BAXTER, Sylvester, American journalist: b. West Yarmouth, Mass., 6 Feb. 1850. After several years on the Boston Daily Advertiser, beginning in 1871, was long on the staff of the Boston Herald; was editor of the Mexican Financier, of Outing and of The Automobile, the second motor-vehicle journal started in America; correspondent of Boston Daily Ad vertiser and Boston Herald in Germany, of Boston Herald and New York Sins in Mexico, of the Outlook in South America. In Boston was active in organizing the metropolitan park system and was secretary of the preliminary Metropolitan Park Commission. His interest in civic improvements led him to organize the Metropolitan Improvement League, of which he has for some years been secretary i this led to the appoinment of the Metropolitan Im provements Commission by State authority and he was its secretary while for two years it studied important problems for Greater Boston. He first suggested the organization of Boston and its suburban communities into a federated metropolis as a Greater Boston, which was realized to the extent of constituting metropoli tan districts for parks, sewerage and water supply. In 1888-89, as secretary of the Hemen way Southwestern Archaeological Expedition, he was associated with Frank Hamilton Cush ing in his important explorations in Arizona, representing the expedition at the Americanist Congress in Berlin in 1888. In 1899 he organ
ized an expedition to study and place on record as many of the important examples of post Columbian architecture in Mexico as might be practicable. The • result was an elaborately illustrated work entitled 'Spanish-Colonial Architecture in Mexico.' Among his other writings, beside numerous uncollected contribu tions to the leading magazines, including essays, sketches, short stories and poems, are 'The Cruise of a Land-Yacht> (a story of travel in Mexico, for boys); 'Berlin, a Study of Munic iN.-1 Government in Germany,' 'The Old New World,' an account of the work of the Hemen way expedition's work in Arizona; 'Greater Boston,' 'Old Marblehead> and 'The Quest of the Holy Grail.' Also, in association with Charles Eliot, the greater part of the report of the Metropolitan Park Commission for Bos ton, made in 1893 — regarded as an exception ally important contribution to the literature of public parks.