THE CITY OF WASHINGTON. 149 



THE IMPEOVEMENT OF THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.* 



'T^HE city of Washington differs from all other American cities in 

 -^ the fact that in its original plan parks were laid out as settings 

 for public buildings. Even its broad avenues were arranged so as to 

 enhance the effect of the great edifices of the nation; and the squares 

 at the intersection of the wide thoroughfares were set apart as sites 

 for memorials to be erected by the various states. Park, in the mod- 

 ern sense of a large public recreation ground, there was none; but 

 small areas designed to beautify the connections between the various 

 departments of government were numerous. 



During the nineteenth century, however, the development of urban 

 life and the expansion of cities has brought into prominence the need, 

 not recognized a hundred years ago, for large parks to preserve artifi- 

 cially in our cities passages of rural or sylvan scenery and for spaces 

 adapted to various special forms of recreation. Moreover, during the 

 century that has elapsed since the foundation of the city the great 

 space laiown as the Mall, which was intended to form a unified con- 

 nection between the Capitol and the White House, and to furnish sites 

 for a certain class of public buildings, has been diverted from its 

 original purpose and cut into fragments, each portion receiving a 

 separate and individual informal treatment, thus invading what was 

 a single composition. Again, many reservations have passed from 

 public into private ownership, with the result that public buildings 

 have lost their appropriate surroundings, and new structures have been 

 built without that landscape setting which the founders of the city 

 relied on to give them beauty and dignity. 



Happily, however, little has been lost that can not be regained at 

 reasonable cost. Fortunately, also, during the years that have passed 

 the Capitol has been enlarged and ennobled, and the Washington 

 Monument, wonderful alike as an engineering feat and a work of art, 

 has been constructed on a site that may be brought into relations with 

 the Capitol and the White House. Doubly fortunate, moreover, is the 

 fact that the vast and successful work of the engineers in redeeming 

 the Potomac banks from unhealthy conditions gives opportunity for 

 enlarging the scope of the earlier plans in a manner corresponding to 



* From the report to the Senate committee on the District of Columbia of 

 the Park Commission, consisting of Daniel H. Burnham, Chicago ; Augustus 

 St. Gaudens, New York; Charles F. McKim, New York, and Frederick Law 

 Olmsted, Jr., Brookline. 



