DESIGN OF PARK AND RECREATION AREAS 195 



and greater demands for more of the space to be given over to active recrea- 

 tion and the park take on more the character of a huge playfield with a 

 wide drawing radius, than the original large landscaped park. This is a 

 condition to keep in mind always, both in the selecting of large park areas 

 and in making original designs. 



The list of different kinds of games and sports facilities found in large 

 parks of today is a long one. Among these facilities are the following: 



1. Golf. This game has made very great inroads into the total area 

 of large park spaces in the United States. It happens that of all the games 

 that have been introduced into these parks golf does least violence to the 

 general landscape effect, unless the topography is so level as to require a 

 large number of artificial hazards or large areas of tree growth are removed 

 for the installation of the course. However, in a very large number of 

 instances golf courses should never have been introduced into existing large 

 parks for the reasons that the driveway plans and the layout of the courses 

 are often incompatible and that large areas of parks have been withdrawn 

 from general use, to say nothing of the occasional necessity for destroying 

 considerable areas of tree growth which it has taken many years to produce. 

 In general no golf course should be introduced into a large park unless the 

 area to be used for golf is in itself a distinct entity, separate and apart 

 from areas through which roadways or other pathways pass, and unless 

 the remaining portions of the park are sufficient in themselves to provide 

 all the necessary resources to meet the other needs of the people. In other 

 words, unless the park is large enough to reduce a golf course to a distinctly 

 minor feature, the course would better not be introduced. An alternative 

 is to utilize the whole of an existing large park for a golf park but only in 

 case another area is provided for general park purposes. Except in the case 

 of exceedingly large city recreation parks it is desirable that separate and 

 distinct areas be secured for golf courses. 



2. Tennis. Tennis is one of the games commonly found in large 

 parks and its history in such parks is almost contemporaneous with them. 

 For the purposes of ease in maintenance and the better handling of players, 

 tennis courts in large parks are generally constructed in groups ranging from 

 a few in a group to twenty-five, fifty and even a hundred or more. As a 

 general rule the courts are of clay, but occasionally one finds hard surfaced 

 courts and turf courts. The necessity of erecting wire enclosures or at 

 least wire backstops introduces an element that is often very hard to deal 

 with in a landscaped park. This condition is sometimes overcome by locat- 

 ing the courts in such positions that heavy screen plantings will give the 

 impression from the outside of being a part of a larger landscape unit. 

 From the landscape standpoint one of the most desirable methods of intro- 



