ARCHITECTURE IN PARKS 



pared for appropriating that section of Central Park immediately 

 before it for the development of a formal foreground to the building. 

 Although this might seem permissible in the case of so large a park, as 

 a general proposition it would be extending the pale of the city within 

 the park instead of shutting it out, and a multiplication of the device 

 at intervals along an entire boundary would sensibly decrease the 

 apparent area of any but the most extensive of parks. In the case of 

 small parks such suggestions are insidiously dangerous, for, in design- 

 ing or redesigning a small park to bring it into keeping with some par- 

 ticular building facing upon it, the initial purpose of the park often 

 becomes lost and forgotten in the shuffle. The instigator, whose under- 

 most purpose is to improve the appearance of the building in which he 

 is especially interested, usually avows that parks must not be con- 

 sidered as separate units, but should be designed in relation to the city 

 and to their surroundings. This is true, but not in the implied sense of 

 relating to a particular building; for a park, to express its civic func- 

 tion, must eschew partiality toward any one of the buildings facing 

 upon it which would seek to convert it into a forecourt or plaza, and 

 thus abstract it from the genuine park areas of the city. Rather should 

 the precedent of foreign cities be followed, where ample grounds are 

 provided about their semi-public buildings and developed in park char- 

 acter as, for example, in the public flower gardens and play areas 

 about the Alte and Neue Pinakothek in Munich. 



COMMENSURATE AREAS SHOULD BE SUBSTITUTED 



At the present time several of our cities are launched on extensive 

 replanning schemes in the execution of which, as in the Washington 

 Mall scheme, the integrity of long-established parks is threatened to 

 make way for civic centres or other architectural developments. The 

 inexorable dictum that park areas should never be converted into sites 

 for public buildings should not be overruled even in this case ; but, in 



190 



