192 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 377. 



unfold, there is an endless number of combinations for 

 those who are on the alert to watch them. At this sea- 

 son, too, the air is full of an opaline haze which softens 

 every color and smooths every rugged line, so that the 

 prospect from any eminence which commands a forest- 

 view is one to be studied and remembered. One who fails 

 to note these daily transformations in our individual trees 

 and in our woodlands loses every year one of the most 

 characteristic and impressive phases of American land- 

 scape beauty. 



Parks, Parkways and Pleasure-grounds. — I. 



THIS is the title of an instructive paper in the May 

 number of the Engineering Magazine, by Mr. Fred- 

 erick Law Olmsted, who has had a more varied experience 

 in designing municipal pleasure-grounds than any man in 

 America, and, perhaps, than any man in the world. Of 

 course, different kinds of recreation call for different types of 

 public pleasure-grounds, and Mr. Olmstednames the plaza or 

 formal tree-shaded promenade as the simplest. Such works 

 are practically out-of-door halls, where the people may meet 

 in a social way, and their use is better understood in 

 southern Europe and Spanish America than in our country. 

 More necessary still are open-air nurseries or playgrounds, 

 which ought to be provided in every crowded neighbor- 

 hood, where mothers and small children may find oppor- 

 tunity to rest and sleep and play in the open air. Play- 

 grounds for youth or open-air gymnasia can be more 

 remote from the crowded wards of the city. Then there 

 are luxuries, like flower gardens, which the city ought to 

 provide, but not until after the more essential kinds of 

 public grounds have been secured. Of course, all these 

 promenades, concert-grounds, nurseries, playgrounds and 

 gardens can be combined in one way or another, and fhey 

 need take a comparatively small space of the city area. 

 But, besides these is the park proper, which is intended to 

 provide rural scenery as a source of refreshment for towns- 

 people. The wealthy seek change of scene in travel, but 

 those who cannot afford this ought to have available 

 natural scenery, and to furnish this a considerable area 

 of land is needed. In our large cities it requires too much 

 time to get into the country, and entrance to the fields is 

 forbidden when it is reached, and, therefore, it becomes 

 necessary for every large city to secure for the use and 

 enjoyment of its people such neighboring fields and woods, 

 pond-sides and river-banks, valleys and hills as may be 

 made to present fine scenery of one kind or another. 



On the subject of governing parks of this kind, Mr. 

 Olmsted says : 



The providing and managing of reservations of scenery is 

 the highest function and most difficult task of the commis- 

 sioners or directors of park vvforks. Public squares, gardens, 

 playgrounds and promenades may be well or badly con- 

 structed, but no questions are likely to arise in connection 

 therewith which are beyond the comprehension of the ordi- 

 nary man of affairs. If scenic parks, on the other hand, are to 

 be well placed, well bounded, well arranged, and, above all, 

 well preserved, the directors of the work need to be more than 

 ordinary men. Real-estate dealers must, necessarily, be ex- 

 cluded fi'om the management ; politicians, also, if the work is 

 to run smoothly. The work is not purely executive, like the 

 work of directing sewer construction or street cleaning^, which 

 may best be done by single responsible chiefs. The direction 

 of park works may probably best rest with a small body of 

 cultivated men, public-spirited enough to serve without pay, 

 who should regard themselves and be regarded as a board of 

 trustees, and who, as such, should make it their first duty to 

 hand down unharmed from one generation to the next the 

 treasure of scenery which the city has placed in their care. 

 Public libraries and public art museums are created and man- 

 aged by boards of trustees. For similar reasons public parks 

 should be similarly governed. 



A landscape park requires, more than most works of men, 

 continuity of management. Its perfecting is a slow process. Its 

 directors must thoroughly apprehend the fact that the beauty of 

 its landscape is all that justifies the existence of a large public 

 open space in the midst, or even on the immediate borders, of 



a town ; and they must see to it that each newly-appointed 

 member of the governing body shall be grounded in this truth. 

 Holding to the supreme value of fine scenery, they will take 

 pains to subordinate every necessary construction, and to per- 

 fect the essence of the park, which is its landscape, before 

 elaborating details or accessories, such as sculptured gates or 

 gilded fountains, however appropriately or IJeautifully they 

 may be designed. As trustees of park scenery they will be 

 especially watchful to prevent injury thereto from the intru- 

 sion of incongruous or obstrusive structures, statues, gardens 

 (whether floral, botanic or zoologic), speedways or any other 

 instruments of special modes of recreation, however desirable 

 such may be in their proper place. If men can be found to 

 thus serve cities as trustees of scenic or rural parks they will 

 assuredly be entirely competent to serve at the same time as 

 providers and guardians of those smaller and more numerous 

 urban spaces in which every means of recreation, excepting 

 scenery, may best be provided. 



In selecting park sites and boundaries the first problem 

 usually is to choose from the lands sufficiently vacant or cheap 

 to be considered, (i) those reasonably accessible and moder- 

 ately large tracts which are capable of presenting agreeable 

 secluded scenery, and (2) those easily accessible or intervening 

 small tracts which may most cheaply be adapted to serve as 

 local playgrounds or the like. A visit and report from a 

 professional park designer will prove valuable, even at this 

 earliest stage of operations. Grounds of the local playground 

 class may safely be selected in accordance with considerations 

 of cheapness and a reasonably equitable distribution, but the 

 wise selection of even small landscape-parks requires much 

 careful study. It is desirable that a city's parks of this class 

 should present scenery of differing types. It is desirable that 

 the boundaries of each should be so placed as to include all 

 essential elements of the local scenery and to produce the 

 utmost possible seclusion and sense of indefinite extent, as 

 vv'ell as to make it possible to build boundary roads or streets 

 upon good lines and fair grades. Public grounds of every 

 class are best bounded by streets ; otherwise, there is no means 

 of insuring the desirable fronting of buildings toward the 

 public domain. In spite of a common popular prejudice to 

 the contrary, it will generally be found that concave, rather 

 than convex, portions of the earth's surface are to be preferred 

 for park sites. If the course of brooks, streams or rivers can 

 be included in parks, or in strips of public land connecting 

 park with park, or park with town, several advantages will be 

 secured atone stroke. The natural surface-drainage channels 

 will be retained under public control where they belong ; they 

 will be surely defended from pollution ; their banks will offer 

 agreeable public promenades ; while the adjacent boundary 

 roads, one on either hand, will furnish the contiguous buildmg 

 land with an attractive frontage. Where such stream-including 

 strips are broad enough to permit the opening of a distinctively 

 pleasure drive entirely separate from the boundary roads, 

 the ground should be classed as a park. Where the boundary 

 roads are the only roads, the whole strip is properly called a 

 parkway ; and this name is retained even when the space 

 between the boundary roads is reduced to lowest terms and 

 becomes nothing more than a shaded green ribbon, devoted, 

 perhaps, to the separate use of the otherwise dangerous electric 

 cars. In other words, parkways, like parks, may be absolutely 

 formal or strikingly picturesque, according to circumstances. 

 Both will generally be formal when they occupy confined 

 urban spaces bounded by dominating buildmgs. Both will 

 generally become picturesque as soon as, or wherever, oppor- 

 ttmity offers. 



After adequate squares and playgrounds, two or three local 

 landscape parks, and the most necessary connectmg parkways 

 shall have been provided, it may next be advisable to secure 

 one or more large parks, or even one or more reservations of 

 remoter and wilder lands. In a city of five hundred thousand 

 inhabitants a park of five hundred acres, however judiciously 

 located, is soon so much frequented as necessarily to lose 

 much of its rurality ; in other words, much of its special power 

 to refresh and charm. The necessarily broad roads, the nu- 

 merous footways, the swarms of carriages and people, all call 

 to mind the town, and in a measure offset the good effect of 

 the park scenery. It is then that it becomes advisable to go 

 still further afield, in order to acquire and hold in reserve 

 additional domains of scenery, such as Boston has lately ac- 

 quired in the Blue Hills and the Middlesex Fells. In selecting 

 such domains, however, no new principles come into play. 

 As in selecting sites for parks, so here it is always to be borne 

 in mind that provision and preservation of scenery is the pur- 

 pose held in view, and that demarcation of acquired lands is 

 to be determined accordingly. 



