OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 79 



HAMILTON FISH PARK 



This is a park that was built ih the neighborhood of Stanton Street, east of the Bowery 

 about half a mile. 



The building in this park is one of the worst of the kind I ever saw. It was built by 

 one of the leading firms of architects, and I think that everybody who ever had anything 

 to do with it is in absolute despair; they don't know what to do with it to make it useful; 

 it has a great space of about eighty feet, with Httle baths in the basement. One side is 

 arranged for an indoor gymnasium, which nobody ever uses, and I don't think the Park 

 Department ought to provide that sort of thing. It should provide room where they can 

 have a good time. The building cost $80,000, and it is almost impossible to use it, and 

 it is constructed in such a way that to alter it so as to make it useful would cost not less 

 than $25,000. 



But the park itself is all right. There is a street goes through there. It is a carefully 

 laid out park, but the lines are too straight. 



HUDSON STREET PARK 



The Hudson Street Park is particularly inconvenient because it has no playground 

 space, and it has no grass in it. There is a stone wall around the outside and stone walks, 

 and the whole thing is artificial; it is a case of formality carried to the last and worst extent. 

 But still this park is very useful, and is not in so crowded a neighborhood, and the 

 children play basket-ball and tennis, but baseball is out of the question. 



Baths are an excellent thing, and I do not want to say anything against them, 

 but it strikes me that the city ought to keep them in their proper places. A park should 

 be essentially a park, and it should not be filled up with libraries, museums, schools, and 

 all that sort of thing; the general public does not appreciate that, and it is a fight to prevent 

 it. I have a great deal of trouble with the Carnegie libraries; they are trying to get into 

 the parks everywhere. That is the feeling I have about the bath-houses. I don't mean 

 that there should not be baths in the parks, a certain number of them might be made 

 for the convenience of the people who come to the parks to use the gymnasium, etc. 



None of these parks has been flooded in winter for skating. It could be done, but 

 I do not know how it would work; it is such a tremendously crowded neighborhood. Take 

 the skating in Central Park; I can remember, as a boy, going up there and enjoying it, 

 but now the moment the skating is open there are tens of thousands of people on hand 

 and in half an hour the ice is so cut up it is almost impossible to skate on it; that would 

 be the case here. 



Wading-pools have been tried, and I have questioned their value. They tried to intro- 

 duce them in Central Park; I am afraid of them; it would be very hard to control them. 



The same thing applies to the effects of the crowd up in Central Park. There is 

 hardly, I was going to say, a good shrub left in Central Park. When the spring comes 

 and niacs are in bloom people seem to go mad; and the best people of the city, too. They 

 tear the bushes all to pieces. There is a sort of feeling among the American people that 

 anything public belongs to them individually, and that they have a right to do with it 

 as they choose; if they do damage in using it, that is all right, the city has got to stand 



