In Baltimore the work of preparing an accurate and comprehensive topographical and property map was begun in 1893 by a Topographical Survey Commission created for the purpose. The area completely mapped was about thirty square miles although the triangulation necessarily extended over a considerably larger area. The first two-thirds of the area mapped was completed in about two years; the cost, including all field work, office work, draughting, and publication, was about $5,000 per square mile. Allowing for the normally higher costs of all work in New York as compared with Baltimore, and allowing for the fact that the Baltimore figures include little if any street monumenting or final record maps of layout, this figure corresponds very closely with the cost of $10.29 per acre or $6,585.60 per square mile reported from the Borough of Queens.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] The difference between the cost per acre to date and the estimated cost per acre of completed work is due to the initial cost of organization and to the cost of general work, such as triangulation and traversing, which must be done at the start for the whole or most of the area to be surveyed.
PART IV
Notes on Parks and Recreation Facilities
The Bellefield Improvement
Plans for a grouping of public buildings in the Bellefield District, and for improving the entrance to Schenley Park, have been studied with some care. Two plans are herewith submitted (Plan A and Plan B), the essential difference between them being that Plan A contemplates scarcely more than the improvement of the existing layout, while Plan B involves a radical change of design, and absolutely requires, for its happy execution, a control of developments on the Frick property north of Forbes Street.
In Plan A the ravine between the Carnegie Institute and Forbes Field is not filled up but is enlarged. The bridge over the ravine remains, but the present driveway entrance from Forbes Street is moved 50 or 60 feet east, to give room for a double row of trees to screen the Forbes Field grandstand. This road is continued south from the end of the stone bride to Bates and Boquet Streets, thus gaining a direct connection to the Oakland District. Another driving entrance is shown east of the ravine to accommodate travel from the East End through Bellefield, Dithridge and Forbes Streets. Bellefield Street is widened and Tennyson Avenue is extended from Fifth Avenue to Forbes Street, in order to give a more fitting approach to the Institute. And finally, an appropriate setting is provided for the front of the Institute by a small plaza surrounded by public or quasi-public buildings. It may be noted that one of these buildings, the stone church on Dithridge Street, already exists, but it is nearly hidden from Forbes Street by cheap wooden buildings and signboards.