4 
Annual Report 
increased, owing to a revision of the taxing laws. The imme- 
diate demand, use or improvement of these larger park tracts 
could hardly be considered. Justification of the purchase of these 
large tracts on an acreage basis, and so distributed to the differ- 
ent sections of the city will, when associated by the parkways,, 
be objective sites to be gone to, and should, with the tying to- 
gether, be the means of determining the direction of the city's 
development in the next decade, and should eventually be with- 
out cost to the city with the consequent and po-sitive increase in 
property values. 
The parkzvays, of equal importance, extending to and from 
the larger park tracts, establishing lines of park property within 
easy and immediate access of the people, permit of fine resi- 
dential properties all over the city, and do not localize any one 
particular section. Parkway improvements elsewhere have done 
much to advertise and make those cities more attractive. The 
general character of reaching out in all directions has resulted 
in drawing people to those cities to visit and also to established 
residence. 
The playground as designed today, equipped with apparatus, 
sand-courts and wading-pools, is a movement to provide play 
and recreation centers in congested localities, and is a movement 
of recent years' growth. As an adjunct to the park system, it 
has developed a most popular demand. The scope of this un- 
questioned good work has a wide range, from the use of a small 
vacant lot in some cities, to a 15-acre city block in Chicago that 
approximates in cost a million dollars. It has been demon- 
strated that a playground will attract children within a radius 
of one-half mile, and it has been equally well established that 
the wading and swimming-pool w^ill draw its patronage from 
four to five miles ; therefore, in tlie selection of playground sites, 
the character of the improvement to be made had to be con- 
sidered. It was the opinion of the Board that a number of small 
playgrounds distributed over the city were better than one or 
two sites of larger area and more expensive in land cost. In 
accordance, and as a policy for purchase, a minimum size of 
twenty thousand square feet was adopted as the least area for 
playground purposes. Having developed in 1909 six play- 
grounds in the downtown districts, the Board this year has pur- 
