TRAINING OF PARK EXECUTIVES 1001 



of Landscape Architecture always welcomes men of ability and character 

 who desire to equip themselves for meeting the responsibilities of a park 

 executive. While our school directs its two alternative curricula the one 

 for the general practice of landscape architecture with some introduction to 

 city planning; and the other for those aiming to specialize in city planning 

 and who are given the principles of landscape architecture as a basis for 

 this specialization -- toward developing in its students the power to create 

 designs of land areas more than to execute them or to maintain them or to 

 administer them under use, there is little of the instruction offered that 

 does not bear fundamentally upon execution, maintenance, administration 

 or operation, since, in order to execute and maintain and administer intelli- 

 gently, an understanding of the reasoned basis of the arrangement of the 

 area to serve its uses is essential. In the past a common source of failure 

 on the part of park superintendents has been their lack of sufficient under- 

 standing of the designs prepared by competent landscape architects and 

 their consequent lack of respect for them and adherence to them and their 

 spirit. This lack of understanding and consequent respect has led to the 

 doing of many things entirely out of keeping with the main original design. 

 There has certainly not always, though there has sometimes, been the 

 excuse that the original designer so lacked understanding of the problems 

 of execution and economical maintenance and effective administration that 

 it was necessary to alter the design to make it practical. I am confident 

 that the better-trained and broader-minded among our present park execu- 

 tives will all agree with me that a park executive should have as good an 

 understanding as possible of landscape design, particularly as applied to 

 parks of different sorts and sizes, playgrounds and the various other recrea- 

 tion spaces which come under the administration of a superintendent of 

 parks. In this, our courses in theory, design, construction and planting all 

 give most practical instruction. 



But life is short; and usually the man who looks forward to the career 

 of a park executive does not feel that he can take the time, however desirable 

 it may be, for a whole training toward the practice of landscape architec- 

 ture, and, if he could and did take such training he would probably go into 

 the general practice rather than in the work of park superintendence, though 

 some of our graduates do, as a matter of fact, take up park superintendence 

 in preference to professional practice. Therefore he must at best usually be 

 selective, and we are always ready to admit such men to special problems 

 in their own chosen field so long as their previous equipment and training is 

 adequate for their benefitting by these problems. 



Those who have not had the equivalent elsewhere should first have 

 had our course in landscape topography and have acquired the power to 



