West Side Park, the largest of these, located in Jersey City, with its entrance at the crest of the southern boundary of the Palisades and thence running west to the Hackensack River, is the only park where extensive improvements have yet been made, all of the upland portion, comprising about a hundred acres, having been turned over to the public as a finished park some time ago. This park, on account of its size and central location, occupies the same relation to the community as do Central Park to New York and Prospect Park to Brooklyn. It, therefore, seems highly desirable that it should be made as beautiful as possible. In their planning the architects had this as an important secondary motive. It has not been permitted to interfere in the least, however, with the idea of a thoroughly useful park, where rest and recreation should have first place. The plan contemplated no "Keep off the grass" signs, but provided, on the other hand, for a great abundance and a great variety of areas where almost every healthy outdoor recreation might be enjoyed. West Side Park is to-day one of the most popular recreation spots in the state.

It is on the meadow portion of this park that there will be constructed the largest playground in the world, where it is planned to provide such facilities for outdoor sports as have been found popular in the newer park systems throughout the country. Ample areas are arranged for baseball, tennis and general sports, and a field house with locker facilities will be located about midway of the field.

This playfield on what is now covered by the Hackensack meadows will comprise about sixty-nine acres, exclusive of another smaller tract. It will be about six times the size of the gigantic stadium at Athens, which is famous as the athletic field of the Greeks, and three times the size of the beautiful green lawn of Central Park, where thousands of Manhattan's children congregate daily. Nowhere in New York, which has scores of playgrounds greater in size than those of any other city in America, is there a field that can be rated in the same class, while it greatly exceeds in size any playground in Europe.

Of the athletic fields of New York City, the largest, which is now the largest in the world as well, is the forty-acre parade ground adjoining Prospect Park, Brooklyn, which has twenty baseball diamonds, eleven cricket fields, and space for lawn tennis and other

games.

The West Side Park playfield will be half as large again. as this one, surpassing anything of its kind and size in the world.

The athletic field at Pelham Bay Park contains about twenty acres, or less than one-third the area of the Jersey City playground, while Thomas Jefferson Park, in Manhattan, and Macomb's Dam Park, in the Bronx, which are pointed to with pride by New York City as the ideal of a city's interest in its young, are scarcely oneseventh the size of the Jersey City field.

Paris and Berlin have splendid parks, but no great space set aside for young men and boys to play. London's suburbs are dotted with large greens, or commons, where cricket is played on holidays, but even the largest, that at Blackheath, is less than one-third as large as will be the Jersey City playfield. Several times the size of any baseball field in the country, it will be in the summer months the meeting-place through the week of hundreds of boys and men; on Saturdays and holidays the hundreds will be thousands. present the tract is a vast stretch of marsh meadows.

At

The old St. George cricket grounds in Hoboken, the most densely populated city in the United States, has been bought by the commission, and a portion of it already made into a public playground, while plans have been accepted for its improvement during the present year as one of the most complete modern playfields in the United States. The other sites thus far selected include 160 acres in the township of North Bergen, at the northerly extremity of the county, atop the Palisades, overlooking the majestic Hudson, 200 feet below; 48 acres in Harrison, in the westerly portion of the county, between the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, and two parks in Bayonne, in the southern part of the county, one of 84 acres and one of 5 acres.

Hudson County is at present possessed of no large public parks, with the exception of the sites already selected by the commission. Fifteen public squares, nine in Jersey City, two in Bayonne, three in Hoboken and one in West Hoboken, are the only other public pleasure spots in Hudson County to-day. They offer no rural effects whatever, and are merely city squares, with asphalt paths, grass and trees, yet they are thronged on warm evenings with men, women and children, affording additional evidence of the need of park lands in the county.

West Hudson County, comprising in land area more than one

third of the entire county and extending from the Hackensack to the Passaic River, has no public park or playground. The density of population in Harrison, Kearny and East Newark, and the fact that its vacant lands are rapidly being built upon, caused the commission to give immediate attention to this section of the county.

The project of a county system of parks is comparatively new, and is being watched with great interest. While it is an excellent one, it has necessitated a campaign of education, and this campaign is still at its height. Hudson County is made up of a number of distinct local communities, each regarding its public affairs from an independent and isolated point of view, and generally in a spirit of competition and jealousy. The marked topographical divisions of the county have aggravated sectional feeling to an unusual degree. As a consequence there has been a disposition to look upon the county parks as of little value, except to the people of the district adjoining each park. This feeling, entertained by intelligent and generally well-informed citizens, presented a difficulty to be contended with; for, unquestionably, if it were maintained, it would nullify a large share of the value to the county of the properties proposed to be acquired for a park system.

A park standing by itself and little used, except by those living near it, would be very different from a park which is to stand as one of a system. In the latter case the fitness of a site will be found in its adaptation to supply some peculiar form of park refreshment that others of the system are ill-adapted to supply, or are naturally excluded from supplying. In a word, the design, under the policy which the commission is trying to establish, is to develop features in every locality which will give distinctive interest because of the development of altogether different attractions elsewhere.

If due advantage is taken of the particular capabilities of each section the result will be incomparably better than can possibly be gained under a policy, such as seems to be commonly entertained, of regarding each proposed park as an independent affair, deriving no interest from its relation to others, and imparting nothing of value to the interest of others.

In a word, the commission is endeavoring to present the result of a scientific plan to establish water and landscape views in situations either neglected, destroyed or condemned for such purposes by public opinion at least two generations previously. The park system

of Hudson County to-day presents to the people a clear indication of the ultimately beautiful and useful parks they will own. The foundation has been laid, so that the parks can be seen and enjoyed while their development into the complete and perfect system designed is being carried forward.

THE BOSTON METROPOLITAN PARK SYSTEM

BY WILLIAM B. DE LAS CASAS,

Chairman, Metropolitan Park Commission, Boston, Mass.

The original topography of Boston was ill suited for use by a great population. It was that of a peninsula, almost an island, rising abruptly from the harbor in three drumlin-shaped hills. Nearby were islands and peninsulas of similar formation, separated from each other and from the mainland by river and harbor, and by broad stretches of marsh reaching irregularly into the glacial slope from surrounding hills of almost solid rock. The panorama which they made was one of remarkable beauty and diversity, and there were many favorable spots along the rivers and upon the glacial slopes suitable for farming and fishing, which were soon sought out and occupied. Scattered villages grew up about these early settlements, and Boston came to be a city with many suburbs, each quite separate in local interest and government, yet all looking to it as their chief city. In 1880 the aggregate population within a radius of twelve miles was about eighty thousand; it is now almost one million four hundred thousand.

The development of these separate localities, and the many changes of topography required to accommodate a rapidly increasing population, gradually brought the community of interest in many ways, which, in other parts of the world, has usually led to combination into one great city. But Boston and its suburbs have sought union chiefly to provide for the general necessities, such as water, sewerage and parks, and in other respects have retained their local forms of government.

The method adopted has been that of creating, through the agency of the state, metropolitan districts and metropolitan commissions, with the specific authority to provide for these districts trunk lines or main features which could not, or would not be likely to be provided by the separate municipalities. These metropolitan works have in no wise interfered with the local autonomy of the several municipalities; and each has its local water system, fed by