EFFIGIES AND MONUMENTS IN PARKS 



placed at the plaza entrance to Central Park. Statues thus located 

 seem to have a civic function, emphasising the approach to the park 

 and adding to its dignity rather than annihilating it. Statues may 

 often be made to take the form of exedras facing either on the street or 

 toward the park. Illustrations of the former are seen in the Shaw 

 Memorial facing the State House on Boston Common, or the Farragut 

 Statue in Madison Square, New York City. The new Barry Statue 

 in Washington is an example of a site facing the street, the landscape 

 background of which serves simultaneously as the outskirt planting of 

 the park. It would be a simple problem in design to compose similar 

 exedras facing into the park, becoming thereby a part of the screen 

 or framing of the park and not in themselves the dominating motive. 

 The location of the statue in the Giardino della Citta in Torino illus- 

 trates a site which attracts attention without demanding it, an ideal 

 condition. The arrangement of statues along the broad walk of the 

 Promenadeplatz, in Munich, shows how statues may be given suffi- 

 ciently prominent position without destroying the park value. 



PARK DESIGN SUPREME 



Parks at the time they are originally designed and laid out could 

 well show where the addition of sculpture would be acceptable to the 

 design. Sculptors find that a park not originally designed for a statue 

 does not afford agreeable setting for their work ; on the other hand, it is 

 impertinence for a sculptor to expect a park to be changed and laid out 

 anew for the reception of a statue. If the original design of a park is 

 so compromised that it becomes a setting for a statue it loses much of 

 its function as a park. This applies most forcibly to parks of small 

 size, but the smaller cities are apt to have small parks, and the larger 

 cities are so replete and overladen with statues and monuments that 

 even their large park areas become cluttered with them and diverted 

 from their true purpose and ideal. It will be a forward step when 



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