to College of Forestry 



so often done in other cities and much advocated in i\ew 

 York, always produces a condition where the trees are 

 of varying size, age and kind, spaced at irregular and un- 

 satisfactory intervals. The street trees form the most im- 

 portant and often the only esthetic element in street design, 

 and it is difficult to see any reason for releasing them from 

 the oversight of the city which controls and standardizes the 

 rest of the street design. In some cities the tree planting is 

 carried out as a part of the street improvement and this is 

 fortunately the growing tendency. In fact it is no more 

 reasonable to allow the property owner to show his individual 

 preference regarding the kind or arrangement of street trees 

 in front of his property than it is to allow him a similar priv- 

 ilege in the construction of his sidewalk or pavement. 



The smallest unit area of a street that should be planted 

 at one time in Manhattan is a block on the east and west 

 streets, and two or more blocks on the avenues running north 

 and south. The trees for this unit should be of uniform size 

 and kind, and regularly spaced according to the size of the 

 block as regards arrangement. It is of course much better 

 to plant an entire street at once, but units of the size men- 

 tioned will permit of a reasonable degree of uniformity in 

 the street planting in the borough. 



The accompanying typical planting plans have been made 

 to illustrate a satisfactory spacing arrangement for Manhat- 

 tan streets. These plans show a minimum spacing distance 

 of 50 feet, which will be found neither too small for the 

 largest trees, such as the Planes, nor too great for the smaller 

 formally pruned-trees, such as the Poplar and Gingko. This 

 plan will give eight trees to the block on the avenues run- 

 ning north and south where the blocks average about 200 

 feet, and from 24 to 32 trees to the block on the east and west 

 streets according as the blocks vary from GOO to 800 feet. 

 The same standard of spacing should be nsed on any streets 

 which do not divide themselves regularly into blocks. While 

 it would be possible in some cases to plant the trees at smaller 

 intervals, a very satisfactory appearance will be secured at 

 50 feet intervals. In no cases will there be serious crowding, 



