335 PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PLANNING and DEVELOPING a CITY PARK SYSTEM 
{From report by Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects, 
Brookline, Mass., to the Park Board of Portland, Ore.) 
I— The Units and the System 
As in the case of almost every com- 
plex work composed of varied units, 
econom}^, efficiency, symmetry and com- 
pleteness are likely to be secured only 
when the system as a whole is planned 
comprehensively and the purposes to be 
accomplished defined clearly in advance. 
Otherwise, valuable opportunities may 
be overlooked, disproportionate efforts 
maybe expended in the accomplishment 
of particular objects of relatively minor 
importance while others more vital may 
be -ignored or slighted. Limited means 
may be expended on the less important 
purposes, leaving more essentia! feat- 
ures unprovided for. 
In order to determine upon a com- 
prehensive system of parks it is first 
necessary to define and classify the var- 
ious units of which the system is to be 
composed, even though it may not be 
practicable to carry out these ideas in 
all cases. The units of a park system 
generally recognized are city squares, 
play grounds, small or neighborhood 
parks, large or suburban parks, scenic 
reservations, boulevards and parkways. 
City squares are comparatively small, 
ornamental grounds, usually dominated 
by surrounding buildings and necessarily 
more or less intimately related to sur- 
rounding and abutting streets. They are 
usually flat or simple in topography. 
They are more distinctly ornamental in- 
cidents of daily city life and of urban 
conditions than are larger parks. Hence 
they are usually and most appropriately 
improved formally and symmetrically 
and often with prominent architectural 
and sculptural features. They may even 
be so extremely artificial as to be with- 
out trees, flowers or grass. That some 
actually are so and yet command the 
admiration of people of taste is an in- 
dication of their essential qualities and 
fundamental differences from parks 
proper. Few cities have anywhere near 
as many ornamental squares as they 
should. It is particularly desirable that 
a city should have several of its prin- 
cipal public buildings facing upon a large 
public square, as the new custom house 
in New York faces upon the Bowling 
Green, not occupying it as the postoffice 
and municipal buildings occupy the City 
Hal! Park. 
Play grounds are primarily selected 
and improved for particular forms of 
recreation and only such beauty and 
ornamentation is allowable as will not 
undul}^ interfere v/ith their usefulness 
for their intended purpose. As the noise 
which those who use them indulge in 
makes them somewhat objectionable to 
neighbors it is often best to combine 
them with public squares in such a way 
as to partially separate and screen their 
strictly utilitarian parts from adjoining 
streets and buildings, as in the case of 
Charlesbank in Boston, or to locate them 
in parks proper in such a way as to 
avoid undue injury to the main purpose 
of the park as in the case of Jackson 
Park, Chicago. 
Urban or neighborhood parks include 
public pleasure grounds of a variety of 
sizes and styles. They may be formal in 
general design and informal in some de- 
tails like .the public park at Dijon, in 
France, or they may be as informal as 
the designer can make them, like Morn- 
ingside Park in New York, or, as is 
generally the case, they may be informal 
in general design but more or less filled 
with formal and artificial details like the 
Public 'Garden in Boston. Neighbor- 
hood parks are large enough to contain 
naturalistic scenery but not large enough 
to enable the visitor to enjoy fully the 
feeling of escape from city sights and 
sounds and of seclusion which it is the 
function of the large rural or suburban 
parks to encourage. Nevertheless the 
local park is the more useful to the 
daily life of the citizens since its re- 
stricted size and cost enable the city to 
distribute them in various localities in 
close proximity to densely populated 
sections or where they can soon become 
surrounded by a large population. To 
make them as attractive and useful as 
possible it is often best to abandon the 
attempt to secure simple, broad landscape 
effects and to design them with as many 
interesting features and useful subdivi- 
sions as practicable somewhat as a rec- 
reation building is subdivided. It may 
not be possible to wholly screen out sur- 
rounding streets and houses, yet it will 
usually make them more enjoyable for 
visitors to do so to some extent. In 
short, local parks are recreation grounds 
in which beauty of vegetation, and of- 
ten of small scale naturalistic scenery is 
the first consideration, but which, never- 
theless, admits of a large amount of the 
formal and semi-formal work of the 
gardener and the architect and has often 
much provision for games and amuse- 
ments. Drives are often inadvisedly in- 
troduced into such parks. Unless there 
is some fine outlook to which it is de- 
sirable to lead people in carriages, as 
in the case of The Front in Buffalo, or 
some bluff or river bank or lake or other 
landscape feature which cannot be 
viewed from carriages in adjoining- 
streets, or unless there is a concert 
grove at which it is desired to provide 
for visitors in carriages, or unless the 
local park be part of a continuous chain 
of parks and parkways, or unless there 
is some other good reason, a drive is an 
undesirable intrusion in a local park. 
Such -a park is worth far more for vis- 
itors on foot, especially children of the 
neighborhood, than it is for visitors in 
carriages who may be presumed to be 
better able to visit the larger suburban 
parks. Local parks since they are more 
conveniently and daily accessible by 
large numbers of people, must have ad- 
equately wide and numerous walks, and 
these walks must especially provide for 
short-cutting since local parks are usu- 
ally directly in the way of many pedes- 
trians. 
Rural or Suburban Parks : These 
parks are intended to afford to visitors 
that sort of mental refreshment and en- 
joyment which can only be derived from 
the quiet contemplation of natural scen- 
ery. There is absolutely no other rec- 
reation or amusement customarily pro-- 
