In re Mayor of New York

41 N.Y. Sup. Ct. 441
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 15, 1885
StatusPublished

This text of 41 N.Y. Sup. Ct. 441 (In re Mayor of New York) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re Mayor of New York, 41 N.Y. Sup. Ct. 441 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1885).

Opinion

Daniels, J.:

the lands, the value of wbieb it is proposed to appraise by the intervention of appraisers, are described in section 1 of chapter 522 ■of the Laws of 1884. They are designed for six public parks, four of which it is intended to connect by means of public ways designated as park-ways. the application for their appointment has been resisted on the ground that the act, under which it has been made, was not enacted in conformity with requirements applicable to the subject, and contained in the Constitution of the State. A fundamental objection is presented upon the supposed insufficiency ■of the title of the act. It has been urged that this is defective under section 16 of article 3 of the Constitution, for the reason that its subject has not been expressed, as that is required to be, in the title. That the act is a local act has not been denied, and if this objection should be found to be sustained, then it must be held to be entirely inoperative. By the title, it was designated to be “an act laying out public places, parks and park-ways, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards of the city of Néw York, ■and in the adjacent district in Westchester county, and authorizing the taking of the lands for the same,” and this seems to constitute an intelligent reference to all that has been designed to be accomplished by the enactment of the law. It includes but one subject with its incidents, that is, the appropriation of the lands and the purpose to which they are to be devoted. the lands are precisely located and described, and the objects to which they are to be appropriated are fully disclosed by the act, and these purposes and objects are included briefly in the title given to the act. For the purpose of complying with this provision of the Constitution no more than a general statement of the subject of the act has been required, and it. has, therefore, been held to be sufficient briefly to mention in the title the object or subject included in the law. (Matter of Van Antwerp, 56 N. Y., 261, 266; People ex rel. Comrs. v. Banks, 67 id., 568.)

Tbe circumstance that a portion of tbe land designated as Yan Cortlandt park is to be appropriated under the authority of section 6 of tbe act, for a parade ground and rifle range, will not deprive tbe title of its sufficiency, for tbe land so to be used will ■ still remain a portion of the park, to be maintained and enjoyed as such when not [444]*444required for the use of the first division of the national guard, of the State, which is to be at liberty to use such portion for a military, parade, camp and drill ground and for rifle and target practice. The locality in which this land is to be appropriated for these particular uses will still remain and continue a park, but with these additional public uses imposed upon it. It will be at the same time a park with the right of thjs division of the national guard to use it in this manner when that may be required. This park is designed to consist-of over 1,000 acres of land, while the portion of it intended to be used by the national guard, is to be limited to about 120 acres, and that use is not to be exclusive, but to be enjoyed only for the special purposes mentioned in the act. The land still being a park is within the intelligent import of the title of the act as a , part of its subject, and the title may with propriety be held to be as broad as the Constitution requires it to be for a local act.

The park-ways designated and described in the act, are designed lor avenues uniting four of the parks. As they have been described, they are'peculiarly appropriate for that purpose, and may well be regarded as incidents to, or extensions of the areas of the parks themselves. The one uniting what has been designated as the Van Cortlandt and Bronx parks, is intended to consist of about eighty acres of land, devoted to a park-way 600 feet in width and nearly a mile in length. Another, similarly to unite the Bronx and Pelham parks, includes an appropriation of about 91 acres of land, exclusive of an existing boulevard. The width of this park-way will be 400 feet, and its length about two and one-half miles. The third is of minor importance, and is designed to serve as a similar avenue between what is called the Crotona and the Bronx parks.

So far as the act has provided f* r these park-ways it is objected to as contravening so much of section 18 of article 3 of the Constitution as prohibits the legislature, by any local bill, from laying out, opening, altering, working, or discontinuing roads, highways or alleys. But these avenues are not designed to be, and have not ^been, laid out or provided as roads or highways. Those terms have a fixed and definite significance including the public roads and highways only of the State, while these park-ways are designed, and to be used, as broad and convenient avenues, uniting the main portion1 of this system of parks. They are for the convenient passage of per[445]*445.sons designing to use and enjoy the parks themselves, passing from one to the other, and not as public roads or highways, of this portion of the State. And for that reason the legislature was not prevented by this provision of the Constitution from designating and laying out these avenues. A point of a similar nature was considered in People ex rel. Seaver v. Green (52 How., 440), where it was held that this prohibition of the Constitution did not include a way of this description. The effect of this prohibition was further considered In Matter of Lexington Avenue (29 Hun, 303), where it was held that a public street of a city was not included within this provision of the Constitution. And that decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeals (92 N. Y., 629.) The same point again arose In Matter of Woolsey (95 N. Y., 135), and it was disposed of in the same way. If a street of a city is not within this part of the Constitution, then certainly a park-way intended for the mere purposes of passage from one of these designated parks to another, must be excluded from its operation, for such an avenue can, in no proper sense of the ténn, be held to be either a road or a highway. And not being within this prohibition of the Constitution, the legislature, under its general legislative authority, did have the power to designate and lay out these particular avenues or ways. And its power to do that was in no manner abridged by the fact that an existing highway was included as a portion of one of the park-ways for it was within the power of the legislature to subordinate it as a street, to this particular use. (Matter of Prospect Park, etc., R. R. Co., 67 N. Y., 371, 377.) The other objections taken to the act are all founded wholly upon the provisions and directions contained in it. It lias provided for the appointment, by this court, of three disinterested persons to act as commissioners in estimating the compensation to be paid to the owners of these lands, for the appropriation of their property in this manner. That the object to which the property is designed to be appropriated is not a public use, has not been, as it could not be seriously urged, for taking lands for this object is devoting them to a public use as that phrase has been employed in the Constitution. (Holt v. City of Summerville, 127 Mass., 408.)

It has, however, been urged that as the easterly portion of the Bronx park and all of Pelham park, together with their connecting park-way, are outside of the limits of the city of New York, that [446]*446these lands cannot be appropriated to the use of its citizens.

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Bluebook (online)
41 N.Y. Sup. Ct. 441, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-mayor-of-new-york-nysupct-1885.