171 
PARK AND CEMETERY . 
NEW BRIDGES AND PARK PLANS IN INDIANAPOLIS 
The most important work recorded 
in the fourteenth annual report of the 
Indianapolis Park Board is the taking 
of steps for a broader and more com- 
prehensive system, and the completion 
of some extensive bridge building. 
At the beginning of the year the park 
department was without an executive 
head. 
The Board felt that the work of the 
department had reached a crisis. The 
situation was such that the city should 
determine whether it would be content 
to make progress as slowly as had been 
the case in the last few years or would 
attempt to do some really notable work 
than had been attempted before. With 
the feeling that the Indianapolis public 
would support the Board in its plans to 
make a better park system than the city 
had ever known, the Board appointed 
Mr. George E. Kessler of Kansas City 
as its landscape architect, and gave into 
his hands the constructive work of the 
department, leaving to the local organ- 
ization the carrying out of the simpler 
work of park administration and main- 
tenance, under Mr. Kessler’s general di- 
rection and supervision. Mr. Kessler 
was appointed February 1, 1908, and 
while the work done has been largely a 
work of preparation for larger things to 
come, the results have been encouraging 
in park building along broader lines 
in the highest degree. The elaboration 
of a larger plan for Indianapolis has, 
however, brought out the shortcomings 
of the methods by which the Board is 
permitted to transact its business under 
its existing law, and has shown the im- 
perative necessity for a new law to give 
the Board of Park Commissioners power 
to carry on park improvements consist- 
ent with the needs of Indianapolis, and 
the power to assess the cost of such, 
work in. a, different way than has here- 
tofore been possible, so that the whole 
cit\' may contribue to the cost of the 
work in proportion to the benefit its sev- 
eral sections receive. 
It is this necessity for new machinery 
and new power that has led the Board 
to the preparation of the park bill which 
the State Legislature has been asked to 
enact. 
In a review of the year's work atten- 
tion is particularly directed to the new 
bridges which were completed in four 
parks, three of them at the expense of 
the department itself and one b}^ Marlon 
County. Tbe building of these bridges 
was not only important of itself, but by 
reason of the fact that better structures 
made necessary works of improvement 
to carry out plans suggested by the lo- 
cation and construction of the bridges. 
The bridges finished during the year 
were : In Brookside Park, built at a 
total cost of $6,708.10; in Garfield Park, 
which cost $9,170.85, and that in Spades 
Park, which cost $2,726.67. The bridges 
in Brookside and Garfield Parks are for 
both horse and foot travel ; that in 
Spades is a foot-bridge. All three are 
of reinforced concrete construction, and 
in each case the bridge filled a real want, 
as it replaced a bridge that had become 
insufficient for the needs of the park 
and the community in which it was sit- 
uated. 
The fourth bridge is the new one 
across White River at Thirtieth street 
in Riverside Park, which the Marion 
County Commissioners completed at a 
total cost of $180,000. This bridge not 
only took the place of an old structure 
which the city had long ago outgrown, 
but it has. given the city one of the hand- 
somest bridges in the country, which 
must, if the work in Riverside is prop- 
erly done, constitute the center of a very 
important park development. The new 
bridge in Riverside Park does not cross 
the river directly in line with Thirtieth 
street, but leaves that line to cross the 
river at right atigles to the direction of 
the stream, and this has made possible 
the working out of a system of ap- 
proaches on both banks that will, it is 
NEW STO'NE FACED CONCRETE ARCH BRIDGE OVER WHITE RIVER IN RIVERSIDE PARK. SHOWING NEED 
OF DEVELOPMENT IN ITS VICINITY. 
