PARK AND CE-MKTERY 
477 
what this first park step has been, for it may aid us as to 
why it is necessary to take the second step at this time. In 
fact, we have already begun to take this second step; how 
far we had gone in it I did not realize until I listened to the 
discussion at this meeting. 
Beauty is the mantle which is to eventually clothe our city, 
and our first step was to learn how to weave the park fabric 
which is not only to cover our public ground, but will give a 
limited control over private grounds. 
To weave this park fabric has now been learned ; that is, 
be a park large or small, a public square, or the street 
triangle, a large mountain or forest reservation, or a nar- 
row strip on the shore: be it a children’s playground, a 
field house or a gymnasium, or the narrow strip of grass 
next to the sidewalk or the trees which overarch the street ; 
let the ground be of any size or conditions that may be; 
if the use of it is defined and the purpose it is to serve is 
known, the man can be found somewhere who has just the 
knowledge, experience and skill to produce the results de- 
sired. True, some of this work has been most wretchedly 
done, but that does not alter my proposition that somewhere 
there is a man who knows how to do all this work well, 
and fit it for its purpose. Therefore, I say we have learned 
to weave the park fabric and are prepared to furnish our 
part of that mantle of beauty which is to envelop our city. 
But this mantle of beauty is not a fabric to be spread over 
the whole. Beauty is not a blanket; it is gangular ; it is 
more like a dress or a suit of clothes, and must be cut and 
made to fit the city it is to serve. Just as truly as the dress 
has to be cut and fitted to the lady it is to adorn. The skill 
to weave the mantle was the first step; the cutting and fitting, 
the dress-making and tailoring, was the second step, and 
this second step is needed now. First, because those who 
have become skillful weavers, and as such are apt to be- 
lieve, we naturally believe, that the main thing regarding 
parks is to get a piece of land which we can develop and 
make into a park, weaving there some pattern which we 
ourselves are skillful in weaving, and which we know is 
beautiful ; and important as that may be from our standpoint, 
it is of less importance than to have the park so made, and 
so located, as to fit the condition of the neighborhood, or 
city that it must serve. I think every lady prefers a gown 
that fits her, even though of less costly material, less 
elaborately made than a more costly dress of finer material, 
better design and most elegantly constructed, if it is too 
large, or too small, or unfitted for her use. She would be 
right in rejecting the more costly garment under those cir- 
cumstances and accepting the simpler garment, and so a 
park suited to fill the needs of those it serves is better than 
the most elaborate or beautiful park that is unfitted. And 
right here let me say that I believe a park can always be 
built suitable to the needs of a community, and within the 
means which that community can easily and will readily 
pay for, if the matter is reasonably put before them, and I 
also believe that one of the most serious obstacles in park 
work are the elaborate, costly, visionary, little understood 
and never developed park schemes which are brought for- 
ward whenever park projects ar( considered, often by some 
enthusiastic citizen whose visions are as indefinite and im- 
practical as the dream of a shadow of smoke, or by some 
self-styled half-baked embryotic so-called landscape archi- 
tect whose main ambition is to produce something which 
no human being ever did before, and usually succeed in doing 
what no human being would ever want to do again ; then 
again, it not infrequently happens that those who are expe- 
rienced and are true artists will allow their desire for the 
best to lead them to propose costly designs which cripples or 
prevents that which the city could and would have done. 
Such men are skilled weavers, artists without doubt, but are 
not skillful, practical, tailors or dressmakers in the park 
sense. 
Either our theories of parks are wrong, or our practice in 
the selection, development and management of parks is lack- 
ing, or else there is something needs doing which has not yet 
been done, for there are many parks which serve but slightly 
the purposes that parks are supposed to fill in a community. 
The test of success in park work is whether the people use 
them or not; if they are not so used, either the people have 
no need of parks or they do not supply that need, and there 
are parks on parks that are not used nearly as much as they 
ought to be ; that is, if our theory of what parks should be 
is correct. I think we all will admit this fact to ourselves, 
however, slow as we may be to admit it to the public. Now 
we are apt to think the public is at fault, and to think we 
must educate them up to appreciate our artistic production. 
It seldom occurs to us that the parks may be to blame, 
and not the people. To admit the fault is in the park is 
mortifying to our pride and detrimental to our reputation 
as skillful workmen. 
We have for so long considered parks as being a sort of 
a living picture and artistic production that we strive to 
make it such and we do right in so striving, yet, first of all, 
even before the art, a park is made for use, and should be 
made usable, and to fit the needs of the community so they 
will use it. In this respect it is like the home. The first 
function of a home is to be usable, inhabitable, home-like, 
comfortable; we all know what we want our home to 
be, and high art is not the first thing we provide for it. 
Art is the crown of our home, and it should crown our 
parks, but art rests on the useful, and so in our parks there 
are lots of things that come before what is commonly known 
as artistic. I say commonly known as artistic, yet, I most 
thoroughly believe that the most common things may be the 
most beautiful, and the best art is in the simple effect, and 
that much that passes for art is not art at all, but superficial 
embellishment. True art in the home or park may be any- 
thing but costly. 
The second step in the park problem approaches the ques- 
tion from an entirely different standpoint. It is from the 
standpoint of the people, and not from the standpoint of 
beautifying a piece of open ground in a city, but this may 
seem as a continuation, the lengthening out of the old step, 
and not a new one, and I imagine you are now saying to your- 
selves, we have always considered parks from the needs of 
the people, and what you are saying is nothing new. That 
is no new departure ; but wait a moment, let me tell you what 
has occurred during the last five weeks in my office in 
Hartford. 
Within a few days of each other, representative men of 
three of the largest cities in the United States (one located 
in the east and the other two cities more than a thousand 
miles from Hartford, and as much as that distance from 
each other), entirely unconscious that the others were con- 
sidering the same problem, sought fi'om the accumulated 
information in my office data for the study of the following 
questions. These questions I put into words of my own : 
First: What portion of private property should by 
law be kept from being built upon ; that is, reserved for the 
benefit which light and air are to the city, as a whole, as 
well as to themselves as private owners? 
Second: What should be the width of streets, relative to 
the height of building, and what part does the street play 
in distributing light and air to the city, and what part do 
they take in the recreation of the people, or as play ground 
for children, and how far do they perform the function 
known as park function? 
