PROSPECT PARK, NEW YORK CITY.

Fire Signal Stations Opposed.

Under the heading of Central Park we have referred to the proposal of the First Commissioner to establish fire signal stations in the public parks. The proposition with respect to Prospect Park, in the Borough of Brooklyn, appears to be to take one of the beautiful wooded mounds at the main entrance for that purpose. The project as it first came to the public ear was for a headquarters building in the park; but at present it appears to be confined to a signal station. Even this proposal has evoked the earnest protests of the public press. The Brooklyn Standard Union of February 9, 1912, says:

"A meeting of citizens, it is said, is to be called to protest against the invasion of Prospect Park by a fire signal tower. It ought to be a vigorous protest and should be, as far as this borough is concerned, joined in by every civic association in Brooklyn. There are already too many buildings in Prospect Park, although they have to do with the officialdom of the Park Department. Officialdom, or the evidence of it, should be seen as little as possible in the people's pleasure grounds."

The same arguments which hold against the erection of a fire station in Central Park apply to a similar location in Prospect Park, and it is earnestly to be hoped that it will not be countenanced by public authorities.

Brooklyn Central Library Building.

Developments in the early part of 1912 caused our Trustees, on February 26, to renew to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment their protest, made in July, 1905, against the location of the central building of the Brooklyn Public Library on the park lands bounded by the Eastern Parkway, Flatbush avenue and Prospect Hill, at the entrance to Prospect Park.

In the nearly seven years which have elapsed, the objections to the selected site have grown stronger, if possible, than they were in 1905. Our objections are fourfold:

First, the fundamental principle that park lands are for park purposes should firmly be adhered to. The minute that principle

is abandoned our parks are doomed to obliteration by the demands of those who, under the pressure of our growing necessities and increased population, see in them convenient sites for public or private institutions. The first violation of the rule makes succeeding violations easier, and the present project should be discouraged, not only on account of its immediate effects, but also because, if successful, it will make the defense of our parks increasingly harder in the future. The danger in this matter is indicated by the innumerable projects for invading other parks of the City, which, if they had not been resisted, would ere this have resulted in the dissection of Central Park into building lots and the obliteration of City Hall Park. The City did not acquire its parks for building lots, and to use park spaces for structures not directly connected with park administration is to pervert them from their original intent, to nullify the wise foresight of former administrations, and to rob the present and future generations of the benefits which the parks were created to give them. Our parks are a capital investment, the principal of which should not be impaired by a prodigal liberality with property which has permanently been dedicated to a specific use.

A second reason for not locating the library on the site selected is afforded by the rapid growth of population and the enormous increase of traffic at this point. Since the census of 1900, the number of inhabitants of the Borough of Brooklyn has increased 47 per cent. With the dense population which this great Borough of homes is destined to have, every inch of park space should be saved. Contemporaneously with the growth of the Borough and of the City at large has come the immense increase in street traffic and particularly in the use of rapid motor vehicles; and the appalling number of deaths caused by the latter admonishes strongly against the location of a central library building at the junction of two main thoroughfares so much used as the Eastern Parkway and Flatbush avenue.

Thirdly, the location of the building at that point would make a radical and discordant change in the principal approach to Prospect Park. The great elliptical Plaza at the northern entrance to the Park was constructed for and serves a very distinct purpose. It is the vestibule to the park and its encircling screen of

embankments and plantations was constructed to exclude as far as possible the sight of buildings. The interjection of a great pile of masonry like the proposed building will violate the landscape scheme of the park entrance, put the approach out of balance, throw into diminished scale the beautiful Memorial Arch, and destroy the charm of what is now one of the crowning distinctions of the park.

Fourth, the site chosen is not adapted to the proper setting of a building of so much dignity and importance. The building will be cramped on a contracted site, crowded by the reservoir bank and tower, and its pinched-up situation will be discreditable alike to the Borough and the City.

We trust that the municipal authorities will not find it too late to reconsider the action taken in selecting this site.

SEASIDE PARKS, NEW YORK CITY.

City Votes to Acquire Two.

No City in the world is more eligibly situated, with respect to its water front, than New York City. Boston on the Atlantic and San Francisco on the Pacific have fine harbor facilities, but in the extent and diversity of their water front exposures, New York City, bordering on the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers, Long Island Sound, the Upper and Lower Bays and the Atlantic Ocean is pre-eminent. A municipal frontage on an Ocean is a rare possession, and it is gratifying to record that on October 19, 1911, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment took action looking to the acquisition of two seaside parks in the south shore of the Borough of Brooklyn. One of these parks is the Dreamland property at Coney Island, which had been devastated by fire not long before. The other is at Rockaway Beach. The combined cost of the two is not to be more than $2,225,000. Of this total it is proposed to spend $1,225,000 for 250 acres of land at Rockaway Beach. The other $1,000,000 is to be spent for seven acres of the Dreamland property. At the meeting at which this action was taken, Comptroller Prendergast intimated that this was an initial step toward the expenditure of approximately $5,000,000 for seaside parks. Of the $2,775,000 to be expended in the future Mr. Prendergast estimates that $500,000 more will be

necessary to buy seven and one-half acres adjoining the Dreamland property and the remainder to acquire the Brighton Beach property immediately adjoining that. The Dreamland property proper includes 8.72 acres, but the city proposes to take only seven acres of this, leaving 1.72 acres in a strip 200 feet wide along the Surf avenue front of the tract. This 200 foot strip is so valuable for business purposes that the committee, consisting of the Comptroller, President Mitchel of the Board of Aldermen and President Steers of Brooklyn, did not think it would be advisable to take it. The remaining property immediately adjoining, for which the City will probably institute condemnation proceedings in the near future, includes 5.51 acres belonging to the Prospect Park & Coney Island Railroad and 1.91 acres belonging to Catherine Balmer.

GOVERNOR'S ISLAND PARK PROPOSED

While the United States House of Representatives was discussing the Army Appropriation Bill on February 12, 1912, Congressman John J. Fitzgerald of New York City offered the following amendment*:

“Provided, That the Secretary of War be, and he is hereby, authorized to negotiate with the City of New York for the sale of Governor's Island, New York Harbor, for park purposes, and to report to Congress at the beginning of the next regular session as to the terms upon which said property may be sold to the City of New York."

This unexpected suggestion directs attention to the extremely interesting history of Governor's Island. Its Indian name was Pagganck and the Dutch called it Noten, Nooten or Nutten Island, meaning Nut Island, on account of the chestnut, oak and hickory trees with which it once abounded. In "Aboriginal Place Names in New York," by W. M. Beauchamp, it is suggested that the aboriginal name is derived from pohk, meaning to break open, and the terminal locative, the whole signifying place for cracking nuts. The earliest mention of the island by name is found in De Laet's "Nieuwe Wereldt," dated 1624 and published in 1625, in which, referring to the East River as Hellegat and the Hudson as the great river, he says: "The two curThis amendment was not adopted.

rents of the great river and Hellegat meet one another near Noten Island."

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In the year before the permanent settlement of Manhattan Island by the Dutch in 1626, the Dutch West India Company sent a ship load of cattle and some passengers to New Netherland to sustain and strengthen the colony at Fort Orange (Albany). "These cattle," says Wassenaer's "Historisch Verhael," were, on their arrival, first landed on Nut Island .. where they remained a day or two. There being no means of pasturing them there, they were shipped in sloops and boats to the Manhattes, right opposite said island."

The Buttermilk Channel, which separates Governor's Island from the Long Island shore, had not then and for many years after had not attained its present proportions. In the trial of the case of Israel Horsefield vs Hans Bergen in 1741, involving the boundaries to their farms in Brooklyn, Maritie Bevois, aged 84, testified that she had heard Jerome Remsen's mother say that there was only a small creek between Nutten Island and the shore and that a squaw carried Dame Remsen's sister over it in a tub. Jerome Remsen, aged 77, testified that he had heard his mother say the same thing. His mother's sister was born in 1624 or 1625.

The Labadist travelers, Dankers and Sluyter, who had a faculty for picking up facts and gossip and writing them down in their Journal in 1679, credit the island with having been "the first place the Hollanders ever occupied in this bay," but the statement in the sense of permanent occupation is questionable.

Soon after the settlement of New Amsterdam in 1626, a mill for sawing wood was erected on the island. In 1637, Governor Van Twiller bought the island from the Indians, and when his tenure of office terminated, he had on the island, beside the sawmill, a frame house and twenty-one pairs of goats, among other goods and chattels, Van Twiller is believed to have been the only private owner of the island. After his departure, it was claimed by the government and leased from time to time. In 1698, the Assembly set it aside as "part of the Denizen of his Majestie's Fort at New York, for the benefit and accommodation of His Majestie's Governours and Commanders-in-Chief for the time