CHAPTER X 

 DECORATIVE USE OF WATER 



WATER is used much too grudgingly in parks. There are 

 people who would confine the use of water to drinking, bathing 

 and sanitary purposes, objecting even to its use on the streets. When 

 such people come in charge of parks, there isn't to be found even a 

 drinking fountain in their entire township. 



Small towns consider themselves laudably up-to-date when arrange- 

 ments are made for Tom Jones to water the grass on the Common dur- 

 ing midsmnmer; the idea of having a constantly playing fountain or 

 consmiiing water in some other form of foolish display, for which the 

 townspeople would have to be taxed, is considered going a bit too far. 

 Few town officials would have the hardiness to take the responsibility 

 for such inanities. Cities, on the other hand, though less drought 

 stricken, are amazingly pharisaical: they look down upon the desert 

 towns and exalt themselves in pointing to the occasional fountains 

 within their own environs, w^ithout once letting their eyes behold the 

 better land beyond. Contrast what even the most progressive of our 

 cities have done in this line with what may be found in almost any 

 foreign city of equal size, and the tendency to boast will disappear. 

 Let the number of fountains in even our most prodigal cities be checked 

 up in ratio to per capita of population or to area of service, and abase- 

 ment follows. 



ARGUMENTS FOR WATER IN PARKS 



The use of water is justifiable in park development for several 

 reasons: as park embellishment in itself, as an indispensable element 

 of landscape composition, and as a means of alleviating climatic con- 

 ditions. In the first instance, that of ornament per se, its value is 

 obvious. Whether used in the form of plashing fountains, tumbling 



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