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TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



He had early disciplined himself to 

 work deliberately, systematically, effec- 

 tively, without haste, without waste, but 

 with a genuine enjoyment of his work. 

 He had the power to give himself over 

 so completely to the subject in hand as 

 apparently to have lost any and all con- 

 sciousness of the passage of time; and 

 yet in the matter of appointments he was 

 the soul of punctuality. To a most un- 

 usual degree, as compared with other 

 prominent men in his profession, he 

 seemed fully at home in working out the 

 relations and details of a formal scheme 

 and those of a purely naturalistic one. 

 On the one hand, he had a working 

 knowledge of architectural forms suffi- 

 cient for his own professional purpose 

 and for his lifelong co-operation with 

 architects, and, on the other hand, a 

 thorough acquaintance with ground form 

 and engineering works.incidental to land- 

 scape architecture and a marvelously de- 

 pendable familiarity with the plant vo- 

 cabulary of his art. Thus he united in 

 his own person a most rare combination, 

 exceedingly difficult for one individual to 

 acquire of very different professional 

 powers, and was able to maintain these 

 divergent powers in admirably balanced, 

 sane, and wholesome relation. 



As one of those who worked under him 

 in his most active time has said of him* : 

 "Nothing that he engaged in was slighted 

 or done without careful study." This 

 well-known characteristic coupled with a 

 wide knowledge of the practical affairs 

 of communities, (for he was a thorough- 

 ly practical if bold idealist) inspired con- 

 fidence in men of affairs charged with re- 

 sponsibility for large and costly under- 

 takings within the field of his profession ; 

 and, as the same writer has well said: 

 "The range of difficulties he solved in 

 city planning would in itself be a credit- 



*Mr. E. T. Mische of Portland, Oregon, in 

 "Park and Recreation" for April, 1920. 



able record, but this he did as a by-pro- 

 duct in the planning of the country's 

 pleasure-ways, parks and playgrounds." 



His own greatest service — the one of 

 most far-reaching influence — has prob- 

 ably been in park design. In this field, 

 he was, with his partners, concerned in 

 the design and development of the great 

 park system of Greater Boston, including 

 the Boston Municipal, Cambridge, and 

 other local parks, as well as the Metro- 

 politan System ; the exceptionally beauti- 

 ful large parks of Hartford, Connecticut ; 

 parks of Brooklyn, New York, including 

 the Shore Drive ; the extensive Essex 

 County, New Jersey, system of parks ; as 

 well as parks at Bridgeport, Connecticut; 

 Fall River, Massachusetts ; Buffalo, Ro- 

 chester and Watertown, New York; 

 Trenton, New Jersey ; Chicago, Illinois ; 

 Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Mil- 

 waukee, Wisconsin ; Seattle and Spo- 

 kane, Washington ; Portland, Oregon, 

 and Portland, Maine, and, in the South, 

 Louisville, Kentucky; Charleston, South 

 Carolina ; Atlanta, Georgia, and New 

 Orleans, Louisiana. 



He brought to these problems of park 

 design an unusual combination of quali- 

 ties which gave him the power to evolve, 

 under different sets of natural and social 

 conditions, designs of varied beauty, each 

 fitly growing out of the local circum- 

 stances. The public benefit of this great 

 work, in developing areas in all sections 

 of the country for the happy relaxation 

 and refreshment of city population, is 

 truly incalculable; and, since a well lo- 

 cated and well designed park of any con- 

 siderable area tends to increase in beauty 

 with the passing of the years, these parks 

 — so long as they are vigilantly protected 

 from short-sighted alterations and ex- 

 ploitation or diversion to other uses — 

 can but render a constantly greater ser- 

 vice, and constitute an enduring monu- 

 ment to the master's expert knowledge. 



