PARKS AND STREET TREES OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Washington, famous for its man}- 
small parks and squares at street inter- 
sections, and its avenues of well-cared 
for street shade trees is making prep- 
arations for the further development 
of the park system with the appropria- 
tion of $1,400,000 granted by the last 
Congress. Of this sum $365,000 is 
recommended for an addition of nine- 
ty-nine acres to Rock Creek Park. A 
park of fifteen acres on Meridian Hill, 
Sixteenth street, is provided at a cost 
of $375,000. For a reservation on 
Georgetown Heights $140,000 is set 
aside. 'Another $150,000 is appropria- 
ted for a park on the Carpenter tract 
at Pennsylvania and Branch avenues 
southeast. 
George H. Brown, landscape gard- 
ener of the Public Grounds, has made 
an interesting report to Col. Bromwell, 
the engineer officer in charge of public 
buildings and grounds, in regard to 
the parks from which we get the fol- 
lowing information : The present im- 
proved city parks and park places of 
Washington cover in all an area of 
about 500 acres, exclusive of the Poto- 
mac Park, which is now in process of 
improvement. The majority of them 
are park places of small extent and 
border the avenues and principal thor- 
oughfares of the city and are so wide- 
ly distributed that it requires a good 
day’s journe}' with a fair traveling 
roadster to visit all of them. 
In their present improved conditions 
they are all comparatively modern 
creations. Thirty-five years ago the 
major number of them were unsightly 
waste places, covered with debris and 
weed growth, and were a menace to the 
health of the city. Now the greater 
number of them are highly improved 
and transformed into verdant lawn 
spaces with attractions of trees, shrubs 
and flowers, forming pleasing contrasts 
to their city environment of avenues 
and streets. The government reserva- 
tions, which may properly be designa- 
ted as the city parks, are of larger ex- 
tent, their area varying from four to 
over eighty acres, and include the chain 
of parks on the Mall, the President’s 
Park (more generally known as the 
White lot), at right angles to the term- 
ination of the Mall ; Lafayette Park, 
Franklin Park, Judiciary Park, Garfield 
Park, Stanton and Lincoln parks, the 
Capitol 'Grounds, the Botanical Garden, 
and the Agricultural Department 
grounds, the three latter not under the 
control of the officer in charge of pub- 
lic buildings and grounds. 
Thirty-five years ago the major num- 
ber of these government reservations, 
then unimproved, had barely recovered 
sightliness from their occupancy by the 
army for hospitals, barracks, and cattle 
pens, etc., during the Civil War; arid the 
old canal and its basins, together with 
Tiber Creek, then receiving the sew- 
age of the city in large part were . 
very unsightly blemishes in and through 
the chain of parks called “the Mall.’’ 
yiEW IN FRANKLIN SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
