Excerpt from 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

The two boards named in the act met for organization August 10, 1893. H. P. Walcott was elected chairman of the joint board and H. S. Carruth, secretary. At a later date F. P. Stearns, C. E., was appointed engineer to the board, and Messrs. Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot were asked to consider the subject of the improvement of the river, to submit a report thereon and to prepare a plan of the improvements recommended. Mr. Eliot had been a member of the Charles River Improvement Commission appointed under authority of chapter 390 of the Acts of 1891, had acquired complete familiarity with the actual condition of the river, and had made, in a public document, valuable suggestions for its improvement. Dr. Robert W. Greenleaf of Boston was asked to make a sani tary survey of the district designated in the act.

The members of the board have personally examined the river and its banks at many times and under various condi tions. They have carefully considered the reports made to them by the experts employed, and have reached the following conclusions.

The position of the Charles Riv er, in its relation to the metropolitan district, has necessarily a Very great influence upon the health and comfort of the people living in its vicinity. So long as the stream was comparatively unpolluted its banks were occupied at eligible sites by dwellings of the better sort. The increase of pollution and the consequent nuisance occasioned by it have driven from the banks those who could afford to establish new homes in more attractive regions, and the places of these have been taken by a population less sensitive because they cannot afford to avoid offensive surroundings, or by manu factories that seek the stream for commercial advantage or to be at a distance from neighbors likely to complain of offensive processes incident to the business carried on. Even in those portions of the river where the vast quantities of salt water brought in by the tide so far diminish the degree of pollution that offensive odors are not observed except at low tide and in consequence of local causes, and where some of the finest residences of the Back Bay district of the city of Boston are to be found, even here the river has ceased to be a welcome neighbor except so far as the Views to the distant bills to the north and west are enhanced by the water in the not too near foreground, a foreground consisting of a poorly kept alley way behind a line of unsightly sheds and stables situated at the rear of the lots on the north side of Beacon Street, a rude stone wall, upon which grow tufts of seaweed and unsightly grasses, holding as sponges do the floating putrescible materials that come in contact with them, and at the base of the wall, at low tide, a muddy expanse of many acres, marred by rubbish of every description.

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