Parks for the People: Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876Various
History
Parks for the People: Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876
Various
Parks -- Massachusetts -- Boston
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.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account