SEATS IN PUBLIC PARKS 



SLABS, BENCHES, AND SEATS WITH BACKS 



A reasonable per cent, of the park seats should be designed with 

 backs. Throughout Italy the stone-slab bench is almost universal, 

 found in many forms and invariably good in proportion and design. 

 It is the simplest expression of a park seat and always lias a decora- 

 tive character, no matter how placed. In Italian parks, furthermore, 

 the benches are invariably located with intelligent regard to artistic 

 effect, placed to emphasise and accentuate the lines of design in a 

 general plan. They, therefore, appear doubly decorative. The Italian 

 people seem to accept the adamantine quality of a stone bench without 

 protest; and if stone can be less hard to the feel in one country or 

 climate than another, it must be confessed that the stone bench in 

 Italian parks and gardens never seems as unimpressionable or cold as 

 when encountered in other countries. 



If an Italian desires a seat with a back, he indulges in the luxury 

 of a private chair, made of iron, and for which he purchases a ticket 

 at a charge of five centimes, which amounts to one cent in our money. 

 These chairs, however, are occupied only during the band concerts, or 

 by Americans who wonder why all of the separate chairs are so con- 

 veniently vacant, until called upon by the woman attendant to con- 

 tribute the required pittance. 



As one goes North, the form of the park benches remains much 

 • the same, though the slab forming the seat is sometimes given a cover- 

 ing of wood, as shown in the illustration of the seat in the Folkgarten 

 in Vienna. In Germany we find the stone slabs replaced by wood 

 entirely, and occasionally the supports also are of wood or iron. The 

 illustration of the bench used along the Unter den Linden is of that 

 found generally throughout the Berlin parks. At the same time there 

 are many benches with backs quite similar to those we are accustomed 

 to see in America. They are undoubtedly welcome for comfort, but 

 one mourns their lack of picturesqueness as an element of park scenery. 



254 



