Amusement park

“ The chief place of resort in the daytime, after the public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the Observatory, and then drag them down again, at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers-on from below. ”

“ These parks are intended to afford to visitors that sort of mental refreshment and enjoyment which can only be derived from the quiet contemplation of natural scenery. There is absolutely no other recreation or amusement customarily provided for in parks which could not be satisfactorily accomplished and usually with far greater convenience to the majority of citizens in a series of small, well distributed and properly located neighborhood parks and incidentally with far greater benefits to adjoining real estate. ”

“ Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park. ”

“ The standards of excellence Walt Disney upheld in animation extended to his later productions, from nature films to movie versions of ancient fables, tales of American heroes, and stories of youthful adventure. His love for technology and the future, his desire to entertain and educate, and his sense of childlike wonder led him to establish two popular amusement parks, Disneyland and Disney World, which today draw visitors from around the globe. ”

“ The theatre, the music-hall, the circus, the menagerie, the concerts, and the rest of the entertainments, were filling up. In the Amusements Park people shot down railways into water, slid down smooth slopes into mattresses, circled in great wheels, floated in the latest novelties of merry-go-rounds, ascended in the balloon, and practised all the other devices for frittering away eternity, just as though night had not fallen. ”

“ The fundamental purposes of a rural park requires the shutting off from the interior of the park as completely as possible, all city sights and sounds, and the resolute exclusion of museums and of many exceedingly popular means of amusement from the main landscapes of the park; it usually requires fencing and limiting the number of entrances; it requires the relegation of drives and walks and public shelters to places where they will not too seriously injure the park landscapes even at serious sacrifice of opportunities for those using them to enjoy some of the scenery ”

“ It is chiefly in this character that the park has the advantage for public purposes over any other type of recreation ground, whether wilder or more artificial. Other forms of natural scenery stir the observer to warmer admiration, but it is doubtful if any, and certain that none which under ordinary circumstances man can of set purpose induce nature to supply him, are equally soothing and refreshing; equally adapted to stimulate simple, natural, and wholesome tastes and fancies, and thus to draw the mind from absorption in the interests of an intensely artificial habit of life. ”

“ It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. ”

“ A strict enforcement of the game and fish law would be an advantage to this vicinity. The Park is easy of access, and when the railroads, or either of them now under construction, shall be completed, the Park and its surroundings, a very paradise for sportsmen, can be made the most attractive resort in the state. ”

“ It almost never happens that a whole park exists, like an artist's painting, solely to be looked at, yet by far the greater portion of every park exists primarily for landscape beauty. If large portions can be used for recreative purposes other than enjoyment through the eyes, the park will be worth more to the public, but it would be ruinous to let the public use all portions to the destruction of beauty. ”

“ For the children of the poor every city should have a Kinder-park—not a ceremonious promenade, with sacred groves and unapproachable grass-plots, but a public play-ground with shade-trees and swings. May-poles, gymnastic contrivances and a free bathing-house, and room for all the free menageries and music-halls which the Peabodies of the future might feel inclined to add. ”

“ In England, of course, a park means, for the working classes at any rate, a somewhat decorous and over-laid-out open space where there is a band-stand, a range of concrete promenades, a Swiss châlet where bad tea is provided, a policeman, and a number of hard seats. In America, however, the park is an entirely different affair. It is always a place in which you can buy pea-nuts. Not only so; it is a place in which the benevolent American entrepreneurs throw together aggregations of “attractions” such as are to be seen nowhere else on sea or land. ”

“ How can boys and girls help keep the grass, the paths, the flower-beds, the trees and the buildings beautiful? Where does the money come from to pay the caretakers of the park?
Some people visit the park only in spring, summer or autumn. We all love the park in those seasons. Many do not know how beautiful the bare trees look in winter with their gray or brown branches. There is no more exquisite sight in the world than to see these trees coated with glistening ice out to the tiniest twig, or to see them ridged with pearly white snow. It is a merry sight to see the jolly coasters and skaters. ”

“ I think they would all say that there was more concern about the Olympic park than any other place because it was thought that there had to be some place where the general public could congregate, people who did not have tickets to the games but were there in town, wanted to participate, wanted a place where they could go and swap the pins and do all the things that they can do. And they wanted to make some entertainment available to the public for free. ”

“ One who comes hither with preconceived ideas of the peculiar sights to be met with is sure to be disappointed, not in their want of strangeness, for the Park is overstocked with curiosities having no counterpart elsewhere, but the features are so thoroughly unique that his anticipations are transcended both in the quality and the quantity of the food for wonder which is spread out before him on every side. ”

“ The study of children’s activities in connection with the map survey shows that there is an enormous amount of play forced into the streets, even in well-to-do sections of the city, and in other cases into the worst of environmental conditions. There is no leadership or supervision of this play and there are no public playgrounds except Burr Jones Field and two park playgrounds and inadequate, unsupervised school playgrounds, where there is no attractive organization or play to draw the children from the streets to more wholesome activities and influences on the playgrounds. ”

“ The Parsi horse-hoof hat, with adornment, will yet be well known beyond the borders of India and Persia, for milliners will induce their customers to adopt that style of headdress.
The city is well provided with parks. On the west side is a large strip of land, on which English sports, including polo games, are common; this park is used also for other forms of recreation. Music is provided in this part of the city every evening. In another section is located Victoria Gardens, a very pretty place, containing a good museum and a creditable zoo. ”

“ An arcade, 100 feet deep, could be substantially built, and the drive could be carried above this arcade on a level with the reservoir, and overlooking Fifth avenue, the remainder [32] of the ground being filled in; and it is thought that as this arcade may be lighted from the rear, and will face a fashionable thoroughfare, it will offer, at no distant period, very valuable lots for stores, or other purposes; and as it is a third of a mile in extent, it may be a source of revenue, in rent, to the park fund, instead of a burden on it. ”

“ We need a public park, where the children can go to fly their kites, look at the gold fishes, listen to the music, smell of the flowers, laugh, play and sing, and be out of the dust and danger of the crowded thoroughfare. ”

“ The beautiful palace nestles among the grand old groves of the park, the park sits in the lap of the picturesque crags and hills, and both look out upon the breezy ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and there, in secluded nooks that are dark with shade; there are rivulets of crystal water; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks; there are glimpses of sparkling cascades through openings in the wilderness of foliage; there are streams of clear water gushing from mimic knots on the trunks of forest trees; there are miniature marble temples perched upon gray old crags ”

“ No park is too small to have its ducks and swans with unlimited capacity for bread-crumbs, its band-stand, its open-air restaurant where drinks are served and you bring your own food, and its place without grass where you can stretch your own tennis-net between trees. ”

“ The green of a park makes a cool salaam to the beetle-topped traffic of automobiles. Rubber tires roll down the wide avenue and make a sound like the drawn-out striking of a match. Marble columns, fountains, incompleted architectural elegancies, two sculptured lions and the baffling effulgence of a cinder-veiled museum offer themselves like pensively anonymous guests. And we walk like Pierrots and Pierrettes, like John Drews and Jack Barrymores and Leo Ditrichsteins ”

“ It is the great diversity of its physical features, offering within a restricted area all the requirements for animal life, which fits it for the home of big game. Abundant food supply, shelter from wind and weather in winter, cool resorts on the uplands in summer, favorable localities for breeding purposes and the rearing of young, all are found here. The Park supplies what is really needed—a zoölogical reservation where big game may roam unmolested by the intrusion of man, rather than a zoölogical garden inclosed by fences, and the game fed or sustained more or less by artificial methods. ”

“ The house and stables and courts are such as they ought to be for the great estate that surrounds them; and the park is everything that is beautiful. On one side of the house, looking over a fine piece of water, you see a distant valley, opening between lofty hills: on another side the ground descends a little at first, then goes gently rising for a while, and then rapidly, to the distance of a mile perhaps, where it is crowned with trees in irregular patches, or groups, single and most magnificent trees being scattered all over the whole of the park ”

“ There are no air-shafts, for they are not needed. Every room, under the admirable arrangement of the plan, looks out either upon the street or the yard, that is nothing less than a great park with a play-ground set apart for the children, where they may dig in the sand to their heart's content. Weekly concerts are given in the park by a brass band. The drying of clothes is done on the roof, where racks are fitted up for the purpose. The outside stairways end in turrets that give the buildings a very smart appearance. ”

“ It is, indeed, both curious and amusing to see the stand taken on the one hand, by the million, that the park is made for the ‘upper ten,’ who ride in fine carriages, and on the other hand by the wealthy and refined, that a park in this country will be ‘usurped by rowdies and low people.’ Shame upon our republican compatriots who so little understand the elevating influences of the beautiful in nature and art, when enjoyed in common by thousands and hundreds of thousands of all classes, without distinction! ”

“ Do the native sons of the golden West ever recall those names and think what dignity they once conferred upon the favored few who basked in the sunshine of their prosperity? South Park, with its line of omnibuses running across the city to North Beach; its long, narrow oval, filled with dusty foliage and offering a very weak apology for a park; its two rows of houses with, a formal air, all looking very much alike, and all evidently feeling their importance. There were young people's "parties" in those days, and the height of felicity was to be invited to them. ”

“ The place is a fine playground, with its soft, grassy carpet, and noble old trees. It is the sort of park which adjoins country houses of wealthy old English families, where years of training have brought to perfection the trees planted by previous generations. ”

“ The best camping and sporting ground is a main point in the question. The South Park combines every advantage. The weather is sure to be good. There is plenty of grass, of water, and of game; and there are no Indians or mosquitoes: for though the latter are found on the ridges round the park, they are not found in the park itself. ”

“ The park with its fragrant shady aisles, its majestic leafy domes, impervious even to the rays of the tropical sun, its huge piles of rock round which clamber the immense roots of gigantic fig-trees, its deliciously cool atmosphere, its soft green velvet paths, its heaps of ruined walls, and its death-like quietness, seems as though destined for the asylum of an exiled poet, who, instead of lamenting his destiny like common men in sullen silence, felt 395his spirit roused amid this wonderful tropical beauty to fresh sublime efforts,—"Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme!" ”