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Street, but, like Try Street near Second Avenue, it has been surrendered to the Pennsylvania Railroad for a connecting line and spur tracks. Furthermore, it is very narrow (not over 40 feet) and is difficult to widen on account of the many industrial plants abutting thereon. The connections from such a thoroughfare with Penn Avenue, Liberty Avenue and Butler Street at one end, and with the down town thoroughfares at the other, are quite indirect; and they could be improved only at great expense.

The only other place for a new thoroughfare is along Spring Alley, between Penn and Liberty Avenues. As this whole block is only 120 feet wide, including the alley, it is obvious that a broad avenue through the middle of it would leave the abutting property in very uneconomical shape.

As a modification of this plan, the widening of Spring Alley entirely on the south side was considered. As this would leave lots 40 feet or less in depth between the new street and Liberty Avenue, it would mean the practical destruction of the half-block from Spring Alley to Liberty Avenue. The remaining strip could be taken as a central parking space in a wide boulevard thoroughfare, extending from Spring Alley to the railroad; or Liberty Avenue could be abandoned, and the space, left between the new street and the railroad, could be used for warehouses or for business wanting direct railroad connections; or it might be sold in whole or in part to the Pennsylvania Railroad, for additional track space. It is obvious that each of these plans cuts up the property undesirably: the first is not only costly but is extravagantly wasteful of land in a region where available land is strictly limited and should therefore be put to its most efficient use: and the other plans both involve an entire redistribution of the land south of the new street. They could hardly be executed without powers of "excess condemnation" for which constitutional authority is lacking.

A third plan would be to widen Liberty Avenue on the north side. There is no special difficulty in the way of this scheme, and it could certainly be more easily carried out, and at less cost, than any of the Spring Alley plans. Merely as a traffic way between two points, Liberty Avenue widened would be perfectly satisfactory, but several incidental considerations must be borne in mind. First, the lots on the north side of the street

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910