Article September 7, 1899 Issue

To the Honest Public

A Citizen

Editor Statesman:—When preparing a street for a boulevard with the intention of improving and beautifying it, is it not quite as requisite to level a hill on that street as to straighten it? To straighten Pleasant Street in accordance with the wishes of the city government has already taken of Mrs. Eddy's real estate the value of about one thousand dollars, while her neighbor is bitterly fighting the wise proposition to level the hill because it would make the grade between one and two feet lower than he says it shall be, and he is the only abuttor on that portion of the street where it is proposed to change the grade before macadamizing it, who opposes the change.

All the expert testimony is unanimous in favor of leveling the hill. Our experienced city engineer, who carefully prepared the plan—which only one man on that portion of the street opposes—plainly states that it would leave a "comparatively uniform grade and a symmetrical roadway." He emphatically declares that desired desired grade "would benefit the public and would not injure anybody." A civil engineer and landscape gardener from Boston testifies that he should "recommend that proposed change as advantageous to the general public." Thus the opposition to this needed improvement lacks the support of those specially fitted to render and intelligent decision. While Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, offered, on conditions, the large sum of five thousand dollars for the improvement projected, this desirable work of macadamizing Pleasant Street is held in abeyance by one majority vote of the aldermen, and by another one man, a high school teacher, who is dependent on the public patronage.

For Mr. John F. Kent's real estate on Pleasant Street, consisting of a small house and barn, a liberty pole, and perhaps one acre of land, Mrs. Eddy offered ten thousand dollars. She did this, however, not because she wanted his place or valued it at that price,—for she knew that this sum was about fifty per cent more than it had cost him,—but to settle his quarrel over the grading of Pleasant Street; and he refused to sell it. Had she purchased his place she would have concurred with the commissioner's views as to the improvement of the street and his property thereon. Mrs. Eddy pruchased on Pleasant Street years before he built there; she bought up the old huts on it and converted a barren pasture into "Pleasant View," now consisting of over eighty acres and having a frontage of about 2,080 feet on Pleasant Street. She has already expended over forty thousand dollars on her property on Pleasant Street, which has largely increased the value of property on this street. The city government immediately took "Pleasant View" into its precincts. Mr. Kent's place is outside these limits.

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