169 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PARK SU P|ERINTENDENTS MEET AT TORONTO, ONT. 
THE ninth 
annual conven- 
tion of the 
American As- 
sociation of 
Park Superin- 
tendents which 
was held in 
Toronto Aug. 
1 . 5 - 16-17 was the 
most success- 
ful in the history of the organization. 
The attendance was good, with many of 
the members coming from long dis- 
tances. The headquarters of the asso- 
ciation were at the Queens Hotel, but 
the business meetings were all held in 
one of the committee rooms in the city 
hall. BN-'ron Worthen, the president, 
was unable to be present. Vice-presi- 
dent John Chambers, of Toronto, was 
elected president pro tern, and conducted 
the business at the different sessions in 
a very commendable manner. 
It was rather late Thursday after- 
noon before some of the delegates ar- 
rived, the Boston party, for instance, 
getting in five hours behind schedule 
• time. The afternoon was devoted to 
a drive of inspection through some of 
the public grounds of the city under 
the leadership of Alderman Vaughan 
of the parks committee, Alderman Gra- 
ham of the reception committee. Park 
Commissioner John Chambers and other 
officials of the department. 
The drive extended through Queens 
Park, University Grounds, Alexandra 
Park and High Park. In the pavilion 
at the latter park lunch was served and 
the guests formally welcomed to the 
city by Alderman Graham. In the ev- 
ening a business session was held, the 
time being almost entirely devoted to 
a paper on Band Concerts in Parks, by 
Theodore Wirth, of Minneapolis, and 
an interesting discussion of points sug- 
gested by' the paper, Mr. Wirth spoke 
as follows : 
Neighborhood Park Service 
“I have often thought, of late years, that 
park work would at times become almost 
monotonous if it required only the atten- 
tion and skill to make parks attractive and 
keep them in good trim. Yet it was, more 
or less, with such a confined idea of duty 
and requirement, that I assumed the ad- 
ministrative burdens of my first appoint- 
ment as park superintendent. 
“I entered that service as a landscape 
gardener. Today, I proudly claim to be 
more, because I have found out that our 
parks must be more than mere beauty 
spots in order to accomplish all the good 
they can in public life. I am finding, al- 
most daily, new fields and openings for 
useful, beneficial service to the public, out- 
side of the gardening profession, and ail 
those innovations into the original plans 
and ideas of park work and park life, do 
not only not interfere or mar the beauty 
of the original picture and its conception, 
but on the contrary, in most cases they en- 
hance its beauty and in all they many-fold 
increase the value of the work as a whole. 
“Some twenty-five years ago, one of the 
leading park builders of the West was en- 
gaged in designing a park system for a very 
promising growing city, and in reading his 
report outlining the plans he then sub- 
mitted, one can readily see that outside of 
the desire to preserve natural scenery and 
create additional beauty spots, the full, 
far-reaching value of parks as recreation 
grounds was at that time not fully recog- 
nized, or at least did not receive due con- 
sideration. Let me quote him as follows: 
“ T strongly recommend an extended sys- 
tem of boulevards, or ornamental avenues, 
rather than a series of detached open areas 
of public squares. The latter are certainly 
desirable and always form attractive feat- 
ures, but they are comparatively local in 
their character and fail to impart such 
dignity and beauty as is conferred by a 
grand ornamental avenue, comprising a 
continual succession of pretty gardens en- 
livened by the constant passing of throngs 
of pedestrians and fine equipages.’ 
“Now this man, at his time, was up-to- 
date, and the sentiment and opinion ex- 
pressed in those few lines, show, if I in- 
terpret them right, a certain limit of the 
purposes and usefulness of parks, which in 
the last ten or fifteen years has almost 
everywhere been happily overstepped and 
widened. The local, district or neighbor- 
hood park, whatever we may call it, has 
come to the foreground as a most important 
factor to any complete park system. 
New cities, in planning their system, give 
them from the beginning due consideration 
and thought, while older cities spend enor- 
mous sums to acquire comparatively small 
tracts of land for this very purpose and 
need, which, although always in existence, 
has been clearly underestimated, if it has 
not been totally unrecognized. 
“By far the largest percentage of those 
neighborhood parks are or should be lo- 
cated in those parts of our cities where 
the population is or will become the most 
congested, and consequently they ajre the 
recreation grounds of the people who need 
them the most. Large parks are all right, 
but unless they are within easy reach of 
the poorer classes, they will be compara- 
tively little benefited by them. Twenty- 
five or fifty cents are soon spent for car 
fare alone by even a small family for oc- 
casional visits, while they ought to be able 
to get the benefit of such a breathing spot 
at no cost, and at all times within easy 
walking distance. 
“The up-to-date neighborhood park of 
today embraces more than well kept 
lawns. attractive flower-beds, screening 
shrubbery plantations, shady walks and 
THEODORE WIRTH’S PORTABLE BAND STAND. 
Stand Ready for Use in a Minneapolis Park. 
PORTABLE BAND STAND FOLDED FOR TRANSPORTATION. 
Seats and Other Equipment Carried Inside. 
