120 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
February, 1906 
Civic Betterment 
The Cost of Civic Beauty 
EAUTIFIED utility is never too costly. Over 
and over again the cost benefits of public 
improvements have been proved, defined, 
established. It is true of public betterments 
of a sanitary character; it is true of public 
betterments that look to commercial advance- 
ment; it is true of public betterments that have primarily an 
art value. The practical and the ornamental betterment are 
alike in this: that money wisely expended for good purposes 
is safely and profitably invested. 
The limitations of expenditures for civic betterment are, 
of course, very obvious. The work undertaken must be good 
in itself and serve some good purpose. Money expended for 
a worthless filtration plant, for example, is money worse 
than wasted. Money spent for bad art is not always consid- 
ered as so completely lost as money that might be wasted for 
worthless sanitary apparatus. ‘The statue causes no ill health 
and may be avoided by passing down the next street, while 
an impure water supply brings death and destruction to many 
helpless persons. 
The two classes of misfortunes can scarcely be compared, 
yet it is as much of a public misfortune for a community to 
possess a bad work of art as a badly designed sewage system. 
The evil results are quite unlike in each case, but each is a 
misfortune. ‘There is one important difference, however: a 
bad sewage system is apt to hasten a better one from the 
manifest necessity of improving bad conditions. A bad 
statue, however, dulls the public appreciation of art, en- 
courages an incompetent sculptor in making bad statues, and 
leads many persons who know nothing about art to regard 
The Town 
THE first step in all good designing is the plan. ‘The 
architect may start out with some preconceived notion of 
what he imagines his building will be like, but he can not and 
never does undertake the work of designing for practical 
execution until the plan has been studied and determined 
upon. 
Quite the contrary method has been followed in the build- 
ing of cities, and most of the inconveniences experienced in 
modern cities are due to this reversal of the proper method 
of design. ‘The simple truth is that cities are not designed, 
but grow. And they grow according to no system. ‘Their 
growth is helped and retarded by many causes; sometimes it 
is urban car lines; sometimes it is an unexpected development 
of manufactures; sometimes it is the unforeseen tendencies 
of trade and fashion. ‘The one certain thing is that the city 
plan does not help this work of progress and often retards it. 
In great cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
Chicago, St. Louis, and others of the first rank, it is difficult 
to overcome the obstacles occasioned by a bad plan. ‘The 
cost of change and correction is too great to be considered 
under the conditions of American municipal government. 
Sometimes help will be given by the opening of a new street 
or a small park, but radical changes which are absolutely 
necessary to produce satisfactory results—the only kind of 
changes really worth their cost—have never been attempted. 
It is a singular thing, however, and one very much to be 
regretted, that our greater communities do not learn the 
an atrocious piece of work as something very admirable 
indeed. With the aftermath that the incompetent sculptor 
gets more commissions and the cause of true art and of good 
art is not helped at all. 
But the probabilities of bad work in any phase of civic 
betterment are diminishing every day. Artists and scientists, 
engineers and public designers of every sort, are doing better 
work every day. The public conscience is being awakened 
on these matters. Discussions on the lecture platform, in 
the magazines and newspapers, have broadened the public 
mind, and many important public matters are now well 
understood by people who, but a few years ago, did not so 
much as know the words they now readily use. 
Art, of course, follows at the end of the procession, and 
is likely long to continue to do so; but just so soon as art 
exhibits a practical form, and people learn that it has a real 
live, commercial value, it will be appreciated and understood 
in a way that now seems quite impossible. Already the in- 
dications that this time is not far off is apparent. For many 
years Paris has been a shining light as a practical example 
of civic betterment of very unusual artistic merit and beauty. 
Other European cities have made it their model, in these 
respects, to their own great betterment in appearance. Our 
American cities are seeking, in a way, to follow the same 
brilliant footsteps. [he mildest tribute that can be paid 
to the beauty of Paris is that if travelers do not visit the fair 
French capital to look at it, they find so much there to see 
that the mere outward aspects of the city are a lasting joy in 
the memory. The profits of the cost of this civic betterment 
are great beyond the dreams of avarice. 
and Its Plan 
lesson taught by the difficulties of their older parts in the 
laying out of new sections. Many great areas of building 
sites have been added to the available area of New York in 
the last few years, but the gridiron plan which so completely 
hinders locomotion and transportation in the older parts of 
the city have been faithfully reproduced in the new sections, 
so that no possible indication of relief is apparent. 
As a matter of fact, America possesses but one city that 
has been laid out in a rational, satisfactory and beautiful 
manner. ‘This is Washington, our single example of a city 
planned before it was built, our only instance of a city de- 
veloped in the right manner, a veritable object lesson in 
municipal planning, conceived on a generous scale at the out- 
set, and one which has successfully stood the test of a hundred 
years of actual growth. 
The pre-eminent point of excellence in the plan of Wash- 
ington is its diagonal streets. Radial lines, starting from a 
convenient or conspicuous center, are the most convenient 
and the most helpful of all street plans. Washington has 
them because the French engineer, L’ Enfant, who laid out the 
city, knew their value. The modern parts of Paris have them 
because the engineers of Baron Haussmann recognized their 
merits. It is passing strange that, with these two splendid 
examples in full public view, the authorities responsible for 
the new streets of all our cities have not been awakened to 
the value of the diagonal line in the city plan. There is a 
large future in this work. 
