OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



151 



he has led us out of the wilderness of 

 conflicting opinions and established our 

 ways. 



You made possible our first ambitious 

 effort in the way of original work. In 

 preparing for the Chicago Conference a 

 city planning study of a hyi^othetical area 

 of about 500 acres on the outskirts of a 

 city of about 500,000 jieople was an- 

 nounced. It was a problem which was sur- 

 rounded with a great many difficulties. 

 It seemed to me that the problem was 

 too complicated, but I didn't know the 

 landscape architect. There were twenty- 

 five entrants, but only nine submitted 

 finished studies, eight of which were en- 

 tirely by landscape architects, and the 

 ninth was shared in by two landscape 

 architects, who, I suspect, did most of the 

 work. And out of that study came a 

 splendid result, a result which is now on 

 exhibition at Cambridge, and at least 

 Professor Pray knows all about it. be- 

 cause Harvard University is the guard- 

 ian of the result of that study. Now, 

 that is one of our best successes, and I 

 think, with that concrete contribution to 

 the work of the conference, you are en- 

 titled to share in whatever of accom- 

 plishment the Conference may boast. 



What are some of these accomplish- 

 ments? We ought not to claim accom- 

 plishments now, but I think that we may 

 be very glad that the city-planning era 

 in the United States came into being 

 about the time of the establishment of 

 the City Planning Conference. Let us 

 call it a coincidence, if you will, but be- 

 fore 1909, the date of the first confer- 

 ence, there was only one city-planning 

 board in existence, and that was in Hart- 

 ford. Connecticut ; and I will challenge 

 you to find any mention of city planning 

 in legislation before that. Since 1910, 

 if you search the records, you will find in 

 about a quarter of the commonwealths of 

 the United States some reference to city- 

 planning legislation. Five of the states 



— New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

 \\'isconsin and Massachusetts — have 

 state laws authorizing the appointment 

 of local plan commissions, and, either 

 by ordinance or under state law, one hun- 

 dred and fifty of the cities of this coun- 

 try have active planning commissions. 



That is only one result. Generally, in 

 the train of planning commissions and 

 planning committees have come inquiries 

 into the methods of acquiring land and 

 distributing the cost of the acquisition of 

 the land. We hear more and more today 

 of excess condemnation and assessments 

 for betterments: and just this year, in 

 Massachusetts, we have a most elaborate 

 measure presented to the legislature on 

 the general subject of land acquisition. 

 All these things are, it seems to me, di- 

 rect results of the city-planning move- 

 ment. 



I will grant you that the World's Fair 

 and Mr. Burnham's plans for the White 

 City in 1893 may have been the inspira- 

 tion for city planning ; but. even allowing 

 that, I am going to claim tonight that 

 much of the result that we see, much of 

 the activity of city-planning commis- 

 sions, much of the city-planning legisla- 

 tion, can be traced with equal directness 

 to the Conference on City Planning, and 

 to the contract between men of the cities 

 and towns who come to these Confer- 

 ences often with the vaguest idea of what 

 city jjlanning means, and go away with 

 a distinct realization of the benefits to 

 be derived by an adherance to planning 

 principles. 



These are all past endeavors, and. we 

 hope, past successes. Beyond are our 

 new adventures. This year, for the De- 

 troit Conference we are proposing a study 

 of the best methods of land subdivision. 

 I think it is hoped that some kind of 

 guiding principle will be evolved, which 

 will help real estate dividers to get a 

 better notion of what should be the size 

 of lots and of blocks, and so on, a prob- 



