GENERAL PLANNING OF A PARK SYSTEM 47 



3. Sites for Museums of Various Types. There are numerous exam- 

 ples of museums of art, of natural history, and of natural science, located 

 in public parks throughout the country. Most of them are in large parks 

 where spacious landscaped areas provide a fitting setting for the style of 

 architecture which these structures usually affect. They are not always in 

 these parks because the original design provided for them, or park authori- 

 ties particularly wanted them, but because the officials and friends of the 

 associations backing and controlling the museums desired to use park 

 spaces as sites and were powerful enough to put their plans into execution. 

 Functionally, however, there is such close harmony between the services 

 rendered by these institutions and the aims and purposes of the park move- 

 ment as to warrant their location in parks. The question might be raised 

 whether it would not be better in many instances to locate them on sites 

 used exclusively for this purpose rather than to place them in large land- 

 scaped parks. For the widest use these institutions should be located as 

 near as possible to the center of the daily congregation of the people. This 

 is not always accomplished by locating them in large parks; moreover, 

 their introduction in such parks opens the door for the bringing in of 

 other structures, perhaps equally as worthy, but which by their multipli- 

 cation would in time more or less destroy the original design and purpose 

 of the park. 



The example set by Kansas City and by Minneapolis, where individual 

 areas have been set aside by the park authorities as sites, is, on the whole, 

 worthy of emulation by other cities. 



4. Sites for Utilitarian Purposes. Because of the difficulty in fitting 

 barns, yards, shops and storehouses into landscape designs, some park 

 authorities have provided special areas for such utilitarian purposes. As 

 a practical matter it would often be more desirable to have such an area 

 centrally located as a radiating point from which to work than to have 

 them located in various park properties or in one park property not cen- 

 trally located. 



VIII. CEMETERIES 



In practically every section of the United States there are examples of 

 cemeteries under the control of park departments. It requires a consid- 

 erable stretch of the imagination to say that a public cemetery has any of 

 the attributes of a public park, but from some points of view they do per- 

 form some of the functions of parks. They admit sunlight and free air, 

 provide places for people to walk about and rest, and furnish many pleasant 

 landscape features in the form of lawns, flowers, shrubs, trees and delightful 

 vistas. Some of the public cemeteries throughout the country, in point of 



