3H 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Buildings 

 Properly 

 Serving Park 

 Uses 



a country park. It is commonly best to have the scheme of circu- 

 lation of a landscape park consist of a road system of easy gradient 

 and ample curve, making a circuit or series of circuits in the park, 

 displaying but not interrupting the larger landscape units ; a bridle 

 path system (where this exists at all), making a number of interesting 

 circuits perhaps especially through the more rugged and wooded parts, 

 but not unduly cutting up the wilder portions of the park ; and a path 

 system, accommodating foot traffic throughout the park, but as its 

 special function giving access to those areas of more sequestered effect 

 and smaller scale which would be particularly injured by the introduc- 

 tion of roads and bridle paths. 



In determining what buildings should be constructed in a landscape 

 park, the public should bear in mind the obvious and fundamental 

 consideration : the purpose for which the park was created. Though 

 a park may look like wild land, it is not, for that, waste land to be de- 

 voted piecemeal to any use which is in itself desirable. Landscape 

 parks have been set aside by our cities at great expense to serve a definite 

 recreational purpose, and all the experience of our cities goes to show 

 that the service of the parks is well worth this expense ; but this service 

 can be rendered only so long as they retain their character as landscape 

 parks. The introduction of buildings into them, therefore, is undesir- 

 able except such structures as shall serve the legitimate purposes of 

 the park, and which therefore must be built for the sake of the park 

 as a whole. The construction of a schoolhouse in a landscape park, 

 on the ground that the park gives light, air, and opportunity for play 

 for the children, the construction of a public building in a park on the 

 ground that the park makes an admirable setting for the architecture, 

 is a piece of short-sighted folly in the utilization of public property.* 



There must be proper provision for the upkeep of the park, proper 

 place for the storage of tools and vehicles, and the housing of work 

 horses. It is usually desirable that some one in direct authority over 

 workmen should live near these service buildings, and often that some of 



* See the paper by Frank Miles Day, The Location of Public Buildings in Parks 

 and other Open Spaces, with discussion, in Proceedings of National Conference on City 

 Planning, 191 1, p. 53-79. Also see the article by Robert Wheelwright referred to 

 in footnote on p. 308. 



