154 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



whose realization tlie collective endeavor of a community is neces- 

 sary ; — something especially to be commended to the consideration 

 of those who are fond of asserting that such collective endeavor 

 tends to weaken and destroy individual initiative. In truth, it 

 may be said that therein individual initiative finds its greatest 

 opportunity for effective application. 



The park movement in the United States dates from the creation 

 of Central Park in New York City. Though still young, and 

 hardly yet fully developed as a park — for little more than a gen- 

 eration has passed since the work was first begun — Central Park 

 well merits the name of historic. Had Frederic Law Olmsted not 

 been given the opportunity which the design of this park pre- 

 sented, it is probable that one of the greatest artists of the age 

 would not have arisen, and that the history of public parks in this 

 country would have been quite different ; it is likely that the great 

 part which they already play in the lives of our city populations 

 would today be wanting. 



The institution of great public parks, as it is known in our 

 American cities, is a development from the great parks that have 

 long existed in the capitals of Europe. In Germany today are the 

 most beautiful parks of the Old World, and in them we find the 

 nearest approach to the best of our great American pleasure 

 grounds. But in a certain way Mr. Olmsted is the founder of a 

 new form of park, in which — while retaining all the natural 

 beauty of the landscape, preserving it, enhancing it, making it 

 more ideally natural, and even creating nature, so to speak, where 

 her beauty has been obliterated, or perhaps has never existed — 

 all the charm of the locality thus preserved or created is protected 

 and made permanent by the character of the design. And the 

 enjoyment of this charm is made possible for the greatest number 

 by the adoption of methods that make all the essential features of 

 such a pleasure ground accessible in all possible ways. 



The main function of a park is that of providing for the multi- 

 tude tliat enjoyment of natural scenery which is essential for the 

 good liealth of an urlian population in escape from the excitement 

 and the jar of the ordinai-y conditions of city life that constitute 

 one of tlie main sources of the degenerating influences ever at 

 work in sueli a population. The great purpose of a public park is 

 to furnish these opportunities, and to insure tlieir enjoyment in the 

 greatest j)OSsibIe contrast with ordinary urban conditions. In 



