476 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
Qvic Improvement 
Special Civic Improvement Supplement 
Containing Papers Presented at last Annual Con- 
vention of the American Civic Association 
CONTENTS: 
The Second Step in 
Municipal Park Development, . . . . 
by G. A. Parker 
Outdoor Art, 
. 
by Warren H. Manning 
Extension of Connecticut State Capitol Grounds, . . . . . 
. by Frederick L. Ford 
The Improvement of Washington ....... 
by Charles Moore 
THe Second Step in Municipal ParK Development. 
By G. a. Parker. 
The first step in municipal park development began in 
1849, with the article which A. J. Downing wrote for the 
New York paper, to which can be traced the formation 
of the Elm Park in Worcester, the Bushnell Park in Hart- 
ford and Central Park in New York, the first three dis- 
tinctly municipal parks in the United States. . They all were 
begun before 1855, and were the first lands bought for 
municipal parks in this country, and it is well to note that 
these lands were bought by the people’s money and not the 
gift from anybody. 
During the next five years a portion of the land now 
known as Fairmount Park in Philadelphia was taken from 
the water department and dedicated for park purposes. 
Druid Park in Baltimore, Lincoln Park in Chicago, were 
begun, and some other cities were taking steps towards in- 
stalling municipal parks. During the period of our Civil 
War but little was done in park work, but about 1870 it re- 
vived with considerable energy and during the next 25 years 
many of our large park systems were evolved. It was dur- 
ing these years that Frederick Law Olmsted was in his prime 
and doing his great work, which culminated in the World’s 
Fair grounds in Chicago in 1893. Also during this period 
several other skilled landscape architects came to the front. 
During the last ten years municipal park work has taken 
on a magnitude little dreamed of a quarter of a century ago, 
so that now the solitary individual park which was the first 
conception has grown into a series of parks, connected with 
boulevards and park ways and is still further expanding into | 
an outer belt of parks or reservations of tremendous magni- | 
tilde or narrow strips of river banks or the sea-shore or | 
lake front; and furthermore, valleys, hilltops, forest and | 
great meadows have been taken, or are proposed to be | 
taken, for public use, and paid for by public money. More i 
than this, and to my notion better than this, are the neigh- j 
borhood parks, field houses, gymnasiums and play grounds, 
which have recently rhultiplied many fold. Now all this is, 
to me, but the first step of municipal park work. 
In dating the first municipal park movement from 1849, 
I do not forget that park-likc effects existed from time 
immemorial ; some of them of magnificent proportion and of 
most costly development, and many of them were semi- 
public, being owned by national government or by the Crown 
and great nobles of the old world. I do not forget the park-j 
like effects which have been the work of man from the. 
beginning of historic times, and have come down to us from| 
the Egyptian, Chaldeans, Persians, Chinese, Japanese,^ 
Greeks, Romans, Italians, French and English, nor do I for-' 
get the public common and green and square which have^ ' 
existed in this country from its first settlement, yet, I put : 
the date of municipal movement at 1849, for then that move-T 
ment began in all seriousness to be systematically produced! 
and practical results followed, which we enjoy today. A 
I have no desire to review descriptively, statistically or ii^ 
any other way the parks of our cities, but I wanted to saY 
