Public square

“ 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. ”

“ You have done several good things for The Public Square; but you never did a better thing than wishing Miss Pidge Musser on our editorial rooms. She’s brand new every morning. She’s honest, and a worker. ”

“ But where the broad avenue, at midway, spreads still wider, forming a spacious square, are thickly clustered the public buildings of the town and county,—together with the meeting-houses, the taverns, the bank, the shops, and a few handsome dwellings, whose large dimensions and ornate style show them to be the abodes of people of wealth and consideration. ”

“ The principal avenue, a regularly built, grandly proportioned street, with a railway running through its centre, climbs directly up the hill, and is terminated by a well-kept public square, or Grande Place, as the French would call it, about which the State House, City Hall, and other public buildings are ranged. ”

“ In June, a letter came from The Public Square, pressing its correspondent to return to France, or at least to some of the points where the American troops were gathering.
... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote] , they couldn’t be worse. Our little old [178] Public Square has fallen into sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman nor children. ”

“ Orange trees also abound, with their fragrant blossoms and golden fruit, stately palmettoes, magnolias and oleander, rich in bloom, bays and cape myrtles.
The streets running north and south are of very nearly uniform width, every alternate street passing on either side of a public square, which is bounded on the north and south by narrow streets running east and west, and intersected in the centre by a wide street taking the same direction. These public squares, twenty-four in number, and containing from one and a half to three acres, are a marked feature of the city. ”

“ The affectionate pride they excite in the hearts of the villagers, is well deserved. Centrally located, on the east side of the public square, this triumvirate of noble buildings, claims the admiration of the beholder, from any point of view on the open square. The front walls are beautifully ornamented, in harmony with an architectural design, which is considered by critics, as exceedingly artistic. Inside, they have been constructed, finished, fitted and furnished, in accordance with a design, that will afford to the villagers, the highest order of education and amusement. ”

“ In the centre of the village is an open space, or public square, 150 feet in diameter and circular in form, which is used for all public games and festivals, shows and exhibitions. The lodges around this open space front in, with their doors toward the centre ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each of a dozen groups has its place in the Square. They eat, drink, dance and court within their private precinct. They are as unconcerned as if they were in their own private compas. But their gayety is richer; this open sharing of a public place is the sharing of a rite. ”

“ They rose and passed me, alone on my bench, and I, who am wise in courtships, having watched so many bud and blossom on the public seats of Our Square, saw that this was no wooing, but some other persuasion, though what I could not guess.
So those two drifted out of sight; out of mind, too, for life in our remote, unconsidered, and slum-circled little park is a complex and swiftly changing actuality, and it crowds in with many pressures upon a half-idle old pedagogue like myself. It was the Little Red Doctor who, weeks later, recalled the episode, one blistering evening of the summer's end. ”

“ The oldest and best finished public square is Portsmouth Square, commonly called the Plaza, on the west side of Kearny street, extending from Clay street to Washington street, and directly fronting the old City Hall. Besides these are Washington, Union, Columbia, Lobos, Alcatraz, Lafayette, Jefferson, Alta, Hamilton and Alamo Squares, with Yerba Buena, Buena Vista and Golden Gate Parks. ”

“ If the council decided upon a public square, he was the man from whom the ground would have to be bought; and he was the man who could get his own price therefor.
As we have said, the park was decided upon, and a committee of two appointed whose business it was to see Smith, and arrange with him for the purchase of a suitable lot of ground. In due form the committee called upon the landholder, who was fully prepared for the interview. ”

“ Each subdivision of territory bounded on all sides by principal streets shall be deemed a square. When the territory contiguous to any public way is not defined into squares by principal streets, the ordinance providing for the improvement of such public way shall state the depth on both side, fronting said improvement to be assessed for the cost of making the same according to the number of square feet owned by the parties respectively within the depth as set out in the ordinance. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ In the public streets there are, on each side, booths and shops of every description. All the allotments of ground upon which the habitations throughout the city were constructed are square and exactly on a line with each other; each allotment being sufficiently spacious for handsome buildings, with corresponding courts and gardens. ”

“ The whole property on which the buildings stand forms nearly a square, the west side of which is on Union Street, the north on King Street, the south on a public alley, called Fitzgerald's Alley, and on the east was an open space running along the front of the buildings from King Street to, and passing beyond, this alley. ”

“ A park system should comprise all the various units which go to form a complete system. Some cities, Savannah, for instance, have a liberal provision of public squares, but few, if any, play grounds, parks and boulevards: some, New Orleans, for instance, have boulevards and parks, but few, if any, play grounds and neighborhood parks; some, Washington, for instance, have public squares, boulevards and parks, but few, if any, playgrounds; some, Chicago, for instance, have parks and boulevards, but few public squares and local parks ”

“ Thus the people are brought to live in affection and harmony. A square li covers nine squares of land, which nine squares contain nine hundred mu. The central square is the public field, and eight families, each having its private hundred mu, cultivate in common the public field. And not till the public work is finished, may they presume to attend to their private affairs. This is the way by which the country-men are distinguished from those of a superior grade. Those are the great outlines of the system. ”

“ All the other streets are fifty-five feet wide and the alleys are twenty-eight feet. Parks and public squares are laid out with the same regularity, and the houses are of uniform heights and generally after the same pattern. ”

“ WALLED in by slums stands Our Square, a valiant green space, far on the flank of the Great City. Ours is an inglorious little world Sociologists have-not yet remarked and classified us. The Washington Square romancers who bold sentimental revel at the foot of Fifth Avenue reck nothing of their sister park, many blocks to the east. But we are patient of our obscurity. Close-knit, keeping our own counsel, jealous of our own concerns, and not without our own pride of place, we live our quiet lives, a community sufficient unto itself. ”

“ Let me confess at once that we are a bit supercilious in our attitude toward the sister Square far to our West, across the Alps of Broadway. Our Square was an established center of the social respectabilities when the foot of Fifth Avenue was still frequented by the occasional cow whose wanderings are responsible for the street-plan of Greenwich Village. Our Square remains true to the ancient and simple traditions, whereas Washington Square has grown long hair, smeared its fingers with paint and its lips with free verse, and gone into debt for its inconsiderable laundry bills. ”

“ It is one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The dark-complexioned men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and bushy whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about the box-office in the season, between four and five in the afternoon, when they give away the orders,—all live in Golden Square, or within a street of it. ”

“ And let not those whose eyes have been accustomed to the aristocratic gravity of Grosvenor Square and Hanover Square, the dowager barrenness and frigidity of Fitzroy Square, or the gravel walks and garden seats of the Squares of Russell and Euston, suppose that the affections of Tim Linkinwater, or the inferior lovers of this particular locality, had been awakened and kept alive by any refreshing associations with leaves however dingy, or grass, however bare and thin. The City square has no inclosure, save the lamp-post in the middle, and no grass but the weeds which spring up round its base. ”

“ With the vanishing of the sunshine and shadows which all day long had been playing in and about Union Square—whose bits of green lawn, sparkling fountains, and many settees welcome the weary and heavy laden, for a little time at least, and invite rest,—came the myriad lights of the great city which follow the active day of toil and care. ”

“ So when the great square was filled with people, come to see the race, insomuch that the men swarmed like ants, and the windows and roofs were all as full as an egg, Lightning came out and took his station at the top of the square, waiting for the signal. ”

“ There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that is no reason why it should scorn "Colonel Harry" or "Mouldy Jim," the singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls, soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue—in these colours is the Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere at its heart.
The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain. ”

“ All the streets run at right angles to one another, so that a short cut, the joy of the accomplished Londoner, is impossible. It is a chess-board on which the bishop’s move is unknown. Nothing diagonal can be done. The city is ruled like the page of a ledger, from top to bottom with streets, from side to side with avenues. It is all divided into squares. When you are first told this, a vision arises of the possibility of cutting across these squares from corner to corner. Not a bit of it: a square at Philadelphia means a solid block of houses, not an open space enclosed by buildings. ”

“ The plan of the city is very peculiar indeed, but made with the one view of bringing the employés of the system into [286] little communities near the place of their occupation. It resembles a portion of a great checkerboard, eight squares long by six in breadth. Each square is a half-mile in length and breadth, and has an area of one-quarter of a square mile. Four of these squares is called a section, making twelve sections, or twelve square miles in the city. Each section is divided into eight triangles of equal shape and area by diagonals from its corners. ”

“ It seemed in fact fairly to deepen for them as they stayed their course again; the splendid Square, which had so notoriously, in all the years, witnessed more of the joy of life than any equal area in Europe, furnished them, in their remoteness from earshot, with solitude and security. ”

“ New York knows little of Our Square, submerged as we are in a circle of slums. Yet for us, as for more Elysian fields, the crocus springs in the happy grass, the flash and song of the birds stir our trees, and Romance fans us with the wind of its imperishable wing.
The first robin was singing in our one lone lilac when the Bonnie Lassie came out of the Somewhere Else into Our Square and possessed herself of the ground floor of our smallest house, the nestly little dwelling with the quaint old door and the broad, friendly vestibule, next but one to the Greek church. ”

“ By a square in a town, one does not necessarily understand an area with four equal sides and as many right angles, but an open space that is left for air and beauty. There are air and beauty enough to satisfy any reasonable man. A square may be a parallelogram, or a triangle, or any other shape one pleases.”
“This, then, is Hanover Square!—a New York square, or a Nassau Hall square, Corny; but not a Yale College square, take my word for it. ”