3i8 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Park Bound- 

 aries and 

 Gates 



Municipal and 

 Metropolitan 

 Landscape 

 Reservations 



It is practically impossible so to inclose a park that an active person 

 may not get in almost wherever he chooses. Nevertheless it is desir- 

 able that there should be a definite boundarj^ around the park, and, if 

 the city presses close upon the park, that this boundary should be diffi- 

 cult to pass except at designated entrances. The typical treatment of 

 the boundaries of our parks is a wall or fence and within it a boundary 

 plantation. Reasonable economy as well as expression of the purpose 

 of the park would dictate that this wall or fence should be permanent, 

 but not ornate. A stone, or possibly concrete, wall is therefore in many 

 cases the best structure for the purpose. 



The main entrance to a landscape park should express the dignity 

 of the park as an essential portion of the city plan, but it should also 

 suggest something of the character of the park. An elaborate archi- 

 tectural entrance, owing its beauty largely to cut-stone moldings 

 and sculpture, is from this point of view hardly ideal, except that some- 

 times it relates on its outer side to a formal plaza or the end of a great 

 avenue and might possibly require a certain elaboration to bear its 

 part in this composition. Usually, however, even here a simple and 

 massive form would be more effective and more appropriate. 



Almost all the cities in this country are growing in population, 

 many of them at a very rapid rate ; and there is at this time no apparent 

 reason that this growth should not continue for very many years to come. 

 It lies in the power of the cities to see that this growth shall be organized 

 and directed so that the various necessities of existence for all the citizens 

 may be best produced with least waste. Nowhere may the benefits 

 of an enlightened and far-seeing public policy be more evident than in 

 the case of reservations of land for recreational and other public pur- 

 poses. 



So long as the large public park remains upon the outskirts of the 

 city, it may offer sufficient freedom and openness to satisfy almost all 

 the people, and the few who require more than this may be able to find 

 it by journeying farther into the still unspoiled open country ; but in 

 time the city will grow around the park ; and perhaps through the cutting 

 off of its distant views, certainly by its more intensive use, the park will 

 become more humanized. In the meantime the outlying country will 

 have turned from woodland to farms, from farms to gardens, and 



