Public space

“ Public libraries, reading rooms, galleries for the exhibition of the fine arts, lyceums for lectures, and other kindred rational amusements, would do much to establish a new and better order, and to break down those artificial barriers, which separate so many refined and pure minded men from the pleasures and advantages of general society, condemning them to live alone and secluded, in the midst of all that is lovely and attractive in the social relations of life. ”

“ And because the people in their collective capacity own the land on which this beautiful group of cities is built, the public buildings, the churches, the schools and universities, the libraries, picture galleries, theatres, would be on a scale of magnificence which no city in the world whose land is in pawn to private individuals can afford. ”

“ In all the place there is no news-room nor free library, nor even a concert-hall or gymnasium. There is no cricket-ground, no assembly-room, no public bath, no public park, nor public garden. Throughout all that sordid, dolorous region I saw not so much as one tree, or flower-bed, or fountain. ”

“ Large meeting halls for lectures and the discussion of public affairs—that will in future be decided upon by the people at large—dining-halls, reading-rooms, libraries, playgrounds, concerts, theaters, museums, gymnasiums, public baths, parks and promenades, institutions of education and learning, laboratories, etc., all splendidly equipped, will afford ample opportunity for entertainment and sociability, [453] and will enable science and art to attain the highest degree of development. ”

“ Then, on the squares, at the points where the avenues met, rose the many public buildings, huge piles in which triumphed steel and iron. Their magnificence was compounded of simplicity, of logical fitness for the purpose for which they were intended, and of intelligence in the choice of materials and style of decoration. In these buildings it was intended that the people should be at home; the museums, libraries, theatres, baths, laboratories, meeting and amusement halls were but so many common-houses, open to the entire community. ”

“ The street corners adjacent to public-houses, where the workmen were mostly congregated, were, I knew from past experience, forbidden us; and the few vacant pieces of ground elsewhere discernible gave no promise of our getting an audience. ”

“ The irresistible force of the public spirit has met the immovable body of the private house—and that great, splendid, working social force has been frittered away in innumerable little processes of private amusement; the quiet, beautiful, private home has been bloated and coarsened in immeasurable distention as a place of public entertainment. ”

“ Hence the widespread illusion that cities consist of shops, factories and dwellings, with public-houses at the corners—these being the objects presented to the eye, as one passes along the open tunnels called streets. ”

“ The new city is laid out on a magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open squares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the art buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask every passer what it was put there for. ”

“ The curious side of these assaults is that the people who rave at the public-house are not the people one sees in it, and one wonders whether they passionately desire public-houses after their own heart, and, presumably, for their own use. ”

“ Even the great plate-glass windows lined within and without by comfortable chairs commanding, as they did, the principal public square or park and all the fascinating forces of so vigorous and young a town, were such as would naturally be occupied by the bloods and sports of the village, the traveling salesmen, and the idling big-wigs of political and other realms. ”

“ The city plan, for example, establishes metes and bounds, fixes in a general way the location and character of the city's constructions, and imposes an orderly arrangement, within the city area, upon the buildings which are erected by private initiative as well as by public authority. ”

“ The cultural needs of the community find expression in the city in the form of schools, theaters, museums, parks, monuments, and other public enterprises. They exert an influence extending beyond the boundaries of the city itself, and may be regarded as agencies for the definition of the person’s wishes. They are indicative of the level of social life which the community has achieved. ”

“ We build national galleries, and furnish them with pictures; we propose to create public walks, for the air and health and exercise of the community, at the general cost of the country. I do not think that either of those, useful and valuable as they are to the community, and fit as they are for Government to sanction, are more conducive to the moral and social advancement of the community than the facility of intercourse by post. ”

“ The place may be an up to date “Neighborhood House” with rest room and reading room with its chimney corner; a place for tired mothers and babies, and a meeting place for men of business; or it may be just a room at the church or the school house [Pg 134] or the public library, easily accessible to all. Or the social spirit can be developed wholly without any special equipment. The main point is the growth of community ideals and a willingness to work together to attain them. ”

“ Later the social activities in educational, charitable and recreational lines, become organized and evidence themselves in schools, hospitals, theatres and clubs, increasing diversity of function resulting in increased diversity of structure. Analyzing city land according to its utilization, it may be divided into three main classes, that used for business, that for residences and that for public or semi-public buildings. ”

“ A great deal is, as in the outer world, necessarily left to private effort, combined or individual.
Having in our last paper sketched the provision made by the management for sheltering and properly presenting to the eye the objects on exhibition, we shall now turn from the strictly public buildings [pg 522] to the more numerous ones which surround them, and descend, so to speak, from the Capitol to the capital. ”

“ Streets and avenues have since been laid out and completed, squares and public grounds enclosed and ornamented, until the city which bears his name, although comparatively inconsiderable in numbers and wealth, has become quite fit to be the seat of government of a great and united people. ”

“ Years ago the Herald outgrew the provincial idea that the happenings of the streets must be of more importance, and, consequently, demanding more space, than events of universal interest in the chief centres of the world. ”

“ On the other hand, let us take the modern quarter of an industrious city, where the houses of the people are hygienic, where the workpeople receive a fair remuneration for their labor, where popular theaters, conducted with a true sense of art, have taken the place of public-houses, and let us enter one of the restaurants where workpeople are enjoying their food in a quiet, civilized fashion ”

“ Under the head of Municipal Architecture is included every application of the science to those purposes of social life not included under the former heads, such as public buildings of all descriptions connected with the civil business of life, up to the arrangements of entire cities. Men, therefore, must have been assembled together for some time, they must have agreed upon certain compacts and regulations of society, before this branch could have made any progress in the world. ”

“ The leisure-time activities which the city produces are so intimately connected with the life of the people that they furnish clues as to the pathology or disorganization typical of city life. The dance hall, the movie, the amusement park, the back-yard or vacant lot improvised playground, and the many other forms of public, 200commercialized, or improvised recreation facilities are phases of group life which cannot escape the Sociologist. ”

“ So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great series of public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The next large class of public buildings in which we should introduce it, is one which I think a few years more of national progress will render more serviceable to us than they have been lately. ”

“ As their resources and opportunities expanded they might be encouraged to establish museums, public baths, public walks, bands, exhibition-rooms, benefit societies, and all the other agencies of popular enlightenment and comfort. ”

“ I think however, that a good deal depends upon the intention of the building, and on the ideas associated with it; and that a public building, and especially one for the purposes of religion, may occupy, and will even look better for occupying, an exposed and insulated situation, and one domineering over all the neighbouring objects, which would be displeasing in a private dwelling ”

“ The shops, the houses, the public buildings, the parks, the streets, the recreation grounds, then followed in intelligent creation. Its public buildings are fine, and the grouping of them about the open flower-planted spaces is very effective. It is a handsome city, with the single drawback of monotony in the well-built houses. ”

“ They exercise in public gymnasia and eat at public tables. The chief magistrates have their mess-hall in the citadel; the priests have theirs close to the temples; the magistrates, who preside over business matters, streets, and markets, have theirs near the market-square, while those who attend to the defences of the city have tables in the towers. When not engaged in public business, the citizens may meet in the Freemen's Square and enjoy an open-air conversazione, with music, poetry, and philosophy, in a word, διαγωγή, for which our language has no even approximate equivalent (see p. 33) . ”

“ The public house as a national institution has still its purposes to fulfil, and a few suggestions have therefore been included with a view of showing how it might easily be adapted to modern social needs. ”

“ Now an open space near a town is one of nature’s churches: and it is an imperative duty to provide such things. Nor, indeed, should we stop at giving breathing places to crowded multitudes in great towns. ”

“ In State capitals and other centres men meet, as though by chance, and in hotel-rooms debate matters of which the public hears only when differences have been reconciled and a harmonious plan of action has been adopted. ”

“ Those who have squatted upon it may be trusted to keep off other squatters if they can. The public ear is like the land which looks infinite but is all parcelled out into fields and private ownerships—barring, of course, highways and commons. So the universe, which looks so big, may be supposed as really all parcelled out among the stars that stud it. ”

“ There comrades might meet and talk, whose homes are too small and wretched for them to sit there in comfort, and for whom the public-house is too often the only place to meet in, or to read the newspaper. If visitors could gather small groups of children together, and use these out-door sitting-rooms as places to teach them games, read to them, or get leave for them to train the creepers up the wall, much good might be done, and much of the evil of playing in the streets prevented. ”

“ I have sometimes reflected on the lack of a body of public opinion in our cities, and once I contrasted the habits of the city man with those of the countryman in a way which got me into trouble. I described what a man in a city generally did when he got into a public vehicle or sat in a public place. ”

“ Much of what we ordinarily regard as the city—its charters, formal organization, buildings, street railways, and so forth—is, or seems to be, mere artifact. However, it is only when and in so far as these things, through use and wont, connect themselves, like a tool in the hand of a man, with the vital forces resident in individuals and in the community that they assume the institutional form. As the whole the city is a growth. It is the undesigned product of the labors of successive generations of men. ”

“ The building of a new theatre, a town hall, or a park may be made to appeal to many interests of the community, but after all is said the fact remains that the main justification for such buildings rests upon the pleasure which they give to individual members of the community. ”

“ Everywhere, balanced against the Town Hall or the Parliament House, will be the great university buildings and art museums, the lecture halls open to all comers, the great noiseless libraries, the book exhibitions and book and pamphlet stores, keenly criticized, keenly used, will teem with unhurrying, incessant, creative activities. ”

“ The promenade, the corridors of public buildings—post-office, railway stations, etc.—the elevators and arcades of buildings devoted to shops and offices; museums and picture-galleries, the foyer of the theatre, and the reading-rooms of public libraries may all be regarded as thorough fares, where the general public is our observant critic. Greetings between acquaintances casually meeting in such places should be quiet and conventional; friends should avoid calling each other by name, and conversation should be confined to such remarks as one does not object to have accidentally overheard. ”

“ Any lover of the city could live as far out as this. I have no quarrel with the city as a place to work in. Cities are as necessary as wheat-fields and as lovely, too—from twenty miles away, or from Westminster Bridge at daybreak. The city is as a head to the body, the nervous centre where the multitudinous sensations are organized and directed, where the multitudinous and interrelated interests of the round world are directed. The city is necessary; city work is necessary; but less and less is city living necessary. ”

“ We might not establish public tables—they would be unnecessary, but we could establish public baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, playgrounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive power, as well as water, might be conducted through our streets at public expense; our roads be lined with fruit trees ”