SEATS IN PUBLIC PARKS 



the entire park with seats, if the seating problem is considered as a 

 part of the design of the park and not as an after-thought. An 

 especially flagrant example of seats treated as an after-condition, 

 rather than as a fundamental factor in the design of a park, may be 

 observed in Madison Square Garden, New York City, where every 

 walk, by dire necessity, has become outlined with a continuous row of 

 benches on each side, an obvious example where the desi^ of the park 

 should be re-studied to free the main cross lines from such disturbance, 

 at the same time providing more ample and adequate accommodation 

 for the very great number of seats undeniably needed in that park. 



The single continuous bench for secondary walks, designed as a 

 unit in itself and yet as an integral part of the park as a whole, has 

 been used in King's Park, Gibraltar, with good effect. The illustra- 

 tion of a similar seat in the Fortezza Park in Florence shows a clever 

 combining of a low retaining wall with steps and seats. The picture 

 was taken in the early morning and the one small boy giving scale to 

 the picture would not have been posed there in the sun except on the 

 promise of ample remuneration. In the late afternoon, however, 

 when this long seat becomes shaded, it is thronged with people watch- 

 ing the iridescent rainbows of the beautiful fountain and the pretty 

 scene of children absorbed in feeding the schools of gold fish in the 

 water basin. It is then that every inch of this seat is occupied and all 

 have repeatedly " moved up " until there is scarcely room for one 

 more. This seat extends the entire length of the large water basin and 

 yet is so much a part of the park design that it does not appear exag- 

 gerated. The effect is far more restful than would be obtained by a 

 great number of closely crowded, end-to-end park benches of the 

 ordinary type. 



There is a striking arrangement of stone benches in the Piazza 

 deirindependenzia, Florence, where a great number of benches are 

 placed in a formal line along the outer edge of the park in the nature 



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