Staten Island Improvement Commission. 
REPORT 
OF A 
PRELIMINARY SCHEME 
of v ( 6 > 
IMPROVEMENTS. 
Pf^esented, January 12th, 1871. Staten Island Improvement Commission, 
REPORT 
OF A 
PRELIMINARY SCHEME 
! of 
IMPROVEMENTS. 
J^F^HSENTED, JANUARY 12TH, 18jl. :ES SUTTON & CO., Printers and Stationers, 23 Liberty Street, New York. REPORT. 
CHAPTER I. 
QUESTIONS OF GENERAL POLICY. 
To the Staten Island Improvement Commission: 
Gentlemen: We need, first of all, to so far forecast the future 
market of this metropolis for real estate, that we can be satisfied what 
of its demands Staten Island in particular may be prepared to supply 
with the greatest certainty of large, general, ultimate profit. 
All possible demands of the future may, in the first place, be broadly 
divided under the heads of Commercial and Domestic; domestic 
being understood in this case to refer not only to dwellings but to 
whatever would administer directly to household economy, convenience 
and comfort, including stores, shops and markets, for local supply. 
The eastern margin of the Island, from a little north of Tompkins 
landing nearly to the Yacht Club House, has advantages of a peculiar 
character for certain commercial purposes, deep water and good 
holding ground being found close off shore, and large shipping being 
less liable to be troubled by ice than at any other point in the harbor 
at which it can lie with equal safety and convenience in other respects. 
An extensive use of these advantages would lead to the building of a 
special class of warehouses, factories and shops along the shore. As, 
within narrow limits, this demand is liable to become an imperative 
one, the erection of many permanent and costly domestic buildings on 
this shore is not to be expected. The sooner, therefore, its commer- 
cial advantages are developed the better. 
Beyond this district, we do not think that a commercial demand for 4 
real estate is ever likely to be of much importance, or that it should be 
courted, for the Island, and as we are advised that a different opinion 
is held by some of your Commission, we wish to explain why. 
In any region where the value of land depends chielly on its agricul- 
tural productiveness, as, a generation since was the case here, any 
undertakings that are calculated to improve its means of communica- 
tion with a distant market, or to establish a market within it, can 
hardly fail to benefit the landowners, who, consequently, are often 
asked to aid in the introduction of them. Nearly all of the territory of 
the United States being in that condition, there is naturally a pretty 
strong public opinion about the interest and duty of landowners in 
this respect. But Staten Island is now very differently situated from 
the country in general. It has no difficulty in finding a market for 
its crops, or in finding shipping enough to move them. What advan- 
tages, then, can it expect to gain by courting commerce ? 
In answer we may be pointed to the value which real estate has 
acquired in the commercial quarter of New York Island. Staten 
Island has a much greater extent of shore on the same harbor than 
New York Island, and while it is considerably nearer the sea, it is also 
approachable to better advantage from the main land, especially by 
railways. Does it then seem unreasonable to expect that by adding 
certain artificial to its natural advantages, so much of the commerce of 
New York can be drawn to Staten Island, as will greatly advance the 
value of its real estate ? 
The question is how much-how many acres-of the whole area of 
the island is likely ever to be actually occupied, do what you will, for 
commercial purposes? We think we can show that it is very little 
indeed. 
If we look at the two parts of New York city as divided, say, at 
Fourteenth street, we shall see that one side is mainly occupied for 
commercial purposes, the other for domestic. Imagine, then, that this 
division had been made more perfect, and that it had not been con- 
fined to the politically limited New York city, but had included all of 
that larger New York, now numbering a population of nearly a million 
outside the city, which sends a deputation of men every day to its 
commercial quarter. Under this division it will be evident that the 
buildings of the domestic class not only already cover a great deal 
more ground, but that their number and area of occupation is en- 
larging much more rapidly than that of the commercial class, and this 
notwithstanding, perhaps that the amount of business transacted, of 
goods exchanged, is larger than ever before. 5 
It is not very difficult to see some reasons why this should be so, 
and why it is likely to continue. 
In the progress of commerce, men of marked ability have more and 
more duties pressed upon them, and duties in undertakings of the 
most divert character. The necessity of personal conference in regard 
to affairs requiring separate offices, gives increasing value to time 
during certain hours, and distance is for these purposes yet equivalent 
in the market to time. Hence vicinity to various offices becomes 
an increasing element of value. 
The increasing specialization in business which often makes many 
sources of supply necessary to be called on for a purpose which could 
formerly be served by one, tends in the same general direction ; the 
result being always an increasing motive to compactness. 
At every center of commerce, consequently, more and more busi- 
ness tends to come under' each roof, and, in the progress of building, 
walls are carried higher and higher, and deeper and deeper, so that 
now "vertical railways" are coming in vogue. 
It may be thought that these observations apply only to commerce in 
a restricted sense, that is to say to exchanges and administration, and 
especially not to manufactures and shipping. The question is impor- 
tant because some think that it may be possible to establish a great 
manufacturing quarter of the metropolis on the island, and with this 
in view a different line of policy might be advised from that which we 
shall assume to be required. It is well known that conditions which 
make a difference of many years in the expectations of life with opera- 
tives are no obstacle of consequence to the success of manufactories. 
Let us then examine the facts. 
There are between four and five thousand manufacturing establish- 
ments on New York Island, with an aggregate capital of about 
$70,000,000. Why are they on New York Island rather than anywhere 
else ? 
Not because of cheap land, cheap building materials, cheap food and 
lodging for operatives; not because of cheap coal, or wood, or water- 
power, or taxes or insurances. For all manufacturing purposes in 
which these conditions are of primary importance, building sites must 
be sought far away, not only from New York but from Staten Island. 
It is true that for certain of the latter class of purposes cheapness 
of transportation to and from the island of New York becomes also 
important. But the cost of transportation lies chiefly in the loading 
and unloading. Distance, within certain limits, extending far beyond 
Staten Island, counts but little. Moreover such disadvantages as 
distance establishes are lessened by every extension or improvement or 6 
addition to the roads, boats, telegraphs and mail facilities which 
connect the outer country with the town. They will be less in the 
future than they are at present. Thus the difficulty of establishing 
new centers or new sub-centers of manufacturing, like Newark, has, 
of late years, greatly increased and will continue to increase. 
Dividing then, all manufacturing purposes for which land and build- 
ings are liable to be required, into two classes, one of which eco- 
nomy will place at a comparatively remote distance, we see that, 
with respect to the other class, the same motives operate as with re- 
ference to buildings simply for the exchange and administrative 
offices of commerce-motives, namely, which favor a tendency to in- 
creasing compactness of association; to higher and deeper build- 
ings, and to the occupation of less and less land relatively to the 
whole amount of the trade of the port. 
The increasing use of large, deep, fast steamers, lying but a few days 
at the wharf, and each carrying in a year to and from any given hun- 
dred yards of shore ten times the burden of the old fashioned coasting- 
craft, and the increasing employment of steam and machinery in hand- 
ling and stowing cargoes, tends to make dock room of less and less 
value relatively to the whole amount of freighting business to be done 
at the port. General McClellan's plans will aid this tendency. 
The length of shore front on navigable water' within ten miles of 
the City Hall is about eighty miles, of which a tenth part only, and 
that all more than seven miles away, is on Staten Island; of the 
seventy miles perhaps twenty is now in constant demand for the accom- 
modation of shipping; of the remaining fifty an important part, as 
yet unavailable for shipping, will soon be improved by undertakings 
in which the cities of New York and Brooklyn and leading railway 
corporations are now engaged. The land lying immediately back 
from the shore, to the extent of several thousand acres, is flat and 
easily adapted to manufacturing and other ordinary commercial pur- 
poses. It is on the other hand generally unattractive, and cannot 
easily be made, even tolerably, suitable for domestic purposes. We sub- 
mit that at any rate of progress which past experience gives us reason 
to anticipate, and especially in view of the shrinking tendency in 
respect to ground-space which we have shown to exist, it will be a 
great many years before any considerable part of the land thus avail- 
able and thus likely to be pressed on the market, will be required to 
be occupied by buildings, docks, or other structures for commercial 
purposes. 
If not, then it is certainly impracticable, by any use of the taxable 
and other political resources of the county, to place Staten Island so 7 
successfully in competition for supplying the limited amount of land 
that is going to be wanted in the extension of the commerce of the 
port that any important favorable general effect upon the value of its 
real estate can be expected to be produced. 
On the other hand, it is only necessary to go out on Long 
Island a little north and east from Brooklyn to see how harm- 
ful an effect is liable to result from a very moderate effort in that 
direction, many people of wealth who formerly lived there, having 
been driven away, and tracts of land formerly clothed with 
beauty laid waste almost as by an invading army, this being the 
result of a number of scattered manufactories. It is true that 
there are manufactures which would not be likely to have any such 
effect, but it is also true that manufacturing establishments started 
for one object are liable, after a time, to be adapted to another, and 
that those which have the greatest permanency in the outskirts of 
large towns are such as are most offensive, and destructive of value to 
the better class of domestic property near them. Illustrations of this 
are not wanting on Staten Island. It is also to be considered that it 
is very difficult to draw the line between a manufactory which is 
legally permissible, and one which is legally a nuisance, and that 
when capital has been once largely invested in any works, it is always 
a difficult and expensive undertaking for the public to remove or con- 
trol them. The owners of property in the district we have referred to 
on Long Island, having first invited the introduction of manufacto- 
ries, have of late years made great but vain exertions to cause the re- 
moval or suppression of many of them. 
Turning now to the domestic division, is there, in the first place, any 
question that a tendency prevails precisely opposite to that which we 
have seen to be governing the commercial-a dispersing and colon- 
izing tendency ? If it is recollected that the people who inhabit the 
tenement-house districts of New York are very little to be taken into 
account, simply because they are just those who are least able to get 
what they want, and consequently manifest least what is generally 
wanted, for domestic purposes, we think there can be none. 
A man who has probably made more money by suburban real estate 
improvements than any one else in the country, said to us lately, " I 
find that everywhere there has been the largest advance where the 
streets have been widest and the lots deepest, and if. where the deter- 
mination of the width of streets and the depth and breadth of lots has 
been under my control during the last thirty years, 1 had, in every 
case, insisted on having them doubled, I should have been at least a 
million dollars the better for it. I will never again, if I can help it. 8 
have a street laid through or beside property of mine in the outer part 
of a town, less than a hundred feet wide, nor lay off lots less than fifty 
feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet deep, unless it is where I wish 
to draw commercial business or a poor class of people for a special 
purpose, as where hands are needed for a factory." 
Is this experience and opinion exceptional? If so, why, over so 
large an extent of ground on New York Island, in Westchester' and in 
Kings and Queens has the plan upon which land was laid out twenty 
thirty jmd forty years ago been discarded ? 
This plan was generally that of rectangular blocks of 25x100 feet 
lots, with streets of from fifty to seventy feet in width, a plan tolerably 
well adapted to purely commercial requirements. The new plans are 
less regular and will give larger blocks, wider streets, deeper lots and 
more open spaces. This, according to our reading of it, is simply an 
adjustment of the market to a rising demand of a special character for 
domestic purposes, which can be met on New York Island only by a 
compromise with the commercial demand, and consequently, at the 
best, but imperfectly, but which, with the small exception we have 
referred to, the whole of Staten Island may be adapted to supply in 
the most complete way and with great and speedy profit to its land- 
owners. 
From an examination of the recent census returns, which we have 
been permitted to make at the Marshal's office, it is ascertained that 
in one district, over twenty square miles in extent, about as far north 
from Wall street as the middle of Staten Island, there has been an in- 
crease of population during five years of over ninety-five per cent. ; 
in another sixteen miles distant, a little larger, forty-four per cent. ; 
in another twenty-five miles distant, or further than the most distant 
point of Staten Island, fifty-five per cent. These are all in Westches- 
ter' County; and, from personal examination, we know that the larger 
part of the immigration has consisted of thrifty families, each carry- 
ing with it considerable capital, and almost invariably going into villas- 
and cottages, with more or less extensive grounds. 
There are a number of districts on Long Island and New Jersey 
where an increase of a similar character has occurred quite as large.* 
*The increase in population on Staten Island in five years has been less than sixteen per cent. 
The average capital per head brought in and made available for taxation has been less than it has 
in some of the districts above referred to, which have increased much more rapidly. There are 
several districts in Westchester and Long Island, as near and as accessible as the most favored of 
these, which, as we perceive by the census returns, have either lost or failed to increase at all in 
po julation, and the real estate of which is believed to have fallen in value. We have either visited 
or had communication with physicians and intelligent citizens in each of these, and, in every 
case, the first reason given for the depression of their real estate is a reputation for nnhealth- 
iulness. 9 
The suburban travel (chiefly commutation), on five railways from 
which we have returns, has, during the last ten years, more than 
doubled the number of passengers, increasing from four to nine mil- 
lions : on other routes the rate of increase is believed to have been 
still greater. On several of the suburban boat lines the travel has 
more than doubled in four years. 
The out of town families, some member or members of each of 
which habitually visit the island of New York daily, now number 
fully three quarters of a million, and within two years will exceed the 
resident population of the city. What part of this number is strictly 
suburban, that is to say, resident in detached dwellings with sylvan 
surroundings yet supplied with a considerable share of urban conven- 
ience, it is not possible to ascertain, but it is certain that the propor- 
tion of this class is very rapidly enlarging. 
Land held in farms fifteen to twenty years ago, since broken 
up into plots of from one to five acres, in the midst of attractive 
scenery, having a fair general reputation for healthfulness, approached 
by tolerable roads, and accessible in from half an hour to an hour' from 
Wall Street, has almost invariably advanced in value at least five 
hundred per cent, and often a thousand.* 
The tendency, thus indicated, is not peculiar to New York; it now 
prevails in every other* large town, in London and Paris, as well as 
in Boston, Philadelphia, and in our Western cities. Everywhere 
townspeople have been lately tending to break town bounds. It may, 
to be sure, be regarded as a mere fashion, which, acting first on the 
richer and more luxurious classes, and sending them for the summer 
only to country seats, then taken up in a little different form by a 
large number of people of more moderate wealth, has at length fairly 
laid hold of the masses, in which case it must be expected to soon run 
out, and be followed by a reaction. But if it is a mere fashion, and has 
this liability, it is at least singular that it should for years, while suf- 
ficiently manifest, have been less powerful, and made its way more 
slowly at the Head Quarters of Fashion than generally elsewhere. 
Regarding it not as a fashion but as a sensible and permanent com- 
mon movement, the reason why it has been more subdued at Paris 
is not difficult to see. Obviously it is because at Paris the old theory 
of a town has been till now essentially maintained, which made it a for- 
tress, enclosed it by walls, and necessarily surrounded the walls by a 
waste of land, in which domestic considerations were required to yield 
to military. 
If we look closely at any large city, it is to be observed that this 
* This statement is mad } on the authority of Mr. Homer Morgan. 10 
outward current is by no means setting all in one direction, nor does it 
benefit all points alike in any direction. Some districts are constantly 
avoided or fallen upon only by the thriftless, and for evident considera- 
tions of necessity rather than choice; others are passed clean over, so 
that sometimes land at a distance is more in demand than that lying be- 
tween it and the point of departure. We shall hold not only 
that the general flow, but that all these leapings and turnings of the 
stream, wherever it has any strength and persistency, are the result of 
perfectly comprehensible laws, the working of which has been mani- 
fest in other forms for centuries. To agree on what class of improve- 
ments Staten Island requires in order to derive from it the greatest 
benefit, there must first be a common understanding of these laws. To 
carry out such agreement there must be a common faith in them, and 
in what they will, if heeded, ultimately accomplish. We shall briefly 
indicate, therefore, the general line of evidence which leads to the con- 
victions in this respect which will govern our recommendations. 
A century ago much of the filth which at present is taken off by sew- 
ers in most of our large towus was thrown out into the street, under 
the windows, in front even of the most noble mansions of the richest 
of cities, and often remained there for months polluting the air, and 
unquestionably greatly shortening the average period of life of their in- 
mates. Less than a hundred years earlier, the dining rooms of the best 
houses in the healthiest city of England were at frequent intervals laid 
over with a wash of soot and small beer to hide the dirt which was 
allowed to remain upon them. Still another hundred years back 
we find the dining rooms of rich men's mansions strewed with rushes 
in order to absorb and partly cover the still greater amount of filth 
which was customarily permitted to accumulate on them, table-forks 
having then been but recently introduced, and such offal as bones, 
cartilage and apple-cores being often dropped from the fingers upon 
the floor. 
We find from evidence, the character of which these facts illustrate 
that there is a fixed tendency among civilized men, to place more and 
more value upon the cleanliness and purity of the condition of their 
domestic life, and a little consideration will show that this law is not 
confined in its operation to the interior of dwellings, but extends to 
all that may surround or be associated with them. 
Now it is impossible to have a high degree of cleanliness without 
great inconvenience and cost in connection with many conditions of 
commerce. Much that would be offensive in and about a dwelling 
house must be endured in and about a factory, a wharf, or even an 
office frequented by men engaged in many of the duties of commerce. 11 
Hence, in looking even but a little way back, we see how rapidly, since 
town walls have become generally less important, the tendency has 
been developed to separate domestic from commercial life. Late in 
the last century the largest bankers and merchants of London, Amster- 
dam and Paris, still maintained their domestic and commercial estab- 
lishments under the same roof, and the Stewarts and Tiffanies of the 
day had a door opening between their show rooms and their family 
dining-rooms. 
The constantly increasing distinctness of separation between the 
commercial division, and the compact domestic division, in all large 
modern towns, is one result of this law of progress; another is the 
gutters, gratings, sewers and water-works by which a large share of 
the filth which was formerly endured in and about the house is rapidly 
taken to a distance, and which have made it possible even to move 
about within the town without coming in direct contact with anything 
very obviously dirty. These improvements have been so great, and 
their results so beneficial, that the average length of life of the classes 
of the people who live the year through in the city of London has been 
doubled. But it has not yet been found practicable to keep the air of 
compactly-built parts of towns pure and sweet, and lives are yet short- 
ened and made painful by the privation. It is doubtful if it will ever 
be possible to overcome the difficulty of doing so in localities of a 
certain density of population where the two great natural agents of 
disinfection, sunshine and foliage, cannot act largely and freely 
throughout the streets, and on each side of every house. In fact, beyond 
a certain point, density of residence is incompatible with a high 
degree of cleanliness or a high degree of health, comfort and civiliza- 
tion. The difficulty is vastly increased if to the thronging of 
mankind is added the liability of dust, -dirt and unwholesome 
emanations of various manufactories.! Here then is one reason 
why our great cities will never be able to retain within narrow 
limits the families of those who are engaged in their exchanges 
and manufactures. They will be able to do so less and less. By 
modifying their plans, making larger blocks, wider streets and 
more numerous and broader public places and parks, they may 
bring the necessary evils of compact building within certain 
bounds, but the process must go much further than it has yet done, 
even in Paris, where, in fifteen years, $375,000,000 was spent in this 
+ la nearly all large com mercial towns in Europe great undertakings have been planned, and 
in some carried out, for securing more space in and about the dwellings of that part of their 
population which, by its avocations and its poverty, is practically precluded from moving into 
suburbs. Liverpool has recently expended over $5,000,000, and Glasgow has asked authority 
from Parliament to make a loan of $7,000,000, to be expended in the course of twenty years, for 
this purpose. 12 
way, or in London where $24,000,000 has just been spent on sewers 
alone, before the migration to a considerable distance from the com- 
mercial districts, of the classes most advanced in civilization, will cease 
to grow constantly larger. 
There is one other motive element in this movement to which it is nec- 
essary to allude-the esthetic. There is no doubt that with the advance 
of civilization there is in the mental constitution of civiliz d men an 
increasing susceptibility to certain forms of beauty, especially to the 
beauty of nature, apart-so far as it is possible to regard it as ever 
apart-from associations of health and comfort. In what degree this 
element guides the suburban movement it is hard to say, but that it is 
of some consequence and increasing consequence, is proved by the 
extent to which it is abused in the course of catch-penny speculations- 
Nothing has been more common of late than to recommend budding 
sites on account of the natural beauty of distant prospect which they 
possess, or the local attractiveness of the land itself which is offered 
for sale, when the process of building and of so called improvements 
in the neighborhood will assuredly destroy both. It may seem hardly 
necessary to say that views of woods which will soon be felled, streams 
which will be turned into sewers, meadows that will be built on, land- 
scapes that may be shut off, are of no permanent value in a home, but 
it is certain that they are accepted as such in thousands of cases, and 
that they enter largely into the fictitious valuation of real estate 
which causes so much distrust and confusion in regard to permanent 
conditions of value. 
There are few things which make greatly for the happiness of 
men concerning which they know so little of the process by which 
the happiness comes, and the conditions on which it depends, this as 
of the beauty of nature. It is the commonest experience that men 
destroy beauty under an idea that they are going to increase it. 
But most men will, at first sight, prefer a coarse colored litho- 
graph which is dear at a dollar to a Claude or- a Murillo, which 
has, never heless, during hundreds of years been regarded as a 
treasure, and for which there are to-day not a few men who 
would gladly give many thousands of dollars. And it is prob- 
able that there are not a great many who, having the painting placed 
where they would see it, without any effort to force admiration, several 
times a day for some years, would not learn also to place something like the 
true market value upon it. Undoubtedly it is the same with the 
beauty of natural landscape, and the beauty of parks and gardens. 
Men do not know on what their enjoyment of one locality more than 13 
another depends, but they find that one permanently contents them 
more than another. And upon the degree of general contentment which 
can be assured to any community, will the value of the real estate of 
that community in the long run wholly depend. 
In dealing with a question like this, of the most economical means 
of permanent improvement for a large area near a great center of 
business, nothing is more important than a realization of the utter 
folly of a policy which has heretofore been often followed with profit 
by individual speculators in a small way. To illustrate the danger of 
it we shall refer directly to local experiences. 
Within the memory of several of your members, and since the child- 
hood of most, the value of nearly all the land on Staten Island was 
established by reference solely to its advantages for fishing and agri- 
culture. One-third of the appraisement of what were then the most valu- 
able farms was due to the fishing rights which were sold with them. 
The demand for dwelling-sites by men engaged in business in New 
York began between 1830 and 1840. The probability of its increas- 
ing soon occurred to many persons, and upon this farms began to 
be bought and held idle " on speculation," along the East and North 
shore. 
We propose to briefly and, of course, imperfectly, trace the history 
of a single district of from a thousand to fifteen hundred acres in 
extent, which, in the judgment of many, was at that time the most 
attractive of any on the island, or even perhaps of any on this side of 
the Atlantic. The land had been held for generations by the descend- 
ants of the original settlers. Their interests being divided between 
fishing and agriculture, but little of the ground was kept under the 
plough, most of it was in wood or broad greenswards. Old trees had 
an unusual value, ship builders from New York being wont to run 
down the bay, and select timber for special purposes in the woods, 
buying it standing. Hickories of a certain size and form were also 
in request for the fisheries. The woods were thus managed in a way 
not very common with farmers, a certain class of trees only being 
picked out and felled for ordinary purposes, and those promis- 
ing special profit allowed to remain and spread broadly; the groves 
were therefore notable for their beauty, and something of this may be 
seen in portions of them yet remaining. 
The owners of the land lived in quaint and cozy, low-roofed and 
broad-galleried cottages, approached by the most delightful class of 
summer roads, winding among the great trees, crossing clear brooks 14 
and skirting the smooth clean meadows. A man might search the 
world to find an alternative to the commercial town more complete or 
more pleasing. It was believed also by the best physicians of New 
York to be a place of distinguished healthfulness, and there is yet no 
reason to doubt that it was so. The apparent objections to it were 
merely the difficulties of access, the badness of the roads in the Winter 
and Spring, and the want of society. 
The land traders, when their time came, promised to remedy these 
objections; a wharf was to be built, and direct steam communication es- 
tablished with New York, roads were to be constructed and each of the 
farms was to be divided into a number of places adapted to country- 
seats and villa sites, inviting to a good class of residents. This was 
chiefly undertaken by an association and so far as it was able to obtain 
possession of land it at once laid out a broad straight highway 
through it, crossing the shallow valleys upon low causeways. A wharf 
was also subsequently built, and direct steamboat communication for a 
short time maintained with the city. No substantial improvements in 
the way of drainage were made, however, nor was the slightest thought 
given, apparently, to securing to the public in tbe future any claim 
upon the preservation of the various elements of health and beauty 
which now gave the land really the better part of its value. 
The expectations of profit of those who engaged in these 
enterprises were to a considerable extent realized. Numerous 
places were sold, houses built and grounds laid out. To the original 
reputation of the district for the beauty of its landscapes and its de- 
tailed and local rural charms was added a renown for the attractions 
of its villas, gardens and society. All choice sites rapidly advanced 
several fold in value. 
Another class of changes began to be noticeable between 1845 and 
1855. Such improvements as we have described had drawn not only 
a considerable number of families of great and moderate wealth, but also 
many with little or no accumulated means, who were employed as 
laborers and servants. The steam ferry made the island gen- 
erally knotvn to holiday excursionists. A lager beer garden was 
established to aid the ferry enterprise. The ground least saleable 
for villa residences began to be occupied by shops and small dwellings, 
stables and vegetable gardens, to make room for which fine trees were 
often felled. Several of the original suburban places became nearly 
enclosed by those of the later formation, and thus less valuable for 
their original purpose. 
At length two or three factories were established in the neighbor- 
hood, increasing the demand for small lots lor lodging houses, stores. 15 
and dram shops, thus still further lessening the attractiveness and the 
value of a certain part of the territory for suburban purposes. The 
means of livelihood of some of the later arrivals being precarious, when 
hard pressed they helped themselves to fuel, which they found first in the 
old farm rail fences, and then in the unenclosed woods which re- 
mained. Large tracts of these, consequently, were cleared soon after- 
wards by their owners. The construction of roads across the valleys had 
in several cases arrested the natural flow of water upon the surface, 
and some of the old water courses not only lost all their beauty, but,, 
from the mingling of household wastes with the water made stagnant 
by obstructions, became disgusting and dangerous. Some places pres- 
ently began to be known as unhealthy. All soon came under sus- 
picion. 
An intelligent stranger could now no longer possibly reach the 
parts which retained any of the original conditions of attraction, to 
look at a site offered him for a residence, without having the question 
raised: 
u Suppose 1 come here, what grounds of confidence can I have that 
I shall not by-and-by find a dram-shop on my right, or a beer- 
garden on my left, or a factory chimney or warehouse cutting off 
this view of the water ? Is this charming road sure not to be turned 
also into a common town street, strewn with garbage, and in place of 
these 1 vely woods, can I be certain that here also there will not 
soon be a field of stumps with shanties and goats and heaps of cin- 
ders? If so what is likely to be the future average value of land in 
this vicinity? Whatever advantages it still possesses over other 
districts about New York as a rural or suburban dwelling-place, 
it never can possess any for compact bui'ding at all superior to 
a hundred thousand acres elsewhere about the city. Looking either 
with reference to enjoyment of it as a place of residence, or as an in- 
vestment for my children, I must be cautious not to be too much 
affected by superficial appearances. 1J7W improvements have you here 
that tend to insure permanent healthfulness and permanent rural 
beauty t " 
We know that in certain cases, this course of reflection and inquiry 
has operated to prevent the sale of places, and we also know that since 
the conditions to which we have referred have been very distinctly 
manifest, the rent and market value of a large number has declined or 
at least ceased to advance, while at the same time, the number of people 
going out of town in search of places of residence has vastly increased. 
There is another district on the island which, within twenty years, 
has been made accessible from the city in half the time that it was 16 
previously, taking contingencies into account and with reference to 
practical connection with the commercial center. It was believed, 
and confidently predicted by able business men that the completion of 
the railway, by which, mainly, this has been accomplished, would 
double its real-estate value. We find that, in fact, it is doubtful 
whether the gold value of land in this district has advanced at all. 
We know of several cases in which land has been recently bought at a 
price considerably less than that at which it was sold fifteen or twenty 
years ago. 
Surely, it will be said, this is a very extraordinary case-a suburban 
district of great beauty, declining in value of real estate apparently 
because of being brought nearer to town, and this, at a period when 
in other directions suburban real-estate has been advancing five and 
ten fold in value! But it is not at all extraordinary that a suburban dis- 
trict loses attractiveness when the interests of its landowners are turned 
from agriculture to idle speculations. In this case obstructions to 
drainage have been permitted to occur and accumulate, common high- 
ways have been neglected, and hundreds of acres of beautiful wood- 
land have been cut away, leaving bare, unsightly wastes in their place 
to mortify the eye, and making pestiferous swamps of low lands, the 
superabundant moisture of which was formerly sucked up and harm- 
lessly evaporated by the foliage. The district is much less healthy, 
and the pleasure with which a family, having any feeling for natural 
beauty, can reside in it is not nearly as great as it was twenty years 
ago. Consequently it is less adapted to the market, and, of course, is 
all the time tending to fall, instead of rising in value. 
We could easily enforce our argument by reference to several localities 
in various parts of the island, giving, if it wrere proper to do so, names 
and figures. We could point to one short piece of road laid out and 
''improved" in the usual way of land traders, in the midst of a 
district which had previously been flourishing, and by which a series 
of attractive, small villa sites was opened up and placed in the market. 
The local outlook was interesting. A pretty stream which ran near 
by skirted by a nice grove, was regarded as an advantage, as properly 
managed it certainly would have been. Access to broad distant land 
and water views was direct, short and convenient. More than twenty 
houses have been built on this road, the grove being cut away to make 
room for them. As population has come in malaria and other sanitary 
evils have been developed. The original builders have nearly all sold 
out and moved away. A real estate agent having charge of some of the 
houses tells us that for several years past there has been increasing diffi- 
culty in finding good tenants for them and rents have been largely re- 17 
duced. The physicians inform ns that this year, not one household 
upon this road has escaped a visit from diseases which are caused by 
poisoned air. In the densest wards of New York or London, 
there has been no larger per centage of preventable disease, and in 
none have diseases been found to fix themselves more firmly upon the 
system, and to offer stronger resistance to remedies. 
Looking to see what had been the more indirect effect in the neigh- 
borhood we ascertained that a house which, during a long series of 
years, had been a favorite summer boarding-house-frequently rejecting 
for want of room more applicants than it was able to accommodate, 
had this year not been half filled. A large villa was pointed out to us, 
standing on an eminence overlooking the row of houses we have spoken 
of. It had been sold by its original owner fifteen years ago at a certain 
price, since considerably improved, sold again last spring at one half 
the same price, had been unoccupied during the Summer except by a 
man hired to live in it, and is now offered at a reduction from the 
price paid for it last Spring. 
We do not wish that our remarks should imply censure. However 
desirable and profitable it may be, where capital can be commanded, 
there is no obligation upon the owners of land to prepare it suitably 
for the residence of a community before putting it in the market, and 
very few, any where, are e ver found disposed to do so. As long as the 
houses in any district stand well apart, with an abundance of trees 
about them, and only the more healthy situations are occupied, the 
dangers which threaten a closer neighborhood do not generally very 
distinctly appear. They may at least be guarded against by individual 
care. If, however, easy access from the city and low prices for land 
tempt immigration, with denser population the healthfulness of any 
locality is liable to become questionable; once established, from year to 
year the doubt increases; with its increase the prospect of any con- 
siderable future advance in the value of land diminishes. The owners 
at one time elated, become discouraged; they distrust the market 
value of radical improvements, and are more than ever unwilling to 
undertake them privately. At length, before they know it, a state of 
filings is reached in which it becomes questionable whether any gen- 
eral combination, supposing it could be brought about, to secure them 
would effect a sufficient change in the reputation of the neighborhood 
to make it profitable. 
It may be best to inquire here how far this doubt applies at this 
moment to Staten Island as a whole. 
There are parts of the Island which now suffer from an undeserved 
reputation for unhealthfulness. There are various localities, further 18 
from the city, less attractive in landscape, and less healthy, which 
stand much higher in the real estate market. There are 
other places upon the Island, the reputation of which is lo- 
cally worse, but concerning which we are obliged to say, after exam- 
ining the physicians who practice in them, and after personal inquiries 
from house to house, that the worst has not been told. But whatever 
the shortcoming of public rumor toward them in particular, it is more 
than made up by the reputation which is fastening upon the Island in 
general. This growing bad reputation, damaging to the value of every 
acre upon it, we have found to be greater at a distance, and among 
people who had never seen it, than anywhere else. It is surprising 
how far it has already gone. It has been manifested in the most ex- 
aggerated form by new-comers irom Europe and California. We have 
more than once seen it expressed in letters of travelers published in 
distant parts of the country. 
Such a one in passing the healthiest part of the Island, 
including a locality of considerable breadth in which 
we find no evidence that a single case of malarial disease of local 
origin has ever been known, is led to exclaim, " What a Paradise ! " 
whereupon his companions are represented as saying " Yes, if you don't 
find a Paradise on Staten Island it will not be because fever and ague 
will not do its best to help you," and the writer adds " It is quite 
true that this Island is as unhealthy as it is beautiful." 
How is this to be arrested ? How can it be prevented from going 
on from bad to worse ? Never by voluntary individual exertions, 
never by local action, never by proceedings of one or two of the towns, 
fox* as long as a single locality remains in a state to justify it, it is im- 
possible to prevent the undeserved reputation from being applied to 
the Island as a whole by the general public. And if it goes on, ac- 
cording to all experience, the consequences may, at no distant day, 
be absolutely disastrous. Nothing is more sorry than the fate of any 
district, which, lying neai' a great town, gets a bad character strongly 
fastened upon it. Capital avoids it in all forms except those in which 
its coming is resisted by all localities in which the hope of better 
things has not been abandoned. There is unquestionably a tendency 
to let things drift in this direction among some of the land-owners on 
Staten Island. 
We may as well here as anywhere, perhaps, state our conviction that 
some of the local undertakings now in progress, which are expected 
to relieve real estate from the bad name which has been found to be 
growing upon it, are liable to result in s£ill further disappointment, 
not only for the reason which has been given-namely the impossi- 
bility of inducing the general public, from which any considerable 19 
improvement of demand must come, to discriminate between good and 
bad localities upon the island-but also on account of the superficial 
character of these works, and the great expense and difficulty which 
will be found, if any attempt is made, to keep them in efficacious 
condition. This is so marked in some cases, that we are satisfied 
that the evil sought to be removed, will, in fact, be aggravated by them. 
But let us ask what are the grounds of hope that Staten Island shall 
yet make head against this danger? 
Harlem, ten years ago, had a place in public esteem much lower than 
Staten Island has yet reached. Its malarious condition was a constant 
subject of newspaper banter. Since then a very extensive and costly 
system of drainage has been carried out, and there is no more joking 
about Harlem flats. The old reputation seems already quite forgotten ; 
and recent sales are reported at eight thousand dollars a lot for land 
which, ten years ago, before drainage and street improvements, was 
held and was unsaleable at five hundred. 
The report, of your Committee on Organization, incidentally states 
that at New Brighton the value of real estate is higher, and 
has advanced more steadily during a series of years than at 
any other point on the Island. What is the reason of it ? 
A large part of New Brighton is a remarkably well drained, and 
in all respects healthy district. It not only commands a magnificent 
view, but owing to the slope of the surface, it has been impossible to 
wholly cut off that view from any point. No part of it is compactly 
built upon. The houses are generally unobtrusive and inoffensive, 
wholly untownlike, and are surrounded by grounds with a variety of 
flourishing trees. Its roads are lighted, its wheelways macadamized, 
its gutters paved, its walks flagged and their slopes and borders 
neatly sodded. 
If the reason is not to be found chiefly in these circumstances we 
think it will be difficult to account for the low market value of some 
other land which we have seen-land which, with good roads, could be 
reached as soon from New York as that midway between Brighton and 
Tompkins landing; land which is equally elevated, which commands 
equally fine distant views, which with drainage would be equally healthy, 
but in the foreground of which there is a pond hole and a raw bank and 
a gully, which fronts on a road of steep grade, always toilsome to climb 
and in the Spring liable to be almost impassable, and which is without 
gutters or side-walks or gas. Land of this description can be bought 
at a quarter of the price asked for that with which we compare it at 
Brighton. 20 
The hope of Staten Island lies in the certain large profits of the 
substantial improvement of its low-priced lands. 
But we have been met by men of large experience with the remark : 
" Staten Island is on the wrong side of the town. Fashion always 
goes one way and in New York it sets to the North, just as in London 
it sets to the West." 
It is perfectly true that the Eastern outskirts of London are in- 
habited almost solely by very poor people, that the town extends in 
that direction very slowly, and that the progress of building in the 
finer class of residences has constantly been to the Westward, but 
why? If fashion, what established the fashion ? Simply the fact that 
the town began to grow on account of its commerce, that it stood at 
the head of ship navigation on the river, that East of the uppermost 
anchorage, the banks of the river were low and fiat and the outlook 
dreary, while to the West the ground was high and dry, and there 
were most attractive landscapes. 
So far as town houses are concerned the drift of fashion to the West- 
ward has thus been simply a matter of necessity; beyond that there is 
no drift to the Westward. Ten miles out of town to the Eastward 
there is as much of fashion and wealth as there is at the same distance 
in the opposite direction. The villas are as numerous and as fine. 
The noble seats of Sir Culling Eardly Eardley, Lord Say and Seal, and 
the Duchess of Sutherland are examples of them-and there are thou- 
sands of fine places in the same general direction nearer than that to 
the town. Whoever has looked upon the country which was near to 
the South and East, from the terrace of the Crystal Palace at Syden- 
ham, before the view of it was lost behind the host of suburban 
houses that have been lately built in that direction, will remember that 
here is a fine elevated, healthy, well-wooded district and that it is stud- 
ded with villas, country seats and parks. 
It is the same at Paris-the best quarter of the town is in the North, 
in the South are factories and factory people. But go ten miles to the 
Southward and you find the banks of the Marne entirely occupied by 
villas, and suburban villages, to which the Parisians wdio have no 
country seats resort for furnished apartments during the Summer. It 
is a beautifully wooded, healthy, and most attractive suburban district 
and fashion has nothing to say against it. 
Is it fashion that prevents people from selecting Staten Island as a 
residence? We have known three cases this year in which families of 
wealth and high social standing, have, afrer looking at Staten Island, 
gone past it and found residences to the southward in Monmouth 
County, New Jersey. One of these had just abandoned a fine place at 21 
Newport, on account of the inconvenience of going there and return- 
ing. They went to a place south of and much more inconvenient 
than Staten Island, simply because of the advice of their physician, 
that it was more healthy. 
We have, during this inquiry for your Commission, visited several of 
the more successful suburbs-suburbs in which real estate has ad- 
vanced, and is advancing very much more rapidly than at any point 
on Staten Island. At none of these are there natural conditions as 
valuable, in some respects, as at various points on Staten Island; but on 
the whole we find reason to believe that the chances of securing health 
and happiness to a family in the long run are but little overrated in 
the market value of land. 
We say but little, because there seems to be some reason to suspect 
that the long course of make-shifts to which the public has been sub- 
jected by men '' making haste to be rich" on small capital, has at last 
had the natural effect of giving excessive market value to land, where 
the artificial requirements of a good suburban neighborhood are well 
provided for in a permanent way. 
Evidence of this is not limited to the vicinity of New York Bay. 
Let us look to a point where sheer speculation has run wilder, and 
paper streets and paper towns have, for a time, been worth more than 
probably anywhere else for an equal period in the world. Recently 
two suburban speculations were started near Chicago, one at a distance 
of six, the other of nine miles from the town, each centering upon a 
station of the same railway, on land worth, at the time, from one to 
two hundred dollars an acre. The managers of one laid out their plan 
in the usual way, made streets of the prairie soil, with neat open 
ditches, and spaces for side-walks beside them ; planted trees, hit upon 
a good name, got up their lithographs and advertised. The managers 
of the other borrowed a large sum of money at a high rate of interest, 
mortgaging not only the land they were to operate on, but other pro- 
perty for the purpose. With this they first underlaid their land with 
several miles of draining-pipe, then built macadamized roads with 
paved gutters, iron gratings, concrete side walks, and broad borders, 
frequently spreading into little greens and commons, planted pic- 
turesquely. All the natural wood and the banks of the stream which 
passed the place, were made public property, and shelters, seats, bathing 
and boat houses were provided upon it. An Artesian well was sunk, 
and with a steam-pump water sent to all parts of the property. 
Before these improvements were nearly complete the owners began 
selling land upon the roads at twenty dollars, and soon afterwards ad- 
vanced their price to thirty dollars, the front foot. The place has just 22 
been lighted with gas, the works being an independent undertaking, 
and no land can be bought at present on the improved roads at less 
than forty dollars. It is not two years since the work was begun. 
Over forty private houseshave been already built upon the sites sold, a 
number of them at a contract price of over twenty thousand dollars. 
The engineer in charge of the works writes us, as to the effect on the 
neighborhood, that one tract, which is partially inclosed by the im- 
proved territory, and barely touches at a corner upon one of the 
macadamized roads, and which was valued two years ago at from 880 to 
8100, has been recently sold at 81,000, an acre. All surrounding 
property has advanced 200 per cent, during the last year. With 
regard to the enterprise nearer town, it is a complete failure, it stands 
to-day as it did a year ago, not the first house having been built upon it. 
We turn from this lesson in the West to another of equal signifi- 
cance which comes to us from the opposite quarter. East of the 
City of London, there are districts to which we have already referred, 
in which, among dust-heaps, brick and coal yards, and large waste 
places, there are clusters of habitations which from their wretched- 
ness have been spoken of in Parliament as a national disgrace. Efforts 
have sometimes been made to relieve the dampness, which is the 
primary cause of the abandonment of these districts by every thing 
which is wholesome and decent; but, until recently, they had always 
been of a superficial penny-wise, pound-foolish character, resulting in 
disappointment. One such was alluded to by Mr. Dickens, in a de- 
scription from which we draw, with slight contraction of the original, 
the following account: 
" In such a neighborhood stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a 
muddy ditch, known in these days as "Folly Ditch." A stranger looking 
from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it will see crazy wooden 
galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses with holes from 
which to look upon the slime beneath; windows broken and patched ; 
rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too 
tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden 
chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to 
fall into it-as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying 
foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome 
indication of filth, rot and garbage; all these ornament the banks of 
' Folly Ditch.' " 
Six years ago it was determined by the authorities that one of the 
worst of these wretched eastern parishes should be, as far as the streets 
and public property were concerned, thoroughly improved. Matters 
were so bud that plans had previously been discussed for a whole- 23 
sale deportation of the inhabitants. What actually was done 
included the construction of a sufficient number of deep under-ground 
drains, falling into a main, which extended to a distance, the road 
ways were macadamized, and tar concrete walks laid by the side of 
them, water was laid on, and gas lights provided for. To accomplish 
this, it was necessary to raise money by loans, payable in fifteen to 
twenty years. Mr. Fisher, the engineer, employed to superintend these 
improvements, is now in this country. He informs us that before they 
were well completed, the old shanties and pestilent rookeries 
began to be laid low through the voluntary action of the owners of 
the land, and that in place of them, now, less than six years from the 
outset of the work, may be seen hundreds of attractive cottages and 
villas, with neat grounds about them. A healthy and thriving popula- 
tion, able to bear a large taxation has come in, and although no exact 
statistics can at this moment be furnished us, there is no doubt of a 
great profit from the undertaking. 
In the extended observation of the different members of our Board 
on both continents, not an instance is known in which similar results 
have failed to follow works of improvement judiciously adapted to 
provide good roads and walks, and well drained and healthful building 
sites, with attractive sylvan surroundings within convenient distance 
of any large town. 
The effect of substantial suburban improvements, even where un- 
necessary for health, is not at all mysterious. The outgoing townspeo- 
ple do not reduce their standard of comfort in any respect materially, 
and they soon become discontented if they go where the degree of study 
and forethought, and skill in management of household affairs which 
they are accustomed to use is very greatly augmented. People moving 
from the country to the town rapidly lay aside habits of careful pro- 
vision in respect to many details of housekeeping. They keep but 
small supplies, and wait till they are nearly out before taking thought 
for their replenishment. It is nothing to call or send to the grocer's 
or the butcher's or the baker's, when anything which they supply is 
found to be wanted. But the distance of a quarter of a mile over a bad 
country road is a much greater difficulty to a housekeeper than three or 
four miles upon a clean firm flagged street. A well fifty feet deep 
comes as a severe blow often repeated. Kerosene lamps all over the 
house and utter darkness outside the door give constant anxiety. 
Considerations of health being equal, it is the degree in which objec- 
tions of this class to a residence prevail, here and there, that chiefly 
determine the direction of the suburban currents. 24 
There is no doubt ol an increasing domestic demand for land divided 
on a larger scale than has hitherto been generally adopted, or than is 
desirable, where commercial convenience is the primary consideration. 
A question remains as to the extent of the enlargement demanded ? 
Of this, the course of reasoning we have followed enables us, perhaps, 
to form some idea. Houses, for instance, must be so far apart, 
that the air of each shall be absolutely free from contamination arising 
from any other or from the highways; the highways must be so far apart, 
so spacious, so furnished or flanked with trees that organic waste can 
not be carried from them, to an injurious extent, into the houses between 
them ; that the air passing across them shall be quickly disinfected or 
screened of whatever it takes up that is filthy. If a highway is short-* 
taking little or no through traffic, requiring a wheel way of not more 
than 22 feet, the mininum thus reached would but little exceed the 
space of the ordinary town arrangements, except in the size of lots. 
What then, is required to be possessed by each family, for its pri- 
vate use, out of doors, beyond what can commonly be had within 
towns? 
We answer that a high state of health, or a sound moral condition can 
never be acquired by children or preserved by adults under the require- 
ments of success which modern town life tends to impose, where it 
can not be made easy and convenient to spend considerable time out 
of walls-more time than can honestly be spent in idleness or in occu- 
pations which, with us, are deemed consistent with publicity. For this 
purpose there needs to be attached to every house a series of out-of- 
door apartments, not open to public view, in which direct exposure to 
sun and wind may, when desired, be avoided, and in which various 
ordinary household occupations may be carried on. One of these 
should connect with the kitchen, another with the social rooms of the 
family; there should be turf on which young children can walk, and 
fall without injury, on which girls can romp without soiling their 
dresses; there should be a dry walk for damp weather, a sheltered walk 
for windy weather, and a sheltered sitting place for conversation, 
needln work, reading, teaching, and meditation. 
We repeat, that with the exciting and engrossing interests of the 
stage of society which we are now reaching, arrangements such as these 
are essential to a high state of health in a family. Every physi- 
cian will endorse this statement. We can dispense with them as 
our ancestors could dispense with chimneys and table forks, with cot- 
ton and silks, with potatoes, sugar, coffee and tea; but it will cost us 
more to dispense with them than to obtain them, and learn to use them. 
Sooner or later all civilized people will learn to use them. 25 
These requirements involve no large amount of land; but the min- 
imum can not be much less than twice that of our present ordinary 
town lot. 
How much must be added to this in order to admit of any degree of 
artistic luxury and completeness will depend very much on situation. 
With good, shaded highways, walks not liable to be overthronged, it is 
not at all necessary that the house should command fine distant or 
general views, it is rathei' better that stand-points for these should be 
possessed by each family in common with others, at some little distance 
from the house, so as to afford inducement and occasion forgoing more 
out from it, and for realizing and keeping up acquaintances by the 
eye at least, with the community. To give children a fair chance to 
develop their individual tastes and talents, however, without disturb- 
ance to neighbors, even with the most wholesome family discipline, the 
space of private ground must be enlarged, under most circumstances, 
to at least what would be inclosed in a parallelogram of fifty by one 
hundred and fifty feet. Where less than this is taken it will soon be 
from necessities of poverty, not choice. 
It is not desirable that the lot should be a parallelogram or of any 
regular and uniform shape, on the contrary, it will be more satisfactory 
if it is not. It is much easier to fit a house and grounds agreeably 
upon a space of land, the sides of which are not parallel and the angles 
equal than upon one of the ordinary town-lot form. 
Can we get any idea of the maximum ? Suppose that two, three, or 
four hundred thousand families are to be in competition for land, 
each needing to have one member, at least, spend the larger part 
of each day in close proximity to the center of business; obviously 
the maximum for each will eventually be fixed chiefly by considera- 
tions of the cost of the land, established by competition, within cer- 
tain limits of distance; and the limits of distance as far as time of 
passage is concerned will be, up to a certain point, constantly enlarg- 
ing in every direction. 
Yet we do not think that the progress of invention is to tell so much 
in the improvement of the speed with which distances can be over- 
come as in the cheapness, frequency, regularity and comfort of 
transportation. The question will be between cost of passage and 
cost of land; the nearer, other things being equal, the more valuable 
the land and the less of it must be accepted for what each 
man can afford to pay. But the measure of cost for passage 
will not be wholly in the value of time required for it and the 
fare; the incidental occupation of the time will be an impor- 
tant item. At present there is scarcely a suburb of New York the 26 
time to reach which from Wall Street, is not, on an average, worse than 
lost, that is to say, so far from being passed profitably, it is passed most 
expensively-at great cost of nervous energy, health and comfort. 
An addition of ten per cent, to the cost of running the Staten Island 
ferry boats, with good roads and walks from the landings, would make 
it possible for most men to be in the way of gaining health, of re- 
ceiving enjoyment, of spending their time profitably, doing two-thirds 
of all that would be given to the necessity of passing from Wall Street 
to their home.* Nothing like this can, as yet, be asserted of any railway 
line of exit from the town, and there is no reason to suppose that any 
form of land communication will ever be invented by which, without 
vastly larger cost, it will be possible to make the time occupied as 
valuable as it may be now made in water conveyance. 
The greatest improvement will probably occur, however upon com- 
mon highways, which there is no difficulty in carrying to the point 
at which one horse can do the work which must be given to three on 
our present roads. It is not improbable, also, that steam omnibuses 
will soon come into use, and that these, running from landings and 
stations, at a speed of ten or twelve miles an hour, will call at all houses 
on the highroads, whenever required, as the old coaches did. There 
are, at this moment, no practical difficulties in the way of this method, 
except those with which any new arrangement of general public utility 
has to contend. There are already in different parts of the world over 
four hundred steam carriages working successfully on common roads. 
But better and generally wider roads are the first requirement. 
When there shall be, as there soon will, two or three hundred thousand 
families to be provided with houses out of town, the least space wanted 
by each of which shall be what we have named-and when the possi- 
bility shall be realized of occupying the best part of an hour's time of 
transit not uncomfortably, competition will then fix such a price upon 
all land within an hour's distance of the city, that only men cf 
exceptional wealth, and tastes for rural domestic life, will think it best 
to pay for the use of more than eight or ten times as much of it as 
the amount we have named as the minimum for health. The ordinary 
size of the house lot which will soon be most in demand in the sub- 
urbs may thus be approximately estimated. Along the shores, where 
sites can be reached by a short walk from the steamboat landings, it 
will probably be from quarter to half an acre. Wherever there is a 
* The boats have most uncomfortable seats, are badly ventilated, and at night badly lighted. 
Being, also, short-handed, or with inadequate organization of service for their duty, passengers 
Buffer from disorder and nuisances which might easily be prevented. These little matters make 
all the difference between misery and comfort to many, especially many women. The landings 
and houses are in every way the reverse of attractive and convenient. 27 
tendency to reduce it much below this, men will prefer to spend more 
time on the passage, go farther and enjoy the use of more space. 
At a distance from boat landings, a larger area will be generally 
wanted to compensate for the greater trouble of land conveyance, and 
men who can afford to keep horses will also be able to afford to buy 
mor ■ land. Sites then will be in demand large enough to admit of 
some luxury of personal property in local landscape. The maximum, 
under ordinary circumstances, within an hour of Wall Street, on ele- 
vated land, and in a healthy and well furnished neighborhood, is not. 
in our judgment, likely to permanently exceed five acres. The average 
for all the more attractive parts of Staten Island, clear to its furthest 
extremity, beyond distances within an easy walk from the shore, would 
be less than that, but certainly not less than one acre. If the interior 
land should be cut up in smaller plots than an acre, most people will 
prefer to pass a little more time on the public conveyances, and go 
further. This is to be inferred from the readiness with which thous- 
ands are now induced to travel by the most fatiguing and expensive 
means of conveyance to much greater distances than Tottenville, to gain 
no advantage except that of controlling a little more land for their money. 
If our reasoning has been good, we have thus determined with some 
approach to definiteness for what form of real estate there is likely to 
be in the early future the largest demand in the vicinity of New York. 
To what extent that demand shall go, and how rapidly it shall be 
developed is a question in all probability of the completeness and 
rapidity with which a supply shall be provided for it to be fed 
upon. In any locality where such' building sites have been provided 
as we have described, from a quarter of an acre to five acres in extent, 
well drained and in all respects healthy; approached quickly, cheaply, 
and with any tolerable degree of comfort from New York; where good 
service of tradesmen and public servants may be had, where water and 
gas may be laid on, where pleasant natural scenery is accessible, and 
where these characteristics extend over a sufficient breadth of country 
to give assurance of a suburban domestic neighborhood of a permanent 
character-in any locality which comes near offering these advantages 
-the indications of experience all are that if twenty thousand build- 
ing sites could be put in the market, there would be twenty thousand 
families glad to buy them at once, at prices a good deal more than 
double the present average value of all the land on Staten Island-and 
it is hardly to be doubted that if they did so, there would be one 
hundred thousand people healthier, happier, richer and better for the 
bargains. We do not know where one such site can be had near New 
York to-day at ten times the average value of land on Staten Island. 28 
The result of our study thus far has been to suggest a doubt 
whether there is any safe intermediate ground between an aban- 
donment of the Island to the condition of an outskirt quarter of the 
metropolis, which, while it may increase in number of population, will 
lose in quality-an outskirt which will tend constantly to compare 
less and less favorably with the more fortunate suburbs-and an un- 
dertaking of improvement which will be likely to give it the first rank 
among them for healthfulness and general convenience, and which will 
have the result we have described, of causing twenty thousand detach- 
ed villas and cottages, to be soon built upon it by capital to be brought 
from without and thus made available for local taxation. 
We will go further and say that we have been led far toward the 
conviction that the position of the Island with reference to the center 
of business, and its natural attractions, are such, that if it could be re- 
lieved of its bad reputation in one single particular, the public would 
accept temporary inconvenience in other respects, taking the risk of 
delay in improvement of access, of roads, of water supply, and of other 
common suburban requirements, and that the Island, relieved from the 
single disadvantage to which we refer, would rapidly advance to the 
position of the best suburb, and its real estate command the highest 
rates of the market. 
The one particular to which we refer is of course its unhealthful. 
ness, and its special unhealthfulness depends simply and solely upon 
malaria. Aside from malarial troubles it has always been the health- 
iest suburb of New York. 
The problem of malaria will be considered in a second letter. With- 
out present argument upon the latter point, therefore, the views of 
general policy which we now desire to commend to you may be briefly 
re-stated as follows: 
The value placed by the more far-sighted, prudent and pros- 
perous part of the public, first on healthfulness, second on con- 
venience, third on beauty, especially on rural beauty, in choosing 
heir residence is constantly and rapidly increasing. This increase 
does not depend on fashion but on fixed laws of civilized progress, it is 
then likely to continue and may be depended upon as permanent. 
The territory conveniently accessible from New York which has any 
prospect of retaining an agreeable rural character, and which is now 
ree from malaria is limited. The rural territory which is likely soon 
to be retrieved from malaria is still more limited. 
If Staten Island can be freed from malaria, it will be a comparatively 
easy matter to make it the healthiest, and at the same time the most 
convenient and most beautiful suburb of New York. 29 
As soon as this character can be established for it a practically un- 
limited demand for its real estate will occur-a demand which will 
rapidly multiply the value of every acre of land upon it. CHAPTER II. 
MALARIA AND CONDITIONS OF HEALTH. 
The danger that great discouragement and depression may result 
from the adoption of plans for the relief of the Island from malaria, 
which should eventually prove to have been inadequate, has impressed 
us with a strong conviction of the importance of investigating the 
questions involved in this part of our duty as thoroughly as time 
would admit. 
We believe it to be impracticable to secure complete relief from 
malaria solely by any system of public works. There can be little 
hope of success therefore, unless a substantial agreement of opinion, 
among the leading property holders, can be reached in regard to many 
questions which are involved in the study of the problem. 
For this reason we are desirous to present' you the results of our en- 
quiries in a form adapted, as far as possible, to set at rest such doubts 
as we know are commonly entertained by others in regard, more espe- 
cially, to the extent of ground on the Island in which there is a liabi- 
lity to encounter malaria; as to the degree of harm which is liable to 
result from encountering it, as to its sources, as to the practicability of 
obtaining relief from it, and as to the means of doing so. 
Fortunately for this purpose, one of our number, Dr. Harris, had 
several years since undertaken a special inquiry as to certain of the 
phenomena associated with malarial disease, had enlisted the aid of a 
number of physicians and others resident in different parts of the 
Island, and had entered into correspondence with several scientific 
investigators in different parts of the country and abroad, for the pur- 
pose of interchanging the results of observations on the subject. He 
was therefore, fairly well prepared at the outset to answer the class 
of inquiries which most interest the public. 
Since the appointment of our Board, and more or less accompanied 
by others of our number, he has visited all parts of the Island anew, 
observing, it is believed, every acre of its surface, for the purpose of 
verifying and enlarging the information previously obtained, and for 
conference with the medical faculty and intelligent citizens generally 
on the subject. He has also been assisted in his examination 
by Doctor J. S. Newberry, State Geologist of Ohio, and Professor 
of Geology in the Columbia College School of Mines, who is not only 
eminent in his special branch of science, but having practiced medicine 31 
in the malarial regions of the Wes', and thus been led to give particu- 
lar attention to the influence of geological conditions upon health, is 
unquestionably the first authority in the country on certain of the 
points involved. 
After two months of constant searching inquiry, made with these ad- 
vantages, and with, we are confident, an entirely unbiased, candid, and 
cautious disposition of mind we feel prepared to report certain conclu- 
sions with a reasonable degree of confidence. 
We should be glad, were it possible to lay before you full minutes of 
the evidence which has influenced the judgment that we shall express 
upon the practical questions to which the problem gives rise, both that 
obtained from persons direct and from medical and scientific records; 
but as, on account of its volumnious and frequently minutely technical 
character, this is out of the question, we have adopted the course of 
propounding a final series of questions to our medical associate with a 
view of presenting you, in a comprehensive and wholly intelligible form, 
answers which shall embody the more significant results of the general 
study which has been given the subject. Should it be desired, we are 
prepared to give much more detailed and specific evidence on most of 
the important points discussed. 
The report of questions and answers which follows has been deliber- 
ately reviewed and approved, not only by Doctor Harris but by several 
other medical gentlemen of the island, and the opinions expressed 
may, we believe, be regarded with confidence as those to which the 
closest observation and the most cautious and responsible study of the 
questions presented has led. These remarks apply more especially 
to matters of medical opinion. For others, all the members of our 
Board may be considered as equally responsible. 
Q. What is Malaria ? 
A. A poison in the atmosphere of certain localities which is recog- 
nized only by its effects, of which ague and fever is an example. 
Q. Besides ague and fever what other effects of this poison are 
observed on Staten Island ? 
A. Disturbance of sleep and general uneasiness, rheumatic and 
neuralgic pains, lassitude, and a marked disturbance of the digestive 
organs and the vital energies, are commonly complained of in the loca- 
lities where fever and ague prevails. They are mitigated or removed 
by the same antidotes, and are in most cases unquestionably due also 
to malaria. The most virulent form of disease produced by malarial 32 
poison upon the island is pernicious congestive fever which, where 
proper antidotes have not been quickly administered, has sometimes 
proved fatal. This has occurred in but few neighborhoods and rarely. 
Q. In what proportion of the households upon the island, do forms 
of suffering or discomfort occur which physicians attribute to this 
poison ? 
A. Disregarding certain localities which are in general compara- 
tively safe, amounting altogether to not more than one tenth of its 
area, it must be said that the population is almost universally affected 
in some degree by malaria. The effect of it has been sufficiently de- 
cided within the last six months in about three-fourths of the house- 
holds to induce the inmates to consult a physician ; of the fraction re- 
ferred to as comparatively safe very little can be said to be perfectly 
secure against malaria wafted, under certain atmospheric conditions, 
from the other parts. 
Q. Are those who have suffered from the more severe forms and 
persistent influence of malarial disease permanently enfeebled or con- 
stitutionally injured thereby, as a general rule? 
A. As an invariable rule. 
Q. Are other animals than man affected by malarial poisoning ? 
A. Frequently and decidedly, on Staten Island. (See appendix.) 
Q. Are young children affected by it ? 
A. There have been numerous cases of late on Staten Island, in 
malarious places, in which infants only a few days old have suffered 
severely. They have been born with the poison in their system. 
Q. Is it probable that malarial poisoning in many cases where it 
does not very distinctly appear, that is to say, by the ordinary symp- 
toms, acts harmfully by stimulating, complicating and increasing other 
diseased tendencies ? 
A. It certainly does so. 
Q. The tendency to drunkenness or to a morbid desire for stimu- 
lants for instance ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. It exerts a general demoralizing and debilitating influence ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Does it appear that malaria is increasing on the island-affect- 
ing more people and acting over a larger part of the surface? 33 
A. It does, so far as mere extent of its effects and the frequency of 
its prevalence are concerned. 
Q. And is that the case looking back through a number of years 
and independently of seasons of an unusual character ? 
A. It is. In the early part of the present century, and as late as 
thirty-four or thirty-five years ago, malarial disease was almost un- 
known, except in occasional years, in localities where it now prevails 
every year. Dr. Spencer of Westfield, for instance, says that from 
1835 to 1839, he did rot meet with a single case, and considered the 
island free from malaria. In 1839 he first began to meet with evidence 
of its presence. It has now, for a series of years, been very prevalent 
in the same localities. Dr. Spencer's field of observations extended 
from Gifford's and Fresh Kills to Ward's Point. Dr. Edgar, the Pres- 
ident of the County Medical Society, and the physician of longest 
experience on the island, states that the " malarial years" occur more 
frequently since 1845, but that there were occasional intense malarial 
epidemics in earlier times, as far back as 1827. He believes the 
malaria now more constant, but usually less intense. Dr. William 
C. Anderson, whose observations have been very extensive, thinks 
that the malarial nurseries are more numerous and extensive than 
formerly. 
Q. Setting aside special conditions, such as unusual heat or drought, 
do the evils of malaria appear to be increasing year by year ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Are there any instances in which regions at one time free, or 
nearly so, of malarial poison, have gradually become highly malari- 
ous ? 
A. There are lands which at one time maintained large communities 
in fair healthfulness, and that have since been almost completely de- 
populated by the gradual inroads of malaria. This is well known to 
be the case in parts of the Campagna, near Rome, for instance. 
Q. What is known of the causes of malaria ? 
A. Sir Thomas Watson has, perhaps, given the best statement of the 
conditions positively known to be most constantly necessary for the 
production of malaria. He says : "For producing malaria it appears 
to be requisite that there should be a surface capable of absorbing 
moisture, and that this surface should be flooded or soaked with water 
and then dried; the higher the temperature and the quicker this 
drying process, the more plentiful, the more virulent, the poison that 
is evolved." 34 
Q. Our attention has been called to a statement cut from a news- 
paper, as follows: 
M. P. Bolestra has communicated to the French Academy some 
observations on ague poison. He says, that m examining marsh water 
he always finds, in proportion to its degree of putrifaction, a granular 
microphyte, somewhat resembling in form the Cactus Peruvianus. It 
is always accompanied by a considerable quantity of small spores y oVo 
of a millimeter in diameter, greenish-yellow and transparent, and also 
by sporangia or vesicles, containing spores from to of a milli- 
meter in diameter, and of very characteristic form. This plant grows 
on the surface of the water; when young, it is rainbow-like in tints, 
and looks like spots of oil. At the low temperature of cellars, and in 
water containing no vegetation, it develops slowly, but in contact with 
air and exposed to solar rays it grows fast, disengaging small gas 
bubbles. A few drops of arsenious acid, sulphite of soda, or still better, 
neutral sulphate of quinine stops its vegetation at the surface of the 
water: the spores become thin and transparent, and the sporangia 
alter so they would not be recognised. These changes may be seen 
under the microscope. M. Bolestra states that these spores can be 
found in marsh air. He caught ague twice during his researches-once 
after having been exposed to air from water in fermentation, covered 
with fresh algae in full vegetation, mixed with an extraordinary quan- 
tity of spores. He thinks these spores constitute the ague poison." 
It is a fact that such oil-like spots are to be frequently seen upon 
the edge of pools of water near which malarial disease is understood 
to prevail in the island. What is to be thought of the theory ? 
A. There are two hypotheses used in accounting for the production 
of malaria, one is that sustained by the observations which have 
been read, the other, that malaria is produced directly or indirectly 
by certain gases or volatile emanations, the nature and combinations 
of which are yet undetermined, but which are evolved by decaying 
vegetable matter under the required conditions of temperature and 
moisture. 
Q. In either case the point where danger begins, and the manner in 
which it spreads would be the same, would they not ? 
A. Yes, and in this respect we have to deal with malarial diseases 
precisely as with other fevers. We understand only the physical con- 
ditions under which the fever occurs, the factor-like relations of these 
conditions, the results they produce, and the means by which the local 
causes can be prevented. 
Q. Is it at all improbable that malaria is produced by something 35 
thrown off by a microscopic plant which is liable to be reproduced 
whenever its seeds are carried by the wind to situations where they may 
be washed into the midst of dead vegetation, and afterwards find a some- 
what warm moisture, such as might on a hot summer's day be pro- 
duced by the direct rays of the sun on the edge of a marsh or pond, 
or even undei- turf, or a bed of rotting leaves, where the soil had lately 
been water-soaked ? 
A. While it has, as yet, by no means been proved, such an hypothe- 
sis is not improbable. On the contrary, it fits the conditions, under 
which malaria oftenest arises, better perhaps than any other that has 
been suggested. Prof. Niemeyer, the most recent of writers on the 
subject, says it must be so. Dr. Daniel Drake, who spent an active 
life studying malarial diseases, says, that this hypothesis is better sus- 
tained than any other, but is not yet proved. In the latter is the true 
state of the evidence. 
Q. Adopting this hypothesis, wbat would be the effect of the shade 
of trees falling upon damp ground with reference to the propagation 
of the supposed plant ? 
A. By preventing as great a degree of heat as would otherwise 
occur, it might hinder its growth and propagation. 
Q. What would be the effect of foliage upon the dissemination of the 
poison ? 
A. It is probable that the spores or germs would be arrested by 
and fasten to the foliage. But inasmuch as foliage evolves oxygen 
and volatile aromatic material, it is believed that the poison is more or 
less neutralized in passing through foliage. That electrified or active 
condition which is termed ozone, and which is abundant in the vicin- 
ity of flourishing trees, tends to destroy malaria. 
Q. What is the effect oi foliage on dampness of the soil ? 
A. No tree can live without drawing moisture from the soil. Ex- 
periments have been recently made with great care by Pettenkofer, at 
Munich, to determine the amount evaporated by a single tree. It is 
proved that a common spreading tree, such as may grow by the road- 
side, discharges from its leaves eight and a half times as much water 
during the Summer, as commonly falls in rain upon the surface of the 
ground covered by its branches. The tree experimented upon was an 
oak. More succulent trees, as the elms, maples, and hickories, proba- 
bly discharge more than that, especially in this climate. 
Q. The roots of trees then, wherever they go, act as underdrains to 
draw water from the soil and discharge it into the atmosphere ? 36 
A. Yes, so long as covered with living foliage. Professor Petten- 
kofer's experiments have proved that during the first three months of 
summer the activity of this process of evaporation from the foliage is 
greatest. And those experiments scientifically explain the fact which 
has •long been known, and which can be witnessed upon thousands of 
acres on Staten Island, that wherever forests are cut away, and brush- 
wood allowed to remain there will be an increase of stagnant ground- 
water. Large and flourishing trees when standing fairly separated 
from each other so as to have ample foliage, as formerly at Clifton, act 
with amazing certainty and power in preventing the stagnation and 
increase of ground-water. We see how this occurs, by sucking up at 
the roots, and throwing off by the leaves-in vapor-eight times as 
much as the total rainfall on the same area. 
Q. And in this way one of the conditions which all investigators 
are agreed is necessary to the production of malaria, may be prevented 
from occurring ? 
A. Yes, adopting the cryptogamous hypothesis, we should say that 
drainage might cause the death of all the sprouts from seeds deposited 
on the soil the previous year, as it would those of flags or cat-tails. 
Q. Are instances known in which drainage, having been by any 
means made less effective,districts have thereby been made more sub- 
ject to malarial disease ? 
A. Many such instances are known, not only in history like that of 
the Campagna, but in the records of our civil courts, in the cases 
which have come up for legal adjudication because of negligence to 
prevent the occasional overflowing or saturation of lands. 
Q. Are instances known in which regions once populous and pros- 
perous have been reduced to absolute desolation and waste by the pro- 
gress of malarial poisoning ? 
A. There are many such. Even the Campagna, now a waste and 
uninhabitable, had at one period, when drained, twenty-three flourish- 
ing towns. 
Q. Are there instances in which malarial poisoning, once having 
been common in any region, has been made less common or entirely 
ceased ? 
A. Numerous instances. 
Q. Has this been the result of the use of artificial means, or of con- 
ditions which may be artificially produced ? 
A. Yes, always. 37 
Q. Can these conditions be generally reduced to these two; thorough 
drainage and an increased growth of foliage ? 
A. Yes, and as the cases stand, it would be entirely correct to say 
that such a result has been reached only by deep and thorough drain- 
age. Trees and tillage are adjuvants. 
Q. What are the main facts of the evidence to which you referred, 
supplied by the region about Rome ? 
A. The districts soaked by the waters flowing from the Palatine, 
Aventine and Tarpeian Hills were for centuries excessively malarious. 
The elder Tarquin carried deep subterranean channels through them 
by which the stagnant water of the ground was collected and turned 
into the Tiber. They immediately became healthy and were for along 
time occupied by a large population. After the invasion of the Goths 
the care of the drains was neglected, they gradually became obstructed 
and so remain to the present day. For hundreds of years these dis- 
tricts have in consequence been made almost unhabitable by malaria. 
There is a similar history of other districts about Rome, and within 
the city itself the records are numerous and complete which show: first, 
the prevalence for centuries of malaria; second the construction of 
drains, followed by freedom for centuries from malaria; third the de- 
stuction or obstruction of the drains followed again for centuries by 
malaria. 
Q. There have been some similar experiences in France, have there not? 
A. Yes, at Bordeaux and Rochefort, and in large districts of the 
Lorraine. 
Q. And in England ? 
A. Many in England. In large districts where ague and fever was 
common twenty oi' thirty years ago, since the general adoption by the 
farmers of the system of thorough-drainage for crops, it has quite dis- 
appeared. This is true of parts of Essex, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, 
Kent and Sussex; also of Stirlingshire and Perthshire in Scotland. 
There are remarkable instances also in Ireland. Hundreds of cases 
might be cited, in our own country, in which the disappearance of ma- 
larial disease has followed close upon land drainage, several in the 
western part of the State of New York. Batavia was at one time so 
malarious that its prosperity was seriously threatened. A public meet- 
ing was held at which a physician, Dr. J. B. Cotes, advised the drainage 
of some water soaked land near the town. The work was commenced 
by subscription, but had not proceeded far, when the profit of it be- 
came so evident that the owners of the land carried it out on their 
own account. Malarial disease began at once to be less prevalent and 38 
during the last sixteen years the town has been essentially free from 
it. Shawneetown, on the Wabash, suffered fearfully from malaria until 
after 1838. In the construction of a railway through it one seventh 
of all the men engaged died. A ditch, which at one point had to be 
cut to a depth of forty feet, having been opened through the town it at 
once became healthy and has since so remained. The terribly malar- 
ial effects that attend upon the wet-system of rice culture; and, on 
the other hand the speedy relief that has followed the substitution of 
dry-culture, are facts well known. 
An illustration of another character is furnished us by Doctor Hert- 
zog, a pupil of Professor Von Pettenkofer, the highest authority in 
Europe on this subject. The King of Bavaria had two stud-farms, 
on one of which it was found that the horses were constantly liable to 
fall into low condition, while on the other, with the same rules of 
management, they were in excellent health. The best veterinary 
surgeons were consulted, and many experiments in diet and regimen 
tried without success. Rough coats, bad digestion, sudden mysterious 
deaths, and a general low tone continued to prevail. Professor Von 
Pettenkofer, hearing of the circumstances, obtained leave to examine the 
subsoil of the locality. He ascertained that though superficially dry, 
it was a little below the surface completely saturated. He urged that 
the farm should be thorough-drained with tile laid not less than four 
feet below the surface. This was done at once, the following year the 
horses recovered, and there were no further complaints. 
In a recent letter to me from Prof. James Law, of the Cornell Uni- 
versity, he states that "the various forms of 'anthrax' and the 
' brand ' or splenic disease, are indigenous among domestic animals 
pastured on wet and malarial lands. These diseases, and the blackleg 
and other distressing maladies have disappeared whenever the lands 
have been thoroughly drained. In Potsdam, Prussia, the domestic 
animals were formerly deciminated by such diseases, but they have dis- 
appeared since the lands have been drained. Also at Elahaff, near 
Douanwerth, where these maladies were formerly rife, they have to- 
tally disappeared since the wet lands were drained as Prof. Von Pet- 
tenkofer advised." 
Q. What is the character of the evidence that connects the occur- 
rence of malarial disease with decaying vegetation ? 
A. Perhaps the most conclusive is that afforded first at the town of 
Urbs Vetus in Italy, which from its elevated situation might have been 
expected to be free from malaria, nevertheless suffered terribly. An 
eminent physician. Dr. Lancisi, detected the cause of it and secured an 39 
ordinance forbidding the rotting of flax near the town; malaria immed- 
iately and permanently disappeared. This experience led to the pre- 
vention of flax rotting in ditches in France, Ireland, and other coun- 
tries, always with the same desired result. 
Q. Is there an unusual amount of stagnant water, and water-soaked 
soil during every period of dry warm weather, in the immediate 
vicinity of each of the localities distinguished in the medical records of 
Staten Island for extraordinary malaria? 
A. Yes, without exception. 
Q. One of the largest of these districts, as you have informed us 
heretofore, lies near the railway on the South side. We know by per- 
sonal inspection and otherwise that several hundred acres of woodland 
(estimated by a resident as over a thousand) have been cleared in that 
vicinity during the last ten years, much of it low and sedgy land. We 
are also informed that the construction of the railway caused obstruc- 
tions to the natural water-courses from some parts of this low land. 
Must the increase of malaria in this vicinity be attributed wholly to 
these two circumstances ? 
A. It is to be attributed mainly to these, but also to the dropping 
out of cultivation of much land formerly valued and well tilled for 
farming purposes, but lately held only for speculation, to some extent 
by non-residents, water consequently finds its way more slowly 
through the soil; soils that once bore good crops when under the 
plow now bear sedge-grasses, and retentive subsoils have been formed 
near the surface, where formerly the plow and spade prevented this 
mischief. I have witnessed the same evil in certain undrained paper- 
city lands in Kings, Queens and Westchester counties, where mala- 
ria is quite as troublesome as on Staten Island. 
Q. Do you consider that the prevalence of malarial disease on the 
Island is chiefly to be attributed to the difficulty with which rain 
water finds its way below the surface, to a depth where it will remain 
too cool to admit of the generation of the malarial poison ? 
A. That difficulty is a primary condition. 
Q. What is there in the soil of Staten Island which makes it diffi- 
cult for water to soak through it? 
A. The drift which covers the greater part of Staten Island as well 
as the opposite shores of Long Island and parts of New Jersey con- 
tains, even where it is apparently most sandy, particles of feldspathic 
clay, ordinarily in a condition of impalpable fineness, but which 
were originally deposited in the form of silt. When wet, these parti- 40 
cles expand, and, coining in contact one with another, form a slime 
or puddle, filling what would otherwise be the waterducts between 
the larger grains of sand and other particles composing the soil. The 
dust of the serpentine ridges which form the elevated points of the 
Island has a similar property. A certain form of iron (hydrous 
oxide), in a finely pulverized condition is also abundantly diffused in 
the soils of the Island; where this is washed in with the argillaceous,, 
feldspathic or serpentine debris, it forms with it a kind of cement,, 
impenetrable by water. 
Q. The elements of this cement are in the first place washed to- 
gether by rain water, but when thus properly commingled have the- 
property of resisting its passage ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Does this occur upon the surface ? 
A. Sometimes ; there are remarkable instances near the iron mines 
at Centreville, for instance, where rushes may be seen growing on the 
crowns of hills, but it is not general except where a considerable 
body of water is often collected by depressions of the surface, and 
where it evaporates slowly ? 
Q. Why not generally upon the surface ? 
A. The form of iron which has been referred to, is changed by the 
action of oxygen, and another form is taken which is pulverulent, 
and through which water passes freely. The air penetrates soil near 
the surface when it is not covered by water, especially when it is 
under tillage, and oxygen is thus transfused through it to a certain 
depth. Going down six or eight inches the indurated form of iron 
may often be found in scales, more often as a dark stain in a plate or 
hard-pan of sand, gravel and clay, which it firmly holds together. The- 
soil below this pan may often be found dry when that above it is 
mirey. I have, during the past dry Autumn, seen in various cuttings 
of earth-banks, an upper or second stratum yielding a constant 
stream of water of super-saturation, running oft* from a thin impervious 
" hard pan," while the gravel or the sand immediately beneath, and fci 
several feet in depth, not only was not saturated, but was loose and 
dry. In digging drains or wells the pan is often broken throng] 
by the pick, and thrown out in pieces which appear as hard as ii 
they had been broken out of an old water-cemented cistern wall. 
They will bear a sharp rap with a walking stick without fracture. 
Place one of these upon a plate in a dry airy room and after a day or 41 
two it will have quite disappeared. In its place will be a little heap 
of loose grey and reddish loam. 
Q. In the western part of the Island there are extensive tracts oi 
sandy surface, apparently very open, yet we hear complaints of mala- 
ria upon them. What is the difficulty in those cases ? 
A. They are frequently underlaid with the same hard-pan. The 
most deadly malaria is often found under such circumstances. That 
is the condition of the celebrated malarial plains of Walcheren in 
Holland. 
Q. With the liability to the formation, a few inches below the sur- 
face, of a water-cement by the process which has been described, how 
can under drains act to relieve the surface of water ? Why would 
there not soon be a water-holding pan above them ? 
A. It is a well proved fact that the earth immediately in contact 
with the drains, if not naturally porous, soon becomes so; if 
they are laid in clay the withdrawal of the water which would escape 
by the open joints of the drain will cause the clay to shrink and open 
in many fine fissures, as may often be seen in a clay bank by the road 
side. These fissures as soon as the water has ceased to run through 
them will be filled with air. Gradually, after several rains perhaps, 
they will extend until they have reached the water-holding pan and 
penetrate it; giving the air opportunity to reach and decompose the 
cement from below. They would behave precisely like the masses of 
hard-pan laid up to dry, falling into masses of powder. 
Q. And tillage facilitates a similar action in dry weather from 
above ? 
■ A. Yes. 
Q. Pools of water from twenty to fifty or a hundred yards in width 
are common upon the Island. Are they generally liable during 
droughts in the hot season to become "stagnant" in the common ac- 
ceptation of the term, that is, productive of cryptogams, and of 
malarial poison ? 
A. There are upwards of a thousand such pond-holes upon the 
Island, and excepting in excessively wet and cloudy summers they 
inevitably produce vast quantities of algse and other chryptogamous 
plants which are continually reproducing and decaying, and the more 
rapidly as the quantity of water decreases by evaporation. Such places 
are malarial nurseries for the Island. 
Q. And, contrary to the usual belief, they are more common on the 
■ A. Yes. 42 
higher parts, and in rolling ground with an apparently open sandy 
surface than on the long and gentle, nearly level slopes ? 
A. Yes. They are frequent on the ridges, and on several square 
miles of the western parts of the Island, a space of twenty acres can 
hardly be found without what is called a pond-hole upon it, that is a 
basin, the bottom of which is cemented and covered with a vegetable 
deposit, often several feet in depth, sometimes covered with water and 
sometimes simply saturated. 'These are even more frequent, midway 
between the waters enclosing the Island than near its circumference. 
Q. Are the rims of these basins often rocky? 
A. Not one has a complete rim of rock in place, and only a very few 
of them have any rock near them. They could in most cases be 
drained of water by a pipe laid five or six feet from the surface 
of the rim of the ground about them. In this respect the Island is 
more fortunate than any other district of equal extent, no further 
removed from the city. To relieve some portions of our suburban dis- 
tricts upon Long Island, Westchester and Queens Counties, and New 
Jersey, from malaria, deep excavation and works of far more formidable 
character and cost will be required. Unfortunate as the reputation 
of Staten Island is for malaria, the sources of it can be more speedily 
and completely removed than those in other suburban districts. 
Q. We were told by citizens of Northfield that in the low flat dis- 
trict between New Springville, Graniteville and Morning-Star Road, 
over which the waters of the Willow Brook are spread, that deep drain- 
age would be impracticable on account of a natural dam of rock. 
What are the facts in that case ? 
A. There is an impervious ridge of trap rock thickly overlaid by 
diluvial gravel, extending from the shore near Port Richmond to Long 
Neck, between which and the upland, east of Springville, there is an 
extensive basin which receives, from Willow Brook and other sources, 
some two million gallons of water a day, which, in some cases covers 
large surfaces, making marshes; in others, saturates the soil just below 
the surface. In dry weather much of this water stagnates and breeds 
malaria, and the whole district, together with its borders is at night, 
or whenever the sun is obscured, very chilly. There is in this quarter, 
consequently, a special liability to pulmonary complaints (as well as to 
malarial), which are comparatively rare in the greater part of the 
Island. For this, as well other reasons, it is very desirable that the 
region in question should be relieved of its excessive dampness. There 
are two methods of operating for this purpose. The inflowing streams 
should be controlled and deflected from it, and it should be drained. 43 
Professor Newberry assisted me in a careful examination of the supposed 
obstacles, and is of the opinion that there is nothing in the way of the 
perfect drainage of the whole area to any depth desirable for sanitary 
or agricultural purposes. It only requires a little care in engineering 
the course and grade of the outlets. Most of the land but for its 
dampness is very fertile, and by drainage would be rendered available 
for highly salubrious residences, and profitable culture. Much of it is 
now worse than useless, as the emanations from it unfavorably affect 
the health of an important part of the town of Northfield and the re- 
putation of the whole Island. 
Q. Are there any basins on the higher parts of the Island formed 
by ridges of the serpentine rocks ? 
A. None such are found which are due to the rock. The serpen- 
tine ledges will not,like trap or granite, hold water. On the contrary, 
the serpentine and talcose rocks as they are found on this Island, are 
very remarkably absorptive rocks. (See Statements of Experiments 
in Appendix.) 
Q. All the class of rocks which are commonly referred to on Staten 
Island as serpentine have also the property of changing temperature 
much more slowly than most rocks have they not ? 
A. Yes. They are peculiarly non-radiating. That is, the serpen- 
tine rocks when of the varieties we see on this island, namely, the soft 
steatite, dolomite, talc and magnesia, transmit heat very slowly, but re- 
tain it tenaciously. 
Q. Is it for this reason they are valued for the beds of ovens and in 
the form of soap-stone are formed into stoves and foot-warmers ? That 
is to say because, although they heat up more slowly, they retain heat 
and yield it as a gentle warmth for a very much longer time than iron 
or any ordinary hard building stone ? 
A. That is the reason. 
Q. These qualities pertain to the whole of the elevated masses of 
serpentine which we find on Staten Island ? 
A. Yes, and this ridge of soap-stone and porous magnesian rock ex- 
tends from New Brighton Point to St. Andrew's Church and the 
Fresh Kills at Richpiond village. 
Q. These masses are, m effect, two ridges of rocks, which are projected 
boldly to a height of from two to nearly four hundred feet above tide 
level, and together are nearly seven miles in length, surrounded by a 
low sloping base of drift and alluvium, and at a distance of a mile or 44 
two by tidal water; must they not on account of their singularly ab- 
sorptive and singularly non-radiating qualities have considerable in- 
fluence upon the local climate. 
A. There are facts which indicate a certain degree of influence high- 
ly favorable to health from them, but, they are complicated by the 
phenomena produced by the superficial conditions which have been 
described, and which would be removed by thorough-drainage. We are 
warranted in stating that if these rocky ridges were of granite or trap, 
and exposed as they would be, they would vastly increase some of the 
conditions which now render some of the uplands unhealthful. The 
rocks we actually have on this Island are highly favorable to this nat- 
ural requirements for healthfulness. They are even more favoiable 
than chalk cliffs or sandstone would be in the situation. 
Q. How do they affect the local climate ? 
A. Their effect, if not contracted by the superficial conditions re- 
ferred to, must be at all times a moderating one. By absorbing mois- 
ture, they would tend in cold damp periods to limit the reduction of tem- 
perature at the surface of the ground, by exhaling moisture, they would 
equally tend to restrain the elevation of temperature in hot dry periods. 
Radiating heat more slowly than other rocks, or than ordinary soils 
and substrata of soils they would tend to give unusual length to 
the process of a general change of temperature. They would for in- 
stance, part with less heat late in the day or early at night than is us- 
ually given off from the Earth's surface, and more late at night, when 
the temperature of the air is coolest-thus moderating the com- 
mon chilliness of the latter part of the night. When this chilliness is 
extreme delicate persons are often most unfavorably affected by it. 
They would tend to prolong the Autumn and to make the changes of 
Spring less sudden, extreme and trying. 
Q. You say they would do so. Are such effects observable at all as 
a matter of fact ? 
A. They are, distinctly-have been often remarked by observing 
men, and the advantages thus sometimes gained by delicate persons in 
certain parts of the Island are recognized by the older physicians upon it. 
They would be much more marked were it not for the hard-pan crust 
which so generally is found in the soil, and which has precisely the 
opposite qualities. 
Q. Which opposite qualities may be completely changed by thorough 
drainage ? 
A. Yes, not may be only-they have been already to a certain ex- 
tent in several places. 45 
Q. South of this are there anywhere on the coast masses of rock 
found having strikingly absorptive or non-radiating qualities ? 
A. In Florida, the coral reefs. 
Q. Any to the North ? 
A. Nowhere on the coast. 
Q. Is there not a somewhat similar quality in the rock which forms 
the mass of the Isle of Wight, and does it not aid to give it its special 
reputation for healthfulness ? 
A. Yes, but the elevated parts of the Isle of Wight, as well as other 
health resorts in chalk cliff regions, are barren wastes in comparison 
with the Staten Island hills, and less healthful than Staten Island 
could be made. 
Q. Do you know what the effect of that reputation for salubrity in 
the Isle of Wight has been ? 
A. It has brought families of the most intelligent and refined classes 
and many wealthy persons to build and permantly reside upon that 
island; large numbers of such residents have gone thither from all 
portions of Great Britain and various other countries, and thus a great 
value has been given to the land which would otherwise have remained 
almost worthless. 
Q. Below one of the principal ranges of hills (sometimes called 
Grimes Hill, formerly and more properly " Signal Hill ") in which 
serpentine rock and iron ore both appear in large masses, there 
is a broad stretch of flattish land upon which the passage of water 
flowing from the hills is evidently slow and often obstructed. 
The character of the herbage and the moss on the trees also indicate 
a saturated soil. According to our hypothesis this district (the Clove 
Valley, Concord flats and Rocky Hollow) should be a seed bed of mal- 
aria. How do medical records bear out the suggestion ? 
A. The facts are that at some points, where the evidence of an arrested 
flow of water and of water-soaked soil over considerable areas is most 
obvious, malarial disease not only prevails but fever of a pernicious type, 
has occurred more than once during the past five years. There are re- 
cords of its occurrence, in the same localities, going back to 1827. The 
amount of malarial disease, of the common types, has been increasing, 
however, as woods have been felled, and the surface of cleared land has 
been less cultivated. There are but few households in or near these 
flatlands which have not suffered from malarial disease of late years. 
The same is true of most of the flatter surfaces below the hills through- 
out the Island. 46 
Q. Is the malarial poison generated, in these beds liable to be wafted 
up to and over the high ridges which overlook them ? 
A. It is. They are nurseries of evil to all more elevated grounds 
which chance to be so situated as to receive currents of air from them. 
Q. Are there any facts going to show that persons resident in houses 
at a considerable elevation above these seed beds are poisoned by mal- 
aria while at their residences ? 
A. Facts such as this for instance-a physician reports that he has 
recently visited a lady who for weeks suffered from malarial poisoning; 
she lias scarcely been out from her own elevated grounds, not at all 
at night, and has lived wholly in the second story of her house, at an 
elevation of three hundred feet above tide water and two hundred and 
fifty above the lowest point of the malarious valley upon which her 
windows open, and from which they are half a mile distant. 
Q. There is reported to be about six thousand acres of salt marsh 
on the shore of the Island, chiefly on the continental side. Is this 
malarious, and if so, can it be rendered harmless by drainage ? 
A. The actual salt marsh, that is to say, marsh reached by the tide 
from the sea, is not more than thirty-five hundred acres in extent, and 
there is no evidence that this is in the least malarious. The immediate 
margins of such marshes in fact, are, in some cases, where well drained 
and cultivated, exceptionally free from malarial diseases. In others 
such marginal land, once malarial, has been rendered healthy by drain- 
age, the salt marsh remaining undrained. Little streams flow from 
the upland into most of the salt marshes, the channels of which are 
generally tortuous and obstructed. The fresh water pools and 
marshes thus formed above the saltmarshes are often highly malarious. 
Little estuaries at the head of salt inlets such as are found at Factory- 
ville, at Richmond Valley, at the outlet of Taylor's Brook and near 
Seguine's Point are also apt to be malarious. In all these cases how- 
ever it is the fresh, and not the salt water, that establishes the con- 
dition of malaria. From personal inspection and inquiry, I judge 
that the quantity of such back water marsh, which is not actually salt, 
may be estimated at about two thousand acres. 
Q. Are ponds of water, which have no visible outflow, sources of 
malaria, even though the water in them is never exhausted by evapo- 
ration ? 
A. There are a few such ponds on the island, in which there is sel- 
dom any appearance of algae or other vegetable growths. Such 
ponds, in some parts, are usually quite deep, and they are, to some ex- 47 
tent, supplied by springs. In these there is a constant circulation be 
tween the deep cold parts and the surface, so that the water in them 
seems nowhere to become sufficiently stagnant and warm for the evo- 
lution of malaria. But such condition is seldom met with, and ponds 
can be kept from becoming malarial only by care. If, in an extremely 
hot period, the water should reach a temperature of sixty or sixty-five 
degrees Fahrenheit, and much vegetable waste were in and around it, 
malaria would probably be produced. 
Q. Are such ponds unfavorable to health ? 
A. Provided there were no shallow bays opening upon them the 
soil of which they soaked, and that their shores did not greatly con- 
tract in Summer, leaving long slopes covered with decaying organic 
matter to putrify in the sun, they would be generally favorable to 
health. The necessary conditions of healthfulness in ponds, which have 
a value for their effect in landscapes, could easily be established and 
maintained artificially, but they seldom are so. What commonly 
occurs is indicated in the record here exhibited, which gives a series 
of measurement made upon the margin of a pond at frequent inter- 
vals during the Summer. The pond is nearly circular, and on May 
15th measured 64 feet in diameter. On June 3d the diameter was 
5 feet, less, the water having receded 2 feet 6 inches, leaving a 
border of offensive matter. June 10th the water had receded from 
original outline 5 feet. 
June 17 
5 6 
Aug. 
214 
Sept. 
2 
12 
24 
5 
" 8 
12 
cc 
7 
12 
4 
July 3 
8 
" 11 
15 
a 
14 
12 
6 
" 9 
5 
" 19 
15 
a 
28 
14 
" 16 
7 
" 25 
15 
a 
30 
13 
" 21 
8 6 
" 28 
12 
Oct. 
3 
12 
" 24 
12 5 
Ql 
7 
12 
6 
a 
15 
12 
8 
Ci 
18 
10 
It will be seen that with every shower, and according to the varying 
degree of sun-heat, the width of the exposed margin varied, but that 
not till the 18th of October did the water return to the original mar- 
gin. Conditions more exactly in accordance with those laid down by 
Sir Thomas Watson, as necessary to the production of malaria could 
hardly be contrived, and, as before said, there are probably at least a 
thousand shallow-edged ponds on the Island in which a similar process 
occurs every Summer. The pond-hole to which the foregoing records 
relate is situated in Westfield, and the observations were undertaken 48 
simply to ascertain the facts for the information of a sanitary officer 
in the year 1869. 
Q. We have seen many open drains leading from the ponds-many 
miles of them altogether. In frequent cases they simply reduce the 
depth of water, not wholly removing it from the surface ; in others 
they barely take the water off' the foul bottom, and in most cases where 
drains of this class have been made more than one season we have 
ound them obstructed. A landowner who had himself made 
a great many, and who was extremely dissatisfied with the result 
stated that nine times out of ten some obstruction began to form 
within a week after they were made, the causes at the beginning being 
various, sometimes the work of birds or beasts, sometimes of children, 
sometimes of sportsmen or ramblers who throw in stepping stones, 
sometimes the lodging of reeds, brush or leaves, sometimes the caving 
down of the bank. What is the effect of such drains ? 
A. In all the instances named, and in by far the larger number of 
cases, in which open drains have been made on the Island, their effect 
has been to increase malaria by opening to the sun a larger extent of 
soil, thinly covered by water, or not all covered but saturated, either at 
or a little below the surface exposed. Open drains are usually suc- 
ceeded by increase of malaria for a time immediately succeeding their 
construction, but such is not the case with good tile drains. 
Q. And many of the smaller water-courses, farm ditches and road 
gutters, gullies and culverts being of the same character, do they have 
the same effect ? 
A. Yes. Being easily obstructed they form pools, keeping the soil 
saturated, under conditions favorable to the collection of decaying 
vegetation.* 
Q. Road side ditches, then, as at present formed, are often a nuis- 
ance ? 
* The following observation taken from the Minutes of Information, laid before Parliament in 
1852, with regard to the open water courses in the districts of country surrounding London, apply 
to all the old brook channels on Staten Island, near which a considerable number of suburban 
residences have been established. 
"When there are no floods the water * * * moves sluggishly over uneven bottoms, 
or lodges in stagnant pools in these ditches, giving off insalubrious effluvia * * * Many of the 
ditches are used for the outfalls for the drainage of suburban houses, and with the addition of such 
house drainage the effluvium becomes at times highly noxious and even fatal. The courses of 
these open water-courses were marked by excessive ravages of the cholera amongst the population 
living near them. • 
With regard to wayside drains of the common form, it was remarked that they were open to 
similar objections, " namely their unsuitableness to small runs of water; wide bottoms intended 
to be flat, but so irregularly shaped as to impede effectually the current of all but very large floods 
of water with considerable flows." 49 
A. Yes. 
Q. It is generally believed that the immediate effect of drainage is to 
increase malaria. Is that a necessary result of it ? 
A. It is not. Unless some special precautions are taken, there is 
danger that malaria will be increased for a short period if drainage is 
executed during hot dry weather, none if it is carried on in the 
Autumn. In any case, the danger can be overcome by applying some 
cheap disinfectant to the newly exposed soil. This has been proved in 
the extensive operations of Mr. Orange Judd and Mr. Poppenhusen 
during the last two years near Flushing. 
Q. How extended are the records of observation and experience upon 
which the views are based which have been expressed regarding the 
origin of malaria in damp and warm decaying vegetation, and the 
practicability oi its eradication where established, by the means in- 
dicated ? 
A. Observations have been making in several localities of Europe 
almost constantly for centuries, and as malaria has frequently been 
very destructive to the strength of armies, and monastic organizations, 
and has frustrated plans of colonization, the investigation of its causes 
and the records of observations thereupon are by no means limited to 
those of medical men. The records of observations fill thousands of 
pages of our most trustworthy medical and historical literature. 
Q. Can the fact be explained that the same conditions which on 
Staten Island apparently give rise to malaria, fail to do so a short 
distance to the northward ? 
A. There are a number of trees and plants which are common on 
Staten Island, but which are yery rare, or not found at all north of it. 
There are others that ripen reproducing seed here which, while they 
will grow from seed ripened here, will not themselves produce ripe 
seed much further North, unless perhaps in an unusually warm dry 
Summer, such as this has been. Such facts are, perhaps, not more un- 
accountable than that of the special liability of this immediate vicinity 
to malaria; difference of climate, which seems slight as defined by the 
thermometer, is adequate to account for great differences of vegetation, 
and in respect to malaria. As a matter of fact, malarial disease is 
not at all rare much to tlie northward of this, and in those parts com- 
monly exempt from it, it often breaks out when from any unusual cir- 
cumstance, such as the drawing down of a pond at midsummer, a 
large surface of rich and saturated soil is exposed to be more than 
usually heated. Such has been the case near Plymouth on the coast. and near Northampton in the interior, of Massachusetts. Such is at 
present the case in localities near some of the tributary ponds of the 
Croton Aqueduct, where it has been unknown before, but has been 
induced by an unusual lowering of the pond-water. 
Q. Understanding that all marshy places and stagnant pools of 
water, not salt, are sources of malaria which may be remedied by drain- 
age, would their drainage relieve the Island from malarial disease, or 
would the poison continue to arise from sources not superficially evi- 
dent, especially from damp ground, the subsoil of which is a hard pan 
or of a tenacious character ? 
A. Malaria is liable to arise from such grounds. The thorough- 
drainage of all retentive soils can alone insure absolute safety. 
Q. By thorough-drainage is meant under drainage, adequate to pre- 
vent the soil from remaining saturated with water after rain has ceased 
to fall ? 
A. Yes; a soil that remains saturated for a day after rain ceases (ex- 
cept in frost), is not thoroughly and sanitarily drained. Sanitary 
drainage, like agricultural drainage, requires open-jointed pipes, so 
laid down as to preclude such saturation. 
Q. It is generally understood, in districts where thorough-drainage 
is general, that a common open-jointed tile, after the cracking 
process (in the stiff soil), which has been described, will completely free 
soil from water, except such as is held in the pores of its particles, in a 
space about ten feet wide for every foot of distance from the surface at 
which it is laid, estimating approximately for ordinary circumstances. 
If, then, tile are laid thirty feet apart and three feet deep, or forty feet 
apart and four feet deep, is it to be expected that the locality so treated 
will be rendered perfectly safe against malaria of local origin? 
A. Yes • that may reasonably be expected under all ordinary circum- 
stances. 
Q. Would a less thorough drainage be adequate ? 
A. It should not be possible for the soil to long remain saturated 
within two feet of the surface near a dwelling. If it is, exhalations, 
causing disease, will be liable to rise from it. To make sure against 
this danger, drains must be laid little, if any, less than three feet, be- 
low the surface. Where there are or have been ponds with accumula- 
tions of vegetable matter in the bottom, the drains should be carried, if 
practicable, below the vegetable matter, and, at any rate, four to five 
feet below the top of it, otherwise there will be a liability, from the un- 
usual porosity of the soil, to moist exhalations rising through it. 51 
Q. Where the foundations of a dwelling and the land about it for a 
certain space have been thoroughly underdrained, and where consid- 
erable foliage interposes between such a space and any exterior source 
of malaria, are the liabilities to malarial disease greatly reduced, and, in 
general, is there little danger that malarial disease would be contracted 
by its inmates, except by exposure outside their own ground? 
A. Instances of exemption so obtained are not unfrequent, even in 
the midst of very malarious districts, but they somewhat rarely occur, 
unless where several adjoining properties are so improved; that is to 
say, where the land is thorough-drained over a somewhat larger space 
than an ordinary house lot. Examples are furnished in the four ad- 
joining drained farms of Messrs. Garretson, Underhill, Cortelyou, and 
Mrs. Banker, near Fresh Kills, and on the estate of Mr. Crooke, 
near Gifford's. Adjoining each of these there has been much malarial 
disease, but the people living upon them, to the number of seventy, 
have scarcely had a symptom of it. In another quarter the adjoining 
places of Messrs. Meyers, Simonson and Luling may be referred to. They 
were formerly very malarious, and the families living on them before 
their drainage, since living elsewhere, on the island, continue to suffer 
from malarial poison, there first contracted. The families which re- 
mained upon them after their thorough-drainage, recovered, and have 
since suffered not at all, and those who have moved to them since their 
drainage have lived for years upon them without suffering at all from 
any form of malarial trouble. Beyond the influence of the underdrains, 
the neighborhood is still highly malarious. 
Q. The difficulty of obtaining outlets by which the water collected 
would be at once removed harmlessly to a distance, is one of the obsta- 
cles to efficient private drainage, is it not? 
A. No doubt it is. For example, none of the property on the Finger- 
board Road, or upon Pennsylvania Avenue, can find outlet for neces- 
sary drainage except by artificial channels through other property. 
Q. Malarial poison being established in a locality where there is ex- 
cessive moisture upon the surface, and where decaying vegetable mat- 
ter, and the liability to a considerable degree of heat from the direct 
rays of the sun occur together, and these conditions being maintained 
through a series of years, is there reason to believe that something from 
the organic waste of a large and increasing population being added to 
them, malarial poison is increased ? 
A. Yes; not only so, but to malarial poison others are added which 
come from domestic wastes, and the compound effects are of avery dan- 
gerous character, often causing incurabF diseases and f dal epidemics. 52 
Q. Are all persons, of whatever habits, when living, or passing near 
the places where these poisonous compounds form in the air, liable to 
suffer from them ? 
A. They are. Good habits, good houses, and good food can not in- 
sure protection against such sources of danger. 
Q. And the distance to which they may be wafted, without losing 
fatal power, can it be strictly limited ? May it, under special condi- 
tions of the atmosphere, be much extended ? 
A. Yes. Malaria may be wafted overland and up hill sides some 
distance. There is ample proof that when favored with a warm and 
moist atmosphere the malarial poison may be wafted for a mile or more, 
especially when borne along the course of valleys and hill sides. 
Q. We have seen several localities on the east and north shores, where 
the conditions exist under which these fatal compounds are liable to be 
generated, have we not ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Generally they are to be found near the outlets of the island 
streams, are they not ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. As communities enlarge near these streams, it will be essential to 
safety that these household wastes should not be discharged into them, 
will it not ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. And will the planting or preservation of trees on their banks be 
a reasonable precaution against malaria? 
A. It will. 
Q. Other things being equal, no trees being planted, no drainage of 
consequence effected, is malaria likely to increase on this island with 
an increase of population, and is it thus likely to grow more and more 
unhealthy ? 
A. More than liable. If no efficient preventive measures are taken, 
it is practically sure to do so-practically sure, with any considerable 
increase of population, to become extremely unhealthy. The excep- 
tions will be found only where there is exceptionally good drainage, 
natural or artificial. 
Q. On the other hand, can we feel wholly confident that the removal 
or prevention of stagnant water, or of prolonged saturation, in con- 
junction with a high Summer temperature, in all places where dead 53 
vegetation occurs above or immediately below the surface, would be 
followed by the relief of the island from malarial disease in all its 
forms ? 
A. There can be no reasonable doubt of it. 
Q. Would such relief be complete and immediate ? 
A. Yes; but in very retentive soils drains do not always instantly 
remove saturation of the surface for reasons already indicated. 
Q. If all the small shallow ponds, and all the marshy places in which 
water stands above the surface, or in which its presence just below the 
surface is obvious, during the Summer, were drained, so that water 
could not stand in them, within three feet of the surface, would the 
island be freed from malaria within a year? 
A. The liability to' contract malarial disease would at least be re- 
duced in a very important degree within that time. It might take 
longer to eradicate the poison from the system of those who had pre- 
viously taken it, and as the soil of the island in most districts may 
now be supposed to contain the seeds of malaria, which only require 
favorable circumstances to become sources for the evolution of the 
poison, it is probable that in all localities where the subsoil is at all im- 
pervious, and the surface is apt to remain long saturated, malaria 
would still be produced to a limited extent. The total amount of the 
malarial element in the air of the island would perhaps be reduced by 
the drainage of all places where water is obviously stagnant close be- 
neath or upon the surface, of all rush-bearing land, for example, as well 
as pond-holes, to one-tenth what it is at present. Almost any person, 
in ordinary health, would resist what remained, and the number of 
those who would be affected by it would gradually become less. 
Q. Your statement would seem to imply that the resisting power of 
the system was gradually sapped where a man lives exposed to a high 
degree of malaria-and supposing the degree of malaria to be reduced, 
his resisting power gradually increases. Is that the accepted view ? 
A. It is. Experience indicates that a general, even though not 
absolutely complete extinction of the common sources of malaria, would 
have the effect which has been stated. The amount of the malarial disease 
might be quickly reduced to possibly one-tenth what it now is. A 
slow and gradual reduction below this would subsequently follow, the 
rate of reduction being a fluctuating one, varying with the seasons. 
Q. That statement, that the resisting powers of a man become 
less, the more malaria he is exposed to, and that his resisting powers become greater, the more attenuated the malaria he is exposed to, 
seems to be at variance with the common notion that a man may 
become acclimated to malaria. Is that notion not accepted by phy- 
sicians ? 
A. What is termed acclimatization, and hardening in malarial re- 
gions is attended by such impairment of constitutional health as to be 
as undesirable as fever and ague itself. 
Q. So long as the people of Long Island and New Jersey opposite, 
neglect drainage, what danger would there be of malaria produced 
there, drifting to Staten Island and destroying the benefits of drainage 
upon it ? 
A. None what ever. Staten Island is wholly responsible for the 
malaria under which it suffers, and it commands within itself the com- 
plete remedy for it; malaria seldom travels far over salt-water, never 
at all except under the influence of a current of highly-heated air. 
Numerous cases in proof of this might be cited from the records of 
our military posts and naval stations. The fact is well established. 
Q. Can you refer to instances in which belts of trees have been found 
to protect localities near them from malarial poison ? 
A. To many. Augusta, Georgia, may be mentioned as one in which 
a large community was kept nearly free from malarial diseases for 
many years, by a surrounding border of forest trees left for that pur- 
pose. A portion of these trees having been felled, malarial troubles 
immediately afflicted many households.* 
Q. To what diseases, apart from those attributable to imperfect 
drainage, if any, is Staten Island subject, more than the adjacent con- 
tinent, the comparison being especially with parts equally distant from 
New York ? 
A. None; pulmonary catarrhs which prevail in certain localities to 
an unusual degree, are attributable to excessive ground-moisture, and 
would be relieved by drainage. The same is true of rheumatic and 
neuralgic affections which prevail in some damp localities. 
Q. To what diseases if any less in parts where ground moisture, 
either from natural or artificial causes, is not excessive ? 
A. Pulmonary diseases, especially consumption;! all continued 
fevers, especially typhoid fevers; degenerative diseases, as scrofula and 
cancer ; uterine diseases both of tissue and function. 
* The surrounding of houses by trees at a little distance is desirable, but the shading of 
houses by trees in the midst of malarial districts seems to increase Ihe liability of their inmates 
to be poisoned. 
+ This remark is limited to the early stages and the cause of consumption, namely, the deposit 
and progress of the tubercles. 55 
Q. Is the Island generally believed by those physicians who have 
been long resident upon it to possess certain special and peculiar ad- 
vantages in this respect ? 
A. It is. Where there is no complication from malaria, the greater 
part of the Island is unquestionably a sanitarium for persons afflicted 
by, or having a tendency to any of the several classes of disease which 
have been named, and still more especially for overtaxed nervous sys- 
tems, and mentally overworked persons. In all its non-malarial posi- 
tions, this island is, unquestionably, one of the most healthful places 
in the world, and the most invigorating of any of the suburbs of New 
York. There have been an extraordinary number of instances of pro- 
longed vigor and great age among the native Staten Islanders, es- 
pecially in families who have lived in those parts, while up to this time 
there has been little or no malaria. 
Q. Is the advantage which the Island is reputed to possess in respect 
to consumption, due at all to the malarial elements of its climate ? 
A. Not at all. Malaria has no advantages. This Island is freest 
from pulmonary consumption in the dwellings and districts where 
there is no malaria. There is most suffering from it where there is most 
malaria. Consumption is known to be particularly associated with wet- 
ness of grounds about dwellings. 
Q. Would this advantage, in respect to pulmonary complaints, be 
increased, or lessened, and in what degree by the same means that 
would relieve the Island of malaria ? 
A. Greatly increased. 
Q. The same means being used, what in general terms might be 
anticipated of the quality of the air upon the Island, with respect to 
the counteraction of the effects of the irritating, wasting, and debili- 
tating conditions to which men spending their days in the crowded 
parts of a large town are specially subject ? 
A. The air of the Island where not at all malarious, has an effect 
more decidedly remedial co that class of ailments than any other within 
easy distance from the city. 
Q. Thoroughly drained, would the condition of Staten Island be such 
that physicians might generally be expected to recommend it as a 
place to be resorted to on account of its special sanitary advantages ? 
A. They would undoubtedly do so, and people would come to it 
from far and wide, as they now do in England to the Channel Islands 
on account of their climate. 56 
Q. It appears then that simply by thorough-drainage it might be 
transformed from a region threatened with devastation, to a region 
offering really unparalleled advantages of residence to large numbers of 
persons ? 
A. Unquestionably it might. 
Q. Thorough-drainage being accomplished, and trees being general- 
ly planted on the road-sides, what mi^ht we say are the number of 
chances in a thousand that malarial diseases would not only entirely 
disappear from the Island, but that it would become as healthy as the 
elevated regions of the Continent at some distance from the sea, to- 
which people resort on account of their supposed healthfulness; the 
granite hills of New England for instance ? 
A. There is not one chance in a thousand that it would fail tn 
become more healthful than any of them. The drainage being really 
thorough, reasonable caution being used to prevent common nuisances, 
and the occupation of the land being such as to favor a considerable 
growth of foliage and clean cultivation, it is perfectly reasonable to 
anticipate that no place on the continent would equal Staten Island 
in healthfulness. There are perhaps a few localities, and but a few, 
which could be rendered equally healthy by similar' means. CHAPTER III. 
PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS. 
Our undertaking is to suggest to you a series of propositions, which, 
if you should see fit to adopt them, will serve to determine, approxi- 
mately, the place, scope, and general proportions and relations of the 
more controlling features of a practicable plan for the improvement of 
Staten Island. 
We start with the conviction which it was the principal object of our 
first chapter to justify, that the improvements required to secure the 
greatest possible prosperity to your Island, are such as will present the 
largest number of sites for dwellings, furnished with urban public con- 
veniences and associated with permanent and generally available ad- 
vantages of landscape and sylvan beauty, all accessible with regularity 
and comfort from the business quarter of New York, and all pre- 
eminently healthful. 
In regard to this last condition we have in our second chapter dis- 
tinguished two groups of facts, a disposition to look at which apart, 
accounts for tbe conflicting opinions often expressed in regard to the 
chances of health upon the island. 
These two groups of easily observed sanitary facts-those which ex- 
hibit the effects of a subtle and generally weak poison, pervading the 
air of the larger part of the island, and the field of which is surely ex- 
tending, and those which indicate special exemption from certain 
classes of ailments, and which account for numerous instances of re- 
markably prolonged vigor and longevity, especially in the older stock 
of islanders, we have connected with two corresponding series of 
topographical and geological facts. 
Tlu^ central dement of one of these groups is that of a great mass of 58 
absorptive non-radiating rock* and of a strong argillaceous and ferru- 
ginous soil situated in the midst of a natural air tunnel opening from the 
humid and equably tempered reservoir of the ocean; the central ele- 
ment of the other is that of the thin metallic, non-absorptive and 
strongly radiating crust which under a condition of prolonged satura- 
tion is formed within your superficial soil. 
There are three circumstances attending and resulting from this 
■condition of saturation of the surface which need your distinct recog- 
nition. 
First, while it has, chiefly because of the topographical changes which 
have attended the increase of population, the holding of land on specu- 
lation and the decline of agriculture, been much more general of late 
years, it has always been sufficiently so to prevent a realization of the 
special advantages inherent in the geological structure of the island 
the propel' effects of which, though not wholly lost, have yet remained 
indistinct, undemonstrable, and, from a commercial point of view 
valueless. Disclosed and developed their commercial value would be 
very great. 
Second, under certain circumstances, and in combination with other 
causes, it produces the air poison, concerning which we find that from 
year to year it is increasing, at the same time that the appreciation of 
its evils by the more intelligent, thrifty and able portion of the public, 
and the general prejudice against localities where they are liable to be 
incurred, is also increasing. Put the two conditions together and they 
involve ruin to Staten Island, unless its tendency to grow more and 
more malarious can be reversed. For it may be assumed with perfect 
confidence that, whatever has been the case heretofore, no man of 
average intelligence, unless under compulsion of poverty, will, in the 
early future, move from New York Island, to any suburban district 
which is commonly reputed to be malarious. It may also be assumed 
that so long as any part of the island deserves the reputation of being 
malarious, that reputation will practically attach to all parts. 
Third, the condition of a prolonged and high saturation of the soil, 
is so distributed over the island, the seed-beds in which malaria is 
chiefly propagated are so scattered, and the poison so pervasive that 
there is little or no inducement to improvement by individual or 
local enterprise. Again and again we hear of properties selling at 
* A statement of trials made at our suggestion, at the School of Mines, to test the absorbent 
qualities of the rock, is expected to be received in time to be inserted in the Appendix. A meas- 
urement of radiative or heat-holding qualities is making, the result of which will not probably be 
reached in time for this report, but Prof. Newberry authorizes us to say that it is so far advanced as 
to Justify a general conclusion, and that this sustains our conviction that these qualities are suffici- 
ently distinct and extraordinary to account for special local climatic conditions upon this island. 59 
less than the cost of improvements which have been made on them, 
solely because those who would dwell in them cannot be assured of ex- 
emption from the danger of malaria propagated elsewhere. 
To recapitulate; this condition of saturation of the soil locks up a 
treasure such as no other suburb, and probably, no other community 
in North- America, can possess; it poisons the air and threatens the 
ruin of the island by prejudicing the public against all parts of it as a 
residence, and it forbids private enterprise and capital from being em- 
ployed to overcome these two evils. 
Here lies, then, the arch enemy of your island. There are two ways 
of dealing with him. One is to deny his existence, or to insist that his 
power for evil is local and restricted, and a matter of limited individual 
and local concern; to say that there are some truths which it is 
not best to utter, to curse those who make any public admission 
of your actual suffering and danger, and generally to play the penny- 
wise, pound-foolish poltroon. 
The other is to look all the facts fairly in the face, study them de- 
liberately and fully, and then devise and steadily pursue whatever 
course shall be necessary to a success which shall be really worth some- 
thing. A conviction that the last is the wiser way has given existence 
to your Commission. 
The means by which saturation of the soil may be prevented, to the 
extent required to lay open the locked-up wealth of the island, are well 
established. During the last thirty years they have been applied with 
invariable success upon not less, probably, than a million acres of land. 
They consist in the laying of a sufficient number of open-jointed pipes, 
generally from three to four feet below the surface, so connected and 
graded as to form unbroken descending channels for water; this is 
tlioro%igli-drainage. The cost may be estimated at one hundred dol- 
lars an acre. Elsewhere the primary object of the operation has not 
been sanitary benefit but increased agricultural productiveness. The 
effect is not to make the soil, previously liable to saturation, on an 
average necessarily dryer, but more porous and permeable, so that it 
will hold and transmit water, in moderate and desirable quantity, not 
only downward but upward as well, as a lamp wick does oil. A dis- 
trict of country that has been thorough-drained is less dry during 
periods of drought than it was before. Its spring is hastened, its 
autumn prolonged, its winter delayed and shortened; the temperature 
of the soil at these seasons being elevated from ten to fifteen degrees of 
Fahrenheit, while in extremely hot, dry weather, the surface must be 60 
cooler than before.* Its productiveness in nearly all ordinary farm 
crops is increased, never less than sixteen per cent, and not unfre- 
quently more than doubled. In view of these and other agricultural 
advantages great sums of money have elsewhere been spent by land 
owners in thorough-drainage. But where agricultural productiveness 
is so small an element in the value of land as it is generally on Staten 
Island this inducement will not operate. The motive of personal and 
family safety and comfort, and of gaining an advanced demand for 
healthful land would do so, to a certain extent, immediately, but for 
two reasons, one of which, the danger of wafted malaria, we have 
named; the other is the frequent difficulty and cost of obtaining good 
outlets for private drains. 
Let these two difficulties be overcome-and we know that many land 
owners are prepared to begin thorough-draining. Once begun at many 
points, and its advantages in giving increased value to land made evi- 
dent, it would soon become frequent, and then rapidly general. Over- 
come these two difficulties, then, and you may look forward with con- 
fidence to a not very distant period when your hidden treasure shall 
have been unlocked, and Staten Island be known of all men as the 
healthiest dwelling place of the metropolis, and probably the healthiest 
in the whole country. Every other desirable improvement will follow, 
provided only the way to it is not obstructed by ill-considered, time- 
serving, catch-penny plans of " improvement." 
The overcoming by public means of these two obstacles, which it is 
certain that private means will not overcome, we hold to present so 
much the most important problems for your study, that all others 
beside are insignificant. 
Let us face the first. 
The principal source of malaria upon the island is to be found in 
the dishes of the surface where water accumulates in the form of pud- 
dles, ponds and swamps. Though by no means the only source, it 
may be reasonably assumed that if this were overcome, the poison in 
the air would be so much diluted that it would rarely produce fever 
and ague, and it would be possible by local thorough-drainage, espe- 
cially if free-spreading trees should be common, to perfectly guard any 
private place of an acre or more in extent, and certainly any con- 
siderable neighborhood in which the land-owners would combine for 
the purpose, against wafted malaria. It may also be reasonably 
assumed that if the more distinct effects of malaria should thus become 
* We know of no experiments on this last point, but theoretically it must be so, and we have no 
doubt that it could be proved by trial with the thermometer. All our other statements as to the 
effect of drainage rest on abundant, accurately measured experience. 61 
no longer common on any part of the island, a fair general reputation 
for healthfulness would return to it; that it would at least compare 
favorably with any other suburb accessible in the same time from 
Wall Street. Private enterprise might then be depended on to carry 
forward the work of improvement to the higher ultimate stage which 
is desired. 
All propagating grounds of malaria then, of the character we have 
indicated, must be abolished and prevented, and this can be accom- 
plished only by their legally enforced under-draining. 
To compel private citizens to open a conduit from every dish in the 
surface of their land all the way to the sea or to a natural safe outlet 
would be obviously unfair. To undertake directly the under draining 
by public administration of every such dish would involve an inter- 
ference with ordinary privileges of property very undesirable. A 
mixed system, therefore, seems to be essential-a system, that is to say, 
in which the public shall supply certain advantages now wanting to 
private undertakings and with the offer of which it shall make com- 
pulsory the abatement of every distinct malarial nuisance on private 
ground. 
The public- should provide safe and convenient outfalls at the gen- 
eral charge of the whole Island, from the sea up to the point where 
direct benefit to the land-owners would result from the laying of 
under-drains. Beyond that point it should cause pipes to be carried 
on to the malarial dishes, either by undertakings of the land-owners 
personally, or by its own agents, the cost in either case, except for engi- 
neering and superintendence, to be a charge upon the land directly 
benefited. 
This having been done, outfalls for thorough-drainage would have 
been generally provided ; where they were wanting they, should be 
supplied ; it might then be best, in order to hasten an advance toward 
the end finally to be attained, to offer a release during a series of years, 
from a part of the taxation which would otherwise fall upon land 
which should be thorough-drained. 
Although we have spoken of the public outfall drains as of two 
classes, and as if they might be constructed in two periods, there is no 
doubt that the localities to be reached in the first stage are so scattered 
and so frequent throughout the Island, and the incidental advantages 
of every rod of such drains which may be laid are so great, that eco- 
nomy would require that the process should be continuous one. The 
only important question that remains then in our present duty re- 
garding them, is as tp their form, size, extent and frequency. This 
we shall take up later in the present report. 62 
We can not pass from the general consideration of this subject, how- 
ever, without again expressing our deliberate opinion, and offering you 
our most earnest advice, that, if it is thought necessary to neglect every- 
thing else that we shall recommend in order to relieve the island of 
malaria, everything else should be neglected. Nothing threatens vour 
interests, nothing even now compares in importance as a drawback to 
your prosperity, with this evil of saturated surfaces. Do not think that 
we undervalue other means of improvement when we say that ten times 
the money it would cost to carry out our suggestions in this respect, 
put into roads and railways and steamboats, would ultimately bring you 
not nearly as much profit. We doubt, indeed, if this Hydra be not 
soon manfully dealt with, whether cheap, rapid, frequent communica- 
tion with New York would be at all a benefit to the island. It would 
not bring a class of people here in large numbers who would be able 
and willing to pay an advanced price for land and for improvements. 
It might bring, and it might tend to make the island a miserable, 
squalid lodging place for, ignorant, uncircumspect, unthrifty men. In 
short, blocking the way to all suitable improvements, it might fix a 
character upon the island such as would destroy all hope of any great 
advance in the value of its real estate. 
Once put the island in the way of some relief from this danger, and 
the value of other means of improvement can not be too highly esti- 
mated; but you cannot build without a foundation, and this must be 
the foundation of all improvement for Staten Island. We feel that if 
we cannot convince you of this, all our advice must go for nothing. 
At the outset of our inquiry, facts came to our knowledge which im- 
pressed us with the conviction that, second only to the problem of ma- 
laria-a long way following it, but a long way preceding everything 
else-would be the problem of providing water for household use in 
considerable parts of the island. 
The difficulties of obtaining wholesome water in sufficient quantity, 
are here and there already so great, especially on the eastern part of the 
island, even in favorable seasons, that they are fully overcome only by the 
more enterprising, intelligent, and well-to-do householders. The water 
from some wells in constant use near the shore is perceptibly brackish, 
that from some others is impregnated with salts of magnesia, and has 
a decided action on the bowels. At some points wells have been sunk 
to a great depth without reaching springs; there are others, the labor 
of drawing water from which is so great, on account of their depth. 63 
that it puts a strong check on the consumption of the water they yields 
which after all is liable to be turbid. But the worst misfortune is that 
of the liability to organic impurity of the water used where population 
is growing somewhat dense; this has, without doubt, already been in 
some cases a cause of fatal disorders, and it is quite certain that with 
no great enlargement of population, it would render the whole commu- 
nity of the island especially liable to suffer from dangerous epidemic 
diseases. (See analysis of water from a well in Edgewater in appendix.) 
None of these conditions are general, nor do their consequences, as 
yet, perhaps, seriously affect your prosperity; but if the island advances 
as we expect it to do, the localities and the number of people in each 
affected by them will increase, and some means of radical relief will, 
before many years, be demanded. The direction from which this is to 
come should be anticipated by your Commission, and in all your plans 
a way for it at least carefully left open. 
The high and comparatively narrow ridge which forms the larger 
part of the island, presenting no large interior basins, suggests the im- 
practicability of collecting any considerable supply of fresh water with- 
in it, except from wells, which would involve a very costly system of 
pumping. Nor is there any near point on the main land from which 
it could be conveniently obtained. It has given us, therefore, great 
pleasure to find that there are opportunities within the island of collect- 
ing a considerable supply of water on the surface of the best possible 
quality. Before the amount of it can be estimated with any approach to 
exactness, a careful series of gaugings will need to be made. As favor- 
able an opportunity as the present for this purpose is not likely to oc- 
cur again for many years, on account of the protracted drought of the 
fast season, and we strongly advise you to provide for it immediately. 
We are only now able to express the opinion that the sources of supply 
which we are about to indicate would, under a proper system of con- 
servancy, meet all the requirements for pure, fresh water, of a much 
larger population than at present occupies all of the island north and 
east of Richmond. 
On the ridge line of the range of hills, the south slope of which 
merges upon the plain of New Dorp, three prominent knolls are ob- 
servable. To the middle one, which is that due north of the Moravian 
Church, and near the old Egbert and Sharrot homesteads, we shall 
have frequent.occasion to refer, and as it stands upon and overlooks 
the site of the old manor of Governor Dougan, we shall distinguish it 
as the Dougan knoll. Standing upon it, a valley may be seen, or 
rather a gentle dell, mainly of pastured fields, but with some beautiful 64 
woodlands, descending to the north-west. The water collected on its 
slopes forms a series of springs, and half-way down a living stream 
known as Willow Brook, which, near the bottom, being dammed, 
drives the works of a little machine shop, beyond which it spreads 
out, forming the chilly district of Northfield, which has already been 
described. We shall refer to this as the Manor Dale. 
A little to the left is the bead of another dale trending to the west, 
the upper waters of which supply the pretty beech-shaded mill-pond 
north of Egbertville, and the lower that of Ketchum's Grist Mill. We 
shall distinguish this as the Mills Dale. The water of both streams can 
be taken by gravity into the Manor Dale at a point well above the swamp 
east of Springville, where a dam would form an impounding reservoir 
for all the water gathered by the two dales. An incidental advan- 
tage of such an arrangement would be the arrest of the waters which 
go to form the chilly district of Northfield, thus making its drainage 
and reclamation a much easier undertaking. 
From a point a few hundred yards to the eastward of the head of the 
Manor Dale, another gentle depression of the surface may be observed, 
having a more winding course than the two before described, widening 
at the distance of half a mile into the w6st fork of the Little Clove 
Valley, and finally discharging its waters into the beautiful pool known 
as Martling's Pond, being the lower of Britton's two Clove Valley ice- 
ponds. We shall refer to this as the Martling Dale. A large and deep 
impounding reservoir can be formed to hold the waters which it col- 
lects, and those also which flow from the Silver Lake valley, and all 
the northern and central hillsides of the Clove, by a dam constructed 
at or near that now existing by Britton's ice house in the Glen, but 
which could, if desired, be easily made to raise the water twenty feet 
above the surface of the present pond. 
Martling's Pond now supplies a considerable share of the ice con- 
sumed upon the island, and the quality of the water is well-known and 
held in high popular esteem. The present dam having raised it so as 
to flood a considerable area of bogs and bushes, and as it is surround- 
ed and overhung by trees, the leaves of which have drifted into it, the 
analysis of its waters by no means indicates the degree of purity which 
it is easily practicable to secure in them. A similar observation ap- 
plies to the water taken from above Ketchum's dam. It is evident that 
all these waters are of high rank, but that the latter is of really remark- 
able excellence, superior to most of the streams which contribute to 
the Croton, and fully equal to the best. To the eye it is perfectly, 
clear, limpid and sparkling, and the analysis shows that-it is soft and 
possesses every desirable quality in an extraordinary degree. We regard 
the fact as one of great value to the island. 65 
We have no doubt that whenever a system of water works for the 
eastern part of the island is fully studied, the several dales which we 
have described and named will be relied upon to collect the principal 
part, if not all, of the water. 
Neither have we any doubt that, if no measures are soon taken to 
secure certain public rights and properties in those dales, the practica- 
bility and economy of securing a large supply of water of good qual- 
ity from them will be seriously impaired. What measures they should 
be we shall hereafter discuss. 
We now turn to the question of public communications. 
Our object, at present is, chiefly, to discern why Staten Island in all 
its parts does not gain, at least as much, from the general suburban 
movement, as any of the more favored districts, and to contrive 
means for overcoming what we find to be the more important obstacles. 
Difficulties of access to its shores from New York do not ap- 
pear to be properly classed among these. We have had special oppor- 
tunities for ascertaining the motives which have influenced many sub- 
urban residents in their choice of locality, and have used them 
diligently, but have known of no single instances in which the scale 
has been turned against the island by advantages of access offered else- 
where. We have heard a great many encomiums on the healthfulness, 
on the water privileges, on the scenery, and on the local roads of the 
places preferred, but never observed any enthusiasm in regard to the 
conveyance from town; on the contrary, we have often heard it refer- 
red to with disgust and indignation. It costs a great deal more in 
watchfulness, in time, in money, in fatigue, in irregularity, vexation and 
disappointment, in the course of the year, for a man who has business 
daily in New York, to go to any point on the range of hills between 
Riverdale and Scarborough, for instance, where during the last ten 
years or more land has been advancing in market value at the rate of 
5 per cent, a month, than to large districts of Staten Island where it is 
doubtful if it has advanced enough to cover interest, insurances and 
decay of improvements. 
It is not to be denied that the ferry arrangements of Staten Island 
are singularly bare, rude, unattractive in appearance, and inconvenient 
compared with what they easily might be; but, looking well ahead, this 
rather tells to the advantage of the island than otherwise. It is quite 
impossible by the most lavish use of capital to overcome the limita- 
tions of room and of many conditions of comfort to great numbers of 66 
people when they are thronging out of town upon narrow iron lines 
extending through the town itself (and in this sense Brooklyn and the 
New Jersey towns are parts of the town). And this is especially the 
case when the first objects of management in the organizations which 
control them are the movement of freight and of through passengers. 
The opportunities of enlargement and of adding increased appliances of 
comfort are as unlimited on the ferries-as they are in a country house. 
There can never be the most distant approach to what a very little cap- 
ital and skilled architectural study would accomplish for them in the 
means of access, for instance, to Mr. Stewart's Garden City speculation 
on Long Island, or to any of the inland suburbs. 
We have, therefore, at present, nothing to do with the matter of ex- 
ternal communications, except as it is necessary to anticipate improve- 
ments in them which would affect the Cfuestion of the best way to im- 
prove the internal communications of the island.* 
We may assume that, as soon as any considerable impulse to general 
improvement on the island has been established, by means which it is 
the object of this report to suggest, the more radical defects of the 
present system of communication with New York will, through force 
of public opinion, competition or otherwise, be put in the way of 
remedy. 
What are the radical defects-that is to say, the defects seriously pre- 
judicial to the Island, and which cannot be remedied simply by a little 
more study and capital applied to the appointments, furniture and organ- 
ization of' the boats and ferry-landings ? They are, preeminently, the 
liability to occasional, however rare, irregularity and the risk of accident. 
The weight of defect in these respects depends almost wholly on the force 
of conditions likely to throw the boats out of their usual course and time. 
It may be argued that as it is, irregularity occurs so seldom and is com- 
* The reason given ns by the managers of the ferries for their being fitted only to meet the 
barest necessities of passage to and from Kew York, by those who are compelled to use them or 
ive somewhere else than in Staten Island, is that, at present, their receipts do not so far exceed 
their running expenses as to justify an investment of capital in appliances of convenience, com- 
fort and attractiveness. It is encouraging, therefore, to learn, as we do by returns made by the 
companies to the Police Department, that the business of the ferries is increasing a great deal 
faster than the population of the island, the fares collected on the " Staten Island Ferry" being 
but 912,500 in 1861, while in 1870 they were 2,500,000. On the North Shore Line the business 
has exactly doubled in five years. In a few years more, therefore, some essential improvements 
may be reasonably looked for. It is added, and certainly not without reason, that complaints of 
the means of travel across the bay do not come with a very good grace when made in behalf of a 
community the civil service of which provides no better facilities for travel than are generally 
found on shore on Staten Island. Undoubtedly the boats are centuries ahead of the common 
roads, many of which illustrate in every particular of location, construction and maintenance the 
result of exactly reversing all established rules for good roads. Costly expedients are now being 
introduced in road-mending on the island, which have been elsewhere tried hundreds of times 
always resulting in disappointment and disgust. 67 
monly so slight, that it is hardly worth considering as an objection to the 
Island as a dwelling place, a*nd that all risk of personal injury from acci- 
dents might be insured against at a premium infinitesimally small. But 
those upon whom this irregularity and this risk is liable to weigh most 
are not controlled in their estimates of it by the calculations of actua- 
ries, they are nervous women, with strong affections and ingeniously tor- 
menting imaginations, and before twenty thousand more of them can 
be established in Staten Island homes, there will be a very strong de- 
mand that all possible obstacles to absolute regularity and punctu- 
ality in running the boats, and especially all possible apologies for 
abruptly taking off or suspending the usual trips of the boats, shall be 
overcome and guarded against. 
There has been for twenty years or more a settled conviction among 
intelligent men in all parts of the island that this would be accom- 
plished by the establishment of a landing and a direct " bee line" ferry 
at the point of the island nearest to New York. The karbor on this 
line is less liable to be packed with ice than on any other, and the course 
being straight, the channel broad all the way, and no strong lateral 
tide-drifts, as in the East and North rivers, except close at the land 
ings, the elements of difficulty in pilotage are less than in going to 
the Brooklyn or Jersey shore. 
Mr. John C. Thompson, whose practical experience and special at- 
tention to questions of ferry management gives a value to his judg- 
ment which we cannot claim for our own in this matter, says in answer 
to our inquiry, that upon this line " the route being short and straight, 
neither storms, ice nor fogs need cause interruption. The passage can 
be made [by the present boats] in fifteen to twenty minutes." To run 
half hourly from the present landings would involve an expenditure, 
Mr. Thompson supposes, of 8300,000 for new boats, as it would require 
two extra boats to keep up a line of four with certainty, besides doub- 
ling daily running expenses. A single powerful, large boat could 
be built for less than half that amount and put upon the short 
line, which would be able under all ordinary circumstances to make the 
passage from pier to pier in fifteen minutes, and there have been no 
conditions of weather in twenty years when such a boat could not have 
comfortably made the passage in less than half an hour. The sug- 
gestion does not involve the suspension of the existing ferries, but it 
offers to the people of all parts of the island the alternative of a line 
shorter and surer than any of the existing lines can be, on 
which to fall back whenever desirable. Mr. Thompson would advise 
that the direct boat run from 4, 5, or 6 A. m. according to season, from 
the island, until p. m. from the city, and that the boats on the old 68 
routes run as at present, or oftener, till 8 p. m., after which they might 
cease running, the trips of the direct boat being continued till after 
midnight at least, leaving the island on the hour and the city on the 
half hour. 
Supplemented, as, of course, it would be by railways on both sides of 
the island, it appears that the existing facilities of communication with 
New York can in this way be made essentially better, regarding espe- 
cially the one point of liability to unexpected detentions, than they 
could by doubling the number of boats, and the working expenses 
upon the old lines. 
We say that this opportunity has been long seen and canvassed by 
intelligent property owners in all parts of the island, but, although 
universally looked upon with favor and hope, it is no more practically 
agitated now than it was twenty years ago. The reason it makes no 
progress seems to be, that the existing highway system, if the word 
'system' is not a misnomer, has been formed without reference to it. 
New Brighton Point cannot be made accessible, with any tolerable ap- 
proach to directness and ease of grade, from distant parts of the Island 
witnout a widening and straightening and re-grading of some existing 
highways, the construction of some new ones, and more or less injury 
to many established property interests. The difficulty of overcoming 
these obstacles, seems hitherto to have continually increased faster than 
the disposition to engage with them. 
We now proceed to the discussion of what should be called for, in an 
improved highway plan for the Island. 
We have in our first chapter given our reasons for assuming 
that it is quite practicable and desirable to make the whole 
island essentially a city of detached dwellings, with only such shops, 
stores, factories, and buildings for other purposes, as may, advantage- 
ously or inoffensively to the great body of the residents, be associated 
with them. We shall further assume that each of these dwelling sites 
needs to be provided with ways of communication as direct 
and at the same time as agreeable as possible, (1st.) with New 
York City; (2nd.) with those situations, nearest each, which are most 
suitable and most likely to be chosen as the sites of churches, schools, 
and shops; (3rd.) with those parts of the Island which are likely to be 
most attractive for visits of recreation, whether in pleasure-driving, 
riding, or walking. 
We shall likewise assume as probable the eventual construction of a 
railway from some- point near New York, either Jersey City or Ellis 
Island, to a point on the North shore of Staten Island. 
Also, the construction of a railway from the short ferry landing 69 
westward, which shall cross the Fresh Kills marshes near their narrow- 
est point, and thence be carried in a moderately direct course until it 
makes a junction, not far from Tottenville, with the present railway on 
the south side; also, that this latter will be extended to New Brighton.* 
There are two classes of sites at present upon the island which 
have special value for villa dwellings-1st. Those upon the border low- 
lands, from which, or from the immediate vicinity of which, views 
over the water are commanded that are not likely to be obstructed in 
the future by buildings or plantations; 2nd. Those upon eminences 
in the interior which overlook the low lands, and in or near which 
there is permanent command of expanded landscapes, including por- 
tions of the surrounding waters. Keeping in view the general interest 
of advancing the reputation for beauty and convenience of the Island 
as a whole, and of increasing its average real estate taxable valuation, 
it must be conceded that, other things being equal, those improvements 
will be of the most value, which, while directly serving the general con- 
venience, shall incidentally give new and special advantages to property 
of a more secluded character. 
It is also to be considered that any thing that is beautiful upon the 
Island, and which is laid open to public view, is of value to the public, 
and that no dwelling, however remote from it, can wholly fail to be ad- 
vanced in value, by reason, first, of the right of its occupants to avail 
themselves of it, and, second, of its general influence in an advertising 
way for the Island. Public roads, then, which while serving as well 
as possible their primary purpose, incidentally give pleasing prospects 
to those passing along them are, on that account especially, of more 
public value and tend to advance the general reputation of the island 
and to increase the taxable value of all its real estate. We shall as- 
sume this also to be conceded. 
Finally, we shall take for granted that a definite plan of improved 
highways is wanted forthwith, which, while it can be realized at 
an early day if desirable, may also for the most part be carried out 
gradually, as the advance in population and wealth of the island 
shall be found to justify; that it is to be general and comprehensive 
rather than local or detailed; that it is to block out the entire island 
with a frame-work of highways, between which private taste and enter- 
prise may be fully exercised without disturbing the economy of the 
general plan; that the purpose is to guide and facilitate improvement, 
and, as far as possible, not to hamper or restrict it; and in brief, to fur- 
* A suitable place for the railway bridge over the Kills, occurs near York Avenue. Should it be 
located much to the west of this, we assume that the west side railway would be extended by a 
branch line to the short ferry landing, and that this, in any case, must be the chief point of concen- 
tration of common road traffic with New York. 70 
nish a chart of future progress to which individuals may refer and con- 
form their improvements, with assurance that in pursuing their private 
designs they are also contributing to a complete and harmonious whole, 
every step toward which, wherever made, tends to the general advantage 
and benefit. 
Great detail in the plan is to be avoided, because once adopted it is 
intended to become, to that extent, binding upon the land owners, 
restricting in a certain degree their liberty of action in respect to 
their property. If such restraint be carried to an extent beyond 
the absolute requirements of the general public interest, it will be felt 
as an invasion of private rights, and possibly engender serious oppo- 
sition. 
In devising, under this series of assumptions, a system of highways 
for Staten Island, it is almost necessary at the outset to take up the 
problem de novo-that is to say, to regard the island as so much terri- 
tory, conformed, populated, situated and affiliated as now, with pros- 
pects in the near future such as are conceded to it, but as entirely 
without ways for intercommunication; and then, having devised a 
plan, comprehensive and complete, as best suited to its present wants 
and its reasonable future expectations, to proceed to adapt such plan to 
existing conditions by engrafting it upon them. By such method the 
present highways will be put to their utmost availability; while the 
transition from the old system to the new will be effected with less of 
disturbance and, by consequence, less of expense to individuals in re- 
adjusting their communications to the new order, than by radical 
and sweeping changes. 
As some slight classification of roads will need to be used, we must 
explain why we avoid the terms "avenue" and "boulevard." Avenue, 
formerly used to designate a straight, level approach between formal 
plantations, was in an evil day used to designate a town street of 
unusual breadth and directness, also adapted to be planted with trees. 
For purposes of misrepresentation in regard to paper towns it was 
afterwards applied with even less propriety; it has reached the lowest 
point of degradation and abuse when applied, as it now is, by official 
sign board on Staten Island to a narrow lane leading to a stable. All 
association of dignity and wealth which once belonged to the word 
are lost and it henceforth suggests nothing but clap-trap. The only 
useful significance of the designation, Boulevard, which is the French 
for the English word bulwark, and properly applied to streets of extraor- 
dinary breadth, formed on the site of the old town bulwarks of Europe, 
is already similarly destroyed past recovery, it being now applied all 
around New York to wretched dirt roads fifty feet wide. Instead of these 71 
we shall use the old term " high roads" for such public ways as are likely 
to be in daily use by large bodies of the general public, and which ap? 
designed to form main channels between the different principal quar- 
ters of the island. 
New York being the focus of the principal travel of the island it 
becomes a primal necessity that the high-roads take that direction, and 
reach to points of nearest or at least quickest approach thereto, and 
that they be sufficient in number and size to provide all parts of the 
island with the most direct and ample lines of approach to those points. 
Such a road fixed with regard to present location of population and 
existing facilities of communication with New York, would be drawn 
from Tottenville, by the most direct line practicable, to or near Silver 
Lake, and thence to the two ferry landings at present nearest New York, 
Tompkins and Brighton. 
We find that with little bending from a straight line, the topography 
of the island admits of the construction of such a road upon easy 
grades without heavy work to obtain them. The most difficult division 
would be that between Silver Lake and Tompkins Landing. By a slight 
deviation from the route of the present road, the grade here can be 
brought to 1 in 25 without much excavation. On this grade with good 
construction a horse can trot down or up with a moderate load, with 
speed and safety. At no other point would the grade need to be as steep 
as this, and it could, with some quite short expections, be kept below 
1 in 40. 
This road would divide the present town of Westfield into two nearly 
equal parts, and with a few additional lateral roads, would take the 
greater part of the common wheel travel of that town to the ferries. 
Hence we shall speak of it as the Westfield High Road. If well con- 
structed it would lead to a great increase of this travel and by shorten- 
ing the way to the early markets in town would considerably increase 
the agricultural value of its land, as we are assured by leading market 
gardeners of the town. It would pass through and open up a district 
of Castletown and Middletown now the most secluded on the island, 
and which is accessible by direct roads from no point on the shore; a 
district nevertheless possessing great landscape attractions, and much 
of which would without doubt be at. once greatly advanced in value by 
its construction. It would occupy an axial position with reference to 
the island as a whole, being at all points nearly equidistant between 
shores. 
It could be made to terminate at the proposed short ferry landing 
without increasing grades, and we propose that it should be so laid out. 
As compared with present roads, it would shorten the distance to the 72 
landing from its junction with the old Manor Road half a mile; with 
tjie road near Ketchum's Mill, three quarters of a mile; with the Ross- 
ville Road near Marshland, a mile and a half, and from Totten ville, a 
mile and a quarter. Its width should nowhere be less than one hun- 
dred feet, and as the throng upon it would be constantly enlarging as 
the ferry was approached, from the middle of the island, east, it should 
be from 120 to 150 feet wide. Of course we refer to the requirements 
of the distant future, with regard to which its limits should be establish- 
ed. Within these limits a wheelway of ordinary breadth only would 
need to be soon constructed. The borders should be graded, and 
made neat, and utilized at once in the manner we shall hereafter in- 
dicate. 
The Westfield High-road, as thus proposed, falls, it will be observed,, 
to the northward of the main central ridge, or back bone, of the island. 
This ridge extends only from the Fresh Kills near Richmond to Sta- 
pleton, but while its altitude is melted away in gentle slopes to the 
northward toward the Sound, permitting in that quarter the greatest, 
freedom in the location of roads, it descends toward the sea on the 
south, in steep and broken declivities, impracticable for roads for rapid 
travel. As a route toward New York it will therefore be of no direct 
value to the residents of the greater part of the extensive and populous 
district of Southfield lying between the crest and the bay. 
It becomes necessary therefore to provide for them another high? 
road, for which purpose the course of the present Richmond Road 
would be generally satisfactory. This road was originally laid out 
99 feet wide, but as the result of a long series of encroachments 
is now at many points less than 30. We are advised that the 
county can compel the restoration of the land appropriated from 
it to private purposes, and if it should be thought necessary to adopt 
it as one of the high-roads of a new system, this would be a necessary 
proceeding. It would involve the removal of a number of buildings, 
and the destruction of a good deal of property, and, the encroachments, 
having been made for the most part generations ago, would bear 
hardly on many good citizens. We should rather suggest that the 
lines of this road be but slightly modified, where especially desirable^ 
and, if practicable, that so much of the land originally appropriated to- 
it as is not required for public convenience, should be formally released 
to the present owners of the adjoining properties. If your Commission 
should be disposed to adopt this policy, we would recommend a 
course nearly parallel with the Richmond Road to be adopted for the 
Southfield high-road, and at such a distance east and south from it as 
would make the be«t division of lands. With efficient drainage ar- 73 
rangements this would admit of greater directness and better grades, 
and would better accomplish all general public purposes. 
Before reaching the broken ground near the Black Horse, this road 
would fork, one branch leading off to Egbertville and Richmond, the 
other running nearly parallel with the Amboy Road, as will hereafter 
be proposed. 
The present Philadelphia Turnpike or Long Neck Road would 
serve as a north branch of the Westfield or central high-road. But, 
still further to the north, there is a large and already very populous 
district at too great a distance to make use of it as a route to the short 
ferry. Another high road is, therefore, required to be laid out on a 
line between this and the north shore, (to which it would be mainly 
parallel,) dividing the distance into three parts. The dwellers upon 
the southern third may be expected to use the Long Neck Road, and a 
course for the additional or Northfield high-road, which would serve 
the largest number of house sites to the best advantage, will be not 
far from the line which would divide the other two-thirds. In ap- 
proaching New Brighton, however, considerations of grade will de- 
mand a curve to the north, and not, far west of Jersey Street, probably, 
the line should merge in that of the present Terrace Road, at the point 
which would be chosen for a bridge. 
Such a class of improvements as are contemplated in this report, 
will make Staten Island a resort of pleasure travel from all quarters, 
and, as the great suburban population west of Newark Bay would find 
the most convenient route of access to it by way of Elizabethport, and 
as this also will be a point of connection for visitors from all the West, 
it will be desirable to lay out the western part of the Northfield high- 
road with a view to its serving as a general approach road from that 
direction. Its terminus should, therefore, be fixed with reference to a 
suitable position for a bridge, if that should be found feasible. 
Immediately about the short ferry landing at New Brighton Point, 
where the travel by the three high-roads would be concentrated, there 
should be an open space of sufficient extent to admit a large concourse 
of people, on foot and in carriages, to assemble and wait without the 
necessity of dangerous or uncomfortable crowding. For this purpose 
it should have an area of not less than two by four hundred feet. 
It is beyond our province to suggest what rights or privileges the 
county can hold or offer to this proposed ferry line. The improvidence 
of possessing no rights in respect to means of communication, upon 
which its future prosperity may be very greatly dependent, in view of 
the arrogance and unscrupulousness with which the business of pub- 
lic carriers is now often conducted, it is unnecessary to argue. 74 
A road along the shore where none exists has been so long called for 
and the occasion for it is so generally admitted, that we need not state 
its advantages. It is most required along the south shore, where some 
fifteen years ago it was agreed that it should be made, the project hav- 
ing been defeated, as we believe it had been once or twice before, by 
the determined resistance of one or two land owners who approved the 
purpose in general, but demanded more consideration for their private 
convenience at the points where it crossed their property. 
As such a road would not, in general, be on a line leading directly 
toward New York, or to any point of much business on the island, and 
as it would be the only road from which a near view of the lower bay 
could be obtained, it would necessarily become a route of pleasure 
travel as well as a neighborhood road, and the object of presenting the 
sea to view fully and to the best advantage, should be prominent in 
determining its route. For this reason, beginning at the end of New 
York Avenue, Clifton, it should be carried with all convenient direct- 
ness to the shore, and thence follow as near the beach as economy of 
construction would admit, so that private buildings and plantations 
could not be interposed to obstruct the seaward prospect. 
After reaching a point on New Dorp Plains, where, owing to the 
flooding of the ground in Spring tides, it would be necessary to divert 
it to a considerable distance from the shore, it should be laid out chief- 
ly with regard to neighborhood convenience until the hill district 
north of the Great Kills is reached; at this point a junction would be 
formed with the Southfield high-road, after which, as it is impracti- 
cable, in going west, to follow the shore on the beach, and would be 
unadvisable on the bank near the beach, on account of its liability to 
be encroached upon by the sea, it will be an object to keep sufficiently 
high to overlook the buildings on the lower slope near the shore. 
This will establish a road intermediate between the present Amboy 
road and the beach, and will generally divide property advantageously. 
From New Dorp westward to Prince's Bay, it would serve as an ex- 
tension of the Southfield high-road, and be a direct route to the 
short ferry as well as to all the east side ferry landings, for residents 
along the shore. From Prince's Bay it would pass neai' the shore to 
Ward's Point, thence to Tottenville, thence along the west side to the 
shore road on the north side. 
With respect to the internal plan of this road, we would express our 
general satisfaction with the suggestions of Mr. Root, with whom it has 
been a matter of special consideration, and whose views are before the 
public. 75 
Routes will next be required to and between the high-roads, as well 
as to the railway stations anil ferry landings, their general direction 
being transverse to that of the high-roads, though it will be better 
that they shall, as far as practicable, approach the high-roads in the di- 
rection toward New York; speed with carriages in that direction being 
everywhere more of an object than in any other, and as the time thus 
gained in driving, supposing that it involved in some cases the reverse 
rule in respect to the approach to railway stations, would be offset by 
nothing appreciable in locomotive travel. 
The course of these cross-roads would be generally nearly parallel, 
with such deflection from directness only as would be required to se- 
cure ease of grade and convenience of drainage, at little cost for exca- 
vation and embankment. Their course will generally be coincident 
also with that of the trend of the valleys and of the currents of the 
water courses on the hill-sides. This fact will, to a certain extent, in- 
fluence their location between stations and landings. The present 
village streets, especially those along the north shore, would establish 
the initial point for a considerable number, particularly such of them 
as lead to the ferry landings. In the interior, each railway station 
would establish an objective point for a road approaching from each 
side. At present, stations occur at intervals of one mile on the south 
side track, that being the distance apart at which the old transverse 
highways of the island are generally found. It is to be expected that 
in the early future, if the interior of the island increases in popula- 
tion at all rapidly, double the present numbei' of stations, each to be 
called at by alternate trains, will be demanded. These will be estab- 
lished as nearly as practicable midway of those existing, and it being 
assumed that the same rule will serve on the projected North Side Rail- 
way, the position of roads at half-mile intervals is thus approximately 
indicated. 
Taking the ferry landings, the positions and probable positions of 
railway stations, the lines of water courses and intermediate ridges 
which it would be necessary to' accommodate, and the advantage of 
maintaining, where practicable, an approximate equidistance between 
the roads, a series of lines would be formed, which, with the intersect- 
ing high-roads, would subsect the whole island into blocks having a 
general width of half a mile, and an average length of about a mile. 
This having been accomplished, the question is in order whether a 
judicious limit has not been reached, and whether the further exten- 
sion of our plan had not better be left to local and private enterprise ? 
We shall leave this question open to your Commission, taking care in 76 
further elaboration to avoid as far as possible any elements which will 
involve additional highways as a necessity. We shall, however, offer 
reasons why in our judgment it may be best to proceed one step fur- 
ther with the general plan, doubling again the number of cross-roads. 
Looking forward a brief space, and making but moderate allowance 
for the effect of increased facilities of access and conveniences of house- 
keeping, and of the advertising influence of the mere adoption of a 
broad and comprehensive scheme of improvement, and especially for 
the consequences which will result from the adoption of means adapt- 
ed to relieve the island of malaria, and give it for the first time the 
full benefit of its unequalled latent advantages of climate-making 
the least hopeful allowance for the effect of these proposed improve- 
ments, an early large demand for land in the interior and back parts 
of the island must be anticipated, and of a different character from 
any that has yet been experienced. 
We have endeavored to show more particularly in our first chap- 
ter, the space which each of the largest class of purchasers will 
be likely to want. Along the shore, especially near the steamboat 
landings, and in the interior near the railway stations and existing 
villages, the competition for land for domestic business purposes and 
for the residence of those to whom distance from the boat or station 
would be objectionable, may be sufficient to make it desirable that it 
should be readily divisible into lots of from one to two hundred feet 
in depth. Elsewhere, universally, it should be practicable, without a 
special process of laying out roads, to divide all land.into villa plots as 
small at least as five acres. With roads averaging half a mile apart, plots 
of five acres, each occupying half the space between two roads would 
necessarily have a depth of disproportionate length to their frontage, 
being 1300 feet to 170, which would be generally objected to. With 
roads laid out at a quarter of a mile apart, a five acre lot would have a 
depth of 660 feet, with a front of 330 feet, which is a very good pro- 
portion. Again, if lots of about one acre are required, they would be 
obtained with 150 feet front on streets opened at intervals of 600 feet 
between the laterals of the general system. Another reason remains, 
before stating which, however, it will be necessary to advance our 
drainage plan. • 
We have argued that thorough-drainage must be the first object of 
any valuable scheme of general improvement for the island, and have 
admitted that such drainage must be effected largely by individual un- 
dertakings. It is quite evident, however, that not much can be expect- 
ed of individuals, unless suitable channels are open to them at no great 77 
distance for taking away the water which their private drains are de- 
signed to collect. Nor can much be expected of volunteer associated 
efforts for this purpose so long as they shall remain hampered by the 
almost insurmountable difficulty of first obtaining unity of opinion, 
concert of action, and equality of convenience, among a considerable 
number of neighbors. All may be convinced and resolved, but the 
moment when all are agreed as to all the particulars necessary to be 
settled, and when all are prepared to incur the expense, is never 
reached. The establishment of public drains at frequent intervals 
would obviate these difficulties by allowing each individual to consult 
his own convenience as to time, and the same means would provide 
outlets for the proper drainage of the highways, without which good 
roads are an impossibility. 
Precisely at what intervals such public drains should be con- 
structed, is a question depending on the peculiar conformation of the 
surface and character of the underlying strata, to be determined 
only by a careful examination of each particular area. Convenience, 
and efficiency, however, require, in our judgment, that in no case 
should any land-owner be compelled to carry the main of his private 
drainage more than a quarter of a mile before reaching an outlet 
in a public drain. This would require public drains to be formed at a 
distance apart, never exceeding half a mile, throughout the island, and 
this we shall assume as a maximum. 
We have already shown the objections to open drains, saying nothing 
of the inconvenience and danger which they occasion otherwise; the 
prime object of drainage is liable to be defeated, and the evils designed 
to be remedied by their construction to be aggravated, whenever the flow 
of water in them is obstructed. Obstruction is constantly liable to 
occur from vegetation growing in their channels and along their mar- 
gins, from leaves and other debris delivered by the winds, from the 
treading down of the banks by cattle seeking water, cool standing 
places and lush herbage in hot weather; from stepping-stones thrown 
in by wanderers; from the fall of neglected bridging, and from care- 
lessness in conducting agricultural operations on their banks. Open 
drains, therefore, are to be avoided as far as practicable, the limit of prac- 
ticability being one of expense. 
The common form of roadside gutter is inefficient, expensive to 
keep in order, especially on steep hill-sides, and it is often liable, as 
we have shown, to all the objections which apply generally to open 
drains. 
That roadside gutters may be kept moderately narrow, shallow, 
smooth and tidy, no large volume of water must be allowed to accumu- 78 
late in them. They must therefore be provided, at frequent intervals, 
with outlets to the general system of public drains. 
It is obviously undesirable that public drains should cross private 
fields or pleasure-grounds, where this can be conveniently avoided. 
In the larger part of the island the drainage system has to be adapt- 
ed to two quite distinct districts; the first a high-land district, having 
frequent slopes, which end, often abruptly, in the low-land plain which 
forms the second. In the descent of these slopes a drain-pipe of given 
calibre would carry much more water than it would upon the grade at 
which it would be necessary to lay it on the plain below, and a volume 
of water which would move with lazy flow in a ditch of given dimen- 
sions on the plain, if turned into a similar channel upon the hill sides, 
unless it were made very expensively or were laid out in a very long and 
circuitous course, would soon establish a gully; it is, therefore, especi- 
ally desirable to avoid the necessity of a resort to open drains above 
the base of the higher and steeper hills. We estimate that all 
the drainage water which can be collected upon the hills (certain ex- 
traordinary circumstances, to be hereafter provided for, being excepted) 
might, if required, be carried across the lower ground by a series of 
open drains half a mile apart, and above these in pipes which, even at 
the point of discharge, need never exceed 15 inches in calibre. (If the 
drains were to be placed much further than half a mile apart, a far 
more expensive pipeage would be required near the base of the hills, 
the rate of cost increasing much more rapidly than the size ) 
But although 15 inch pipes, half a mile apart, would take all the 
water of the hills under ordinary circumstances, economy, safety and 
convenience would be greatly better consulted^ in many cases, by the 
use of smaller pipe at more frequent intervals. This gives the addi- 
tional reason which was promised for providing in your plan for high- 
ways at a less distance than half a mile. It would not be desirable to 
construct the intermediate roads, or lay drains upon all the lines pro- 
posed to be established for them, at once, but in the study of the drain- 
age system it would be a great convenience and matter of economy to 
be free to do so occasionally. 
Where there are existing highways, or where they are immediately 
required, crossing the lowland regions in a direction transverse to the 
shore line, at intervals of quarter of a mile or less, as generally along the 
north and east sides of the island, it is to be presumed that pipes 
would be laid in them; as a general rule they would not need in these 
cases to exceed eight inches of calibre, as by means of lateral channels 
each volume of water descending from the hills could be distributed, 
on reaching the flatter grades, to a number of outlets. 79 
We are now prepared to define a considerable part of the framework 
of a highway and drainage plan, which we present in a series of propo- 
sitions, as follows: 
SCHEME OF IMPROVEMENTS TO BE HAD IN VIEW IN THE STUDY OF A NEW 
PLAN FOR STATEN ISLAND. 
I. 
Westfield High-road.-A highway not less than one hundred feet 
wide from Tottenville to New Brighton Point, by the most direct 
course which shall be found consistent with ease of grade and reas- 
onable economy of construction. 
II. 
Northfield High-road.-A similar highway from the western part of 
Northfield to New Brighton Point. 
HI. 
Southfield High-road .-A similar highway from the western part of 
Southfield to New Brighton Point. 
IV. 
Brighton Place.-At the point of junction of the three high-roads, above 
specified, an open place on the water side, not less than four hun- 
dred feet in length upon the shore and two hundred feet deep. 
V. 
Shore Road.-A road not less than one hundred feet wide leading 
from the south end of Netv York Avenue, Clifton, southward to the 
shore ; thence, westward, along the shore, or as near it as a reason- 
able economy will admit, to New Dorp Plains, then curving to the 
northward so as to make a convenient junction with the Southfield 
high-road north or north-east of the Great Kills; thence, westward, 
keeping the Bay in view, to Tottenville ; thence, along the shore, 80 
or as near the shore, either upon salt marsh or upland, as shall be 
found consistent with moderate directness and economy, until a con- 
nection is made with the existing shore road on the north side of 
the island. 
VI. 
Transverse Roads.-Hoads not less than fifty feet wide crossing the 
highroads wherever the topography admits, at intervals not ex- 
ceeding, on an average, half a mile, nor nearer together, on an 
average, than a quarter of a mile. 
VII. 
Public Drains.-Public Drains, at intervals not exceeding half a 
mile, nor nearer together, on an average, than quarter of a mile, 
throughout the Island, the salt marshes alone ■ excepted, 
to be adapted to serve as outfalls for the thorough-drainage of all 
the lands between them, and also to receive the surface drainage 
of the highways. 
VIII. 
Under Drains and Road Drains.- Wherever the public drains 
will be required to receive no more water than can be safely carried 
in a pipe of fifteen inches calibre, they may be covered drains, laid 
as far as practicable within the bounds of public highways. 
It may be presumed, that under the last rule, drainage would begin 
near the " divide " of the water shed, with three inch tile of common 
brick clay, laid with collars ; and that in most cases a close six meh 
pipe, laid on each side of the road, would be the largest required, until 
an open water course, natural or artificial, should be reached. A cheap 
form of silt-basin, made probably of cement, would be placed at inter- 
vals of from two to three hundred feet, into which land-owners would 
be permitted to carry their mains. The surface drainage of the roads 
would reach the pipe also through the silt-basin, entering it by a gra- 
tingon the surface ; this grating in the rural districts might be of wood. 
To avoid the expense of a gutter of stone, which would nearly double 
the ordinary cost per foot of the system, we should propose that 81 
highways out of villages be generally laid out of sufficient width to 
admit of their being constructed with turf gutters. These have else- 
where been found adequate to the duty that would be required, and 
with the arrangement suggested, would be liable to gully probably on 
no grade necessary to be adopted on the island. Assuming a wheel- 
way of twenty-two feet as the minimum for the most secluded neigh- 
borhood roads, the gutters would require as much as four feet on each 
side, beyond which, the turf should be extended with a very flat slope 
four feet further, to admit trees to be grown healthfully and without 
inconvenience. The advantage of fairly grown road side trees, as an ad- 
junct to the drainage system and as air purifiers, has been sufficiently 
shown, their advantage as embellishments needs no argument. The 
arguments against them are all based on the assumption of a bad 
ground plan and an ignorant and inconsiderate administration. We 
assume that in all roads to be hereafter laid out proper provision will be 
made for them. Tn a highway fifty feet wide, there would remain six feet 
on each side of the tree border for walks. The gutters should be kept 
free at public expense, and should be adapted in form to be rapidly mow- 
ed, rolled and swept by a small horse machine of special construction, 
which would make the cost of keeping them from five to ten dollars a 
year per mile of road. Whenever business upon any such road so much 
increases, that twenty-two feet should be found inconveniently narrow 
for a wheelway, stone or brick, gutters could be substituted for turf, and 
iron for wooden gratings, and the wheelway enlarged to thirty feet. 
The sidewalks could also be extended and flagged to the curb if neces- 
sary, making them ten feet wide. These remarks are intended to show 
simply the practicability of applying the general plan to the highways 
not more than fifty feet wide, that is to say, the narrowest neighbor- 
hood roads, without excessively expensive details. Its adaptation to 
wider roads, and especially to the high-roads, needs no explanation. 
It remains to define the form of the open drains which shall be used 
where the amount of water to be provided for is liable to exceed the 
capacity of a fifteen inch under drain, the object being to reduce the 
necessary evils to the lowest point which shall consist with economy of 
original construction. The inside slopes of the canals of this state, ap- 
proved by half a century of experience, have two of base to one of 
vertical measurement; channels for drainage not being subject to the 
abrasion of boats, may not require as much, but it is a common sense 
rule that no side slope should be formed artificially with a greater slope 
than is established by nature where banks of similar material are un- 
dermined by streams. An examination will show that a slope of at 82 
most oae to one is that fixed as a maximum in the ordinary material 
of the island. We therefore add the following to our series of pro- 
positions. 
IX. 
Open Public Drains.- Open drains either to be boxed, or to be cut 
with side slopes of never less than one foot horizontal to one of 
vertical measurement, and whenever such side slopes are im- 
practicable, to have smooth floors of firm material, and such 
wall as may be necessary to prevent caving or crumbling of 
sides. 
The danger of air-poisons rising from all water courses which are 
liable to run dry, or nearly so, in the heat of summer, especially if 
there are many dwellings near them, has been fully explained ; without 
further argument, therefore, we add 
X. 
Natural Water Courses.-The beds of all open water courses to 
be made sufficiently firm, smooth and dishing towards the deep- 
est part of the channel, to prevent any lodgment of the water, as 
the streams shrink in summer, in pools where it will be liable to 
stagnate. 
XI. 
Occasional Flood Courses.- Wherever any open drain or water 
course is liable to great fluctuations of service, as to flood by 
storm, and stagnation by drought, provision if practicable, to be 
made for laying a pipe below such open drain, the use of the 
open drain being to dispose safely of floods which the pipe 
cannot carry. 
Certain extreme cases above alluded to remain to be specially pro- 
vided for. The water, for example, falling during a heavy storm upon 
the eastern side of Signal Hill, is mainly collected before it reaches the 
bottom, in a series of depressions, and then combined in one stream, 
the outlet of which is near Stapleton Landing. Generally in summer, 
the channel of this stream, south of the head of Rocky Hollow, is dry 
on the surface, and even below that point it often carries, in time of 83 
drought, nothing but a driblet, which breeds deadly poison; yet in a 
single night it has risen so rapidly as to burst its banks and destroy 
property to the amount of many thousand dollars, and even cause loss 
of life. Here, then, are two extreme conditions to be provided for in 
the same locality, and in each case the question whether our scheme is 
adequate, may be a matter of life and death. That the present ar- 
arrangements are really murderous, there can be no doubt. The cost 
of providing a covered conduit sufficient for all occasions, would be 
very large. 
It has occurred to us that a channel for a part of this water might 
be opened to the southward, and we find that this can be done by a 
light excavation. For ordinary conditions a moderate sized pipe-drain 
might be laid below the present bed of the stream, as already proposed, 
and instead of a deep open trench sufficient for storm waters, which, 
would be very costly to maintain, and always liable to become a nuis- 
ance, we should propose a broad and gently sloped turfed depression. 
At certain points, as at the mouth of the Clove for instance, this 
depression would be made sufficiently large and deep to serve as a 
storage pond, taking up a large body of water during heavy storms, 
and giving out north and south no more than conduits of moderate size 
below would be adapted to carry with safety. The object of the ar- 
rangement, it will be readily seen, is to avoid -what would otherwise be 
the dilemma of a very expensive system of large covered drains, or a 
very inconvenient and dangerous system of large and deep open drains, 
canals m fact. The ground required in this case is now mainly swam- 
py, a " seed bed of malaria," and of little value. The arrangement 
proposed would make it wholesome, useful, and ornamental. 
It will be obvious that the plan proposed by Mr. Root, before re- 
ferred to, for the shore road, may be readily modified, whenever cir- 
cumstances shall render it desirable, so as to admit of the introduction 
of such an arrangement as has been described, the exterior highway 
lines being expanded and the central row of trees carried around the 
depression. The plan has also the advantage that if between any two 
crossing roads it should, for any future village purpose, become desirable 
to establish a market place or open ground, or merely to gain additional 
wheelway room, it can be readily done by removing the central row of 
trees. Should such a necessity arise where the proposed depression has 
been introduced, it could also be met by the construction of a sufficiently 
large culvert or pipe drain, and covering and levelling up above and 
about it, to the grade desired. 
An arrangement of this nature, nearly continuous, but varying in 
breadth and depth, would have considerable advantages if introduced 84 
parallel to and a little below the steep slopes terminating the highland 
district, as all the water flowing from them might thus be arrested and 
distributed as before suggested to find its way thence to the sea through 
any required number of channels of moderate capacity. 
In many situations where its use would be thus desirable, the land is 
at present unoccupied by houses, uncultivated, often boggy, and gener- 
ally highly malarious, and would probably be the last in which proper 
remedies would be applied by private enterprise, because being low, it 
would, even if improved, be the last to be selected for private residences. 
For these reasons we are disposed to think that it might profitably be 
made a somewhat prominent and important feature of the general plan 
of roads, especially about the base of the hills. It may be well, there- 
fore to try to realize its landscape character a little more distinctly. 
This may be done by imagining that a shallow stream has formerly 
flowed upon the course to be followed by a highway, close upon the 
banks of which trees have grown picturesquely and that back of the 
trees on each side a roadway and walks have been formed. The water 
of the stream having been cut off, and turf having established itself in 
the old bed, the result would have the character of the safety-valley 
we suggest. For a short time after storms it would be covered with 
water which would rise through occasional outlets from the pipe drain 
below; soon subsiding, it would leave the turf perfect, and available as 
a continuous pleasure ground. At certain points this plan has other 
advantages which will be hereafter indicated. 
We give you the suggestion as our 12th proposition. 
XII. 
Flood Regulators.- On any line of drainage which it may be 
desirable to follow in laying out a public highway, and the 
stream of which is liable to great fluctuations, a sufficiently deep 
and broad valley, or depression of the surface, to serve as a 
catch-water drain, safety pond and flood regidator • the surface 
of the ground being sodded and otherwise prepared, so as to 
have an agreeable appearance, and whenever practicable, fitted 
to serve as a public green, the road way being carried on each side 
of the depressed ground. 85 
It may be noticed that each of the high roads as proposed to be laid 
out, with no object in view except that of offering the shortest practi- 
cable route to New York from the greatest number of house sites on the 
Island, will, if properly drained and constructed and especially if wisely 
embellished in planting, incidentally make available and attractive a 
series of sites fronting upon itself, upon ground which is now mainly 
useless, unoccupied by houses, uncultivated, and of which there is less 
prospect that it will be soon turned to much account in the ordinary 
course of improvement than almost any other on the island. Beyond, 
at furthest, the first mile, the value of land required to be taken would 
be low and the benefit to adjoining property would be more than enough 
to compensate the cost of the roads, provided always that adequate 
measures are at the same time taken to lift the character of the Island 
as a whole in public esteem. 
It will also appear, if the whole system which has been thus far sug- 
gested, is carefully studied, that it is calculated to bring especially into 
public notice and favor the very districts which have been pointed out 
as those having the most advantages for collecting, storing and dis- 
tributing water. Two, if not three or more of the safety-valley roads, 
which would take especially the character of pleasure roads, would lead 
toward them, the Westfield high-road would run for four miles through 
or beside two of the dales, and would cross the third, and both the 
Northfield and Southfield high-roads would, by short, necessary and 
important branches, connect with them. 
There is no room for doubt then that if the general suggestions of 
our report thus far should be carried out, there will be a rapid and 
large rise in value in the land of these dales. A paint mill, a tobacco 
manufactory and a large brewery, have already been established hard by 
one of them. There are five places of burial, three of them recently 
established, upon the hills overlooking them, though fortunately only 
one drains toward them, and there are already within a mile of them 
settlements much too dense to consist with the preservation of water 
collected on the surface in a state of wholesome purity. Not only 
will all the dale land rise much in value, then, but its occupation in 
such a way or in such degree of domestic density as would destroy its 
suitability as a field of water collection will almost certainly occur be- 
fore many years. 
We have before referred to the peculiar situation of the island, in that, 
while likely to be the residence of a large and closely settled population, 
its authorities can not fall back for water, as is usually done, upon col- 
lecting basins in elevated highland pastures, where serious sources of 
contamination are easily guarded against. 86 
We show by analysis that already in the denser settlements along the 
shore the well water contains nearly five times the amount of organic 
and dangerous impurity that is found in the water collected by the sur- 
face of these dales. (See Appendix, pp. 102-104.) 
It will be evident, upon a review of all the circumstances, that the 
value of these dales, if held as public property, will by and by be 
almost beyond price, while the cost to the public of obtaining them is 
liable soon to be vastly greater than at present. The immediate 
duty thus suggested is in our judgment of the most imperative 
character and gives grounds of justification, which could not 
well be made stronger, for throwing upon posterity some share of the 
cost. 
We are by no means prepared to completely plan a water system for 
the island. Our figures of elevation are taken from the coast survey 
chart, which gives nothing within contours of twenty feet. We have 
not been able to properly guage the streams, and all our data must be 
taken as roughly approximate. Under any conceivable plan, however, 
large places will be wanted at several points in these three dales for im- 
pounding ponds and other essential parts of an aqueduct system, as 
will all the land occupied by and adjoining the streams flowing through 
them. If not absolutely essential to hold a large area on either side of 
the water courses from end to end, it will be quite necessary to restrict 
the amount and the character of its occupation, and it will certainly be 
desirable to keep it entirely free from dwellings and stables. Observ- 
ing that your Commission contemplates a public park, (having appoin- 
ted a committee on that subject,) the question occurs whether there 
would be any objection to its use as a public ground for recreation. 
We are fortunately able to answer it with confidence, a similar question 
having been raised some years since in Pennsylvania, and having been 
referred by the legislature to a Commission of leading citizens of 
Philadelphia. They obtained the assistance of the best engineers, 
chemists and sanitarians of the country and their decision was that 
with proper care such use of a water preserving ground was unobjec- 
tionable. The result gives the City of Philadelphia a noble suburban 
park of nearly three thousand acres, this being the extent of the area 
sloping towards the impounding pond of the Fairmount Water Works, 
which it had been thought desirable to especially guard from sources of 
contamination. 
In the case of Staten Island, it would be a simple plan for the public 
to form a park similarly designed, to include nearly all of the valleys 
and hillsides which would constitute the areas of precipitation for the 
water to be collected. Such a park for the Eastern water works would 87 
be four miles in length and at least one in average breadth, the Wes- 
tern part of the island still remaining to be provided for. It would oc- 
cupy a moderately central position, would turn to good use a large ex- 
tent of land which is at present benefiting nobody, but is much of it a 
nuisance, and relatively to the City of New York would possess some- 
what of the character of the great suburban parks about London, Paris, 
and Berlin. This plan has great attractions, but it involves the pur- 
chase of a large extent of valuable real estate on the upper hill sides, and 
although we are confident that, as has happened in all similar cases, 
the advance in taxable value of the surrounding properties would even- 
tually more than compensate for the required outlay, provided a 
thorough-drainage system should at the same time have been carried 
out over the whole island, we are constrained to doubt the practica- 
bility of so large an undertaking. 
We propose, instead, that highways should be laid out on the slopes 
of the three dales we have indicated, one on each side of each, in such 
a manner as to leave the water-course generally midway between the 
two, the intermediate dale-bottom being in the upper parts not more 
than three or four hundred feet wide, but becoming gradually broader 
as the points are approached which would be suitable for impounding 
reservoirs, about and above which there would in each case be a large 
meadow. This space we should propose to clear of buildings, (there 
are none upon it now of much value), thin out the trees to open groups, 
and with little or no grading lay it down to grass. The ground thus 
prepared would have much the character of the safety-valleys before 
described, except that it must be broader and more diversified. We 
shall speak of it as the Water Glade. 
The outlines of the water-glade would be curving in correspondence 
with the present forms of the inclosing hills, its bounding roads being 
carried down the slopes, always upon easy grades, giving occasion for a 
series of small bays and headlands on its border. 
Outside the bounding road we should recommend that another 
space, having a depth of fully three hundred feet, should be acquired, 
which should be cleared of everything likely to occasion contamina- 
tion, and the surface prepared as might be found most desirable for 
the collection and discharge of water upon the water-glade, by cul- 
verts under the highway. This having been done, and the ground on 
each side of all branches of the water-course being reserved, the re- 
mainder of the exterior ground, which we shall designate the Over- 
dale, might be disposed of on long building leases, or possibly sold 
with certain rights reserved, also with restrictions against burial of 
the dead, against various manufactures, limiting the number of dwel- 88 
lings, providing against cellars, manure pits or cess-pools, unless 
cemented, and with cemented outlets to a common pipe which would 
be provided in the highway, to discharge below the impounding ponds, 
and under whatever other conditions should, upon careful considera- 
tion, be thought desirable. There would perhaps be three hundred 
acres of the Overdale, which when properly prepared and regulated, 
might safely be occupied by detached dwellings. 
On the south side of Dongan-knoll there is a favorable place for a 
distributing reservoir for the upper hill country, and we should pro- 
pose to acquire this ground and connect it, together with the knoll it- 
self, with the heads of each of the water-glades. 
We should also recommend the acquisition of a tract of land of 
from five to ten acres suitable for a distributing reservoir for Clifton, 
which would be found at an elevation of two hundred feet on Fox 
Hill, and another with reference to Stapleton and New Brighton at 
some point on Signal Hill. 
The Martling Dale lies exactly on the line of the proposed Westfield 
High road, which would here constitute part of the bounding high- 
way of its water-glade. The west end of the Millsdale would extend 
to the Fresh Kills near Richmond. The Manor Dale would be reached 
by a short branch from the Northfield High-road, and thus opened to 
pleasure travel from Jersey as well as New York. By carrying a 
branch of the drainage valley proposed to be formed below the hills at 
Concord up the Clove, this feature in the Southfield High-road would 
become to all appearances a branch of the water-glade; we should 
propose to extend it in one fork to the reservoir ground at Fox 
Hill, about which a drive and walk constituting a local promenade for 
Clifton should be formed, and in another, east of the Oldtown road, to 
the Shore-road at the South beach, where, as already suggested, it 
would merge in the central feature of Mr. Root's plan. We should 
propose a similar connection with the proposed reservoir ground on Sig- 
nal Hill, the distance to which would not exceed half a mile probably, 
and a third branch following down the glen below the Martling Pond 
to the North shore, by which means some of the most charming syl- 
van scenery on the island would be appropriated at little cost and 
with great incidental advantages to the neighborhood. 
To the amount of land which should be acquired and held by the 
public simply from considerations of economy and prudence with re- 
gard to water supply and drainage, an addition of a tenth would en- 
able a pleasure-ground to be laid out, which, if less desirable than the 
large park before suggested, would certainly have a highly interesting 
and attractive, as well as wholly original character. 89 
One element in the value of a park is the advantage which house 
sites fronting upon it have in not looking directly upon the face of 
other houses but rather upon a permanent verdure. This advan- 
tage our plan would secure to a frontage from fifteen to twenty miles 
in length, (not counting the Shore-road, much of which would have an 
outlook finer than that upon any park.) Regarded as a park scheme, 
much of the Glade is already very charmingly planted, the western 
landscape as seen from all parts of the Manor Dale has great breadth 
and beauty, while from the Dougan-knoll, which is the central feature 
of the system, the views, with some little improvement of the fore- 
grounds, would be really magnificent, comprehending a grand sweep 
of the horizon in blue water on one side, in blue hills on the other. 
The advantages of such a public ground in giving increased value 
to all property on the island we hardly need argue. It is sometimes 
said, however, that the island is a park in itself and has no need of 
any special public ground. It may be pertinent, therefore, to 
recall the fact that no part of the island is today more of a park 
than Rocky Hollow, or the Bloomingdale road north of Union Square, 
or the greater part of the Twenty-first Ward of New York, 
was fifty years ago. Nowhere on Staten Island is there a land- 
scape or even a glimpse of agreeable scenery which belongs perma- 
nently to the public-which no man has the right to obstruct and 
destroy in pursuance of private and selfish ends. 
Without advocating the immediate construction of water-works, we 
may observe that the measure we propose would give Staten Island 
control of an opportunity for supplying its eastern and northern parts 
with pure water at a smaller cost for original construction of works 
and annual maintenance and extension, than a similar advantage could 
probably be obtained by any other considerable rural suburban district. 
The conditions upon which this opportunity depends, beyond those 
which we have already emphasized, are to be found mainly in the near- 
ness of the sources of water to the points at which its distribution will be 
required; the commanding height attainable for distributing reservoirs, 
by which the requirements of size and consequent cost of pipeage may 
be kept low; the location of the communities to be served within a 
circular sweep of short radius from the center of the system-the si- 
tuation of the Dongan-knoll being almost exactly equidistant from 
tide water at Factoryville on the north, and New Dorp on the south, 
Stapleton on the east, and the Fresh Kills near Richmond on the 
west;-and finally in the limit to outward and scattered extension 
which is imposed by the sounds and bays, and the certainty that the 
principal increase of population wTill tend to bring the point of greatest 90 
average annual consumption constantly nearer the principal point of 
supply. 
We submit that the Island, cannot afford to run the least risk of 
losing this opportunity. 
The preparation of the Glade and its connections with the safety 
valleys and the distributing reservoirs, so far as necessary to give 
unity of character to the whole territory proposed to be acquired for 
the public, as a pleasure ground system, would involve very little expense 
for construction. The ground simply requires the treatment that a farm- 
er would ordinarily use for making a permanent meadow. We propose no 
constructed interior roads or walks, and the general character aimed 
at being that of a rural common rather than a park, the turf would be 
cropped by sheep, and its maintenance involve no expense. The bound- 
ing road wTould be a common highway, and the expense of its mainte- 
nance would be a charge upon the householders of the Overdale front- 
ing upon it. 
The propositions in respect to this subject which we present for your 
formal consideration, are almost necessarily somewhat indefinite in 
terms, the object being to leave much freedom for further study. 
XIII. 
Eastern Water Preserve and Public Common.-A system of water 
works for the eastern part of the Island to be had in view, the 
suggestion being favored of appropriating to this purpose so much 
as is desirable of the ground designated in the report before the 
Commission as the Martling-dale, the Manor-dale and the Mill- 
dale, with reference to Impounding Reservoirs, and the preserva- 
tion of the purity of the water to be collected in them. An appro- 
priation to be made of from five to ten acres of ground upon 
Fox Hill and upon Signal Hill, selected with reference to the 
double purpose of distributing reservoirs and public recreation 
grounds, and these sites to be connected by arms from fifty 
to one hundred and fifty feet wide, with the ground proposed to 
be appropriated as a water preserve, and the ivhole designed to 
serve as a public common. 
The system of water works which has been indicated has been 
studied especially with reference to supplying the population dwelling 
east of the Kills, (Fresh and Great). It might for a time contribute 
also to the supply of the community living west of the Kills. But 91 
the necessity of an aqueduct supply will not nearly as soon, probably, 
be pressing in that part of the island, and when it is so it will doubt- 
less be thought prudent to provide for it from local sources. These 
will be found in the water-shed of Benham's Brook and Lemon Creek, 
the collections of each of which may be united in one scheme to sup- 
ply the whole, or perhaps better, may be used distinctively for separate 
districts. The amount of water estimated to be due from both, sup- 
posing the usual yield, would be adequate under proper conservance to 
meet the necessary requirements of a population many times as large as 
the present. There are elevations centrally situated within the districts 
of altitude sufficient to give the water satisfactory distribution by gravi- 
tation. The early acquisition of ground for this purpose would, it is 
believed, be a measure of prudence and economy. Nor would its early 
appropriation as a public common, maintained as heretofore suggested, 
be without considerable advantages. We submit therefore our last 
proposition as follows: 
XIV. 
Western Water Preserve and Public Common-Suitable grounds 
for the collection, storage and distribution of the waters of Lemon 
Creek and Benham Brook, to be selected and laid of, and these to 
be of the extent required to admit of a system of conservation and 
management, in all respects similar to that proposed to be had in 
view for the Eastern Water Works. 
It may be acceptable to you to learn that while very great interest 
in our duty and a disposition to assist us has been generally manifested 
by citizens of the island, for which we are grateful, we have seen no 
evidence of an intention to unworthily influence our judgment. We 
have received no hint from any person, in the Commission or out of it, 
of private or local interests, nor was there a soul beside ourselves who, 
before this reading, had any knowledge of our intended recommenda- 
tions. 
We beg to return thanks, on your behalf, to Doctor H. I. Bowditch, 
of Boston; to Professor J. S. Newberry, of the School of Mines; Prof. 
C. F. Chandler, of Columbia College; to Professor A. F. Liautard, of 
New York; and Professor James Law, of the Cornell University; to 
Messrs. G. K. Radford, of Buffalo, L. Y. Schermerhorn, of Chicago, H. 
D. Fisher, of New York, Civil Engineers, and to S. C. Hawley, Chief 
Clerk of the Police Department, R. S. Guernsey, Esq., and Homer* 92 
Morgan, Esq., of New York, and to Messrs. Crooke, Elliott, Meyer, 
Minthorne Tompkins, John C. Thompson, D. R. Hitchcock, Jacob 
Garretson, and Peter L. Cortelyou, of the Island, for valuable contri- 
butions. 
We are also under obligations, in your behalf, to the physicians of 
the Island generally, and more especially to the following gentlemen, 
who have answered our inquiries with painstaking care, or otherwise 
particularly aided us: Doctors Edgar, Golder, Spencer, E. and G. Hub- 
bard, and Andrews, of Westfield; Doctors Anderson, Lea and Richard- 
son, of Edgewater; Doctors Walser, Bogart and Van Rensselaer, of New 
Brighton; Doctor Clark, of West Brighton; Doctor Martindale, of 
Port Richmond; Doctor Satterthwaite, of Mariner's Harbor, and Doc- 
tors Ephraim Clark, and Isaac L. Millspaugh, of Southfield. 
We shall conclude by gathering in one scheme the several proposi- 
tions to which our study has led. It is by no means intended to 
cover all obvious requirements of improvement, but to establish a 
framework, and give a key to the character of what should be had in 
view. Accepting the estimate which we have taken, and have at- 
tempted to justify, of the opportunities and dangers of the island, we 
believe that we have given you good reasons for adopting each propo- 
sition. 
With the problem of ways and means for carrying out the proposi- 
tion we have nothing to do, nor, as we understand, has your Commis- 
sion, further than as it affects the question of its practicability; and 
even on that point the question is not merely what is practicable now, 
but what is to be practicable? What can be expected of Staten 
Island ? It is for you to determine whether our recommendations as- 
sume too much or too little in this respect. 93 
We respectfully recommend you to adopt the following: 
SCHEME OF IMPROVEMENTS TO BE HAD IN VIEW IN 
THE STUDY OF A NEW PLAN FOR STATEN ISLAND. 
I. 
Westfield High-road.-A highway not less than one hun- 
dred feet wide from Tottenville to New Brighton Point, 
by the most direct course which shall be found consistent 
with ease of grade and reasonable economy of construc- 
tion. 
II. 
Northfield High-road.-A similar highway from the west- 
ern part of Northfield to New Brighton Point. 
III. 
Southfield High-road.-A similar highway from the west- 
ern part of Southfield to New Brighton Point. 
IV. 
Brighton Place.-At the point of junction of the three high- 
roads, above specified, an open place on the water side, 
not less than four hundred feet in length upon the shore 
and two hundred feet deep. 94 
V. 
Shore Road.-A road not less than one hundred feet wide 
leading from the south end of New York Avenue, Clifton, 
southward to the shore ; thence, westward, along the 
shore, or as near it as a reasonable economy will admit, 
to New Dorp Plains, then curving to the northward so as 
to make a convenient junction with the Southfield high- 
road north or north-east of the Great Kills ; thence, west- 
ward, keeping the Bay in view, to Tottenville; thence, 
along the shore, or as near the shore, either upon salt 
marsh or upland, as shall be found consistent with moder- 
ate directness and economy, until a connection is made 
with the existing shore road on the north side of the 
island. 
VI. * 
Transverse Roads.-Roads not less than fifty feet wide 
crossing the high-roads wherever the topography admits, 
at intervals not exceeding, on an average, half a mile, 
nor nearer together, on an average, than a quarter of a 
mile. 
VII. 
Public Drains.-Public Drains, at intervals not exceeding 
half a mile, nor nearer together, on an average, than 
quarter of a mile, throughout the Island, the salt marshes 
alone excepted, to be adapted to serve as outfalls for the 
thorough-drainage of all the lands between them, and also 
to receive the surface drainage of the highways. 
VIII. 
Under Drain and Road Drains.-Wherever the public 
drains will be required to receive no more water than can 
be safely carried in a pipe of fifteen inches calibre, they 
may be covered drains, laid as far as practicable within 
the bounds of public highways. 95 
IX. 
Open Public Drains.-Open drains either to be boxed, or to 
be ent with side slopes of never less than one foot horizon- 
tal to one of vertical measurement, and whenever such 
side slopes are impracticable, to have smooth floors of 
firm material, and such wall as may be necessary to pre- 
vent caving or crumbling of sides. 
X 
Natural Water Courses.-The beds of all open water 
courses to be made sufficiently firm, smooth and dishing 
towards the deepest part of the channel, to prevent any 
lodgment of the water, as the streams shrink in summer, 
in ponds where it will be liable to stagnate. 
XI. 
Occasional Flood Courses.-Wherever any open drain or 
water course is liable to great fluctuations of service, as 
to flood by storm, and stagnation by drought, provision, 
if practicable, to be made for laying a pipe below such 
open drain, the use of the open drain being to dispose 
safely of floods which the pipe cannot carry. 
XII. 
Flood Regulators.-On any line of drainage which it may 
be desirable to follow in laying out a public highway, and 
the stream of which is liable to great fluctuations, a suffi- 
ciently deep and broad valley, or depression of the sur- 
face, to serve as a catch water drain, safety pond and 
flood regulator ; the surface of the ground being sodded 
and otherwise prepared, so as to have an agreeable ap- 
pearance, and whenever practicable, fitted to serve as a 
public green, the road way being carried on each side of 
the depressed ground. 96 
XIII. 
Eastern Water Preserve and Public Common.-A sys- 
tem of water works for the eastern part of the Island 
to be had in view, the suggestion being favored of appro- 
priating to this purpose so much as is desirable of the 
ground designated in the report before the Commission as 
the Martling-dale, the Manor-dale and the Mill-dale, with 
reference to the Impounding Reservoirs, and the preser- 
vation of the purity of the water to be collected in them. 
An appropriation to be made of from five to ten acres of 
ground upon Fox Hill and upon Signal Hill, selected 
with reference to the double purpose of distributing reser- 
voirs and public recreation grounds, and these sites may 
be connected by arms from fifty to one hundred and fifty 
feet wide, with the ground proposed to be appropriated as 
a water preserve, and the whole designed to serve as a 
public common. 
XIV. 
Western Water Preserve and Public Common.-Suitable 
grounds for the collection, storage and distribution of 
the waters of Lemon Creek and Benham Brook, to be se- 
lected and laid off, and these to be of the extent required 
to admit of a system of conservation and management, in 
all respects similar to that proposed to be had in view for 
the Eastern Water Works. 
Respectfully, 
FRED. LAW OLMSTED, 
ELISHA HARRIS, 
J. M. TROWBRIDGE, 
H. H. RICHARDSON. APPENDIX. CONTENTS OF APPENDIX. 
I. Tables Showing Comparative Progress of Population of Staten 
Island and other Suburbs. 
II. Analysis of Waters. Report of Professor Chandler. 
III. Steam on High-roads. Report of Trials following the French 
Exposition. 
IV. Ventilation of Ferry Boats. Letter from L. W. Leeds. 
V. Agricultural Value of Thorough-Drainage. Prize Report of 
Highland Society. 
VI. Effects of Saturated Soil on Brutes. Letter from Professor 
Liautard. 
VII. Sanitary Geology of Staten Island. Letter from Professor 
Newberry. 
Vni. Report on Experimental Tests of the Absorption Capacity of 
Staten Island Serpentine, and other Rocks. By Professor 
Newberry. 101 
I. 
COMPARATIVE PROGRESS OF POPULATION OF STATEN 
ISLAND AND OF OTHER SUBURBS. 
SUMMARY OF THE CENSUS. 
RICHMOND COUNTY. 
1865. 
1870. 
DIFFERENCE 
Castleton 
7,883 
9,519 
1,636 
Middletown 
6,866 
7,589 
723 
Northfield 
5,201 
5,949 
748 
Southfield 
4,407 
5,072 
675 
Westfield 
4,052 
4,905 
853 
Totals 
28,409 
33,044 
4,635 
TOWNS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY. 
1865. 
1870. 
DIFFERENCE 
Yonkers 
12,756 
18,320 
5,564 
Westchester 
3,026 
6,166 
3,140 
West Farms 
7,333 
9,334 
2,001 
Morrisania 
11,691 
19,637 
7,946 
Rye 
4,675 
7,152 
2,477 
Cortlandt, including Peekskill 
9,393 
11,695 
2,302 
Greenburgh, including Tarrytown.. 
8,463 
10,876 
2,413 
Ossining, including Sing-Sing 
6,223 
7,798 
1,515 
Eastchester 
5,615 
7,494 
1,879 
W. Plains 
2,122 
3,000 
878 
Bedford 
3,465 
3,700 
235 
New Rochelle 
3,968 
3,901 
67 less. 
TOWNS ON LONG ISLAND. 
1865. 
1870. 
DIFFERENCE 
Flushing 
10,813 
14,673 
3,860 
New Lots 
5,009 
9,805 
4,796 
Gravesend and Flatlands 
3,531 
4,417 
886 
New Utrecht 
3,394 
3,298 
96 less. 102 
II. 
ANALYSIS OF WATERS. 
By Professor C. F. Chandler, of the School of Mines. 
Note-Samples 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were selected as follows, under the 
supervision of this board, and were forwarded to Prof. Chandler, 
under seal, and with no other description than the above numbers. 
They were obtained during a time of unusual drought, and conse- 
quently may be considered as fairly representing the particular charac- 
teristics of the water-supply in each of the localities, or from each of 
the sources we here describe: 
Descriptive List of the Waters submitted to Professor Chandler for 
Chemical Analysis. 
Sample No. 1.-From a well in Amos street, Clifton, about twenty 
feet above tide level; depth nine feet in the ordinary gravel and earth 
of that district. Well, clean, with clean surroundings, the surface near 
it being paved and cemented but the subsoil exposed to the ordinary 
results of defective drainage. Quantity 5 gallons, taken December 
10th, 1870. 
Sample No. 2.-From a shallow well-spring at the dam of the Mill- 
pond of Standrig's machine shop, on Willow Brook, about fifty-five feet 
above tide level; Northfield. Quantity, 6 gallons, taken December 
9th, 1870. 
Sample No. 3.-From principal inlet of Ketchum's mill-pond, near 
the road from New Springville to Richmond. The inlet receives some 
fresh drainage from swamp ditches recently opened, and the surface 
wash of some soft magnesian rocks, which give the chief impurities. 
Taken at a point about sixty feet above tide level. Quantity 5 gallons. 
December 10th, 1870. 
Sample No. 4.-From the upper pond of Abraham Britton, Esq., 
on east side of Clove road, two days after heavy rain. Height about 
one hundred and thirty five feet above tide-level. Quantity, 6 gallons. 
December 15th, 1870. 
Sample No. 5.-From a well near Franklin avenue, at a point 
about one hundred feet above tide-level, and from a clean excavation 
forty feet deep in the magnesian or soapstone rock of the locality. 
Quantity, 2 quarts, taken December 15th, 1870. 
Remark.-The wells (Nos. 1 & 5), are regarded as fair examples of 
the village and villa wells. The samples 2, 3 and 4, are specimens 
of the present natural outflowings from the several dales described in 
the report. 103 
Laboratory of the School of Mines, ) 
New York, January 12, 1871. J 
Certificate of the Analysis of the Samples of Water from Staten Island, marked 
Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, submitted to me for examination, contain in one U. S. Wine 
Gallon of 231 Cubic inches. 
GRAINS. 
No.l. 
No. 2. 
No. 3. 
No. 4. 
No. 5. 
Potassa 
0.529 
0.140 
0.091 
0.106 
Soda 
2.822 
0.369 
0.^45 
0.846 
0.362 
Lime 
1.819 
0.816 
0.851 
Magnesia 
4.397 
0.332 
1.960 
1.149 
Chlorine 
3.156 
0.486 
0.546 
0.546 
0.728 
Sulphuric Acid 
2.018 
0.140 
0.198 
0.158 
Silica 
1.429 
0 804 
0.937 
0.385 
Oxide of Iron and Alumina 
0.233 
0.041 
0.088 
0.204 
Carbonic Acid 
5.451 
1.447 
2.660 
1.813 
Oxygen equivalent to Chlorine 
21.854 
0.711 
4.575 
0.109 
7.671 
0.123 
5.574 
0.123 
Total Inorganic matter as left by evaporation.. 
21.143 
4.466 
7.548 
5.451 
8.519 
Organic and Volatile matter 
4.283 
0.816 
0.734 
1.397 
0.812 
Total Impurities left by evaporation 
25.426 
5.282 
8.282 
6.848 
9.331 
Carbonic Acid holding Carbonates in solution 
as Bicarbonates 
5.451 
1.447 
2.660 
1.813 
Water in Bicarbonates 
2.230 
0.391 
1.088 
0.742 
Total impurities in solution 
33.107 
7.120 
1.2030 
9.403 
These bases and acids exist in the water in the following combinations 
Chloride of Sodium 
5.200 
0.697 
0 651 
0.683 
Chloride of Magnesium 
none. 
0.084 
0.203 
0.177 
Sulphate of Potassa 
0.979 
0.260 
0.169 
0.195 
Sulphate of Soda 
0.152 
none. 
none. 
none. 
Sulphate of Lime 
2.520 
0.035 
0.205 
0.116 
Bicarbonate of Lime 
2.354 
3.299 
2.203 
2.326 
Bicarbonate of Magnesia 
15.957 
1.084 
6.841 
3.920 
Oxide of Iron and Alumina 
0.233 
0.041 
0.087 
0.204 
Silica 
1.429 
0.804 
0.937 
0.385 
Organic and Volatile Matter 
4.283 
0.816 
0.734 
1.397 
Total Impurities as they exist in solution 
33.107 
7120 
12.030 
9.403 
Hardness-Carbonate of Lime or its equivalent, 
4.130 
1.430 
1.350 
1.380 
4.210 
Oxygen required to oxidise the putrescent 
organic matter 
0.050 
0.020 
0.020 
0.070 
0.040 
Gentlemen.-As I am not informed of the particular sources from 
which these samples were obtained, I must necessarily limit my 
remarks upon them to the chemical, composition of the waters as 
developed by my analyses. 104 
Sample No. 1 is a very impure water, it contains an unusually 
large proportion of organic matter, which, while it is, perhaps, not 
specially dangerous at present, is liable at times to be a prolific source 
of disease. 
Besides the organic matter this water contains a large amount of 
alkaline and earthy salts. The former are not specially objec- 
tionable, while the latter are anything but desirable. These lime 
and magnesia salts are injurious in waters intended for domestic pur- 
poses ; (1) as they render tve water "hard," and destroy a certain por- 
tion of the soap, when they are used in washing; (2) because when 
food is prepared with such waters, the full effect of the application of 
heat is not obtained, meat and vegetables do not become as tender and 
perfectly digestible as when boiled in soft water; (3), that salts are 
believed by physicians to cause, when present, in unusual quantity, cer- 
tain very troublesome diseases, such as indigestion, diarrhoea and 
dysentery, and even goitre. 
Thi s water is probably drawn from the neighborhood of dwellings, 
and perhaps of stables, and I regard it as unsuitable for domestic use. 
Samples numbered 2, 3 and 4 are of very good quality. They con- 
tain about the same quantity of organic matter as is usually found in 
the sources from which the Croton and Ridgewood waters are drawn. 
The alkaline and earthy salts are not excessive, though there is a 
marked choice between these three samples of water. No. 2 is de- 
cidedly the best of the three; it is remarkably pure, and is of equal 
quality with the Croton. 
Next in the order of purity stands No. 4. No. 3 contains an amount 
of earthy salts which places it near the dividing line between the good 
and the impure waters. If the supply of Nos. 2 and 4 is sufficient for the 
public wants, it would perhaps be advisable to rely entirely upon 
them, though I think No. 3 may be used with safety. 
No. 5 is of about the same quality as No. 3, though some what inferior 
to it, as it contains a larger quantity of alkaline and earthy salts than 
any of the others, except No. 1, and more magnesia than is desirable; 
yet it is not contaminated by organic matter. 
The softness of numbers 2, 3 and 4 is remarkable, and is an impor- 
tant element in a supply for domestic purposes, for the reasons already 
mentioned. 
Respectfully yours, 
C. F. Chandler, 
Professor of Analytical and Applied Chemistry. 
To the Advisory Board, 
Staten Island Improvement Commission. 105 
STEAM ON COMMON ROADS. 
The following extract from an official report of a very cautiously con- 
ducted trial of road locomotives is here given, on account of its bearing 
upon the question of the probable future value of roads of unusual 
breadth and easy grades, especially when they are continuations of im- 
portant routes of water transportation, as would be the case with the 
proposed high-roads, and some of the cross roads, leading inland from 
landings on the island. There seems little room for doubt that, 
upon firm, broad roads of easy grades, steam can now be used for the 
carriage of freight more economically than horses. If roads should 
now be laid out of ordinary width and grades, upon such routes, 
leading to localities which are likely to increase very much in popu- 
lation, a demand is very likely to arise, in the early future, for 
widening and reducing them, which can only be met at the cost of 
much destruction of property fronting upon them. 
The report gives the result of a trial of one of Aveling 
& Porter's Road Locomotives, undertaken by M. Tresca, for 
the French Conservatoire Imperial des Arts-et Metiers, at the in- 
stigation of the Director, General Morin, and in concert with Professor 
Fleeming Jenkin, Fellow of the Royal Society of London. The 
engine, "La Ville de Senlis," with which these experiments were made, 
is of 14 horse-power nominal, and as will be seen, drew a load of nearly 
80 tons, of 2,240 lbs. each ton, (exclusive of the engine,) whereas her 
power is stated to be " 40 to 50 tons'" The trial of the engine took 
place at the Sugar Manufactory of Messrs. Lallouette & Co., of Beau- 
rain, near Senlis: 
"Messrs. Aveling & Porter, who have applied themselves to the 
construction of Traction Engines, have already made a great number 
for business purposes; so, as it was impossible for us to make suffi. 
ciently prolonged trials of these machines at the Exposition, we gladly 
availed ourselves of an occasion offered at the Sugar Manufactory of 
Messrs. Lallouette & Co., of Beaurain, near Senlis, to witness a traction 
experiment with a very heavy load; and we took the necessary steps 
to register all the mechanical elements of the question. 
"These experiments were, moreover, made in concert with Professor 
Fleeming Jenkin, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, who went 
into all details, and whose presence gives to the results arrived at, a 
character of security that increases their importance. 
"The motive power of the engine consists of a single cylinder, 11 
inches diameter, with a piston stroke of 14 inches. 106 
" The diameter of the driving wheels being 6.50 feet, the ground 
gone over by every turn of the wheels should be 20.07 feet; and we 
shall see, in fact, by the numbers shown on the wheel indicator, that 
the actual ground passed over differs very little from this number. 
The width of face of the driving wheels is 18 inches ; they each form a 
veritable roller, bearing upon a great surface and preventing the des- 
truction that might be found from the passage over them of so great a 
weight, of macadamized roads. 
" These wheels work free upon the axle, and are only keyed to it by 
means of a strong pin of 2.36 inches diameter at the projecting end, 
which it is necessary to draw out a short distance to unlock the wheels 
when going around curves. This mode of connection, as simple as it is 
strong, is exceedingly convenient, and appeared entirely to answer the 
purpose intended. The two front wheels are only 3 feet 8 inches in 
diameter, and 12 inches wide on the face, but when the engine is on a 
level road they only carry 7-29ths of the total weight; those on the 
driving axle accounting thus for 22-29ths of this weight. 
" The locomotive is, besides, provided with a fifth, steering wheel in 
front, or rather a thin disc of 2 1-2 feet diameter, which acts on the road 
by its own weight and by that of a triangular frame, fixed, by means 
of a horizontal joint, on the front part of the engine. The weight of 
all this apparatus is 6 cwt. 1 qr. 16 lb. only. This fifth wheel cannot 
exercise any injurious action upon the ground; but slight as the fric- 
tion is, it is sufficient for moving the fore carriage which carries if, 
guided by the hand of the steerer, and by a very slight effort, in any 
required direction. The entirely effectual arrangement of the steering 
wheel is not one of the least interesting features of the engine in 
question." 
After giving a long and technical description of the Locomotive- 
Boiler, and the large amount of heating surface provided,-which in a 
14 H. P. engine reaches 273 1-4 square feet,-the report proceeds to 
detail the particulars of the load drawn:- 
"In order to form a load, six wagons were filled with coal, the total 
weight of which added to the weight of the wagons, was 59 tons 14 
cwt. 3 qr. The trial consisted of drawing this load from Beaurain to 
Senlis, and then from Senlis to Beaurain, a distance of 7.45 miles, pre- 
senting inclines and descents which in some instances were as great as 
1 in 30. On the departure of the train the following conditions of the 
engine were noted :- 
Fuel on the locomotive, 5 cwt. (560 lbs.) 
Water in tenders, 375.47 gallons. 107 
Level of the water in boiler below brass case of glass tube, 0.39 
inches. 
Steam pressure on starting, 97 lbs. per square inch." 
Time occupied in the run from Beaurain to Senlis (7.45 miles,) 
3h. 3m. 
CONDITIONS ASCERTAINED ON ARRIVAL: 
Fuel remaining on the engine. = 1c. lq. 161b. (156 lbs.) 
Ashes and Cinders . . . . - 1c. Oq. 141b. (126 lbs.) 
Water in the Tender after having refilled the boiler to the level of 
starting, 125 galls, which gives a consumption of 278.78 galls. 
Pressure on arriving 90 lbs. per square inch," corresponding to 7-12 
atmospheres, (French measure.) 
" The facility with which this journey from Beaurain to Senlis, 
(7.45 miles) was accomplished, led us to suppose that the limit of trac-' 
tion power had not been sustained. It was believed that two additional 
wagons might still be attached, which Mr. Aveling had gone to fetch 
with the locomotive from the sugar factory at Beaurain. He set out 
at 3.25 P. M. and returned at 4.15 P. M. with another load, which was 
yoked on to the principal train. 
" In consequence of this addition the total weight of the load drawn 
was raised to 79 tons 19 cwt. 1 qr. The adherent weight consisting 
of only 22-29 ths that of the locomotive, we may call the total load equal 
to 7.65 times the adherent weight. 
" In spite of these unfavorable conditions the engine started very well 
and hauled the load on level ground and up slight inclines 1 in 250. 
" The care with which we registered the time of passing each kilo- 
metric post may appear excessive, but our motive was to ascertain con- 
vincingly if the engine, loaded as it was, had not slipped over any por- 
tion of the road. The total distance was 7.44 miles, and the counter 
marked 2.037 revolutions, which brings it to 19.29 feet of displacement 
per revolution. The figure is so near the exact figure, 6.12 miles, that it 
may be considered no abnormal slip took place, the slight obseived 
difference not being greater than 4 per cent, of the external circum- 
ference of the wheel. 
"To sum up: The engine La Ville de Senlis drew in a regular 
manner, upon a good road slightly undulating, a total load of 59 tons. 
The co-efficient of traction may be approximately estimated at 1-40, 
which would bring the mean strain to nearly 39 1-2 cwt., taking into 
account the weight of the locomotive.* 
"This mean effort, developed at a speed of 3.54 feet per second, 
brings the valuation of effective work to 15,623 foot-pounds per second, 108 
or to 27.61 horse-power. This figure will appear high if it be com- 
pared with the consumption of fuel, which was 3c. 2q. 13 lbs. (405 lbs.) 
in three hours and three minutes, say, 132.15 lbs., per hour of actual 
travelling. This consumption represents only 4.40 lbs. of coal per 
horse-power and per hour. 
"The corresponding consumption of water is not less than 132.22 
gallons per hour of actual travelling. With the present tenders, which 
can hold 396 gallons of water, it is necessary to replenish them every 
6 1-2 to 7 1-2 miles. The co-efficient of adherence may be estimated 
on the road gone over at 0.3 of the adherent weight. The adherence 
resulting therefrom was only necessary for the working of the engine 
up inclines of 0.030 (1 in 33 to 1 in 30) and at starting. 
" The load of 79 19-20^/w tons which the engine drew onlevelground 
is not the limit of what it can draw under these conditions. 
"A speed of 2.48 miles per hour appears suitable for traffic of this 
nature, and renders the manoeuvres so easy that the train is well man- 
aged by a superintendent, an engine driver, and an assistant solely em- 
ployed to guide the steering wheel in front. 
" Done by the Engineer Sub-Director of the Conservatoire Imperial 
des Arts-et-Metiers. 
H. Tresca. 
" Approved-The Director, General Morin. 
" Paris, 15th January, 1868." 
Note.-M. Tresca adds to his report some facts as to this engine, 
furnished by Messrs. Lallouette & Co. 
From these it appears that it had only been worked half of the 
previous season, but during that time "it had conveyed 2,460 1-2 tons 
of beet-root from the weighbridge to the factory; a distance of 2.48 
miles. It drew each journey 3 wagons loaded with 24t. 12cwt. Oq. lllbs. 
of beet root, and the engine made 4 journeys and back; thus effecting 
the transport of 98 1-2 tons per diem. 
The expenditure of fuel was not more than 9c. 3q. lOlbs. (1,102 lbs.) 
of coal for the 8 journeys,* and the trains were well managed by a driver 
and two assistants. 
* Equal to 2 1-2 lbs. per ton. The ton referred to is 2,240 lbs. 109 
IV. 
VENTILATION OF THE FERRY BOATS. 
Extract from a letter from L. IK Leeds, Engineer of Ventilation and 
Heating: 
Mr. Leeds was consulted as to whether by any simple expedient, the 
sickening air often found in the saloons of the Staten Island ferry 
boats, when crowded and artificially heated, could be avoided with- 
out introducing draughts of cold air. 
In reply he remarks : 
"I think the uncomfortable feelings experienced in the upper saloon 
are much owing to the way in which it is warmed. The thin floor is 
exposed to the current of cold air sweeping through the carriage way 
below, and to keep up a tolerable average of heat, the upper part of 
the cabin must be highly heated, making the head hot and feet cold. 
To remedy this, I should think, it would be necessary to ceil below 
the floor, and that being done, it would be very desirable to pass a cur- 
rent of heated air beneath it, [in the interspace] ; there appears to be 
an abundance for that purpose that now escapes around the smoke- 
pipe, and which might be utilized in that way. 
There is also abundant power to create any amount of draught of 
heated air through the saloon, even when densely crowded, that may 
be desirable. But I do not believe that this alone would satisfy most 
persons, they need fresh, moderately cool air for breathing, and warmth 
to be supplied in a great measure by radiation or by contact with a 
warmed floor." 
V. 
AGRICULTURAL EFFECTS OF THOROUGH-DRAINAGE. 
The large Gold Medal of the Highland and Agricultural Society of 
Scotland was last fall awarded to William W. Hozier, a farmer of Tan- 
nochside, for a paper entitled " Practical Remarks on Agricultural 
Drainage." At the conclusion 01 the paper, the author, after proving 
the greatly enlarged yield which has followed thorough-drainage, says: 
" Noris increased productiveness the only benefit therefrom accruing. 
By thorough-draining all the operations of agriculture are rendered less 
dependent on the variations of the weather; and farming, instead of 
being a hazardous game of chance, approaches to a certainty as nearly 
as any out-door occupation can be held to do in an unsettled climate* 
Drained land can be earlier ploughed in spring and, becoming sooner 110 
workable after rainy weather, the seed is sown betimes, and the crops 
arriving earlier at maturity, harvest is expedited and the crop saved 
before the advent of bad weather. Stock can be sooner placed in past- 
ures in the spring, and left out later in the autumn, thereby securing 
the advantages of a prolonged season. * * * * Owing 
to [the] increase of temperature [in the soil], germination is speedier, 
growth more rapid, and the quality of the crops enhanced. Drained 
land even acquires the power of producing crops which cannot possibly 
thrive on undrained land. The growth of wheat has thus been ren- 
dered certain, where formerly it was precarious. * * * * 
It counteracts the evil influence of drought in summer, * * 
while in winter the openness of the pores, which it induces, permits the 
frost to penetrate deeper and to pulverize the soil more thoroughly. 
Everywhere its introduction tends to the farmer's benefit by lessening 
the expense of seed and labor, and by adding to the fertility and conse- 
quent value of the land. The very climate is improved; dense and 
chilly fogs are dispelled. * * even diseases, such as rheuma- 
tism, ague and intermittent fevers, often disappear on its introduction. 
Cattle and sheep are more comfortable and, consequently, become 
healthier. In some Highland farms the diminution of casualties from 
'braxy' has been found more than sufficient to cover the entire cost of 
draining." 
The Boston Journal, of Chemistry, reports a trial made in this 
country in April, in which a difference in the temperature of the soil 
of the drained and the undrained part of a field, at four inches from 
the surface was found to be 13°, the condition in all other respects 
being as nearly as possible alike. Corn would germinate and grow on 
the drained and not on the undrained side of the field. 
VI. 
EFFECTS OF SATURATED SOIL ON BRUTES. 
Prof. Liautard, of the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons, con- 
firms, from personal observation, our statement that domestic animals, 
both of common and high bred stock, suffer much from malaria on 
Staten Island and other districts having highly saturated soils, about 
New York, and has kindly furnished the following letter: 
To the Advisory Board of the Staten Island Improvement Commis- 
sion : 
Gentlemen : In reply to your inquiries, I beg leave to state that 
marshy and other malarious localities have always been regarded by 111 
observing veterinary physicians as being injurious to domestic animals 
as well as men. I need not delay here to quote authorities upon this 
subject; they are abundant in the records of our profession. 
Carbuncular fever, various putrid affections that tend to gangrenous 
termination, anaemia, hydraemia, catarrhal affections, periodic ophthal- 
mias, grease, canker of the feet, etc., etc. Such are the diseases which, 
according to the seasons, affect animals inhabiting malarious localities. 
These very serious forms of disease show themselves during the sum- 
mer months and in the autumn, when the marshy or other wet grounds 
are partially dried, and especially when the animals are turned out in 
the fields at evening, or during the night and morning-the periods 
when the air is loaded with vapor, and when the malarial elements are 
present in their highest proportion, and are saturated in the dews. 
The growth of vegetation in marshy and malarial grounds is gener- 
ally very active; the plants in such localities are usually large and wa- 
tery, but containing little of nutritive elements. Animals fed with 
such herbage generally have very large and tumid bellies, their skin is 
thick, hard, and covered with long, rough hair (rough coated), the 
feet are fl^it and spreading, and the hoof material thin and brittle. 
Their blood contains an unhealthy proportion of watery elements; the 
lymphatic glands are excessively developed and swollen. Such animals 
may be larger framed, but they will be anasmic and feeble. Such ani- 
mals-chronically poisoned by malaria-are thus already constitution- 
ally and structurally predisposed to blood diseases, as also to diseases 
of the lymphatic and circulatory systems. Horses are thus predis- 
posed to, and readily suffer from " distemper," influenza, periodic 
ophthalmia, canker, glanders and farcy. Horned cattle, particularly in 
the spring, are often, from such poisoning, found suffering from anas- 
mia, hydraemia, and parasitic diseases; and when thus associated with 
malarial empoisonments, such maladies generally appear under the 
entozootic or epizootic forms. 
In regard to the question, " How is the malarial poison received 
into the system by domestic animals ? " we find that the skin, being 
protected as it is by the rough, long coat of hair and by the thick 
epidermis, is less liable than in human beings to absorb malaria. But 
the digestive apparatus offers a more ready way for receiving the pois- 
on. Animals, in drinking the water of marshy or other malarial 
grounds, eating the herbage during the night-especially in morning 
hours-of plants covered with saturated dew, introduce into their di- 
gestive cavities the pathogenic malarial element, which is soon absorb- 
ed and made operative for evil in the blood. The pulmonary mucous 
membrane is likewise an open door for the introduction of paludal 112 
malaria, and, as we know, that delicate membrane has a great power 
of absorption, both for liquid and gaseous elements. M. Roche, in a 
treatise published in 1852, states that " an adult horse, breathing at an 
average of 10 or 12 times per minute, would, in 24 hours, introduce 
into his organism, by respiration alone, from 6 to 7 litres of mala- 
rial elements." 
I have the honor to be, 
Gentlemen, 
Respectfully yours, 
Alexandre F. Liautard, M. D., V. S. 
VII. 
SANITARY GEOLOGY. 
Note from Professor Newberry upon the Geology of 
Staten Island in relation to Water-supply and Sanitary 
Drainage. 
The following note from Professor Newberry sustains the view 
presented in the Report, of the drainage, even in the most difficult 
situations upon the island, and of the absorptive and reservoir character 
of the great central ridge of loose serpentine rock: 
School of Mines of Columbia College, ) 
New York, January 10th, 1871. ) 
F. L. Olmsted, Esq., Chairman Advisory Board, Staten Island Im- 
provement Commission: 
Dear Sir:-In reply to your inquiry I would say that one result of 
my hasty reconnoissanoe of Staten Island was to convince me that 
geological causes exert an important influence on its salubrity. The 
geological conditions are important, mainly as they affect the drainage 
and water supply; and they are-very briefly stated-1st. a peculiar 
topography, apparently the result of glacial drift action, in which an 
unusual number of small, detached water-basins or pond-holes are a 
conspicuous feature; 2d. A hard-pan subsoil, more than usually re- 
tentive of moisture; 3d. The nature and relations of the different belts 
of rock which traverse the Island. These rocks are serpentine, sand- 
stone, and trap rocks, which differ greatly in their power of absorption 113 
and retention of water, and their conductibility of heat. How much 
differ in these respects can only be determined by experiments nc 
progress, for your Board; but we know that they differ in a ma, 
degree. The serpentine is granular and porous in texture, and gen 
erally loose and. open in structure, so that it promptly absorbs surface- 
water, and promotes natural drainage; while at the same time it is the 
great reservoir from which a water-supply must come. The sand- 
stone has much the same physical characters, and whatever influence 
it exerts is similar to that of the serpentine, but it nowhere shows it- 
self at the surface, and I only infer that it is present from what I know 
of the geology of the neighboring country. The trap is a very clos~ 
and impervious rock, and is a ready conductor of heat. It is therefor 
an undesirable element in the geology of the Island. The belt it oc 
copies is however, very narrow, and cuts only one side of the Island 
the ridge it forms is also very low, and while it is the rim of certah 
water-basins which must be drained to be salubrious, such basin 
are relatively small, and I was led to believe, by what I saw of them 
by no means beyond the reach of reclamation. The cretaceous clay: 
which underlie so much of the western part of the Island, are nearb 
impervious to water, and hence when underlying regular slopes mus 
form a salubrious substratum. When scooped out into basins they 
like the trap rock, will retain water with great tenacity. 
On the whole the effect of my visit was to give me a more hopefu. 
view than I had before entertained of the sanitary problem before you 
As it seems to me, thorough-drainage would remove nearly all the 
causes of insalubrity of the Island. To be effectual this drainage must 
be intelligently planned, and thoroughly carried out. It will cost 
money, but by bringing into market so much beautiful country, so 
near New York, I should say that it would many times repay its cost. 
Yours, very truly, 
J. S. Newberry. 114 
VIII. 
RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS ON THE ABSORPTIVE CA- 
PACITY OF STATEN ISLAND SERPENTINE. By Professor 
J. S. Newberry. 
School of Mines, Columbia College, New York, Jan. 27th, 1871. 
Specimen No. 1. Compact Variety: 
" No. 2. Granular, porous variety from near surface. 
Loss in weigh 
t, per cent. 
No. 1. 
No. 2. 
Air-dried by remaining two weeks in Columbia College 
cabinet, then 
Dried in air ball) at 212° Fahr. 5 hours 
1 13 
2.90 
Gain in weight, per cent. 
No. 1 
No. 2. 
Saturated with water, then allowed to drain till surface 
was dry 
12.84 
28.41 
For comparison I give below results of similar experiments on two 
well known varieties of sandstone. 
No. 1, Amherst, Ohio; No. 2, Bass Island, Lake Superior, artificially 
dried and then saturated with water. 
Weight,-per cent. 
No. 1 absorbed 6.268 
No. 2 " 6.718 
From these experiments it will be seen 
1st. That when exposed in dry air this Serpentine spontaneously parts 
with nearly all its moisture. 
2d. That its capacity for absorbing moisture is remarkable, almost 
equal indeed to that of Carbonate of Magnesia; the most compact variety 
absorbing twice, and the most porous four times as much water as 
average sandstones, generally regarded as the most porous of al] our 
rocks. 
The absorptive power of an average Limestone,-that of Athens, 
Ill.,-is 1.901 per cent, of its weight. Of Milwaukee Brick 17.118 per 
cent of its weight. 
The gain on saturation, of these specimens of serpentine rock, would 
be nearly double their volume.