the
City.

The relations between the Park Department and the City of Boston Planning
Board have been yery helpful. In determining the locations for future
playgrounds, the help of the Planning Board has been especially important.
Evidently playgrounds and other recreation areas should be placed where
they will not interfere with the future local street extensions or with
main thoroughfares. Similarly it has been possible with a degree of
confidence to secure the abandonment of streets which have heretofore
separated parcels of playground area and thus unite them in a single
tract, as in the instances of the Christopher Gibson and John A. Doherty
Playgrounds.*

THE FENS PLAYGROUND

The extraordinary growth of schools, colleges and other educational
institutions near the Fens, between Brookline Avenue and the Art Museum,
has brought thousands of pupils into a region which is well equipped with
park areas, but which has lacked playground space especially for school
games of baseball and football. When the first schools were built, the
pupils used vacant lots on the upland for their sports. Subsequently when
the low wet land of the Fens was reclaimed from salt marsh, this flat
ground, although intended for park lawns and for tree and shrubbery areas.

*In Dorchester; these two playgrounds were combined into Town Field in
Fields Corner section of Dorchester.

-4-

was eagerly sought by the schools for ball fields. These demands upon
the park became more frequent and more urgent as the number of schools
increased. As time passed, it became apparent both that some permanent
provision should be made for these playground activities, and that these
play spaces should not be allowed to preempt so great a portion of the
park as to change its landscape character. In the neighborhood between
Simmons College and Jersey Street the demand for ball fields had already
required a resurfacing of the ground, and it became evident that this
play area was destined, unless organized, to destroy the shrubbery and
grass areas further east toward the Art Museum. The Park Department
therefore decided to develop the western portion of this area to accomo-
date two regulation baseball diamonds, and to define this tract definitely
for such use by fences, marginal plantations, and border walks. Beyond
these limits, the park landscapes were to be restored and developed in
accordance with a carefully studied general plan.

The first steps toward a realization of this improvement are now
under way. Ground within the space reserved for playground purposes has
been graded. The surrounding plantations of trees and shrubbery, which
will give shade and hide the necessary back nets and other structures
of the field, will be installed. To avoid the unsightly appearance of
temporary wooden grandstands and to meet the pressing demand for specta-
tors' benches, the Department is constructing permanent concrete bleachers
of good design. The height of this structure is limited, however, to five
rows of seats in order to prevent it from interfering with views across
the Fens from roadway to roadway. A field house of low height is to be
built against the bleachers where it will be as inconspicuous as possible.
Within the building public toilets will be built, and a limited number
of lockers and shower baths will be installed. All these constructions
and the back nets are to be hidden as fully as possible by vines, high-
growing kinds of shrubbery, and by low-branching trees.

The public footways of the park are to be carried around the marginal
screening plantations of the playground. Therefore, to pleasure seekers
wishing to enjoy the landscapes of the park, the playground activities
will not distract attention from the river, and from the reasonably ample
borders of sedgy ground, grass land, and the slopes rising to the roadway.

PROPOSED FENS IMPROVEMENT OPPOSITE THE ART MUSEUM

Reference has been made both to the need of providing playground
space in the western section of the Fens, and to the desirability of
developing adjacent portions in a park-like manner in keeping with the
landscape ideals of the Park System. A start is to be made toward the
general landscape improvement of the Fens, by the development of the tract

-5-

opposite the Art Museum. Recognition of this building is possible in the
design of the park by arrangements of water, meadow land, and woodlands
to form vistas for the enjoyment of visitors who approach the Museum, and
also for the pleasure of those who enter the park from the direction of the
galleries. Evidently this local adaptation of the landscapes of the
park to the Museum should not be carried so far as to create formal
compositions appropriate to this edifice but at variance with the continuit-
of the naturalistic landscapes which give unity to the Park System.
It is also evident that special local compositions of this kind, even
though naturalistic in character, cannot be repeated often in the Fens
without danger of a loss of unity in the design of the park. With these
reservations in mind, the Park Department proposes to create opposite
the Museum a landscape composition in harmony with the park and arranged
to display the northern portico of the building pleasantly and frankly
from the roadways, paths and lagoons. This landscape treatment is to be
studied carefully for composition as seen from the building, and from
the roadways, paths and stairways which give access to the park opposite
the building.

A description of the plan and bird's eye view of this improvement
briefly is as follows: The curving park roadway and bridle path which pass
the front of the Museum are to be straightened to form lines parallel
with the building. Using a portion of the space thus gained, the stream
opposite the center of the building is to be widened to form a reflecting
pool or lagoon of sufficient size to accommodate boats. The trees which
now obscure the Museum from this aspect are to be rearranged to frame the
portico of the building as shown. To accommodate pedestrians wishing to
cross the path toward Jersey Street, two paths are to be provided, one
from the Huntington entrance and the other from the Ruggles Street
entrance. Two bridges symmetrically placed, are to be built to carry these
footways across the stream at each end of the lagoon. A broad flight
of steps also connects this path system with the lagoon and the footways
at the Museum entrance. Opposite the stairway a landing platform for boats
and a low terrace with a balustrade is to be installed. Beyond the lagoon
to the north, a large space of open meadow is to be maintained. This
open space is to be flanked by scattered trees and groves, but sufficient
openings are to be arranged to give good vistas across the intervening
meadows and the water to the portico of the building. Studies of the
angles of sight have been made in deciding the location and extent of the
pool to insure good reflections of the great colonnade. The east-west
path system follows the margins of the composition without detour, and
connects the bridges. Plantations of shrubbery and trees are to be set
out to give shade for the paths, to form screens, and in general to
support the margins of the open spaces. This work has been planned to
harmonize with the plan of general development of the Fens as a whole .

Arthur Shurcliff

The Lagoon in the Back Bay Fens designed to
compliment the 1915 addition to the Museum
of Fine Arts.

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The Morton Street Rotary to Franklin Park in August, 1981.

-6-

THE ZOO

Great importance should be laid upon the point that this special
tract devoted to a collection of animals and to the Rose Garden and its
adjacent Herbaceous Garden, to the Mall and its terminal colonnade at
the Peabody Circle, should not be made a part of the landscape of the great
naturalistic "Country Park" which is the controlling composition of Franklin
Park. The most precious landscapes of the Park System and of the country-
side about Boston are in Franklin Park. There is little chance that these
landscapes will be excelled. The Zoo is a unit which must be kept within
the jbopographical and landscape bounds which now define it. If it were
allowed to encroach upon the "Country Park" or if amusements which are
appropriate to the Zoo were allowed to find a place in the heart of Franklin
Park, very serious harm would result. The heavy and high screening plan-
tations which border Glen Lane were deliberately designed to protect
the landscape of the "Country Park" from the irrelevant and, therefore,
disturbing attractions which were permitted to find a place on the ground
now devoted to the Zoo. Similarly, the heavy woods north of the Playstead
were maintained at their full height and density to screen from the land-
scape of the park a collection of native animals which it was thought
might find a place upon the ridge among the trees. Fortunately the bounds
which frame and screen the Zoo are ample for the accommodation of a thoroughly
satisfactory and reasonably extensive collection of animals. There is
nothing in the size or contour of the ground or in the location of this
tract which can handicap it in becoming one of the most important Zoological
Parks of the country, or to justify trespass upon the great "Country Park."

The Zoo is confined to the limits of ground described above, and it
uses the border screens of trees which are essential to the "Country Park"
as a useful background and shelter plantation. Buildings of low height
and quiet color are used in order to present a group of structures as
inconspicuous as possible when seen from without. Interior plantations
of trees are an important element of the plan of development. They are
arranged to reinforce the present boundary screens, to provide shade
between and within the enclosures, and to give a sense of space and
separation. Trees are to be planted in naturalistic groups except along
the Mall, which is an adaptation at less width of the original formal
"Greeting," intended to be used as a great entrance esplanade for the
accommodation of horse-drawn carriages, riders and pedestrians. The
exhibits of animals, birds and flowers are arranged in symmetrical groups
where they are associated with the Mall, but elsewhere they are placed
in conformity with the rolling and ledgy contour of the ridges and hills.
Buildings of picturesque type are used wherever a departure from regular
forms has been possible. Temporary buildings for housing deer, elk and
bison are built without attemJDt at picturesque effect, and the simplest
materials and methods of construction are used. In erecting permanent
structures, the Board has aimed to provide buildings which are best adapted
to the health of the animals, and which will give the greatest satisfaction
to visitors to the park. It can be said without hesitation that each
permanent building thus far erected is the best of its kind in this country
and provides shelter for exhibits which are not excelled elsewhere.

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A large element in the successful development of the Zoo has resulted
from the constant adherence to the general plan of layout which was
adopted when the first exhibit (the bear dens) was installed. Improvement
of the details of the plan has followed special study devoted to each
new acquisition, but the general plan has not been the subject of change.
Consequently, the Zoo has taken form rapidly. Public attendance has in-
creased far beyond expectations. The recent development of the elk and
deer ranges, the extension of the much needed Mall plantations, and the
construction of the Rose Garden have awakened new public interest and
enthusiasm for the Zoo. It is hoped that the grading of the Mall can
be completed before another season. This improvement will greatly assist
in handling the crowds of sightseers, and it will form an important
scenic addition to the work already completed.

THE ROSE GARDEN

Over two years ago his Honor Mayor Curley brought to the attention
of the Board the growing popularity of rose garden displays in City parks.
Near at home, in Springfield and in Hartford, displays of this kind attract
great crowds to the parks on Sundays and holidays, and bring flower
lovers to these centers from all parts of New England. The time seemed
ripe for the creation of a garden of this kind in Boston. After thorough
study a satisfactory site was found near the Herbaceous Garden in the
Zoo at Franklin Park. General public approval of this project followed,
and much interest was shown by the local flower and garden clubs, horti-
cultural societies, and by organizations and cities in the West. Working
plans were consequently prepared and the garden has now become an accomplished
fact. To save a season's time, the first installation of roses was made
in the spring of 1923, as soon as the ground was graded, but before the
walks, trellises, fountains and the walls of the garden were built. These
structures were partly completed during the following summer, and thousands
of visitors evinced their interest by visiting the work to see the roses
during the period of construction. The rose arches, the gates, and other
details of the garden were finished during the following winter, and
the garden was opened in completed form last May. Over seven thousand
roses will find a place in the garden. The best roses which can be grown
successfully out of doors in this climate will be used. Pillar roses,
climbers, standards, dwarf and other types will be grown. Upwards of
eighty- four varieties have already been set out.

In form the garden is oval. The central panel is sunken and is
approached by four flights of steps. In the center is a circular water
basin and fountain. Trellises resting on a curtan wall of concrete,
and interrupted by massive concrete piers, form the enclosure of the
garden. Upon these trellises and walls, climbing roses are grown. At

-8-

the four cardinal points of the oval, attractive concrete niches and arches
are built to give points of ascent, and to provide gateways. Permanent
construction is used throughout the garden and it cannot fall into ruin
through need of repairs in the wooden panels of trellis. Around the
garden flowering shrubbery and trees have already been planted.

The general location of the garden is at the westerly end of the lagoon
proposed for the future extension of the Herbaceous Garden. Shelter from
the wind and a southerly exposure to the sun have been found here on
ground which lent itself to the form and the extent of the garden and
to the need of well drained soil. A natural background of large trees
was also present. The main path system of the Zoo leads to the site,
and near it are placed the most important exhibits of the Zoo, including
the Bears' Dens, the Bird House and Flying Cage, the Elephant House, the
Lion House, and the collections of deer and elk.

It is estimated that the number of visitors to the garden during
the season of construction was in the neighborhood of fifty thousand.

-9-

THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARK AND PLAYGROUND
SYSTEM OF THE CITY

Report of Arthur A. Shurtleff, Landscape Architect

BOSTON, November 2, 1925

James B. Shea, Esq. ,

Chairman, Park Department:

DEAR SIR. - In pursuance of your request I have made during the past
two years a study of the Boston Park System in consultation with your
Board, to determine the probable future needs of the City for parks, park-
ways, and playgrounds, and to prepare a plan showing the distribution,
size and character of these public open spaces. I have received much
valuable information from the Planning Board, the Schoolhouse Commission,
and from other City Departments. Information has also been secured from
the Metropolitan District Commission and the Metropolitan Planning Division,
The accompanying plans and report also include material which has been
gathered from the files of your Department, or developed during conferences
with your Board and your Engineer. My report embraces the results of
much recent field work and the conclusions, recommendations and plans
to which the studies have led.

BOSTON PARKS IN 1875 AND IN 1925

The history of Boston during the half century which has elapsed since
the first parks were acquired records changes in trasportation, in methods
of living and in opportunities for recreation and amusement, which were not
foreseen in their entirety when these open spaces were dedicated to public
use. These changes are influencing the use, the size and the distribution
of parks. The growth of the City, the increase in the number and area of
parks, and the changing conditions of park use, are facts of deep interest
today as they will be in the future to those who are responsible for the
service of the parks to the City. These facts should be recorded. A
forecast is needed also of the probable needs of parks based on the changes
which have taken place during the past fifty years in the upbuilding of
vacant land, the distribution of stores, office buildings and industrial
plants, and the changes which still are taking place in transportation and
in the types of popular amusement and of recreation. Such a forecast
should be of value in determining a plan for the location and the size
of future parks and playgrounds. At the present time when the increase
of playgrounds is very rapid a guide of this kind especially is needed
and could be put to use at once.

■10-

EARLY AND LATE DEMANDS FOR PARKS

Half a century ago the need of extensive parks and playgrounds for
Boston was questioned. In those days opportunities were at hand for out-
of-door recreation in the fields, woodlands, and along the seashores of
the near suburbs and in the less used streets and vacant lots of the
partly built-up sections of the City. Men who read the times aright
predicted that these recreative opportunities, which were made possible
largely by sufferance of trespass, would prove inadequate to the public
in a few decades and would become intolerable to property owners, and that
a well -distributed system of publicly owned parks would become essential to
Boston as to the large Old World cities already possessing large park
systems. Other men to whom the signs of the times appeared to point in
an opposite direction predicted the growth of Boston would be slow, the need
for outdoor recreation would become less rather than greater with the
improvement of sanitary conditions within homes ^ schools and industrial
establishments, and that unlimited opportunities for recreation beyond
the confines of the City would become available through the invention of
rapid transit facilities which would eventually supplant the horse-drawn
buses, the horse car and the steam-driven locomotives of the railroads.
These men thought the then recent invention of the bicycle and the develop-
ment of pneumatic power vehicles, and even of flying machines, might
extend the recreative range of city dwellers and make local parks less
necessary. In that era, before the development of electric power for
street cars and before the subsequent revolution in transportation brought
about by the automobile, predictions of this kind were widely accepted
but fortunately these views did not prevail in the program which was
inaugurated at that time for an extensive Park System and which led to
its acquisition and development.

As time passed, many of the transformations which were predicted have
come to pass. Modern sanitation has done even more for homes and for
working conditions in the industries than was expected. The flying machine
has arrived, and though the bicycle has all but vanished, the automobile
is accomplishing almost all that was expected from both, though it has
created dangers which were not foreseen. Nevertheless, today the demand
for parks and especially for playgrounds is greater than ever before.
Labor-saving inventions have increased the demand for public recreation
spaces by increasing the free time in which such facilities can be used
by the general public. It is true that modern transportation has at length
enabled the City dweller to seek pleasure grounds at a distance, but
this increase in range has not offset the increasing demand for local
parks and playgrounds, though it has created an unexpected demand for large
outlying and widely separated County and State Parks.

In fact, the automobile brings into the City in the summer thousands
of persons from the country who seek the extensive bathing facilities of
the waterfront parks, the interesting attractions of the Zoo and the

■n-

Aquarium, the opportunities to watch or to take part in athletic contests
and games on well -equipped and properly supervised athletic fields,
and to enjoy motor trips through the varied landscapes of the parkways
and greater parks. Parks, parkways and playgrounds are intensively used.
Their increase has been phenomenal. No defense for their existence or
continued extension is asked or made. If it were desired cut down the
population growth of Boston, one of the most effective measures which
could be adopted to attain that end would be undoubtedly to curtail the
extension of parks and playgrounds or to neglect the satisfactory upkeep
or administration of such grounds. Fifty years ago the drift of the country
populations to the cities was irresistible. The urge of that drift was
the seeking of comforts, novelties and gregarious entertainments, and
it prevailed in spite of the higher death rates which prevailed sometimes
in cities. Today most of those comforts, novelties and amenities are
attainable nearly as easily and as cheaply in country districts.
Families in the country can have local or private water supplies, supplies
of coal, oil, gas, electric power, light, heat, telephone, wireless
communication with distant parts of the world, transport of food and other
supplies to the door by truck, local good schools, churches and libraries,
theatres, regular and frequent mails, opportunities for social and intellec-
tual contact, and local industrial employment of large attracting power.
The automobile also enables the country dweller to seek the crowds of the
City at short notice when he wishes to join them for a meeting, an
entertainment or for a holiday, and to forsake the crowds again at that
moment's end.

In other words the small town, the village and the isolated home have
become during the past fifty years competitors or near-competitors of the
City and not mere feeders of population to the cities. I mention this
competition not as an approach to an argument regarding the merit of the
City as contrasted with the country or the small town. No agreement can
be reached or need be sought on this debatable matter in which personal
taste and training are involved. The world would be the poorer if either
of these domains prevailed at the expense of the other.

I mention this competition to show that the parks, playgrounds and
parkways of a city like Boston must be regarded today in a new light.
Fifty years ago their purpose was to give the city dweller recreative es-
cape from the stresses of city life, to make amends for the confinement,
darkness, noise and close air of the streets, factory and even of the
home by providing opportunities for exercise of play in the open air and
for contemplation of natural landscape in areas of large size. Open spaces
for recreation were regarded as savers of human life, conservers of vitality,
the humanities, and of certain kinds of delight. These functions will
always continue to be the large, necessary and compelling purposes for
the establishment of parks, and cannot be delegated to other types of rec-
reation like the stage, the concert hall, the museum, or the gymnasium,
but a new function has been added or is being added to these. That new

■12-

function is the service of the park, playground and parkway when admirably
designed and maintained to compete successfully with the natural opportuni-
ties for recreation in the open country in and about towns and villages.
If a city can meet that competition it need not fear shrinkages of its
size or of its invested treasure as far as a backsetting of the tide of
population from the country to the city is concerned within the realm
of these new forces of change.

For example, if a city can provide very extensive, and excellently
administered bathing beaches and other attractive waterfront recreative
facilities and aquaria, large areas embracing exceedingly fine woodland,
fields and streams composing notable landscapes and having vegetation of
marked loveliness and interest, large areas of ground perfectly arranged
for athletic sports and games and fully developed for public reception
and use, it is highly probably that a very much greater number of men
who prefer the country districts would forsake the small community and
seek the city to enjoy these facilities if they were easily accessible
and could be used with reasonable freedom. On the other hand if these
facilities were small, cramped, shabby, or badly administered, I conceive
that one of the strongest bonds of the city upon men, women and children
would be sundered in these days when excellent transportation facilities
are general and when new living conditions make a change of residence
either to the individual or to the family a simple matter.

PARK IDEALS IN 1875 AND IN 1925

A study of the Boston Park Reports of the period during which the first
land for parks was purchased and methodically planned for recreative use
shows that those who were responsible for the design of the parks were
governed by certain fundamental beliefs, among which were the following:
First, that the cost in money for the land, for the withdrawal of the land
from tax-earning uses, for construction, and for maintenance was justifiable
on the ground that no other agency than public parks could provide a
needed form of recreation. Second, that this recreation could be enjoyed
best in large playgrounds and parks from which the sight and the sound
of the city could be eliminated by marginal screens of planting, mounds
and walls. Third, that one of the most desirable and necessary forms of
recreation afforded by parks is the contemplative enjoyment of extensive
landscape compositions, especially of a naturalistic kind. These funda-
mental beliefs crystallized the park idealsof those days and led as well
as guided the popular interest and enthusiasm which brought the park
systems of Boston and other cities into existence. Frederick Law Olmsted
was then the ablest enunciator of these ideals and the most active designer
of parks in this country. He became the leader of the Boston Park movement
and the designer, with John C. Olmsted, of the system of open spaces which
were built.

-13-

What is the popular view of these fundamental beliefs of today? The
experience of a half century has found no error in the first belief that
public parks supply recreative needs which cannot be provided by other means.
During these years of change, as I have already noted, a remarkable increase
has taken place in the number and size of theatres, exhibition halls,
fair grounds, private baseball "parks," private golf courses, race
tracks and other indoor and outdoor recreative developments. That the
public demand for parks and playgrounds might become less in consequence of
the increase of these vast resources of amusement and recreation seemed
a likelihood. Quite the opposite has been the fact. As we have seen,
the demands for additional parks and playgrounds has steadily increased
and although large numbers of these installations have been made, the
requirements are still unsatisfied. In fact, the requirements have
passed the limits of cities and of Metropolitan areas and have brought
about the creation of State Parks, an increase of whose number is also
constantly urged.

FUTURE PARKS, PLAYGROUNDS AND PARKWAYS

The need of marginal screens and walls to secure quiet and retirement
in parks and playgrounds was never greater than today in this era of noise
and danger incident to the increase in volume and speed of street traffic.
The extent to which walls can be used around public open spaces is limited,
however, by the degree to which supervision and policing can be carried
on within grounds thus secluded. Without such oversight, especially at
night, boundary screens or interior coverts of all kinds, except in the
large parks, are not practical, though quiet and freedom from outside
disturbance is greatly needed. In the large parks which are frequented
by great numbers of persons and which are therefore open to constant
public inspection, the use of border screening plantations of shrubbery
and trees, border mounds and walls has been thoroughly practical and
forms an even more valuable protection against the noise and distraction
of adjacent streets than was foreseen before the revolution in highway
transportation came about.

The belief in the value of extensive natural landscapes as an essen-
tial element in outdoor recreation has gained ground vastly in the past
half century. Popular demand for books, pictures and plays, in which
the landscapes of the wilderness of the park and of the private place
form the theatre of action, is seemingly insatiable. At the same time
the automobile has brought the country-side landscapes and even the
wilderness itself within the reach of the City dweller. In fact, the
resources of the country are taxed to provide motor vehicles, roads, and
camp grounds to meet the requirements of the clerk, the business man and
even the farmer in seeking recreation "in the open." Cross-country

■14-

"hiking" and golf has become a country-wide activity of week-ends and
vacations. Daylight saving has increased the hours available for re-
creation in the summer season. Naturally enough a demand upon the large
city parks for foot trails, motor roads, golf courses and camp sites
has sprung up.

Although the landscapes of the great naturalistic parks were never
in greater demand than they are today, the scenery, upon which the
delight of such recreation depends was never in greater danger of de-
struction by those who seek them. A half century ago the quiet con-
templation of natural scenery by individuals or by families engaged in
strolling, picnicking, resting under trees, and moving leisurely about
on foot or in slow-moving horse-drawn vehicles, formed the chief active
element. Today individuals are less inclined to stroll or to move about
quietly on foot. They seek the speed and the rapid change of scene
made possible by the motor car and motor cycle. Contemplation of land-
scape is less deliberate and more often sought as an adjunct to golf
or to strenuous "hiking," or "nature study." It can fairly be said at
the same time, however, that the public is keener in appreciation of
fine scenery and has become severer in the condemnation of inappropriate
structures and uses. The individual is strangely unable, however, to
appreciate the destruction which he brings about by his own conveyance,
his own litter of paper and tin, and by his own noise and unnecessary
personal haste-
Franklin Park, the vicinity of Jamaica Pond and the Muddy River
Valley were laid out in a naturalistic manner, although with thoroughly
subordinate formal incidents, first because the irregularity of the
ground and of the boundary lines made that kind of design most direct,
appropriate and economical, and second because the "natural" manner
was typical of our growing national ideas of park design, although, formal
examples of good kinds could be found in this country in the layout of
public squares, colleges and the approaches to state buildings. To
secure desirable unity in the entire Park System of Boston a continuation of
this naturalistic style was made in the Fens, at South Boston, and
elsewhere, though with occasional formal incidents. In detached
parks and playgrounds the formal manner sometimes dominated when the
topography, the boundaries and use, made it desirable.

Everyone who is interested in the design of Franklin Park as a
work of art should study the park itself at all seasons of the year
and should read the special report upon it by its designer, Frederick
Law Olmsted, and published as a City Document in 1886.* A yery heavy
responsibility rests upon anyone who may propose to modify the design
of this park, which was planned after devoted study by the greatest
master which our country has produced in the field of landscape architecture.

*"Notes of the Plan of Franklin Park;" available from the Franklin Park
Coalition.

■15-

In the future shall the naturalistic manner of 1870 be given up and
the old parks laid out anew in the formal manner of a new era? Certainly
not if the recreativeneeds of that day are fulfilled by the ancient
designs. An old fashioned design of excellent type gains in distinction with
the passage of years. We no longer destroy excellent portraits, furniture
or buildings of early types, but we cherish them rather because they do
not conform to the mode of the moment. Public appreciation of good things
which are out of date in appearance has increased to an extent which
could not have been imagined. To change the existing design of an old
park merely to satisfy a new fashion would have no intrinsic reactive
merit except to momentary novelty occasioned by the change, and might
seriously hurt the continuity of design of the system of parks which is
unified almost as much by adherence to a single manner of design as by
its curiously irregular physical links. With regard to the layout of
future detached playgrounds or parks, however, sufficiently distant from
the main chain of the System to bear no design-relation to the chain,
a design in any new sensible manner which would meet recreative needs
should be welcomed heartily.

It was a principle of good logic and business sense as well as an
ideal of fifty years ago which forbade the erection of buildings in parks
merely to "decorate" the park or to find a cheap or available site in land
already paid for. Except in one or two instances, during this past half
century, the public has united against any extraneous building projects
upon the Common, Public Garden, the Fens, Franklin Park, or in any part
of the Park System. Pleas of emergency, economy, fitness, beauty, have
not overcome the wise determination of the public to keep the parks for
the recreative purposes which justified the expenditure of money for
them and the withdrawal of their land area from taxation. In most other
cities the protection of the parks against building operations has been
pretty generally successful. As building space in Boston becomes less,
demands of this kind will probably continue, but under the present temper
of the public mind the parks appear to be reasonably secure. The fact
that buildings have been torn down in recent years in the thickly settled
regions of Boston to secure space for parks, makes the public doubly
skeptical of the business common sense of erecting structures upon park
areas. Wholesale demolition of buildings to widen streets and to find
sites for modern edifices is one of the familiar sights of the Boston
of today, and indeed of all modern American cities. Consequently, the
plea so often used in the past that no land other than that of a park
is available for a contemplated building project does not carry its former
weight.

CHANGES IN LIVING CONDITIONS

Today a large population of the central portion of Boston lives in
tenement and apartment houses. More families, consequently, live upon the

-is-

land and require larger nearby playgrounds and parks to accommodate them.
The wide general home use of prepared foods, use of public laundries,
restaurants, and other utilities, tend to reduce the number of household
servants, and tend with the transit facilities provided by the automobile
and the electric car to make the upbuilding of residence areas exceedingly
rapid and to render the individual home smaller, less permanent in loca-
tion, and to make the dwelling an almost standard commodity which may be
leased or bought or sold at short notice. The increasing flexibility
of hearthstone ties and almost universal facilities for cheap, individual
transportation, have placed the family in a position to move from one
part of the city to another, to adopt country or seashore life during the
summer season, to make long expeditions to distant parts of the country
at any season, and to make rapid changes of employment. These changes in
living conditions are not peculiar to Boston. They are taking place
over all this country and in Europe. Whether we like these changes or
not, theyare one of the salient features of the times. To ignore them
in the distribution and layout of parks, and to attempt to provide op-
portunities and facilities only for those forms of recreation which were
in vogue when the parks were established would fail to meet the needs
of the hour and the demands of taxpayers. On the other hand to transform
our parks instantly to meet all these demands to their full would be
equally unwise.

Among other changes of the past half century the following maybe
noted which have effected the home, places of employment, the schools,
the highways, and therefore the parks: General use of electricity for
lighting, power, and to some extent for cooking and heating (for both
of which gas is also used); general use of the telephone and radio,
wider patronage of theatres, picture shows, music and dance halls,
indoor skating rinks, museums, the circus, pageants, athletic games and
contests; increase in size and number of schools, libraries, churches,
hospitals, baths, gymnasia; increased popularity of baseball, football,
basketball, tennis, golf, hockey; increased interest in "hiking," long
distance touring and camping; increase in out-of-town industrial plants
of large size and with excellent equipment; remarkable development
of suburban land for housing and country clubs; shortening of working
hours, increased wages, and improvement of working conditions, increase
of cost of building materials, clothing and food; elimination of the horse
traction, the development of the private automobile and truck, the
decline of surface trolley cars, the growing use of the motor bus,
construction of rapid transit subways and elevated electric lines;
radical widening and straightening of streets on an extensive scale,
creation of local and State planning boards, development of zoning
laws to permit rational control of building height, use and area. This list
is by no means complete, but it illustrates the range and the intensity
of change. Smoke originating from factories, power plants, locomotives
office buildings, dwellings and other sources, prevents the growth of ever-
green trees and shrubbery in the parks of the central portions of the City.

-17-

Al though the horse as a transportation agent upon the park roads
and the parkways, which were designed for horse-drawn vehicles, has all
but vanished, the number of families and individuals who have at their
comnand privately owned and operated pleasure automobiles is vastly greater
than those who formerly used horses. This change has brought a \/ery
much heavier traffic burden upon park roads and parkways than could have
been foreseen, with the result that radical widenings and reconstruction
of these pleasure ways has become necessary both to meet recreative
needs and for purposes of safety. Danger resulting from the use of
rapidly moving motor vehicles has caused their exclusion from certain
park driveways. Large areas of park are devoted to the storage or
"parking" of the motor cars of visitors. The number of visitors to the
large parkways and parks has increased enormously, in part owing to the
use of roadways as mere transportation routes and in part to the increasing
use of the parks by out-of-town visitors who frequent the beaches, the
local athletic fields, the golf courses and the attractions of the Zoo
or the Aquarium.* Rapid transit facilities offered by electric cars
upon the streets, elevated railroads and subways has made possible
an extraordinary interchange of recreative opportunities across the
entire length of the City. A local playground, if it be sufficiently
large and well -equipped, like the Christopher J. Lee Playground**
for example, attracts patrons from all parts of the City and from all
parts of the Metropolitan area, and also from points outside the State.

These radical changes in living conditions have gone hand in hand with
an increasing demand for playground facilities for ball playing, baseball,
football, tennis, basketball, for children's play fields, for bathing
beaches, for ample parkways, for golf courses, and for the "special
feature" attractions of the Zoo, the Rose Garden and other exhibits.
Changes somewhat parallel are taking place in the parks and parkways
of many cities of this country and of Europe. If anything, the changes
in Boston are slower than those in other large American cities, partly
because theBoston Park System was developed earlier and is less flexible,
and partly because we have been unwilling to make hasty changes.

To say that there is less appreciation than was expected twenty-five
years ago of the impressive landscapes of the great country park section of
Franklin Park, of the meadow and hillside landscapes of the Riverway,
and of the woodland interiors of the lower parks, is probably true if the
quiet, leisurely contemplation of these compositions by the great mass of
visitors is meant. Frequenters of the Boston Parks are an exceedingly
"strenuous" part of our population. That these men, women and children
do not dwell in a lingering manner upon the loveliness of these park
landscapes and pause to contemplate them in the fashion of th& Schools of

*Boston's first Aquarium was built in 1912 in Marine Park in South Boston.
It was destroyed in the 1950's. An ice skating rink of dubious archi-
tectural merit replaced it.

**0n M Street in South Boston.

■18-

Landscape Painters of three-quarters of a century ago need not trouble
us. The contemplations of our day are all necessarily brief and rushing.
That is our whole manner of life. The great landscape compositions of
our Park System are seen, enjoyed and highly valued. Whenever they have
been threatened the popular outcry has been great and it has been compel-
ling. Enthusiasm for golf has made the public a willing spectator of some
transformations of the Country Park which ought to be retrieved when
other golf courses are provided. Enthusiasm for ball fields has also
witnessed injury to the naturalistic landscapes of some of the smaller
parks and the reduction in area of adjacent tracts intended for the
use of children and girls. There is a growing sentiment for the restoration
of these tracts, but at the moment the demands of the young men and boys
have been so keenly pressed that the needs of children, girls and elders
have been made secondary in some instances. The recent creation of new
special playgrounds to meet the latter needs, without accommodations for
the larger boys and men, at the Cherry Street, the Morton Street and the
Bolton Street Playgrounds, where buildings which covered the entire space
have been demolished, indicates both the demand for play space for
children and the determination of the City to furnish it even by
resorting to drastic methods.

RESULTS OF THESE CHANGES

What bearing have these changes upon Boston's future park and play-
ground system?

First, the demand for public recreation areas having steadily in-
creased through a half century of a most searching kind of change in which
full rein has been given to all other competing forms of recreative op-
portunity, no doubt now remains either with regard to the permanent
value of public open spaces or of the importance of placing their de-
velopment in the front rank of needed public improvements.

Second, playground areas whose space for athletic contests is large
are required in greater number to meet the needs of a public which has
modern transportation facilities at its command and which shows an in-
creasing interest in viewing spectacular games. Public golf courses
are in demand.

Third, a public which is accustomed to the sight of the rapid erec-
tion of large buildings, the rapid installation of public service utilities
and the wholesale rapid construction of dwellings upon extensive areas
of new ground is impatient of slow or piecemeal development of recreative
facilities.

-19-

Fourth, the extraordinary facility with which domicile for homes
can be bought, sold, hired or leased and the ease with which employment
is "overturned" has brought into existence a large population always
ready to move into or out of residential sections which change character
and become attractive or unattractive. For this reason well equipped
and well maintained recreative facilities must be regarded as valuable
in stabilizing the value of the City of Boston as a residential district
in competition with surrounding cities and towns.

Fifth, horse-drawn vehicles have disappeared from the parkways and
are replaced by a much greater number of more rapidly-moving motor vehicles
which require wider and straighter roadways and road junctions of new
forms in order to reduce the number of accidents and to facilitate traffic
control. The parkways are unsafe for the use of foot power bicycles, and
are less attractive to horseback riders and to pedestrians.

Sixth, the parkways are widely used for long distance inter-city ancj
inter-state motor routes, in part because they are wide, smooth and
attractive, and in part because other through routes of good width and
smoothness are lacking in the general street system of Boston and
surrounding cities and towns. There is a constant demand for extensive
widenings of the roadways of the parkways at the expense of grass and
tree spaces.

Seventh, on the parkways horse cars have been replaced by trolley
cars, and the latter are frequently operated in trains, at high speeds,
with few stops, and tend to destroy the grass of the reserve spaces.
The automobile bus is making its appearance on some of the parkways.

Eighth, there is an increasing demand for motor parking spaces,
motor camp grounds, oiling stations and roadside restaurants.

The above are obvious results. Other results not clearly seen at
present may be expected to develop in coming years.

The most convincing argument for local recreation spaces of good
size, say seven to ten or more acres as contrasted with spaces of small
size, say one to two acres, is found by actual field examination of such
small areas and by the opinion expressed by those who depend upon the
meagre accommodations.

A playground in a residence district should not present, when seen
from without, an expanse of play surfaces and fences so arid and mechani-
cally uninteresting as to hurt the general appearance of the neighborhood.
Trees, vine-clad walls, or borders of shrubbery and grass should be
arranged to make the exterior of such play spaces attractive.

-20-

USE OF THE PARKS FOR SPECIAL GAMES

Although the pastoral landscape areas of Franklin Park were not
designed to accommodate golf, this game is now played extensively upon
them. In many respects the game is appropriate to this park, and under
present control little objection can be made.

When a golf course and the play upon it is subordinate in incident
to the landscape, of a public park, objection to the course cannot be
sustained against a strong demand for it. On the other hand, if a golf
course becomes a most conspicuous element in the scenery through the
presence of hazards, bunkers, tees, the play itself, and other features
which seize the attention, objection to the course tjecomes fundamental.
A decision must be made, then, either to preserve the landscapes upon
which the golf course has intruded, or to regard the former landscapes
as an intruding element and yield it to the new game. In making such a
decision the following facts should be weighed. I dwell upon them at
some length because the relation of the golf course to the design of
Franklin Park is typical of other unintended uses which may spring up
in the parks and which in the long run may tend to destroy features
justifying the construction of such parks and essential to their all
around public use.

First, there are places other than Franklin Park in the vicinity of
Boston where golf can be played, but there is no other area of public ground
in Boston or even in its near vicinity where a landscape as extensive
has been designed and brought to a high degree of perfection for the
enjoyment of persons who wish to view it from woodlands which surround
it or who wish to walk over open areas which are sheltered from distracting
objects and brought into an attractive composition by the grouping of
trees and border shrubbery in relation to the contour of hills and valleys.
Second, this landscape composition was designed to be the most important
feature of Franklin Park, and to this composition all the minor landscapes -
the Zoo, the service areas, the great Playstead, and the extensive fields
for tennis - were carefully subordinated. All the main roadways which
connect the parkways on the west at the Arborway with those on the east
at Columbia Road through the Park were placed where sight and noise of
vehicles would not intrude upon this landscape composition. Third,
a golf course has been developed in this landscape composition because
the ground could be used without rental or purchase cost and the public
could play without club membership or other cost incident to private
courses.

The intensive use of this ground for a purpose which was not in-
tended when the Park was designed has come about very gradually and through

-21-

the slow development over a term of years of a game whose ultimate
requirements were not foreseen. In the beginning the game appeared
to be one which would be played chiefly by those who sought this land-
scape for the very kind of enjoyment it was intended to provide and under
conditions which would not modify the landscape itself. If the requirements
of the game develop to a point where they are at variance with the
design of the Park, the course should either be given up or it should be
modified to become once more a subordinate element in the landscape
even at the sacrifice of some of the interest of the game which can
be played upon it. It is to be hoped that the game can be continued in
the Park under conditions which are satisfactory to the integrity of these
impressive landscape compositions.

The popularity of golf is so great, and the present capacity of the
course at Franklin Park is so heavily taxed, that additional accommoda-
tions for the enjoyment of the game ought to be found upon public ground.
The terrain required for the game is appropriate to the ground of a
park system. Other cities are laying out municipal golf courses in
liberal number. Land of sufficient extent is available for purchase
and development for golf near Boston.

CHANGES ALREADY MADE IN THE PARK SYSTEM TO ACCOMMODATE
TRAFFIC

Considerations of public safety and convenience have required
the following changes in the Park System during the past ten years to
meet the requirements of motor vehicle traffic.

1. The straightening of Commonwealth Avenue, between Massachusetts
Avenue and Governor Square, and the construction of a double-barreled
roadway throughout.

2. The straightening of the Westland Avenue entrance to the Fens
and the creation of a circle for the gyratory handling of traffic.

3. The straightening of Morton Street at the easterly end of the
Arborway to enable the latter parkway to function as a through motor
route rather than as an entrance primarily for Franklin Park.

4. The widening and straightening of the Circuit Road of Franklin
Park to provide a width of 40 feet and to eliminate some of the sharper
curves. This work has been completed within the past two months.

5. The widening and straightening of Glen Lane at the easterly side
of Franklin Park for the accommodation of trucks. Work partly completed,

*** ■ -.,. .- -^; .; ,-,-_,;j_:^J■>;,;•^;.^■-

The Rose Garden in September, 1925.

The Golf Course from Future Parks, Playgrounds and Parkways.
1925. This picture was taken before the course was
enlarged to eighteen holes in 1922; note the construction on
the left.

The Blue Hill Avenue Entrance Rotary - named in honor of
Robert S. Peabody, architect and Park Commissioner - photo
taken in August, 1981.

■22-

6. Straightening of some of the roads of the Jamaicaway at the southerly
end of Jamaica Pond to permit better functioning of the double roadways

of the Arborway.

7. Widening of roadway along the notherly edge of Jamaica Pond to
accommodate motor vehicles. Also widening Riverway to Brookline Avenue.

8. Elimination of vehicles from The Mall of Franklin Park, being a
departure from the original scheme for The Greeting, which was intended
to accommodate horse-drawn vehicles.

9. The construction of a large circle to assist traffic control at
the westerly end of Beacon Street in pursuance of plans made nearly half
a century ago but not executed until recently.

10. The construction of a large traffic circle at South Boston at the
junction of Columbia Road and the Old Colony Boulevard to assist in
traffic control .

11. Provision of special parking spaces for motors at many of the
parks, including World War Memorial Park at East Boston, Columbus Park
at South Boston, Peabody Circle in Franklin Park and elsewhere.

12. To the above should be added the rounding of street corners
adjacent to parks, the widening of streets adjacent to parks by the re-
duction in width of sidewalks as in the case of Charles Street between
the Common and the Public Garden, the improvement of visibility conditions
at street corners, the elimination of shrubbery plantations alongside
curving park roads where public safety requires a clear view of traffic,
and the erection of signs and other directional material, and the use of
white paint to mark crossings, curbings and other lines requiring special
attention on the part of operators of motor vehicles. Under the rapid
increase in the number of motor vehicles and the need of greater public
safety, many other changes will undoubtedly be required which cannot

be foreseen at the present time. At the moment the use of exceedingly
conspicuous directional signs and roadway markings appears to be necessary,
although these features hurt the appearance of the park roads.

THE PARKWAYS OF THE PARK SYSTEM

The relation of the parkways of the Boston Park System to the larger
parks and to the playgrounds, as well as to the great park areas and park-
ways of the Metropolitan System is shown on the small scale plan between
page 2 and 3 and also on the plan on page 45 to a larger scale. The re-
lation of these parkways to main thoroughfares is also indicated, and
letters are entered on the plan for convenient reference.

?3-aoj

-23-

What determined the arrangement of the width of the parkways of the
Park System when they were laid down? They were arranged to connect centres
of population with the large parks. They were also intended to enhance
the recreative efficiency of the parks by extending their zones of in-
fluence. Subsequently parkways were arranged to connect Franklin Park
with the ocean beaches at South Boston by means of Columbia Road, and with
the Muddy Pond Reservation by means of the West Roxbury Parkway. Another
group of parkways or park-like roads. Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue
extensions, were built for other than strictly park purposes and formed
arterial thoroughfares leading into the suburbs. The width of the first
series of parkways was made more than sufficient to accommodate horse-
drawn vehicles and sidewalks, in order to include generous space for trees,
waterways and lawns. Space for these landscape features was considered
essential. The City spent its treasure liberally to buy land and to
develop it for such landscape effects. The moneys spent for the landscape
elements of the parkways over and above the cost of the mere smooth road-
ways brought a return in attractiveness and distinction which has made
Boston's parkways famous over this country.

What promises in the future to determine the arrangement and the
width of the parkways of Boston? Whether we relish it or not, the re-
quirements of motor vehicle traffic are tending to cut down the landscape
elements of the parkways by widenings, straightenings and double-barreling
of the roadways at the expense of ground which was considered essential
for grass areas, trees and shrubbery. Initial widenings and straightenings
have become necessary on account of the greater width and speed of motor
vehicles more or less independently of the volume of traffic. Subsequent
widenings will probably be required to accommodate volume. This volume
will arise not from a demand for park-approach facilities, but to secure
road space, because the local highways of the City and the suburbs are
so narrow and so poorly connected that they cannot be used for convenient
through routes. Naturally enough, complaint is made of the parkway
capacities, although projects are put on foot at the same time to bring
still larger volumes of traffic into them by linking them with the main
thoroughfares and with the Metropolitan parkways. In the meantime
progress is being made with plans for the connection of the faulty
alignment both of local highways of the City by the Boston Planning
Board and of the Metropolitan District and by the State authorities.
Evidently, however, there is danger that the more expensive local street
improvement projects will be postponed until the development of the parkways
for motor use is either carried to a point where all their width will be
devoted to road surfaces for the accommodation of vehicles or to a point
which will arouse public protest against the destruction of the grass
spaces, shrubbery masses and the trees which were regarded in the beginning
as essential to the attractiveness of these ways. The temptation to allow
the development of the roadways of the parkways to proceed too far will
become \/ery great as a matter of immediate relief and of instant economy^,
but sooner of later the City and the State will be forced to link together
and to widen the highways which are responsible for a great part of this
congestion, at least to a point where the destruction of the parkways
as pleasure routes and as necessary adornments of the City can be stopped.

■24-

To regard the parkways as routes whose pleasant appearance and de-
corative effect are essential to the welfare of Boston is not an extreme
view. Boston has possessed no other one feature which has occasioned
so much favorable comment from visitors or which has been so widely
copied by other cities of the country. To permit these parkways to
be seriously injured during this epoch of the revolution of vehicular
transportation could only be justified upon grounds of a vast gain in
some other field. At the moment the only gain in sight would be a post-
ponement of the cost of undertaking the long contemplated improvement of
the highway system as a whole, which is urgently needed for every reason
quite apart from its bearing upon the over-use of parkways. Certainly
a postponement of these costs to the State and to the City could not
justify an injury of vast magnitude to the Park System. Injury of this
kind would mean more than a reduction of attractiveness of the parkways
themselves. It would mean an injury to the attractiveness of the City
as a whole and a consequent reduction in the value and the earning power
of all the treasure which has been invested in the City as a residence
district. In passing to a discussion of desirable future extensions
of the parkways, I make the assumption, therefore, from the foregoing,
that such extensions can neither take the place of general highway
improvements of the City, nor can be recommended unless those highway
improvements are assured.

The great U-shaped system of main parkways is provided with a con-
venient group of highways which lead from "B" at the Fens by way of Westland
Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue to Columbia Road at the point "F." The
northerly branch through Southampton Street to "G" in Columbus Park
needs the improvement of Preble Street, as shown on the recent plans of
the Planning Board.

Reference to the plan indicates the need of better connection
between the point "A" in the heart of the City and the point "H" on the
South Boston waterfront. The proposal to extend Summer Street by a widening
of L Street would render the park facilities at South Boston more useful.
At the opposite end of Summer Street, in the neighborhood of Dewey
Square, the proposal of the Planning Board to construct an intermediate
thoroughfare approximately as shown by the dotted lines would assist
in uniting the extreme northeasterly sections of the City and also Old
Boston with Summer Street and consequently with South Boston. The con-
struction of the Metropolitan Old Colony Parkway from "6" along the
margin of Dorchester Bay toward "J" and thence souteast toward Quincy
will make the parkway facilities of the City of greater use to long
distance motor vehicle travel. The westerly extension of the parkway
system from the Fens at "B" through Commonwealth Avenue to Chestnut
Hill Reservoir by the line "S R Q" forms an important link in one of the
main westerly arteries of the City which leads via the Newton Boulevard
to Auburndale Bridge.

■25-

The northerly lead of the West Roxbury Parkway from the Stony Brook
Reservation to Weld Street, if extended from "0," as proposed by the Town
of Brookline, toward Hammond's Pond and thence northwest to a termination
in the Charles River Valley, is desirable.

The wide highway connection proposed by the Planning Board of Brookline
connecting the vicinity of Jamaica Pond at "C" with Beacon Street at
Cleveland Circle near the point "Q" will provide a useful connection
between the Brighton district and the waterfront at South Boston.

An east-west connection between the Stony Brook Reservation at "N"
and the vicinity of Mattapan Square at "L" by the suggested improvement
of River Street would be of value to residents of Hyde Park and West
Roxbury wishing to proceed either by way of Blue Hill Avenue or by way
of the Neponset River Valley to the waterfront facilities at City Point.

The proposal of the State Highway Commission to provide an east-west
connection from Morton Street by way of Codman Street to Neponset is also
desirable.

In East Boston, Bennington Street in combination with Neptune Road
serves as a convenient approach to Wood Island Park, though these two
highways are not under the jurisdiction of the Park Department. The
proposal to connect Wood Island Park (World War Memorial Park) with a
park-like waterfront street extending northeast to the existing Metropolitan
Park land on Breed's Island would unite Neptune Road, Wood Island Park
and the Winthrop shore to form an attractive local chain of parks.

The general relation of the parkways of the City of Boston to those
of the Commonwealth are shown on the plan, between pages 44 and 45. Although
these ways were intended for the accommodation of pleasure vehicles making
short excursions to the parks either from Boston or from the surrounding
towns, these arteries are being used today to an increasing degree by
long distance motors passing from the southern portion of the State or
from Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York State northwards into New
Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. So much traffic is being led to these
arteries that they are becoming rapidly overcrowded and the attention
of the Planning Boards of the City and surrounding towns, as well as the
Metropolitan Planning Division, is being turned to the development of
long distance highways, especially of a circumferential alignment, which
should distribute traffic and prevent undue concentration on the parkways.

To what degree the traffic of the parkways at the east and west of
Franklin Park should be en oDuraged to use the Circuit Road, recently opened,
is a matter which experience can alone determine. A separation of roads
at points of crossing by means of underpasses similar to those which have
been carried out in Central Park, New York, may become necessary, notably
in the vicinity of the Valley Gate and at the crossing with Glen Lane
near Peabody Circle.

City or BOSTON

Park Dcpvrtmi \t
PARKWAYS

•26-

Other separation of grades will doubtless be needed in time on the main
parkways at points of intersection like those at Longwood Avenue, Brookline
Avenue, and at Columbia Road - Old Colony Avenue junction. These are
problems which cannot be foreseen in their entirety while the present
rapid changes in traffic conditions are taking place and before the
better co-ordination of the main highways of the district has been ef-
fected through the activities of the Planning Boards of the cities and
towns of the Commonwealth.

RECOMMENDATIONS

If there were no system in the grouping of Boston parks, or if the
parks individually were unable to meet the ordinary requirements of
recreation under the changes of recent years, the report which ought to
be made with regard to the parks could not fail to include recommendations
of a striking kind, involving much expense for their accomplishment.
If such were the state of the parks the changes and the expense involved
in such recommendations conceivably might be as striking as some of those
which are entailed in the reports of sensible men for the improvement
of the ordinary street system of the City to-day to meet the needs of
vehicular traffic. It is regrettable in one respect that the requirements
of the parks are not striking in such a sense, for there is danger that
\iery pressing needs may not awaken and hold the public attention which
they deserve and which the continued prosperity of the City requires.
The methodical planning of the Boston Park System during the past half
century, by continuing groups of able men who have been singularly clear
sighted in providing both for the recreation needs of their own day and
for the expectable needs for the future, is responsible for the fact
that recommendations of a drastic kind involving great immediate expen-
diture comparable with the sums which are required to correct the layout
of public streets are not required to-day.

The work of these men places a responsibility of another kind upon
their successors. It is the responsibility of carrying through and ex-
tending work which was well planned in the beginning and which has been
on the whole well directed for half a century. To protect this older fabric
from injury while changing it as little as need be to meet new conditions
and at the same time to make new fabric of like weave where it is needed
by a new era, is a part of this work. Recommendations for the continuance
of such established work must be striking, however, if they reflect the
singular urge of our own times toward an escape from the confinement
of city life at a period when city-building itself never went forward
so enthusiastically or built so compactly, so high and so wide. The
cost involved is also great either to foolow with too absolute step or to
fall too far behind the pace which the public is setting to-day in re-
sponse to this urge for the establishment of new parks, playgrounds and
parkways, and for the use of existing recreation areas to a point of
intensity which taxes their integrity.

-27-

I make the following recommendations based on the material of the
report:

1. Ground for playgrounds and parks should be secured at an early
day in the sparsely settled section of the City which have been described
and shown on the plans while opportunity remains to select well situated
areas of sufficient size, satisfactory contour and soil, having good
trees, located if possible near schools, but distant from dangerous
motor routes.

2. The above open spaces should be sufficiently large to accommodate
combined park and playground facilities, including ball fields for boys
and men, play fields for children and girls, field houses, shelters and
apparatus, and also park space planted with trees, lawns and shrubbery
for the use of older persons.

3. The distance between these recreation areas should be determined
by the distance-radius areas described in the report.

4. In the more thickly settled parts of the City where parks and
playgrounds are lacking they should be provided where needed and their
size and development should be made to conform as fully as possible

to the requirements specified in the three recommendations above.

5. In sections of the City where present parks and playgrounds are
too small to meet the requirements of men and boys, women and girls, and
of older persons, additions should be made preferably by acquiring more
space adjacent to the present areas, but if this is not possible, by the
interpolation of new recreation areas designed to meet the special
recreative requirements of that neighborhood.

6. In sections of the City where playground areas are required for
ball fields or athletic grounds for men and boys, these should not be
secured by the absorption of parks which are needed by children or girls
or by elder persons or which if used for ball fields would injure the
appearance of the Park System or of the locality.

7. The extensive landscapes of the larger parks should be protected
by the mainenance or the provision of marginal screens of foliage, mounds,
or walls, for the purposes described in the report, and should also be
protected against the encroachments of uses, structures, or planting

at variance with the landscape composition of these parks.

8. Golf or other field games which are played upon the open ground
embracing the central landscape compositions of the larger parks should
not be permitted to mark the ground with lines of play, hazards, bunkers,
trees, backnets, or other features or structures to such an extent that
the appearance of the landscapes becomes marred or to such a degree that
the use of these grounds for the enjoyment of the landscape becomes un-
reasonably interrupted or involved with danger.

-28-

9. Land should be acquired for golf courses or for other field games
whose accommodation upon existing park areas would endanger the attractive-
ness of such areas, and whose continued popularity is reasonably assured.

10. The interior roadways of the large parks should be developed for
the use of motor vehicles, but not beyond limits which would jeopardize
the value of the park for general recreative use or interfere with the
enjoyment of its landscapes by the distractions of the sight of moving
vehicles and by noise.

11. The parkways of the Park System should be developed for the use
of motor vehicles, but not to a degree which would make them dangerous
for pleasure use or to an extent which would mar their appearance.

12. Undue use of the interior Park roads or the Parkways by motor
vehicles as an expedient to avoid the cost of construction of adequate
general highways for the accommodation of the traffic of the City or of
adjacent towns or cities or of the Metropolitan District should not be
permitted.

13. The Parkway connections and extensions advocated in the report
should be carried out if the demands of traffic continue to increase.

14. The "naturalistic manner" in which the Park System was laid out
and which gives desirable unity of design to the System as a whole
should not be abandoned in any of the parks forming the main chain of
the System.

15. Variety in the design of the scattered playgrounds and small
parks of the City should be sought both %o prevent undesirable standardi-
zation, and to secure the full recreational value of local individualities
of site, exposure, contour of the ground, and local requirements of use.

16. To prove as far as may be a depreciation of the treasure which is
invested in the City as a place of residence, and to secure the greatest
returns in inspiration and in ordinary recreation which the Park System
can yield, the playgrounds and parkways in all parts of the City should

be maintained in a high state of upkeep, free from appearance of shabbiness
or neglect. The parks should receive equally good care, but the upkeep
of their landscapes should not be made a mechanical routine which would
impair the natural appearance or the intricacy and attractiveness of
their foliage compositions.

Respectfully submitted,

ARTHUR A. SHURTLEFF, Landscape Architect.

11 Beacon Street, Boston.

/ 7 9 7 2 S