2i 4 PARKS 



6. Special care should be given the lawn areas, and planting and 

 proper maintenance of roadway should be assured. 



7. A generous building set back will add spaciousness to the pleasure 

 drive and permit a wider planting of trees. 



8. Car lines, if need be, can be accommodated on streets of this type, 

 but they should be planned for and isolated as much as possible in a wide 

 central strip bordered by planting. 



All these measures will contribute to the creation of a first-class pleasure 

 drive system. Most of them cost little or nothing beyond the regulation 

 costs of any ordinary street. 



BORDER ROADS FOR PARKWAYS AND PARKS* 



"I have faced the problem of border roads vs. their omission in parks 

 and parkways under the widest variety of conditions and from every point 

 of view from that of the general public using the parkway and that of 

 the general taxpayer, to that of the dealer in abutting real estate and that 

 of the individual lot owners. I have made mistakes both ways, and learned 

 to recognize them. I have learned especially to distrust sweeping general- 

 izations on this subject and mechanically standardized practices, and to 

 realize that each case ought to be considered on its own merits without 

 preconceptions and with an openminded regard: first, for the controlling 

 purposes which each particular parkway or park can best be made to 

 accomplish; and second, for the local conditions, topographic and otherwise, 

 including conditions affecting the probable and possible ways in which 

 abutting land may be developed. 



As to the first, to illustrate something of the wide range of different 

 purposes which under different circumstances may properly control the 

 design of things called parkways, consider these types: 



1. An elongated park, the dominant purpose of which is to connect 

 two or more broader parks in such a way that people may pass from one 

 to another under pleasant conditions without any appreciable sense of 

 interruption of the parklike environment, without feeling that they have 

 got out of a satisfactory park into something quite different before getting 

 back again. 



2. A more or less glorified and ornamental street, such as is sometimes 

 created by subdividers, the prime purpose of which is to add to the value 

 of abutting property while incidentally serving the general public for travel 

 and enjoyment. 



3. A thoroughfare, boulevard, or parkway, the prime purpose of 



1 This statement by Frederick Law Olmsted is such a valuable discussion of the problems involved in the 

 acquisition and design of such areas that it is reprinted with the permission of the editor of Landscape Architecture 

 in which it was originally published. (January, 1926, issue.) 



