January 15, 1S96.J 



Garden and Forest. 



21 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICH AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article :— Municipal Art Again 21 



Bridge over the Kent at Levens Hall. (Willi figure.) Beatrix jfones 22 



The Retail Prices of Cut Flowers M B C. 22 



Trees or Minor Importance for Western Planting. — I .F. A. Waugk. 23 



Foreign Correspondence: — Gleichenias W.Watson, 23 



Plant Notes 24 



Cultural Department: — About Currants IV. P. 26 



How to Grow Peppers and Egg-plants Will IV. Tracy. 26 



Freesias IV. N. Craig. 26 



Oxalis versicolor G. W. O. 27 



Notes from Harvard Botanic Garden R. Cameron. 27 



Ardisia crenulala T. D H. 27 



Reinwardtia trigyna Edward J. Canning- 27 



Correspondence: — The Prospects tor Califoi-nia'sOrangeCrop. Wm. M. Tisdale. 28 



Meetings of Societies : — The New Jersey Horticultural Society 29 



R ecent Publications 29 



Notes.. 30 



Illustration : — Bridge over the Kent at Levens Hall, Fig. 3 _ . 25 



Municipal Art Again. 



A FEW weeks ago we alluded to the report of the Fine 

 Arts Federation of this city on the location of the 

 proposed monument to the soldiers and sailors who died 

 in the war for the Union, for which a quarter of a million 

 dollars had been appropriated by the Legislature. The 

 legally appointed trustees of this monument fund had 

 invited an opinion from the Federation, which consists of 

 members of ten different societies in the city which are 

 connected with various branches of the arts of painting, 

 sculpture and architecture, and the Federation gave its 

 reasons for considering the vestibule of the park known as 

 the Plaza objectionable as a site. Further than this, and in 

 order to give a definite and practical character to their 

 views, the associated artists named another site and 

 gave the reasons why they considered it an appro- 

 priate one. The commission did not adopt this report, 

 but. on the contrary, voted in favor of the site condemned 

 by the Federation. We expressed our regret at this deci- 

 sion, because we believe that if the city is to be made 

 attractive by works of art these must be designed by artists 

 of the first rank and their positions must be selected by 

 men whose taste and training have fitted them in a pecu- 

 liar way for'deciding questions of this character. A com- 

 -mittee of thirty picked men, three from each one of the 

 affiliated societies, devoted a great deal of time and study 

 to this subject, and no argument is needed to show that 

 their judgment on such a point ought to be worth more 

 than the offhand opinions of men who do not pretend to 

 have any special education or experience to prepare them 

 for work of this character. 



The last number of The Engineering Magazine contains 

 an instructive article on the Value of Good Architecture in 

 Cities, in which it is shown how insignificant are the efforts 

 to supply American cities with monumental and architec- 

 tural adornment, when compared even with the second- 

 rate cities of the Old World. Taking the City Hall Park of 

 New York, for example, and the streets that surround it, at- 

 tention is called to the fact that although this is a compara- 

 tively small space the buildings on the east and west are 

 sufficiently distant from each other to escape any appearance 

 of crowding. Not to speak of the meaningless public 

 building occupied by the general government as a post 



office at the southern end of the park, ten million dollars 

 would be a conservative estimate of the amount expended 

 within the last decade upon the great buildings which now 

 look down upon the little City Hall in the centre of the 

 green. This sum of money, if it had been expended in 

 Paris, for example, would have probably secured for that 

 city one monumental building and a series of structures, 

 each one of which would have been a genuine municipal 

 ornament. Without criticising the buildings about this 

 park, it is safe to say that, with one or two possible excep- 

 tions, if they were all destroyed no one would feel that the 

 city had lost any priceless art treasures; and yet this is the 

 very heart of the municipal life of the metropolis of the 

 New World, and it is the one point in the city where care- 

 ful artistic treatment is desirable, and where splendid 

 surroundings would be constantly exerting their influence 

 upon the taste and ministering to the pleasure of tens of 

 thousands of people who daily pass through it. If the 

 contemplation of objects of art which embody noble 

 thoughts is more wholesome than the daily contact with 

 objects which offend the sense of beauty, then the city 

 which does not furnish dignified buildings, monuments 

 and statues does not live up to its opportunities and fails 

 to minister as it should to the wants of one part of our 

 nature. 



We hear much of republican simplicity, and it is some- 

 times argued that buildings of impressive proportions and 

 lofty purpose are wasteful and contrary to that utilitarian 

 spirit which is the foundation of our material progress. 

 But the truth is that purity of line in buildings is not at all 

 inconsistent with usefulness, and that an ugly structure 

 may cost as much as one which has real value as a work 

 of art. It is not the want of money, but the failure to ap- 

 preciate the real worth of architectural beauty, that makes 

 so many of our streets commonplace and featureless. We 

 do not mean by this that our people, as a rule, lack good 

 taste. It is only vulgarity and snobbishness which con- 

 sider anything good enough for Americans. Our na- 

 tional, state and municipal authorities go on constructing 

 public buildings which not only are lacking in ordi- 

 nary comfort and convenience, but which have nothing 

 in the way of stateliness or beauty to show for the 

 vast sums that are every year expended upon them. 

 And yet when by some happy chance some really 

 meritorious building or monument or fountain is set up 

 the plain people who are stigmatized as lacking the 

 aesthetic sense at once recognize its value and look upon 

 it with genuine satisfaction and pride, for they are quite as 

 able to appreciate the beauties of a well-designed park or 

 fountain or statue or building as any in the world. 



One reason why we have no more good public structures 

 lies in the self-reliant and self-sufficient feeling of men who 

 are elected to office, and who assume, therefore, to decide 

 upon questions of art with the same positiveness and 

 assurance with which they decide matters of their own 

 private business. So-called self-made men have too little 

 respect for expert opinion in any direction. They consider 

 themselves able to decide all serious questions, and ques- 

 tions of art they are apt to consider too trivial for any 

 study. They seem to imagine that the artistic and the 

 practical are in everlasting conflict, and they have not 

 begun to learn the truth that the highest art in the laying 

 out of a park or the construction of a building is simply 

 the exaltation of its greatest practical value. The artistic 

 view of a question is not something opposed to what is 

 known as the common-sense view of the same matter. 

 For example, the Report of the Fine Arts Federation 

 on the site of the soldiers' and sailors' monument 

 was a document full of hard, practical sense, and 

 it set forth reasons for the conclusions reached that 

 any man of ordinary cultivation could weigh. The tact 

 is that the view of artists upon such a question is 

 nothing but the view of the educated community, only 

 the artists by their training are able to seize upon the real 

 points at issue and present them in an orderly way for the 



