58 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



ADOPTED POLICIES WITH COMMENTARIES 



BUILDINGS IN PUBLIC PARKS 



The A. S. L. A. is opposed to the erec- 

 tion in Public Parks of buildings other 

 than those required for park purposes. 



DIVERSION OF PARK LAND 



The A. S. L. A. is opposed to the diver- 

 sion of land which has once been set 

 apart for public recreation until an over- 

 whelming public need for such diversion 

 has been convincingly shown, or unless 

 it is shown that an exchange of land will 

 unquestionably give the community more 

 than it loses. 



COMMENTARY ON ABOVE TWO 

 POLICIES 

 It is unfortunate that the more use- 

 ful park lands become, for park pur- 

 poses, the more desirable they become 

 for many others, especially those of 

 building. The result is that attacks 

 are continually being made on the in- 

 tegrity of parks by people with real 

 estate schemes, proposals for public 

 and semi-public buildings or institu- 

 tions, or by people with axes to grind 

 at the expense of the community, and 

 who cannot see that a piece of public 

 ground is doing any work unless it has 

 a building or a street on it. The de- 

 termination and persistence of those 

 who would despoil is greater than that 

 of most of the park defenders, and the 

 latter are mostly ill-provided with ar- 

 guments or energy to defend the 

 parks; and as the best uses of parks, 

 those of solace, recreation and the ef- 

 fect on the mind of park scenery, 

 though of as really practical value as 

 any uses to which land may be put, 

 are difficult to state, it becomes hard 



to overpower the pleas of the so-called 

 practical man who can demonstrate 

 the soundness of his scheme from his 

 point of view by facts, figures and per- 

 haps balance sheets. Furthermore, 

 the American public is generally very 

 hazy in its ideas about the inviolability 

 of park lands, and does not see the 

 great danger in small encroachments 

 which form precedents for others, and 

 become continually more difficult to 

 resist. The number or energy of at- 

 tacks on park lands is an index of the 

 value of them to the people, and should 

 be an index of the determination of the 

 people to resist them. The open 

 spaces of a community are, in their 

 way, as precious to it as its covered 

 ones ; and they will never be secure 

 until the people have been educated to 

 consider a public park as inviolable as 

 a public building. 



BILLBOARDS 



The A. S. L. A. favors reasonable and 

 appropriate local regulations by legally 

 constituted authority for the control of 

 advertising signs and of other private 

 enterprises likely to impair, through of- 

 fense to the sense of sight, the esthetic 

 or economic value of public or private 

 property in the district in which they 

 occur. 



COMMENT.\RY 

 Nearly all people endeavor accord- 

 ing to their lights to protect their 

 homes against ugliness within. In pro- 

 portion as the community is more 

 numerous than a household it is im- 

 portant to protect it, as far as possible, 

 against ugliness without, in its streets 

 and public places. We are now, to a 



