Nor did the _Journal of Commerce_ lack help. In 1854 Mayor Jacob Westervelt spoke with hostility in his annual message of the two park projects. The Central Park enactment, he said, reserved six hundred acres in the center of the island, “toward which the flood of population is rapidly pouring”; while its limits embraced “an area vastly more extensive than is required for the purpose, and deprives the citizens of the use of land for building purposes, much of which cannot be judiciously spared.” As for Jones’s Wood, it ought not to be taken at all. “The shore on the margin of this park is generally bold, affording a depth of water invaluable for commercial purposes.” The _Evening Post_ denied that the tide of population was setting toward the center of the island, saying that it moved fastest up the Hudson and East Rivers--an historical fact. The waterfront of Jones’s Wood was probably not more than one two-hundredth of the island’s whole margin. “Can we have no fresh air, no green trees, no agreeable walks and drives, that Smith may have more houses to let, and Brown and Co. have less distance to go to their warehouses and ships?” The endeavor to save Jones’s Wood failed in 1854, and for a time it seemed likely that the proposed area of Central Park would be decidedly reduced. A member of the State Senate that year introduced a bill for slicing one-sixth off each side of the park on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Avenue, for shortening it at both ends, and for “interspersing the park into suitable squares connecting with each other but on which, or parts of which, family edifices may be erected.” This, as the _Evening Post_ said, was simply a scheme to destroy the park. It could understand “that the eye accustomed to look upon the dollar as the only attractive object in this world, would not find the beauty of a park ‘materially lessened’ when beholding it covered with rent-paying brick and mortar; but the idea of ‘public recreation’ among dwelling houses, in open spaces like Union and Washington Squares ... is too absurd.” When hearings were held this same month (January, 1854), upon Mayor Westervelt’s proposals for curtailing Central Park, the advocates of the original limits seemed to be weakening. The Mayor’s supporters desired a park of about one-third the area originally proposed, and presented a petition with several thousand signatures. The chief spokesman for the opposite side, Samuel B. Ruggles, indicated his willingness to consent to a less drastic reduction, making the park extend from Sixth Avenue to Eighth, or from Fifth to Seventh, instead of from Fifth to Eighth. But against any weakening whatever of the plan as it stood the _Evening Post_ protested energetically. In the heart of London were more than 1,500 acres of park, it said, which would command high prices for building lots, yet New York jobbers grumbled over sparing 700. The people owed it “to the thousands coming after