Parks for the People / Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876

by Various

We changed the Back Bay from a beautiful bay, where the wholesome tides of the ocean swept in, to a natural cesspool.

Well, now, look at the lanes and roads in the suburbs of Boston—beautiful. As you ride over them, there are trees hanging over them, and there are bushes on each side: you say it is charming. Well, go out there the next year. The selectmen if it is a town, the city government if it is a city, have changed all that. They have made a straight line right through it, and widened the streets sixty feet; cut down every tree, and made it one of the most disagreeable and painful spectacles that the eyes could rest upon. It is their duty so to do: it is a necessity. And so you go on destroying the beauties of the city, destroying its wholesomeness, destroying its charm; and now we have got to meet that tendency, and we have the power to meet it. We have the intellect, we have the money, we have the will, and we have the taste; and we would be incensed if any one should suggest that we do not. And yet we have allowed every city in the United States to get in advance of us. [A voice, "That's so.">[ Chicago has three thousand acres of parks; Philadelphia, five thousand; New York, one great park of about one thousand acres; and almost every city in Europe has better, more handsome and attractive accommodations than the city of Boston. I am ashamed to say it; but it is so. I trust, however, gentlemen, that, before I ever have the honor of addressing you again, we shall have taken the first step to remove this odium from the city of Boston. [Applause.]

Some six years ago, I think it was, the people got greatly in earnest that this park should be undertaken. They saw that the progress of the manufactories was fast destroying the beauties of Boston; that they were taking up the land in the suburbs rapidly: and, when I said that your green lands were destroyed, with their beautiful curved lines, I forgot to mention that your beautiful sheets of water are in the same danger. Why, look at Fresh Pond, look at Jamaica Pond! They are beautiful objects to gaze upon: but when manufactories begin to surround them, when there are soap manufactories and tanneries, and I do not know what, draining into the pond, the result is, that the water is unwholesome, that the fish die, the water cannot be drunk, and then physicians begin to tell their patients, "You had better move out of that neighborhood." Are you aware, gentlemen, that that is coming upon us, that we must meet it, and avert it?

Some years ago, the people of Boston were earnestly in favor of a park, or system of parks. The legislature, for some reason or other, required that the project should receive a vote of two-thirds of the people. That was extraordinary and hard. But it did receive a vote of two-thirds of the people of Boston proper, and more than two-thirds; but from the accident of a newly added portion of the city, for some reason or other, taking a slant in a certain direction, they voted very largely against it, and it fell through. We must take warning from that; for land that would have made then a handsome park, which we could have had, we cannot have now at all. It would cost altogether too much to take dwelling-houses and factories and railroad beds, if we could, for a park.

Well, after six years of restlessness, at last we went before the legislature again; and we got an act passed, authorizing the appointing of commissioners with powers. That act passed, helped by our most able fellow-citizen, Mr. Ropes, chairman of this meeting; and it was submitted to the votes of the people of Boston; and the park project was carried by the votes of this entire population,—Boston, East Boston, Charlestown, South Boston, Dorchester, Brighton, which make, all together, a very large and most decisive majority. And therefore, gentlemen, the question is not, Shall we have parks? you have decided that; but the question is, Whether, having determined to have them, we shall rest content with saying so? whether we will have our paper parks, as we have our paper money, with nothing to rest upon [laughter], or whether we shall have genuine parks, with life and trees, and have sheets of water? Now we are here to-night to say it is the latter that we want. [Applause.]

Fellow-citizens, that statute authorized the appointment by the Mayor, subject to approval, of three commissioners. Well, that was wise. It was not nine, seven, nor five; but it was three. Well, his Honor the Mayor, who has presided with so much dignity, wisdom, and integrity [applause] over the city of Boston for two years,—and we would be glad to get him for a third year, if his health would permit it [applause],—his Honor the Mayor appointed three gentlemen as commissioners, in whom this community have entire confidence. There are no politics among the Board of Commissioners; there is no jobbery in the Board of Commissioners; and I will venture to predict, gentlemen, that, when they finish their task, there will be no investigation. [Great applause.]

I was amazed on looking over their charge. Why, I found an item of coach-hire for the whole period of their service, nine dollars. Why, it would not have been enough to take three common councilmen from Parker's or Young's. [Laughter.] But it is all they have charged; and how, on that sum, they succeeded in riding around Boston, I do not know. Their experience with persons who let carriages must have been much more favorable than mine has been. But not only have they done honorably, economically, and frugally, they have put into their work an amount of brain-labor, an amount of patient investigation and of good judgment, which no one can have an adequate opinion of who has not read their book; but, if he has not, I hope he will. And at least this I may be allowed to say, I do not think any citizen of Boston has the right to object to those parks, or to be silent or indifferent on the subject, unless he has read the report of the Commission, and knows what is proposed, and has been done. [Applause.] They have consulted the best authorities. They have consulted Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead, who laid out Central Park in New York, and he is the highest authority on the construction of parks in the country; and he has been all over this neighborhood, viewing the localities, and they have taken every thing into consideration; and, gentlemen, what is the result? They do not propose to us one great park of a thousand acres, at an almost unattainable distance; they do not propose a great park that nobody can get to, unless he gives a day to it, and a good deal of money: but they have adopted a system based upon the natural characteristics of the neighborhood of Boston. And what better could they do? At East Boston, they have given them a park upon the water-side, where they will always have the fresh breezes of the sea. At South Boston, they have given them a park upon the water-side, one directly opposite Fort Independence, and then another one, called the South Park, larger; and Chester Park, which you are all familiar with, is already extended, and nearly ready to be used as far as Beacon Street; and thence it is to go over to Cambridge, and be the quickest means of access to the University. That same avenue is to be extended easterly till it strikes the farthest of the South Boston parks, opposite Fort Independence; and, when that is done, you will be able to drive or walk, according to your powers of walking, from the park opposite Fort independence, into the city, and across it, to Harvard University.

Now that is a good deal; but they have taken another step. They propose to take the water-front of the Charles River basin; and there is nothing in Nature so beautiful, so well adapted to the needs of a city, as a park, or boulevard, or promenade, directly on a water-front, especially if that water is sea-water,—if it is brought in and carried out by two daily tides. What more beautiful, what more wholesome, what more invigorating, during the hot season of the year, than to have an open boulevard, where you can sit, or walk, or ride,—a place for the fresh sea-water of the ocean brought in pure to you every day! Well, they mean to preserve that, and give us about two hundred feet for a driveway, a saddle-horse way (a saddle-pad, I think they call it), and footpath, a place for flowers and trees, as it extends along the water-side, beginning by Leverett Street, and going out as far as Brighton. Then from there they mean to take this great Back Bay, which Dr. Clarke properly called a natural cesspool, and keep a large part of it under water, the ocean to be let in and let out at our option, so that it can be always kept pure; and yet such a quantity of it, that it will be a sort of inland sea, where we can have regattas, and where every gentleman may keep his boat, and every boy may keep his scull; and perhaps it is just as well a boy's skull should be there as anywhere else a large part of the time. [Laughter.]

Then, gentlemen, they are going to take Jamaica Pond, and have a park or driveway around the pond; then the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, that has a parkway one hundred feet in width, where you can drive or walk at your pleasure. In West Roxbury they are to have a mountain-park, which will be the largest (about five hundred acres); and it is well called a providence, because it is high, it is rocky, it has a thoroughly sylvan look, like a forest. You would feel as if you were fifty miles from Boston, if you were where you could not see the city. At the same time, it is beautiful for a park. There are very few houses there; and it is difficult to make it salable for residences. But they have selected this spot; and they are going to give us the best park of the city, and then have all these parks connected by parkways, thus making them so convenient of access, that every poor man in Boston can take his child by his hand, and for five cents a head can be carried out to any one of those parks by the railroads. [Applause.]