Splendors Of The Battery In 1835

The Battery is now decidedly the most beautiful metropolitan promenade in the world. All our readers may not be informed that this spacious park was by no means originally of its present size, but, from a paltry enclosure, planted with a few scattered trees, has, by the gradual exercise of municipal enterprise, and the improvements of successive generations, grown, century by century, larger and larger, until it has at length acquired its present ample dimensions. We will not venture to calculate the expense frequently incurred in accomplishing these repeated enlargements. Suffice it to say that the twenty-four "twenty-fifths" is entirely artificial ground. The gigantic oaks and elms, now so thickly planted along its shadowy walks, must, with the other changes, throw over the whole scene a wonderful transformation, and we shrewdly suspect that one of the original New Yorkers of the year eighteen hundred would scarcely recognize the pretty little unimportant spot in the present extended park, with its venerable groves and its black shadows, its exquisite winding walks and close, low bowers, its broad carriage drives, its beautiful statues and all the splendours which now so charm the stranger.—"New York Mirror," Nov. 28, 1835.