Fairmount Park

“ Fairmount Park, in which was held the Centennial Exposition of 1876, contains nearly 3,000 acres, and is bisected by the Schuylkill through its entire length of ten miles. In this park is the first established zoological garden in the United States. ”

“ These very favorable results are largely due to the abundant and cheap water-supply, and to the opportunities given, even to the poorest citizens, for the enjoyment of pure country air in the great Fairmount Park, which contains 2,991 acres. The extent to which this is valued by the citizens may be inferred from the fact, that, during the year 1875, the [Pg 41] park was visited by over eleven million persons." There is no reason why a park in Boston should not yield as good a sanitary result as one in Philadelphia. ”

“ The city's greatest pleasure ground is Fairmount Park, rich in natural beauties. The Schuylkill divides it into East Park, with over 633 acres, and West Park, with 1323 acres. Along the Wissahickon is the Wissahickon Valley extension of 1010 acres. The acquisition in 1812 of five acres on Morris's Hill, the original Fair Mount, for water-works and park purposes, led to the formation of the park. ”

“ Then of course we went to Independence Hall, where the second Continental Congress gathered, and saw the old cracked bell which rung on the first Fourth of July. Helen says there was a Fourth of July every year before that time; but I mean the first one which was worth having.
Robert Stuart Campbell.
I think the prettiest place in all Philadelphia is Fairmount Park. If I lived there I should want to stay in the park all summer. The drive out is just as lovely as it can be. We crossed the Girard Avenue bridge, which is a thousand feet long. You can walk or ride across, just as you please. ”

“ The great fact of Fairmount Park itself is news to an incredible number. University of Pennsylvania students have taken the boys to summer camps. There has been supervised play in summer, and in the winter months there is a carefully scheduled and well-attended routine of classes and meetings for young and old. ”

“ Primness and stableness is now the rule. Art has sought to improve nature, and has almost obliterated it, instead. Yet even the landscape gardener cannot succeed in making the Schuylkill entirely unattractive; and velvet turf and trees waving in the wind, even though the latter be pruned into a tiresome regularity, are always more grateful than the cobble stones and brick pavements of the city streets, and thousands every day seek rest or recreation at Fairmount.
GIRARD AVENUE BRIDGE—FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA.
Belmont Mansion is now a restaurant. ”

“ So much is true equally of Philadelphia and Paris, and the merits of each are such that comparisons may be instituted which shall be derogatory to neither.
The scale of each is immense, and the buildings of both well filled and overflowing into numerous annexes. Fairmount had the advantage of breadth of ground for all comers. The Champ de Mars is but little over one hundred acres in area, while the portion of Fairmount Park conceded to the Exposition was two hundred and sixty acres. ”

“ There are 33 smaller public grounds in New York and Brooklyn, all but three of which are improved and in use, the total pleasure ground space of the two cities being 1,600 acres. — Fairmount park of Philadelphia is a body of land 2,740 acres in extent, having a great variety of surface, all of it of considerable natural beauty. ”

“ Wide undiscovered stretches lay off the beaten track, and the mansions of the Park—Strawberry, Belmont, Mount Pleasant—were well stocked, not only with lemonade and cake and peanuts, with croquettes and chicken salad, but with beauty and associations for those who knew how to give the order. And, greater marvel, beauty—classic beauty—was to be had even in the Fairmount Water Works that, after I left school, I had looked down upon as a childish entertainment provided for the holidays, beneath the consideration of my maturer years. ”

“ Gothic, granite. Germantown Unitarian, corner of Chelten Avenue and Greene Street, built, 1866; Gothic; architect, Frank Furness; has good stained glass windows, made by Heaton, Butler and Bayne, London. Rev. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the poet, was pastor for some years; also the Rev. Charles G. Ames.
FAIRMOUNT PARK
On east and west banks of the Schuylkill River, and Wissahickon Creek; second largest municipal park in the world, 3597 acres; its only superior in acreage being Blue Hills Park, Boston, with 4906 acres. The ravines, “unkempt and wild,” all have springs of clear, cold water. ”

“ The lane inclined gently leftward, and presently, as I had anticipated, I came upon a lodge, overgrown with ivy and but partly visible beyond the gates which barred the end of the drive.
That this was the entrance to Friar's Park I felt assured, but I had no intention of seeking admittance in the usual way. Pursuing a high wall, evidently of great age, which divided the grounds from the road, I walked on for fully three hundred yards. ”

“ Anybody might have entered the gardens, I suppose; but only well-dressed people were there not, of the upper classes, but shop-keepers, clerks, apprentices, and respectability of that sort. It is pleasant to think that the people have the freedom, and therefore the property, of parks like this, more beautiful and stately than a nobleman can keep to himself. The extent of Kensington Gardens, when reckoned together with Hyde Park, from which it is separated only by a fence of iron rods, is very great, comprising miles of greensward and woodland. ”

“ The natural southern boundary of the table-land occupied by the parade ground is a rapid slope that occurs about in the line of Sixty-Sixth street; in this slope it is proposed to sink one of the transverse roads; and on a level plane below it, stretching to the south, a playground about ten acres in extent is located, as indicated on the plan. We have thought it very desirable to have a cricket ground of this size near the southern boundary of the park, and not far from the Sixth and Eighth [21] avenue railroads, which offer the most rapid means of access from the lower part of the city. ”

“ The May afternoon, all sunshine and sparkle, had a wine to make young hope spring from old graves and age forget its years, and youth mad with its handicaps; a day to inspire passion, talent, desire, and to make even goodness take new wings.
With the crowd of interested and curious, Antony Fairfax entered Central Park through the Seventy-second Street gate. Lines of carriages extended far into Fifth Avenue, and he walked along by the side of a smart victoria where a pretty woman sat under her sunshade and smiled on the world and spring. ”

“ Children leaped forward, and old people unconsciously assumed a lightsome vigour.
The Park rose in terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on the ridge of the hill. From its gilded gates to its smallest geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red. The keeper's house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters—all these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees. ”

“ The glory of the Montagus has utterly passed. The present Earl of Egmont is either an absentee or he lives in a cottage near the gates; and the new house, which is hidden in trees, is of no interest. The park, however, is still ranged by its beautiful deer, and still possesses an avenue of tulip [1] trees and rolling wastes of turf. It is everywhere as free as a heath. ”

“ Of perhaps first importance in the planning of local parks is the problem of distribution—accessibility to the people served. Practically there are few women or small children who will take the trouble habitually to walk much more than a quarter of a mile to a playground or local park for exercise or rest, and for most a carfare is out of the question. This means that, ideally, there should be neighborhood recreation centers not more than a quarter or at most a half mile from every home in the city. ”

“ It'll distract your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's most time for the car.”
Andrew obeyed.
Chapter LXI
The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth of oak and birch trees. With the light of the full moon, like a broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been. ”

“ The Park is in no wise taken away from nature, but is rendered back to her, when all has been done to beautify it, an American woodland, breaking into meadows, here and there, and brightened with pools and ponds lurking among rude masses of rock, and gleaming between leafy knolls and grassy levels. It stretches and widens away, mile after mile, in the heart of the city, a memory of the land as it was before the havoc of the city began, and giving to the city-prisoned poor an image of what the free country still is, everywhere. ”

“ The most expensive large parks, Central Park and Prospect Park, were located without taking advantage of the magnificent natural landscapes of the rivers and bays which distinguish New York and Brooklyn. There are many similar cases. Formerly people built with the backs of their houses upon the rivers and lakes, thus not only excluding the public from continuous access to them but ruining their beauty. Where land along the banks of rivers or along the shores of a lake can, in a city, be fairly well spared from commercial uses, public squares, parks and parkways should be located upon them. ”

“ To afford the maximum of pleasant contrast with urban conditions is its fundamental purpose and, if it fail in this, there is reasonable doubt if its return in public usefulness is worth its cost to the community. A considerable degree of seclusion from adjacent land with its city developments is practically essential, and the more complete the barrier, both as to sight and sound, the more perfectly will the park fulfil its purpose. ”

“ Unless a special and intelligent effort is made to secure individuality in the improvement of each of the public squares, parks and boulevards of a city, they are liable to repeat each other too much. The West Side parks of Chicago resemble each other to a regrettable degree. Each has its little, crooked lake, its green house and flower beds, its little lawns, its curving level drives and walks, its bridges and statues, its plantations mainly of the same selection of trees crowded and slim and only partially screening out surrounding houses. ”

“ For the purposes of the avenue, the American elm naturally suggests itself at once as the tree to be used; and it is to be hoped that the fine effect this produces, when planted in regular lines, may in a few years be realized in the Central Park.
There is no other part of the plan in which the planting calls for particular mention, except to the south of the skating pond; an opportunity is there offered for an exhibition of semi-tropical trees, and it is intended to treat that portion of the park in the manner suggested in the study. ”

“ No one should leap over the ditches, or fences, or break the latter down. 'No Person to ride over the grass on the South side of the Gravelled Coach Road ... excepting Henry Wise, who is permitted to pass cross that Part of the Park leading from the Door in the Park Wall, next his Plantation.' No grooms or others were to ride over the banks, or slopes, of any pond. No stage coach, hackney coach, chaise with one horse, cart, waggon, or funeral should pass through the park ”

“ Old houses there were before the great increase began, but they exist no more; the place is dull; in parts it{113} is dirty; everywhere it is without character or distinction. It has, however, a pretty park called after the famous Vauxhall Gardens, on whose site it stands. The park is new, but it is well laid out and planted; already it is a pretty piece of greenery, and, with Kennington and Battersea Parks, offers a much wanted breathing place for the multitudes of that quarter. It is adorned, or enriched, or ennobled, by a statue of Henry Fawcett, who died in a house on this spot. ”

“ The congested capitals of Europe had already learnt this lesson; traveled Americans, like William Cullen Bryant, brought it home; and Central Park, planned in 1853, was the first of the great landscape parks to serve as a people’s pleasance. Conceived in contrast to the deflowered landscape and the muddled city, the park alone re-created the traditions of civilization—of man naturalized, and therefore at home, of nature humanized, and therefore enriched. And even today our parks are what our cities should be, and are not. ”

“ The building was finished about 1770, and is of white freestone, pleasantly age-coloured, with a south front that opens to a formal and beautiful Italian garden with terraced walks and graceful marble fountains. Beyond, reached by stone staircases, spreads the great lake, which covers eighty-seven acres. On this may be seen a gay full-masted frigate, the aspect of which in this tranquil and richly wooded country strikes a somewhat bizarre note. The park contains four thousand acres, and in the neighbourhood of the house may be seen many handsome cedars and yews. ”

“ My conception of Friar's Park had been wide of the reality—and there was no sign of occupancy about this strange-looking mansion, which might have hidden forgotten for centuries in the horse-shoe of the hills. The stillness of the place was of that sort which almost seems to be palpable; that can be seen and felt. A humid chill arose apparently from the terrace, with its stone pavings outlined in moss, and crept up from the wilderness below and down from the fir woods above. ”