Central Park for Brooklyn

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A CENTRAL PARK FOR BROOKLYN.

Among the various questions to be decided by the Commissioners for locating parks in this city, we regard the most important of all as that of where the "Central Park" of Brooklyn shall be. In fact we would rather the Commissioners would give us one large park, well laid out, with space enough for terraces, gardens, walks, drives, groves, and all the other imitations of country scenery, than fifty little paddocks like Carroll Park, Lefferts Park, &c., which are of no conceivable use to any one except the half dozen people whose lofty brown stone fronts around them shut out the vulgar world from even a distant view of the spot.—Such places as these are not of as much use to the people as a private garden or as vacant lots would be—for they might raise potatoes in the first, and their children might play at ball in the second.

If parks are to be "breathing places" or "lungs" for the city, let them be large enough for a good-sized breeze to circulate in. Anything smaller than 800 acres is perfectly useless for a park, so far as the sanitary and ventilating uses of it are concerned. Such an idea as that of constructing a park out of two blocks of a disused Golgotha, could never enter the head of any reflecting and disinterested person.

With a wide expanse of water on three sides of the city, and an illimitable expanse of open country in the rear, we do not recognise the immediate necessity for any parks at all for Brooklyn. But since the Legislature have appointed a commission, and powers of enclosing parks are conferred, it may be as well to discuss the question of location together with that of size.

We are glad to learn that the Park Commissioners are at work energetically in the examination of sites, and settling the preliminaries for the location of a Park. Dr. A. J. Berry,¹ the chairman of the Eastern District committee of the Commission, has selected the Reservoir and the land immediately surrounding it for examination, and with his usual energy has already taken measures for the survey and plans of the grounds. Mr. T. W. Field² has been engaged for this purpose, and has prepared a map of the locality, which shows it to be admirably adapted, in its natural features, for the highest degree of improvement and ornamentation. Also, an inspection of it shows that no other spot of anything like the size could be found in the city, unintersected by public roads. Add to this the cheapness of the land, and the accessibility of the place from all parts of the city, all the great railroad avenues pointing thitherward, and we have irrefragable reasons why the Commissioners should at once arrange for thus bestowing on the city one magnificent, extensive Park, the equal and rival of the Central Park at New York instead of wasting money by buying odd scraps of ground here and there, which will be only large enough to offer obstructions to travel, without being of size sufficient to answer any useful purpose of sanitary benefit or recreation.

In our view, the situation of the reservoir should determine that of the park. Here at once, at Ridgewood, we find some forty acres of land belonging to the city, and free from buildings or habitations. Around this spot, even on the side nearest the city, land is yet so cheap that an acre of it may be bought for little more than a single lot could be obtained in those portions of the city where interested owners and agents want to dispose of land for parks. For a sum not extravagantly large, as much as size or seven hundred acres might be had, enclosing the Reservoir in its limits. We trust that this idea of Dr. Berry's will strike the Commissioners favorably.

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