City park

“ They propose to take the water-front of the Charles River basin; and there is nothing in Nature so beautiful, so well adapted to the needs of a city, as a park, or boulevard, or promenade, directly on a water-front, especially if that water is sea-water,—if it is brought in and carried out by two daily tides. What more beautiful, what more wholesome, what more invigorating, during the hot season of the year, than to have an open boulevard, where you can sit, or walk, or ride,—a place for the fresh sea-water of the ocean brought in pure to you every day! ”

“ I am glad cities are making larger appropriations for parks, and I hope our city will have more in the future, for there are great possibilities of making our city not only a city beautiful, but a most beautiful city. Parks should be well lighted, playgrounds for children are almost a necessity, the river banks should be kept clean—but most of all the natural beauties of a place must be preserved and trees should be planted. Shade is needed as a good background. There is nothing that will enhance a beautiful statue, fountain or other park ornament like a setting of good trees. ”

“ In the making of a park, every step that is taken, [Pg 62] whether the park be large or small, is a costly one; and, if taken in their reverse order, every step is a wasted one. The chief reason why the final decoration of a city park is so satisfactory is that it is only the crowning work of many processes which have had the best and most careful attention from the outset. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is also a trickle of drays and wagons across the park—a mere leakage from the streets, as though the near-by traffic in the pressure had burst its pipes. But only at morning and night when the city collects or discharges its people, are the sidewalks filled. Then for a half hour the nozzle of the city plays a full stream on us.
The park seems to be freer and more natural than the streets outside. A man goes by gesticulating as though he practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country road. ”

“ The horizon lines of the upper park are bold and sweeping and the slopes have great breadth in almost every aspect in which they may be contemplated. As this character is the highest ideal that can be aimed at for a park under any circumstances, and as it is in most decided contrast to the confined and formal lines of the city, it is desirable to interfere with it, by cross-roads and other constructions, as little as possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These illustrations will suffice to prove the truth of my assertion, that the objects of most essential importance to a city in the creation of a park will be attained by selecting for its location a site which is naturally undesirable or even repulsive and converting it into an attractive quarter, rather than one which combines all the elements of beauty and health, and as a consequence is so desirable for residences, that it can only be had at great cost. ”

“ This park is an illustration of how valuable for purposes of recreation additional large areas of hillside land southwest of the city would become in the course of time, as the population grows. Already the capacity of City Park is taxed to its utmost upon holidays and pleasant Sundays in summer. ”

“ Direct construction by the city’s own labor force is slower, and more expensive, but usually more durable.
Parks and Recreation Grounds.—Public parks are of two types, first the large open spaces which cover many acres and can be used by the whole city, and second, the small areas which are provided for use by a single neighborhood only. Every large city has parks of both types. The old-style park which served more for ornament than for use, is now out of favor. ”

“ Agriculture
DREXEL BOULEVARD, CHICAGO—DESIGNED BY H. W. S. CLEVELAND. Selection of a Site for a Park. BY H. W. S. CLEVELAND.
Few persons think of a park as anything but a place of recreation, a pleasure ground, and an ornamental appendage of a city.
As a consequence, if it is proposed to create a park in any city, every suggestion that is offered in regard to its location is based upon the fact of its superior natural advantages ”

“ In fact, we may expect to see, what indeed we may now see, in painful degree, in many of our smaller towns, a halting attempt at the outside show of the city park, which, in the absence of those elements of artistic selection and appropriateness to the conditions which are to prevail, develop, as time goes on, into an ignominious failure. ”

“ City Park should be extended on the west to form a good connection with the Poorhouse Farm, a portion of which may be eventually annexed to the park, or through which it may be found desirable to extend from the park a pleasure drive for the purpose of reaching some of the high hill tops, where, in addition to the views over the city which will be commanded from many points, the beautiful rural views to the westward could be enjoyed. ”

“ That some actually are so and yet command the admiration of people of taste is an indication of their essential qualities and fundamental differences from parks proper. Few cities have anywhere near as many ornamental squares as they should. It ls particularly desirable that a city should have several of its principal public buildings facing upon a large public square, as the new custom house in New York faces upon the Bowling Green, not occupying it as the postoffice and municipal buildings occupy the City Hall Park. ”

“ These parks are all connected by broad boulevards, some of which are not yet fully developed, thus forming a continuous park drive, with enough of nature and enough of varied architecture for variety, unsurpassed, I should say, in the world within any city limits. ”

“ Leading writers and other authorities on modern municipal development agree that no city can be considered properly equipped without an adequate park system.
All agree that parks not only add to the beauty of a city and to the pleasure of living in it, but are exceedingly important factors in developing the healthfulness, morality, intelligence. ”

“ It may sometimes slightly enhance the value of the business property facing it by concentrating travel on that side of the street, and in the largest cities furnishes a desirable outlook for high office buildings. The most detrimental effect of such ft public building in a small park is felt in the early stages of a city, where the park checks the. extension of the business centre. A public building surrounded by a park, if located in a residence section, tends to attract good residences, the outlook for the park more than off-setting what travel comes to the public building. ”

“ It should not be assumed that the improvement of these lands, if taken by the city, need necessarily involve any very great expense. There is no reason why they should be improved in the smooth and semi-formal fashion adopted in the City Park. Until the city has greatly increased in wealth, all that will be necessary would be a comparatively narrow mountain drive and a few narrow trails. In some places, trestles or bridges might be required to carry the drive across gullies or canyons, but for a generation or two, these might be chiefly built of wood. ”

“ In the Central park of New York it is 100 acres, and there is a constant public demand for its enlargement, which can only be met by reducing the verdant elements of landscape, and consequently the benefit to be obtained by the use of the park. In a public park for a city, therefore, the purpose of establishing such natural beauty as soil, climate, and topography would otherwise allow to be aimed at, must be greatly sacrificed under the necessity of providing accommodations for the travel and repose of many thousands of men and horses ”

“ Neighborhood parks are large enough to contain naturalistic scenery but not large enough to enable the visitor to enjoy fully the feeling of escape from city sights and sounds and of seclusion which it is the function of the large rural or suburban parks to encourage. ”

“ It is particularly urgent that a city having beautiful local scenery adapted for parks and parkways should secure the land betimes lest these natural advantages he destroyed or irreparably injured by the owners. ”

“ In order to determine upon a comprehensive system of parks it is first necessary to define and classify the various units of which the system is to be composed, even though it may not be practicable to carry out these ideas in all cases. The units of a park system generally recognized are city squares, play grounds, small or neighborhood parks, large or suburban parks, scenic reservations, boulevards and parkways. ”

“ The Central Park is eminently adapted for such an establishment, has the right location for it, abundant space, and therefore all the prerequisites that are needed. Should it seem desirable, in the course of the growth of the city northward, at some later time to have more and new parks with botanical gardens, future generations will know how to provide them, probably with better means and service, and in any case with closer-lying interest and benefit. ”

“ STEEP LANDS UNDESIRABLE FOR SMALL LOTS. Having pointed out the extraordinary opportunities possessed by your city for picturesque parks and parkways, and having indicated other possibilities as to pleasure grounds, parkways and boulevards needed to complete a proper and comprehensive system of parks, some comment may be worth while on the peculiar conditions which make it desirable to take for park purposes a much larger amount of land in narrow strips and small pieces along the western hilly margin of the city than would be desirable in most other cities. ”

“ If the city can do nothing else in the way of acquiring parkways, it should at least secure the land needed for the eventual construction of this hillside drive, for in proportion to its cost it would be far more valuable than any other parkway possible to be laid out in the city, because of the views which it would command and the romantic local scenery which could be associated with it, and because it would be so characteristic and so conveniently accessible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most superficial examination of any of our large urban parks will show that wherever elaborate construction and planting have been attempted they have failed from subsequent neglect to produce the effects expected from them, and that broad, quiet, pastoral and sylvan features are the only permanent and really valuable ones we can hope to attain in our great city parks. ”

“ It is to be regretted that the necessity for general plans in parks is not appreciated by most people as is the necessity for a general plan for city hall or court house. Yet a park is apt to include more naturally incongruous purposes and objects than a city hall. ”

“ The practice of surrounding public buildings with large grounds is a common one, by which their influence is nullified, the net effect being similar to that of a small park. Such a small park, even though including a public building, makes a bad break on a through business street, injuring especially the adjacent property on the same side of the street. ”

“ It is also desirable that small vacant places be purchased and reserved as small-park play grounds in densely settled sections of the city which now have no public open spaces and are destined soon to be built up solidly. ”

“ The only developed parks are Pioneer and City Hall, both small, and Liberty Park (110 acres) , in which Brigham Young built a grist mill in 1852 and which was bought from his estate by the city in 1880. ”