BY H. W. S. CLEVELAND.
Few persons think of a park as anything but a place of recreation, a pleasure ground, and an ornamental appendage of a city.
As a consequence, if it is proposed to create a park in any city, every suggestion that is offered in regard to its location is based upon the fact of its superior natural advantages; its picturesque character; its command of fine views, or the features of attractive interest it combines.
Without denying the value of any of these elements, I wish to call attention to other objects which are rarely thought of, and yet are deserving of careful consideration in determining the location.
Almost every city comprises within its limits some portion of territory which is not adapted for business purposes, and is not attractive to that class of inhabitants who can afford to choose the location of their residences. Such localities are at first left vacant, but as population increases they are occupied first by squatters, then by those who can afford nothing better, and finally become the site of tenement houses, or dens of resort for the worst class of human beings, male and female, that the city contains.
The original cause of the avoidance of the place may have been that it was low and subject to malarial influences, or of such topographical character that it could only be adapted to residence purposes at very great cost.
In either of these cases it is obvious that the first cost of the land will be far less than that of a tract combining all the features which render it most attractive as a site for residences. Let us now consider some of the effects of improving such sites:
Suppose the area to be low and wet, an unsightly tract, suggestive of chills and fever, and too extensive for improvement by its individual owners. Instead of suffering it to become the plague spot and breeding place of moral and physical diseases, as it certainly will if left to itself, let the city purchase and improve it as a park, first, by thorough drainage, and then by such artistic arrangement as shall make it an attractive resort, and it is obvious that the result will be not only the securing of a charming place of recreation and ornament to the city, but the conversion of a threatening danger to health, into a chief source of its promotion. The creation of such an improvement also invariably changes the character of its surroundings by rendering them desirable as residence sites, and thus repaying the cost by the increased taxable value of adjacent property. It often happens, however, that large areas are comprised within, or adjacent to, a city, which even if unobjectionable on the score of health are not available for residence on account of their topographical character.
The site of the New York Central Park affords an illustration of my meaning:
At the time of its first inception in 1857—the whole of that section of the city was a series of barren ledges of rocks of such forbidding nature that no individual proprietor could afford the expense of preparing an area for residence and providing himself with the simplest necessities of comfort. The land had only a nominal value, and its only occupants