263 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
property, it may be that only the commercial good sense 
of the owners remains for the protection of the public. 
If they are farseeing and of fine civic spirit they will 
secure at least as good a system of advertising as our 
illustrations show. 
Concerning advertising on vacant lots, walls, etc., the 
society has taken the attitude that it would be futile to 
try to abolish sign boards and posters, desirable as 
such a consummation might seem to some artistic souls. 
Regulation and improvement, not suppression has been 
adopted as its policy. 
Already the height and the material of sign boards 
are restricted to prevent the endangering of the public 
life and limb by rickety or inflammable structures. The 
allowance of size is very liberal — lo feet of height for 
single sign boards fastened in the ground and i8 feet 
for double deckers. Buffalo has reduced the size per- 
mitted to 7 feet; but the New York Board of Aider- 
men, urged on by advertising firms, has shown a tend- 
ency to increase rather than to decrease the maximum. 
it can, as is shown, be made more nearly an ornament 
than an eyesore. If the rented sign boards in and 
around Union Square were chiefly pictorial and all of 
them in Dutch style, and if those in other sections of the 
city were made to conform to other styles of art such 
as Louis XIV, or Old English, the effect of harmony 
and sightliness would be greatly enhanced. The com- 
mittee further suggests that posters be “edited” or 
censored as to their artistic fitness in the same man- 
ner as public monuments are now treated, with some 
such body as the Municipal Art Society or the Improve- 
ment Commission as censor. 
^ ¥ V 
A recent storm in St. Paul, Minn., blew over a large 
number of billboards, and an effort was made' to' pass 
an ordinance in the city council forbidding their re- 
erection within 50 feet of a street, which would mean 
practically the abolition of the bill boards in the busi- 
ness district and in thickly settled residence districts. 
The ordinance was however defeated. 
AN IMPROVED BILLBOARD, WITH PICTORIAL FEATURES PROMINENT, AND ALL IN DUTCH STYLE. 
That tendency must be stopped. If 10 feet be allowed 
that should be the extreme limit. Double deckers, with 
their 18 feet of corset and whisky signs, should be for- 
bidden. They are too big to harmonize even with the 
skyscrapers. A city ordinance forbids the advertise- 
ment of quack remedies or medicine in the streets. This 
ordinance is persistently broken and the society’s next 
fight may be to secure its enforcement. 
Equally important with the check on Brobdignagian 
sizes is the improvement of the artistic quality of the 
signs. Cavillers will perhaps argue that they have no 
artistic equality to be improved; but most persons will 
agree that, whatever the quality be styled, it is better 
in some cases than in others. To encourage an improve- 
ment of equality the Municipal Art Society held this 
exhibition of artistic and commercial posters. 
At the exhibition O. & J. Gude & Co. show by photo- 
graphs and pictures what improvement of quality has 
been achieved by them recently, and they make a preg- 
nant suggestion for further improvement. They dis- 
played a sketch for advertising on a fence board, with 
very little lettering used and all the pictures in Dutch 
style. Though a fence so decorated cannot, of course, 
be made as artistic as a row of the Old Dutch masters, 
An ergetic movement is under way at Portland, Ore., 
to restrain and regulate the erection of billboards for 
the benefit of the visitors to the Lewis and Clarke 
Exposition, which opens in that city in June. The 
work has the support of the leading public organiza- 
tions, officials of the Exposition and public-spirited citi- 
zens generally. 
NEW LOCAL CIVIC ASSOCIATIONS. 
The life of the movement for civic beauty is shown 
by the constant increase of the numbers of local im- 
provement associations. At Texarkana, Texas, the 
Civic Improvement League, the object of which is to 
obtain better educational, sanitary and scenic conditions 
in the city, has been formed recently. This is at the 
West side of the city and another League is to be 
formed on the East side, because it is thought that 
each local league will have to do with much that could 
not be jointly looked after with success. Committees 
of five from each ward of the city were appointed by 
the chair to visit every part of their respective wards 
and to recommend to the League the improvement 
needed in each locality. It was determined to take up 
the work systematically and to give the work of sanita- 
