Report of the Joint board consisting of the Metropolitan park commission and the State board of health : upon the improvement of Charles River from the Waltham line to the Charles River bridge. April, 1894.

  • Massachusetts. Joint Board upon Improvement of Charles River.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Joint board consisting of the Metropolitan park commission and the State board of health : upon the improvement of Charles River from the Waltham line to the Charles River bridge. April, 1894. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    but is surrounded by some of the best private houses of this flourishing and wealthy port, and the water surface of the basin and its shores constitute the most frequented places of resort in the city. During the terrible cholera epidemic of 1892, when Hamburg suffered, as few European cities ever have suffered, from this pestilence, the wards in whicli lie the Alster Basins showed the lowest death rates in the city. We do not intend to say that cholera spreads only where there is filth, but it is true that the conditions among which it finds its widest extension are those of unsanitary surroundings. There is no question probably in the mind of any sanitary observer that a river of moderately pure water flowing at a con- stant level between clean banks is much to be preferred to a similar stream which is subject to a rise and fall of many feet twice in the twenty-four hours. Streams of the latter descrip- tion constantly deposit upon the banks the material floating on the surface, material that occasions little offence while sur- rounded and saturated with water, but rapidly decays when exposed to the sun and air upon the shores of the river. 'Whatever care may be taken of the Charles River in the time to come, if it remain an estuary, there is no doubt in our minds that the banks, sloping as now to the stream, will be more or less a nuisance ; dwellings will, so far as possible, not be erected in its neighborhood, or, if they are built here, will be of the sort which are compelled to seek undesirable, consequently cheap, land. A population will be established here which will resist most obstinately and naturally the destruction of their homes, and one more, and perhaps the greatest, opportunity to permanently improve the incomparable situation of Boston and its suburbs will have passed away. In order to protect the low-lying portions of the territory within the valley of this portion of the Charles River, it has seemed advisable to us to make the permanent level in this basin somewhat lower than that of ordinary high tides. The level which seems most advantageous is that of two feet and six inches below such tides. It is well known that exception- ally high tides have done much injury throughout the estuary of the river, both by flooding and by interference with sewers, and we may reasonably expect that still more will be occa- sioned on account of the increased occupation of these lowlands