40 THE FOREST PRESERVES 



CHARLES H. WACKER 



Mr. Wacker, as president of the Chicago Plan Commis- 

 sion, came onto the Forest Preserve Plan Committee with 

 years of experience in city planning, a movement that neces- 

 sarily dovetails with the establishment of an outer park belt. 



As the Chicago Plan Commission head Mr. Wacker has 

 guided the City of Chicago up to realization on two of the 

 greatest improvement projects any city has ever undertaken, 

 the Twelfth Street widening and the Michigan Avenue ex- 

 tension. 



With the help of Mr. Wacker the Plan Committee has 

 been able to lay out Cook County's Forest Preserve District 

 in a manner that will some day make possible the Greater 

 Cook County playground system, including the combined 

 recreational features of the City of Chicago and Cook County. 



WILLIAM A. PETERSON 



Mr. Peterson has a thorough technical knowledge of 

 horticulture and one of his chief treasures is a library of some 

 4,000 volumes, including old manuscripts and rare first editions 

 in English, Latin, French, German and the Scandinavian 

 languages. 



To his booklore he has supplemented extensive travels, 

 gaining a familiarity with the best examples of European land- 

 scape art through visits to the court gardens at Potsdam and 

 St. Petersburg that were, where the men in charge were old 

 associates of his father in the early days at Louis Van Houtte's 

 at Ghent. 



Possibly Mr. Peterson's work with the peony has con- 

 tributed as much as any one thing to his reputation for horti- 

 cultural erudition. Possessed of abundant means Mr. Peterson 

 has acquired a large museum of Indian and other relics, his 

 arrow heads being one of the most complete collections in 

 the country, many of them picked up on the nursery grounds 

 which were the site of an old Indian village. 



