Boston Parks Commission partnership records

In 1842, Benjamin Bussey (1757-1842), a prosperous Boston merchant and scientific farmer donated his country estate, “Woodland Hill,” and a part of his fortune to Harvard University “for instruction in agriculture, horticulture, and related subjects.” Harvard used this land for the creation in 1869 of the Bussey Institution, which was dedicated to agricultural experimentation. The Bussey Institution building was completed in 1871 and served as headquarters for Harvard’s undergraduate school of agriculture.

Sixteen years after Bussey's death, James Arnold (1781-1868), a New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling merchant, specified that a portion of his estate was to be used for “ …the promotion of Agricultural, or Horticultural improvements.” In 1872, when the trustees of the will of James Arnold transferred that fraction of his estate to Harvard College, Arnold’s gift was combined with approximately 137 acres of the former Bussey estate to create the Arnold Arboretum. In the deed of trust between the Arnold trustees and the College, income from Arnold’s legacy was to be used for establishing, developing, and maintaining an arboretum to be known as the Arnold Arboretum which "shall contain, as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air of West Roxbury." The Arboretum would occupy a portion of Bussey’s “Woodland Hill” and the Arboretum’s director would carry the title of Arnold Professor of Dendrology at Harvard, teach “the knowledge of trees” and “give such other instruction therein as may be naturally, directly and usefully connected therewith."

The Arboretum had the former Bussey land and some funds, -- the signatories to the 1872 indenture described the funds available from Mr. Arnold’s estate as “barely sufficient to accomplish the proposed project” -- but lacked adequate financial resources to match the ambitions of Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927), the Arboretum’s first director, who, throughout his 54 year tenure defined the mission of the Arboretum: to increase and disseminate the knowledge of woody plants through research and education.” In 1874 Sargent corresponded with Frederick Law Olmsted, suggesting that “the ground (130 acres) could be handed over to the City of Boston on the condition that the City should spend a certain sum of money laying out the grounds and should agree to leave the planting in my hands. . .”

According to Ida Hay in her history of the Arboretum, Science in the Pleasure Ground (http://hollis.harvard.edu/?itemid=|library/m/aleph|005207037), Sargent’s “earliest political maneuver to credit Olmsted with the notion of joining the Arboretum to the city,” began in 1877. Negotiations between the College and the City took several years to complete with initial resistance from both the City Council and Harvard’s President Charles Eliot. The terms were finally agreed to, the lease was signed in 1882, and the Arboretum became part of the “Emerald Necklace” Olmsted’s linear parkland for Boston. See “The Arnold Arboretum: an Historic Park Partnership” (http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/752.pdf).

In 1882, the Trustees and Fellows of Harvard College provided approximately 120 acres to the City for the project, and the City acquired and provided approximately 48 additional acres. In exchange for the land provided by Harvard, the College received consideration in the form of Olmsted’s remaining design services; the construction and maintenance of walk and roadways, walls and gates; policing; and an uninterrupted supply of water, at the expense of the Boston taxpayers. And in addition, a lease of the total acreage (both the land provided by Harvard and that provided by the City) for 1,000 years with the right to renew for another 1,000 at the rate of one dollar per year. Under the conditions of the lease the Arboretum’s responsibility was to manage the landscape and to acquire, grow, and curate a comprehensive collection of hardy woody plants for research and education while the City was to maintain the hardscape, the roads, sidewalks, boundary fences and gates, and provide security.