Gutzon was highly pleased with his work as permanent chairman. Forty years had passed since the country’s two pioneer landscape artists had made one of the most famous parks in the world from some rocks and a swamp in the middle of Manhattan Island. They had brought in hundreds of tons of soil and thousands of rare trees and shrubs. They had laid out driveways for carriages and winding paths for pedestrians. They had provided lakes and playgrounds for children. In 1907 Samuel Parsons, the landscape architect under Mayor Green, was begging uselessly for better park equipment and a new watering system. The sculptor felt that he had been cast in the right role. An appropriation of $100,000 for improving the water system was passed that year. The sculptor gathered the curses of the old school of artists when he joined the parks association to keep the Academy of Design from putting up a building in Bryant Park. He won a taxpayer’s suit against the city in 1911 to prevent the slovenly extension of Riverside Drive in the Washington Heights region. In 1918, in a similar action, he prevented the building of an unsightly pumping station in Morningside Park. And routine park business, outside of the courts, amused him continuously because it was so full of trouble. In 1910 Mayor Hylan appointed Charles Stover, who had worked under the direction of the park association, his Commissioner of Parks. Stover promptly turned the park into a playground, principally by digging swimming pools and wading puddles wherever there was room for them. He came into direct opposition with Parsons the landscape architect. They quarreled. The commissioner held up the architect’s salary on the ground that he was absent from his office too much. Gutzon entered the fight with a letter to the New York _Sun_, pointing out that the new commissioner had “not rotted enough manure to fertilize a ten-acre lot, nor mustered enough courage to contract for a single manure pit.” He reminded his readers that “Last year a $100,000 high pressure water system remained absolutely idle for the lack of a little hose, and $100,000 worth of property was allowed to go to ruin.” He arrayed himself against a movement to impeach Stover and put his own report on the needs of the park before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. With him on the committee was a fine array of talent--Jacob Schiff, Francis Lynder Stetson, William J. Gibson, George W. Perkins, Charles L. Burmeister and some others. They got a respectful hearing. The sculptor submitted with his report sixty samples of Central Park soil that had been analyzed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The budget committee gave him hearty approval and allotted enough funds to save the park.