375 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PLANNING and DEVELOPING a CITY PARK SYSTEM 
(Concluded) 
{From report by Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects, 
Brookline, Mass., to the Park Board of Portland, Ore.) 
III. — Organization and Management 
The proper determination and im- 
provement of a complete park system 
for a city is one of the most difficult 
and responsible duties that ever comes 
to a city government*. Not only is the 
total expenditure necessarily a very 
great one, but a large part of the ex- 
penditure is liable to be as absolutely 
wasted, if the true objects fail to be 
accomplished, as if the money was 
thrown in the fire. 
Experience proves that the most suc- 
cessful government of important park 
systems is by a small board of unpaid 
park commissioners. There should be 
not less than three nor more than five 
members, who should be appointed for 
long, over-lapped terms and should us- 
ualh' be repeatedly appointed. Park 
commissioners should be appointed by 
some authority as little concerned with 
local politics as possible and yet suf- 
ficiently widely and well acquainted with 
the best educated class of citizens to be 
able to select those best fitted for the 
duties of park commissioners. The board 
should be financially independent of the 
city government but should work har- 
moniously with other city department's. 
The board should not meet normally 
oftener than once a month, else the 
ablest and most desirable men, who are 
therefore the busiest men, may decline 
to serve, but most matters, except mat- 
ters of taste, can be referred to commit- 
tees of one or two members who can, 
at their convenience, examine into sub- 
jects too complicated to be decided off- 
hand at board meetings, and after due 
conference with the principal employes 
of the board can report to the board. 
The board should hear reports from its 
principal employes and pass upon ques- 
tions of greater importance than should 
be decided by an employe, mainly ques- 
tions of general policy. In general, the 
board should leave planning to compe- 
tent experts and the execution of plans, 
including the selection of subordinates, 
to an efficiently and specially trained su- 
perintendent, so far as his capacity, the- 
oretical knowledge and practical experi- 
ence makes it safe to do so. The 
commissioners should, of course, keep 
sufficiently familiar with the work to 
intelligently pass upon all questions 
brought before them at their meetings, 
but they should not individually direct 
work nor give orders. Fortunately it is 
a healthful and more or less recreative 
task for park commissioners to inspect 
parks. 
The president of a park commission 
should be an able administrator, pref- 
erably a man who is in active control of 
many and large commercial undertak- 
ings. He should 'have traveled enough 
to have gained a general knowledge of 
the characteristics that combine to make 
the parks of other cities beautiful. Dur- 
ing the times when important land deals 
are under consideration, the president 
of the board should be a man who has 
been successful in that line incidentally 
to the establishment or extension of 
some large commercial undertaking. A 
resourceful man, with strength of char- 
acter, persistence, sound judgment', and 
above all, tact, can often save a city a 
large percentage in cost of land for 
parks. 
But whether or not the president of 
the board is both an able business man 
and a good judge of park beauty, it is 
of the utmost importance that the rest 
of the board be men of refined taste and 
competent to safely decide the innumer- 
able questions that concern the appear- 
ance of the parks and of every part of 
them and of every object proposed to 
be put upon them. If they are not fit 
for that, they are practically useless. As 
a rule, men of cultivated taste are most 
apt to be found among those who have 
always been rich or well-to-do and 
among professional men more than busi- 
ness men and especially among liberally 
educated men. Although it has not been 
customary to have women on park 
boards, it would seem that as there arc 
probably more of them in a given city 
who have had the time and inclination 
to cultivate an appreciation of the beau- 
tiful in nature and art, it might be ad- 
vantageous to enlarge the choice of the 
appointing authority by including in the 
park board one or two women of cul- 
tivated taste. If a park board has an 
able business man at its head, the other 
members should not hamper him in se- 
curing efficient administration of the bus- 
iness, but they should control him and 
all under him in regard to all matters 
of appearance. It is for this reason that 
park systems should not be managed by 
a single commissioner. A single com- 
missioner may be very proper in the 
case of the police department, the fire 
department and others where efficiency 
is the main consideration and beauty 
incidental, but park beauty should al- 
ways 'be the controlling consideration, 
and the two or four members of the 
board who were selected primarily be- 
cause they were believed to be good 
judges of beauty in park matters are 
certainly much more likely to judge 
safely all matters of appearance than is 
one man who has been selected for his 
business ability. 
.Since it is found desirable that park 
commissioners should serve without 
pay, it is important that the duties of 
the position should be kept as light as 
is consistent with the successful accom- 
plishment of the business and esthetic 
control of the work, and that the mem- 
bers of the board should be so eminent 
and at the same time so genially agree- 
able to each other that it will be a posi- 
tive pleasure for them to meet together. 
This pleasure and the intellectual satis- 
faction of controlling the accomplish- 
ment of things that will be beautiful 
and even monumental and that will be 
admired by both the most intelligent 
and the most numerous classes of the 
community, form the reward which en- 
ables the city to enlist the services of 
able men without salaries. 
As in every other important class of 
human endeavor, the best results will 
