PARK 
AND CEMETERY. 
278 
be the place for a civic center or cen- 
ters. Near the entrance to Audubon 
Park is a formally arranged group 
of college buildings in association 
with which an art museum could per- 
haps be arranged, although it would 
seem to me that such a building 
would be more appropriately asso- 
ciated with the Sophie Newcomb 
School, which is an art center, hav- 
ing a national reputation. It certain- 
ly should not encroach upon any part 
of Audubon Park, which will be found 
to be too small in the future, not too 
large. 
Warren H. Manning. 
Landscape Designer, Boston. 
.-)! * * 
We learn with much satisfaction 
that the cultured people of New Or- 
leans have formed an Art Associa- 
tion with the intention of creating a 
Museum of Art; but, we regret that 
we deem it our duty to advise your 
Audubon Park Association that it 
would be contrary to the purpose of 
the trust imposed upon them to grant 
a site for an Art Museum building in 
Audubon Park. 
We are aware that there are a few 
precedents which might seem to war- 
rant the contrary course, but we have 
had occasion to know that in cases 
in which Art Museums have been put 
in large landscape parks, there have 
been special conditions which ap- 
peared to justify the abstraction from 
the park land for this purpose, or else 
that the privilege was granted by 
Park Commissions whose decision 
was not approved by those who were 
best fitted by their knowledge and 
appreciation of the purpose of large 
or landscape parks, to properly pass 
upon such a special problem of de- 
sign. 
The most important case in which 
a large Art Museum occurs in a large 
park is that of the Metropolitan Art 
Museum in Central Park, New York. 
That is the only case we know of in 
which an eminent landscape architect 
was willing to concede that the loss 
to the park and its landscape was so 
unimportant as to justify the location 
of the Art Museum in the park. The 
peculiar conditions in that case were 
due to the fact that in the landscape 
sense Central Park is, in effect, two 
parks separated by the great elevated 
reservoirs and conected only by com- 
paratively narrow strips of parking on 
each side. In one of these strips, and 
cut off from the body of the park 
south of it by a transverse road, with 
its walls and mounds and dense bor- 
der plantations, there was a mostly 
unimproved area between the older. 
smaller reservoir and Fifth avenue, 
which, it was thought, could be di- 
verted from park landscape use and 
occupied by the Art Museum without 
undue sacrifice. 
In other cases, we believe, where 
Art Museums have been located in 
large landscape parks, it has been at 
enormous and wholly inadequate sac- 
rifice of the only sound, logical jus- 
tification that can be discovered for 
the taking out of the building area of 
a city such a large tract of land in a 
single piece as Audubon Park. This 
justification is the necessity of a large 
tract of land in order to provide a 
naturalistic landscape of such charac- 
ter that it will afford to visitors some 
fair degree of the pleasure and re- 
freshment of a visit to the country or 
of a temporary escape from the nerve- 
racking conditions of city life. If 
the same area as that of Audubon 
Park were scattered over the city in 
the form of squares and playgrounds 
and small parks, it would be far more 
accessible to the citizens and it could 
be fitted to be extremely useful in 
many respects, but such a series of 
small parks would be utterly unable 
to afford that kind of rest and refresh- 
ment and pleasure which Audubon 
Park can, in due time, be fitted to 
supply. If, as is clearly the case, the 
best use that so large a park as Au- 
dubon Park can be put to in a great 
city is to provide naturalistic land- 
scape, then it is equally clear that it 
would be a shocking waste and ex- 
travagance to spoil or materially re- 
duce or injure its breadth and adapta- 
bility for landscape treatment. 
If New Orleans happened to have 
more than 20 per cent of its area not 
in streets, in vacant land scattered 
about in various sized tracts, it would 
be the part of wisdom to reserve at 
least three tracts of several hundred 
acres each in the outskirts of the 
densely built-up portion of the city 
for landscape parks. One of these 
should be up the river, one down the 
river and the other about midway of 
the zone back from the river. Audu- 
bon Park is exactly the first of these 
logical landscape parks and most as- 
suredly it should be preserved for 
that sole purpose. Whatever build- 
ings and artificial improvements are 
permitted in Audubon Park, should 
be germane to its true purpose and 
so subordinated to its landscape as 
to detract from its natural beauty as 
little as possible. 
In our opinion an Art Museum is 
not germane to the true purpose of 
Aububon Park and would be, or 
might in time become, so large and 
conspicuous as to unwarrantably in- 
jure the landscape of the park. 
Olmsted Brothers, 
Landscape Architects, 
Brookline, Mass. 
5tc >5^ 
You are evidently in the same posi- 
tion as every other Park Department 
in the country. Having open prop- 
erties, there is always the temptation 
to patriotic citizens to raise funds foi 
objects that require buildings and in- 
variably find it possible to obtain 
ample funds for buildings, but noth- 
ing for grounds and naturally they 
attach the open grounds. 
I am personally most distinctly 
against the erection of buildings of 
any character other than is absolutely 
necessary for the equipment of parks 
within any of these properties. 
When you study the situation in 
any city in the country you will find 
that after all the terrific pressure that 
may have been brought to bear to 
erect buildings other than for park use 
within the limits of parks, the reac- 
tion against that sort of thing comes 
only after these buildings have been 
erected and gradual encroachment 
ma de upon public open grounds. 
Lfnfortunately for you, and as I find 
it for me, there is a measure of plausi- 
bility in the feeling that an Art Mu- 
seum is a proper exception to this 
general condition, but unless there is 
absolutely no other way to dispose of 
the problem you evidently have on 
hand, I would certainly recommend to 
you to avoid placing an Art Museum 
in Audubon Park. However, particu- 
lar local conditions and inability to 
obtain proper ground with proper set- 
ting might modify such an opinion in 
a measure, but I have always found 
that where there is the determination 
to obtain the right kind of ground 
and the right setting for such build- 
ings outside of the public areas that it 
is always worked out, and in the end 
found invariably to be the best. 
The cities of America are building 
up so rapidly that it is really criminal 
to permit encroachment upon any 
open spaces, and many of them find 
it necessary to materially add to their 
open grounds in spite of every plausi- 
ble and undoubtedly fine argument 
that may be made in favor of the erec- 
tion of encroachments for the various 
laudable purposes. 
The trouble is there is no end to 
the demands on the open grounds for 
legitimate building uses, and surely 
the few open places our cities have 
should be held inviolable. 
Geo. E. Kessler, 
Landscape Architect, Kansas City, Mo. 
