3 6 PARKS 



country that most of the city dwellers can commonly take time to enjoy. 

 It is fitted to receive large crowds and not be spoiled by them, for its main 

 use is still to relieve a man from too close contact with his fellows." 1 It 

 is further defined as "a city park to provide for the average man and 

 woman, as far as it is consistent with fairly intensive use, access to open 

 areas away from the man-made stone city with its heat and noise and 

 dangers from traffic; to rest his sense of sight and hearing and smelling 

 and touch by the colors and noises and odors of nature and the contact 

 with Mother Earth." 2 



To accomplish these purposes large areas are required. The Com- 

 mittee on Recreation Problems in City Planning of the National Recrea- 

 tion Congress (1922-2324) has suggested that this type of property should 

 range from one hundred to two hundred and fifty acres. In point of fact 

 there are many large parks of this character to be found in park systems 

 of American cities comprising much larger acreage than the maximum 

 mentioned above, and there are some smaller than the minimum that func- 

 tionally fulfill the purposes of a large park. Fairmount Park in Philadel- 

 phia comprising 3,881.7 acres; Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, New York 

 City, with 1,756 acres; Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, having 1,013 

 acres, are a few examples of parks of this character having very large 

 acreage. Parks of this type are likely to change their character in process 

 of time through the growth of population around them. Central Park in 

 New York City (843 acres), formerly a large country park, is now practi- 

 cally a park of the "intown" class; Delaware Park (365 acres), in Buffalo, 

 has become a cross between a large neighborhood playfield-park and an 

 "intown" park; the same thing has happened or is happening to Hermann 

 Park (545 acres) in Houston, Texas. Likewise through expansion of cities 

 large park reservations, a type of property to be subsequently mentioned, 

 may become large city parks. For the protection of these areas against 

 the encroachment of commerce, industry and transportation every power 

 of modern zoning should be invoked. 



It has been suggested by one group of experts in park and city plan- 

 ning that there should be one such park for every forty thousand inhabit- 

 ants and that it should be located tangent to or near the city limits of 

 such population. 2 



In providing opportunities, through large parks, for people of cities to 

 renew frequently contact with nature, it is exceedingly difficult for anyone 

 to say under what circumstances a given number of acres will suffice. 



1 Henry V. Hubbard, Harvard University, editor of Landscape Architecture, in an address before the 

 Fourteenth National Conference on City Planning, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1922. 



2 Committee on Recreation Problems in City Planning, National Recreation Congress, Atlantic City, 1922, 

 and Springfield, Illinois, 1923. 



