PARK AND PLAYGROUND SYSTEM 



be studied and recommended by a broad-minded, competent 

 landscape architect), and the improvement work carried out 

 with great care and attention to detail, I undertake to say that 

 any wide-awake city can establish its park system without one 

 cent of general indebtedness to the city. In other words, the 

 enhancement in values of benefited lands will be more than 

 sufficient to pay all the cost of the acquisition and improve- 

 ment of the park system. This will impress you as possibly 

 being a too optimistic view, yet in our own city it is a fact 

 recognized and not disputed, with reference to boulevards and 

 to a somewhat less degree with reference to parks and park- 

 ways. 



That this general benefit is greater in actual enhancement 

 of values of property than the cost of the Kansas City park 

 system in its present stage of development is freely acknowl- 

 edged, and the land owners of that city have now invested in 

 the park system over eleven and one-half millions of dollars 

 and are our stanch supporters for still more parks and boule- 

 vards. In Kansas City, at least, the effect of park and boule- 

 vard improvements has been the enhancement of land values 

 far in excess of the whole cost of the acquisitions and improve- 

 ments of their park system. 



(W. H. Dunn, Superintendent of Parks, Kansas City, 1912.) 



INFLUENCE OF PARKS AND PLAYGROUNDS ON SUBURBAN DE- 

 VELOPMENT AND LAND VALUES FROM THE POINT OF 

 VIEW OF A REAL ESTATE OPERATOR (WILLIAM E. HAR- 

 MON,* OF WOOD, HARMON & Co., REAL ESTATE AGENTS 

 AND OPERATORS). 



At one time, a few years since, my associates and I were 

 seriously engaged in a consideration of the "ideal charity"; 

 in other words, attempting to find a form of charitable or 

 public service, in which a given sum of money could be utilized 

 with the least possible waste, the greatest possible good, and 

 which would leave a perpetual monument to the giver. We 

 took up the various forms of philanthropic activity, educa- 

 tional, religious, care of children, care of the aged, and all 

 others we could think of, and finally, somewhat to our sur- 

 prise, arrived at the conclusion that vacant land was the only 



k *See "Lebanon Trust: An Experiment in Small Parks for Small Cities," 

 in The Survey for March 1, 1913, as an additional illustration of the soundness 

 of Mr. Harmon's point of view. 



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