was brought forth to silence the popular demand for the park's complete improvement, though more than three years, the period fixed by law for the beginning of the work, had elapsed. So the Outdoor Recreation League-not the park department sought the next best thing,-the park's temporary improvement, by filling up the waste places-dumping holes for refuse left by the overthrow and removal of the tenements, once standing

there.

Unfortunately this little job of leveling the ground and fencing it in, amounting to only a few thousand dollars, fell into

the city of New York harmless from the same."

We shouldered all the responsibility, entered, and erected a fully-equipped playground, gymnasium, running-track and athletic field, and opened the same to the public on June 3, 1899. The scene of this opening day continues memorable in East Side history. The mighty multitude, then gathered together, will only be surpassed by the gathering on the approaching opening day of the finished park-playground. The fame of Seward Park has grown from that day to this. Visitors from all parts of the city and

the hands of a typical New York public works contractor, and nine months elapsed before the league found the place ready for its enterprise. Finally in April, 1899, Park Commissioner Clausen permitted us to enter such conditions as these:

"The gymnasium and playground to be conducted without expense to the Department of Parks.

"The Outdoor Recreation League to keep a sufficient number of attendants at the gymnasium and playground at all times to maintain order.

"The Outdoor Recreation League to be responsible for any accidents that may occur by reason of the permission herein given, and to save this department and

from many other cities lauded the undertaking.

After eight months of successful management of the ground, the Outdoor Recreation League, in February, 1900, submitted, to the park board, plans for Seward Park, of which view 1 is a bird's eye drawing. But the leaven of this advice produced no effect in the mind of the commissioner, nor the daily demonstration we had been making in Seward Park for eight months past. In October of that year, he got the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment for his first set of plans, which made not the slightest provision for playground and and gym

nasium. In the communication he sent with these plans to the Board of Estimate and

Two months later, in December, 1900, the park board, again without conference beforehand with our league, presented its second set of plans to the board of estimate and they were rushed through, for they contained both a gymnasium and a playground. These plans conformed to the letter of the law, but not to our notions of the proper apportionment of the park space. For the board's playground measured twenty by seventy-five feet, all asphalted and fenced in, which, merged with the space to be devoted to gymnastic purposes, amounted to about.

sioner had sent the report of his landscape gardener, a very remarkable document, an apology for their derelictions. Among the excuses given for not providing a playground at the beginning was the following: "As playgrounds in other parks had proved to be failures, it was considered neither wise nor necessary to provide a playground at the time; consequently the plans were drawn without a playground and with a view to provide sufficient lawns, shrubberies, promenades and shade trees to make the park

really useful and attractive for the hardworking people of the neighborhood." As he gave no example of such failures of playgrounds in public parks, excepting Hudson Park (at Leroy and Hudson Streets), where there never was a playground and ignored the fact that the experiment in Seward Park, the place under consideration, had been an eminent success, we may conclude that the writer was ignorant of his subject or wilfully blind to the fact.

The landscape gardener, further on in the same statement, endeavored to set

generally small and crowded and the women and children of the neighborhood would derive great benefit from the influence of a peaceful park, with green lawns, ample shade and attractive shrubberies; whereas the playground and gymnasium would be chiefly used by big boys to the exclusion of all the gentle population of the neighborhood." This statement, a product of the writer's imagination, was prepared at a time when thousands of the "hard-working people" of the neighborhood and of the women and children were daily resorting to our

forth the character of the East Side population and their wants, thus: "It now remains to be considered how much of the park area should be set aside for playgrounds and how much for general park purposes. It was found upon investigation that the neighborhood for miles around the park is crowded with hard-working people, who, during their day's work, have no lack of healthful exercise, and who during their few leisure ours, would be more inclined to quiet st, such as a park under ordinary contions would afford. The tenements are

playground and gymnasium in Seward Park, and when "the gentle population of the neighborhood" were not deterred from visiting the park by the "big boys." Knowing well the proclivities of the park department in argument, we had with us, on the occasion of Commissioner Clausen's second defeat before the board of estimate, a petition of twenty thousand signatures of the people around Seward Park, asking for an ample playground and gymnasium there, as well as the lawns and shrubberies.

After its second defeat, the park depart

ment for the first time evinced a readiness to confer with the representative of the Outdoor Recreation League, and early in the summer of 1901 the outcome was a third set of plans, which we approved, provided Norfolk and Division Streets had absolutely to remain open in the park. But we insisted that they should be closed, and their area within the park boundaries be included in the general park area, making it all one plot of ground. The park department said it had endeavored to close the streets and failed, and would now push its third set

large Republican nucleus opposed it on the general principle of holding up all legislation on the eve of the in-coming (the present) administration. However, by persistent button-holing of member after member, the street-closing resolution was finally passed and signed by Mayor Van Wyck.

Then our triumph over the park department becaine complete, and its fourth set of plans for Seward Park, with streets closed and providing ample playgrounds, gymnasium and baths, received the league's hearty approval. These plans

of plans, the streets remaining open. We urged the department to wait and to permit the Outdoor Recreation League to attempt to close the streets. This was agreed to. Summer, however, was at hand. The municipal assembly had adjourned for the summer. And even after sessions were resumed it was difficult to get the requisite vote for the resolution in the council, on account of the slim attendFinally, however, that body adopted the street-closing resolution without opposition. But long and arduous was the effort to get this resolution through the Board of Aldermen, where a

ance.

were quickly approved by the board of estimate; but in the Board of Aldermen the hold-up tactics of the minority were still more active against this measure, inasmuch as it carried with it an appropriation of $137,000. Their zeal to eschew Tammany and all its works again finally yielded to argument, and the fourth set of Seward Park plans were adopted. This resolution, then, only needed the approval of Mayor Van Wyck, which, however, he could not attach; the resolution had come to him so late in his term, that the publication of it for several days in the City Record (required by the charter, before

commissioner, Mr. Willcox, who heartily gave his consent to all the main propositions, which his predecessor had adopted only after years of struggle.1

The contract for the park and bath pavilion-let only last month--was separated from the contract for the remainder of the work, the drainage system and the general layout of the park, including the playground, the gymnasium, the running track and athletic

the park department.

Commissioner

Willcox says his chief effort during his two years of service will be to develop the playground and gymnasium features in small parks, and that he hopes to carry such improvements to completion in the four of them-Seward, Hamilton Fish, De Witt Clinton, and Thomas Jefferson. He declares that looking back on his administration, his chief pride will be in these park-playgrounds.