PARK AND CEMETERY. 
3'72 
touching in its fifteen departments on phases of all 
the life of all the people. 
The Annual Review of the year’s work of the As- 
OLD TOWER ON AMBLER PARKWAY, SHAKER 
HEIGHTS, CLEVELAND. 
sociation was given by First Vice-President Clinton 
Rogers Woodruff, who spoke in part as follows : 
Nestled in the hills at the head of Market Street, San 
Francisco, a famous architect has his bungalow, with a well- 
equipped force to assist him in his preparation of the plans 
for a “New San Francisco.” A broad survey of this great 
metropolis of the Pacific Coast is spread before him, and 
from day to day he studies its outlines that he may the more 
effectively raise a more beautiful and useful city. The plans 
that are in contemplation include a plaza at the foot of 
Market street and the ferry, a series of centers of activity 
for civic, financial, commercial, manufacturing, residential 
and railroad interests; the improvement of the ocean and 
harbor fronts, a system of parks, including those already 
created, connected b)'' planted avenues, and involving the 
treatment and preservation of natural beauty spots like the 
Valley of San Rancho, San Miguel, Presidio, Telegraph Hill, 
Sutro Heights, and other well known points of interest; a 
system of terracing and roadways for the hilly districts of 
the city; a treatment of the Twin Peaks where the bungalow 
is located for park and residential purposes; a boulevard ap- 
proach to the Golden Gate, brought from the heart of the city 
and from the Mission. 
What San Francisco is now doing has already been done 
for Washington, and a great plan for the improvement of 
our capitol city is already in process of gradual execution. 
Cleveland, with its great group plan, affords another illustra- 
tion to the same effect. New York, through its Improve- 
ment Commission, is considering similar questions. St. 
Louis, with foresight, has retained some of the leading archi- 
tects of the country to prepare for its executive officers 
plans for a group plan in that city. Indianapolis is discuss- 
ing the question, and so is Boston. Although in tfiese latter 
cities the matter has not as yet passed beyond the realm of 
aspiration and discussion. Word has just come of the suc- 
cess of the plan to group the public buildings of Hartford, the 
capitol city of Connecticut, in and around the great and 
beautiful Bushnell Park, with the appointment of a commis- 
sion wholly in sympathy with the highest ideals for the de- 
velopment of a great civic center. And an inquiry comes 
from Atlanta, relating how the suggestion of a memorial 
park has grown and developed into the suggestion of and 
agitation for a commission to do for that great and growing 
Southern metropolis what has already been done in Wash- 
ington and Cleveland, and is now in process of planning in 
San Francisco. 
Let us transfer our attention to another part of our coun- 
try, a much newer part, and to an entirely different phase of 
improvement. On the opening of the new lands in Okla- 
homa a thriving little city was established, in the midst of 
which was laid out a public square. In the center of this the 
court house was placed and around it were built straggling 
structures such as characterize frontier towns. The people 
of the town seemed not to care, and the unkempt waste was 
for ten years neglected and forsaken. Then came the “useful 
citizen” — in this case a young business man, who with a love 
of nature deep seated in his soul felt the heinousness of local 
conditions. He plowed and harrowed the square as for a 
crop. He planted it with bits of trees which seemed scarcely 
more than straws. These he set in rows like corn and culti- 
vated as he would have the maize. Throughout the torrid 
days of the Oklahoma summer he carefully cultivated these 
little trees, while his fellow-townsmen looked on and smiled. 
But the trees grew and in a year were two feet high; in an- 
other year they had grown to five feet, hundreds and thou- 
sands of them, and the square took on the appearance of a 
young nursery. Then the “useful citizen” (or the superin- 
tendent as he was now called officially) notified the citizens 
that they could buy the little trees at a low price, and he 
sold them in abundance without in anywise interfering with 
his plans — the beautifying and adorning of the square — and 
he soon had sold enough to pay all the expenses incurred in 
the experiment. Now, these trees are from seven to ten 
feet high, thrifty and vigorous, making of the square a park 
increasing in beauty daily, and in summer the delight of 
children and family parties for miles around. 
Let us take still another example from still another part 
of the continent — a Canadian village, where an American 
woman went to live. She with her husband occupied one 
of a half dozen houses on a fine terrace surrounded by 
private grounds. Behind was the Court House with the usual 
■ collection of county buildings. Its grounds, too, surrounded 
with the terrace and a dense untrimmed growth of trees and 
shrubs which were a menace to the eye and the health of 
the community. The American woman began to trim her 
trees and plant vines around her house. Nasturtiums and 
geraniums were planted, but the alley in the rear of the 
house, through which a private road passed, had long been 
a dumping ground and an eye-sore. This attempt to beautify 
induced everyone in the block to follow suit. Unsightly 
fences vanished, weeds disappeared, lawns were kept shaven 
until now they look like velvet; the trees and shrubs around 
the county buildings were trimmed and now pavements are 
being laid all over the city, and a great improvement is to 
be noted wherever they have been laid. What was once al- 
most an eye-sore has become one of the most beautiful streets, 
not only in the province, but on this continent, all through the 
initiative and persistence of a woman whose heart was in 
her work. 
These three instances are cited, not solely because they 
constitute a part of the recent record of civic improvement 
on the American continent, but because they typify in a 
marked degree the lines along which we are developing at a 
rate that ten years ago would have been considered impos- 
sible. The number of improvement societies .has doubled 
within the last three years, and increased from i,740 to 2,426 
since the Association was formed at St. Louis by the merger 
of the two pioneer bodies in this field of civic endeavor. 
The American Civic Association unites the humble worker 
striving to improve his or her own premises, be they but a 
single room or suite of rooms, or a little cottage with its bit 
of ground, with the far-seeing idealist who with a bold faith 
plans not only for the needs of the present generation, but 
for those of countless generations yet unborn. The progress 
of the past year has been so great, so far-reaching, that it 
makes one charged with any responsibility to it tremble for 
his own inability to grasp the possibilities of the situation in 
their entirety. To enumerate the great and growing lists 
LAKE AND FOUNTAIN, WADE PARK, CLEVELAND. 
of organizations devoted to promoting a more beautiful 
America would alone exhaust a morning session. To detail 
in the briefest outline the activities of a tithe of the organ- 
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