PARK AND PLAYGROUND SYSTEM 



appreciate. (3) Parks pay for themselves, or more than 

 pay for themselves, by making new real estate values. 

 Some examples in support of this statement are given in 

 the Appendix. (4) A sound park policy vigorously pushed 

 by public authority, soon brings rich gifts from private 

 individuals. The history of American city parks fur- 

 nishes much evidence in support of this tendency. Cities 

 that own few parks seldom receive gifts of parks. On 

 the other hand, cities like Hartford, Conn., that have a 

 long and honorable record in public park-making, have an 

 equally long and honorable record of private gifts for 

 parks. 



In considering the justification of important additions 

 to its holdings for parks and playgrounds, New London 

 would find profit in reviewing the experience of other 

 cities. No better example could be given than that of 

 Hartford. It now has more than twelve hundred acres 

 of carefully developed public play and pleasure grounds, 

 at least one acre to every seventy- three of its population. 

 The Hartford Park Department has been persistently and 

 systematically at work for over fifty years, planning, 

 acquiring, constructing, planting, and maintaining parks, 

 and the steady growth and high reputation of the city 

 have been due in no small part to the work of this vigor- 

 ous city department. Hartford does not stand alone as 

 an example. Limiting the selections to cities the size 

 of New London, one may with pride direct attention to 

 Colorado Springs, San Diego, La Crosse, Elgin, Salem, 

 Mass., Nashua, Cedar Rapids, la., Quincy, 111., Waltham, 

 and Madison. In all of these cities, there has been not- 

 able park-making, for in all of them there is an average 

 of one acre or more of parks to every two hundred of the 

 population. 



The extension of the park and playground system of a 



