The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1878-08-31
IN THE SUBURBS.
From the Baltimore Gazette.

From the Baltimore Gazette.
Suburban BaItimoreis yet to be builtup. Prob
ably no city in the United States has so many
natural advantages and picturesque opportunities
in its immediate vicinage for seating cozy rural
towns, romantic cottages an handsome villas, but
natures lavshness has not been seized upon nor
supplemented by art. The rural hamlets, the cot
tages, the Villas rule, do not exist. You will
find them.for miles and miles around Boston, New
York. Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, st. Louis
Pittsburg, &C., but comparatively Baltimore has
very few of these attractions. To be sure there is
a fair proportion of handsome country seats, to
which well-to-do gentlemen drive in their own
carriages, there are towns like Woodbury. and
Hampden, Arlington and Waverly, TOwsontown
and Catonsville and there numerous growing
villages binding on the railroads; but we are stin
sadly deficient in these attractions, in comparison
with other cities having much less population and
wealth and not near so many local Attractions
The fact is the suburbs of city always more
or less dependent upon the railroads which run
into that city. 1t has been the policy of our rail-
roads, in great measure, to subordinate local
patronage to through freight and travel and it j.,
fact that until recently, this policy carried
tually checked and prevented.
In other cities exactly the opposite policy has
been pursued, with results most pleasing to the
citizens and most beneficial to the railroads them
selves-the roads, by furnishing the most liberal
schedules, trains running at all hours and with
the best accommodations for transient travel, and
bv pursuing system of combinations which made
it an indueement to everybody to establish them
selves near their lines buy season and long time
tickets and enjoy the benefits of country air, cheap
rents and easy and convenient access to their
places of business. In some cities the horse rail-
WAYS have sedulously supplemented this plan of
extending the suburbs into the adjacent country.
party Of Boston capitalists not many years ago
bought tract of land, built village upon it of
neat cottages for workingmen, connected it with
the city BY tramway and then gave free transpOr-
tation for three years to every person who bought
or leased a cottage from them. The result OF
course. was that the company sold their property
at very large advance. The advantages of this
policy are numerous and not far to seek. 1t ben
efts the railroads; it keeps down rents promotes
the public health by preventing the crowding OF
population in a few contracted localities and it is
particularly grateful to quiet families with small
incomes Within the last ten years the Northern
Central railroad has wisely and steadily pursued
the policy, and the consequence is that numer-
Gus villages are growing up along its line at a
very rapid rate, and many of our best citizens
have FASTENED to avail themselves OF the great al
vantages thus temptingly put in their way. The
Western Maryland railroad has also begun to ex-
tend to the public facilities in the way of cheap
Communication, and the Baltimore and Ohio and
Philadelphia and Wilmington roads are following
the example, as they should have done twenty
years ago.
The Communication rates should be scaled so low
as to make a suburban residence desideratum foI
people of restricted means, to enable them tc
alfr,fR acaS
while at the same time the facilities for going and
returning at all hours should be ample. Only this
is needed to make large proportion of our people
prefer the railroads to the streetcar and summer
cottage in the country to house in some long row
in the dusty streets.