Park system

“ Duty of Citizens Toward Parks. Parks and Park Purposes Should Be Defined in Advance—Park Units. The Parks of a City Should Be Parts of a System. Parks Systems Should Be Comprehensive. Park Systems Should Be Well Balanced. Parks Should Have Individuality. Parks Should Be Connected and Approached by Boulevards and Parkways. Parks and Parkways Should Be Located and Improved to Take Advantage of Beautiful Natural Scenery and to Secure Sanitary Conditions. Park Systems Should Be in Proportion to Opportunities. ”

“ Nor are gardeners to be blamed for being mechanics instead of artists. If a park commission cannot find artistic gardeners and artistic civil engineers, the next best thing is to "catch them young"—those who have innate artistic feeling—and help them to become such.
18—Park Systems Should Be Managed Independently of City Governments. It has been demonstrated by experience in many cities that the park system more than any other of the undertakings of a city should be managed independently of the common council or legislative body of the city government. ”

“ CO-OPERATION OF LAND OWNERS. Owing to the location of the topographical features which it is designed to take advantage of and owing to the large amount of territory already subdivided, or made valuable by the rapid growth of population, the system of parks suggested is necessarily unusually spread out, and therefore involves unusually long parkways and boulevards. ”

“ We will work to enhance park habitats, expand visitor services, increase educational opportunities, implement new technologies, and hire additional seasonal park rangers. By maintaining and improving our park system, we can ensure that our national parks will thrive for the next 100 years and beyond. ”

“ When we have a good system of carriage roads throughout the Park—for of course it would be very unwise to allow either steam or electric roads in the Park—we shall have a region as easy and accessible to travel in as it is already every whit as interesting as any similar territory of the Alps or the Italian Riviera. The geysers, the extraordinary hot springs, the lakes, the mountains, the canyons, and cataracts unite to make this region something not wholly to be paralleled elsewhere on the globe. ”

“ Street railways have also been pushed all over the territory. The total of street lines is already over one hundred and fifty-four miles, and over thirty miles of these give rapid transit by cable. These facilities make the whole of the wide territory available for business and residence, and give the poorest inhabitants the means of reaching the parks.
The park system is on the most liberal scale, both public and private; the parks are already famous for extent and beauty, but when the projected connecting boulevards are made they will attain world-wide notoriety. ”

“ Many cities have one or more parks in which their citizens may justly take pride, but comparatively few of these cities have what can properly be called a comprehensive, well-ballanced and well-developed system of parks, a system which will compare favorably as to completeness with, for instance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In older communities property owners gladly assess themselves to secure the purchase of contiguous lands for boulevards and park facilities."Suggestions. In this connection, it may not be too early to memorialize the Legislature of Oregon for such an amendment to the Charter as may empower the City, through the Park Board, under certain conditions, and by reference to the voters of the City, to purchase lands, with right of condemnation, when necessary, for the development of the Park system. ”

“ Considerable parts of these canyons are at present very wild and exceedingly beautiful, and if the matter can be arranged in such a way that the city can afford the expense, these steep slopes ought generally to be preserved as parts of the park system. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that so far as the interest of the citizens at large is concerned, it is far more important to secure the continuous view-commanding hillside parkways, with fringes of woods and strips of land below to ensure control of the views. ”

“ It is not the plan to have the parks gridironed with roads, but in each it is desired to make a good sensible road system so that visitors may have a good chance to enjoy them. At the same time large sections of each park will be kept in a natural wilderness state without piercing feeder roads and will be accessible only by trails by the horseback rider and the hiker. All this has been carefully considered in laying out our road program. ”

“ The Park Board stands ready at any time to appropriate funds tor any preliminary work which the interests of the Water Company's trust will permit to be done upon the land in furtherance of its ultimate occupation as a park; and we would urge that the present Is a time for some action in that direction. Because of the Exposition in 1905, we also think that some substantial work should be done in the more remote parks of the system, namely, Governor's Park, Terwilliger Park and Columbia Park. ”

“ The street car system is good, cars being of the double-deck type. This was the first place the American system of street-car transfers was noticed.
One finds here a splendid park square with plenty of free seats and space, flowers and grass. In a larger park, a short distance away, is a zoo. There is also a museum, art gallery, a good library, hospitals and schools. ”

“ It not infrequently happens that the sections of a city in which the population is most dense and most in need of squares, play grounds and local parks, are almost wholly devoid of these advantages because no well-balanced system has been devised and carried out while land was sufficiently cheap and comparatively unoccupied so that now the expense is prohibitory. ”

“ When the Great Smoky Mountains were added to the National Park System in 1934, a unique mission was accomplished: more than 6,600 separate tracts of land had been purchased by the citizens of Tennessee and North Carolina and given to the people of the United States. Previously, most national parks had been created from lands held by the Federal Government. The story of the Great Smokies is, therefore, most especially and significantly, a story of people and their home. Part of that story is captured in microcosm on an August Sunday in a secluded northeastern corner of the park: Cataloochee. ”

“ The backwardness of municipal park systems is not so much due to lack of public intelligence and public spirit, as to a defective development of the love of beauty, as compared with a well-developed appreciation of practical, utilitarian progress. ”

“ If these property owners could visit the park systems of other cities, and study the increased valuations which the lands bordering upon the various parks and parkways have in most instances acquired, no doubt most of them would be convinced of the advisability of giving to the city the land required for park purposes in all cases where the owners have enough land left to be benefited, and to sell them at extremely low prices, and to reinvest the money in adjoining lands, in cases where the whole or the greater part of their holdings has to be taken for the parks or parkways. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If possible to have it there is no more attractive spot in a park than a lily pool. The old idea of laying out parks according to some geometrical pattern is giving way to the development of walk lines of practical use, recognizing both traffic requirements and the desirability of location for numerous park benches. What will lend more charm to a park than a beautiful drive bordered with noble trees leading up to some focal point or opening a way to some particular vista that would otherwise be lost! ”

“ Isn’t the centre of a city for business? What right has a park there?
Or perhaps it is a great lake front as at Buffalo or Cleveland, which could or should be made into something splendid—the municipal centre, for instance, or the site of a great park. No. Instead the city will bend all its energies to growing away from it and leave it to shabby factories and warehouses and tumble-down houses, while it constructs immense parks in some region where a park could never possibly have as much charm as on the water front. ”

“ Much as we have murmured about trespassing, and prosecution, and enclosures, we really feel grateful to the Government for throwing open such a splendid park as this, over which we can wander at will, without being cautioned to keep on either foot-path or open road, but have liberty to tread on the grassy knolls, and are left as free as the antlered deer that walk and browse wherever they please. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the plan herewith offered to the Commission, each of the transverse roads is intended to be sunk so far below the general surface that the park drives may, at every necessary point of intersection, be carried entirely over it, without any obvious elevation or divergence from their most attractive routes. ”

“ A general survey of the ground allotted to the park, taken with a view to arrive at the leading characteristics which present themselves as all-important to be considered in adapting the actual situation to its purpose, shows us, in the first place, that it is very distinctly divided into two tolerably equal portions, which, for convenience sake, may be called the upper and lower parks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This short turn brings us to the Park, which is rapidly filling with vehicles of every fashion and color, and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No hackney coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed to pass the porters at the several gates: the road is macadamised and watered, and the grass within the ring is fresh and verdant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”