Second report of the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Parks for the City of Boston, 1876.

  • Boston. Department of Parks.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report of the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Parks for the City of Boston, 1876. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In considering the first of these conditions, accessibility, attention was directed to the relative density of population in the different sections of the city. The following table, without being absolutely accurate, is sufficiently correct for the purposes of this report: — District. Population. Acres. Pop. per Acre. Old Boston, 141,000 1,570 89 South Boston, 54,000 900 60 Charlestown, 34,000 600 56 llox bury, 50,000 2,100 24 East Boston, 29,000 1,585 18 Dorchester, 16,000 4,533 3£- Brighton, 6,000 3,000 2 West Roxbury, 12,000 8,000 Population • • • • 342,000 Gross acreage . • • • • 22,288 Average population per acre • • 151 It thus appears that Old Boston, South Boston and Charlestown are to day the districts having by far the largest average number of inhabitants per acre, and contain over 66 per cent, of the whole population. As the area- required for business structures increases, the volume of inhabitants will necessarily decrease, while the territory to the west and southwest will not only receive the exodus from the first-mentioned districts, but must also provide homes for its own natural growth. These three districts will, nevertheless, for many years contain a dense population, farther removed from any open country than either of the above-mentioned districts. As the city as yet includes no territory north of Charlestown, any parks within the city limits for the people of that dis- trict must be located in the more unoccupied country to the west and southwest. Such parks would of course be reached with greater ease by the people of all the other districts of the city, East Boston only excepted, which, from the peculiarity of its location, has received independent treatment. The second and third conditions—economy and adapt- ability — have close relations to each other. Many large tracts of land in the suburbs are unoccupied in the main, because their surfaces are of so abrupt, irregular, or rocky a character as to require excessive cost for grading, or of so low a grade as to be rendered unfit for ordinary building purposes. Such regions command a comparatively low