480 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
water to construct artificially a natural object as fine or as 
impressive as the falls now are. 
Another danger comes from the opportunities that _ are 
offered for political patronage in our parks or park systems 
that has been and is expensive to acquire, to construct and to 
maintain. Where there is much patronage this control is 
pretty sin;e to pass from the group of public-spirited and self- 
sacrificing men who initiated the park movement and estab- 
lished the parks to the politician. Not only is this true of 
the city, but it often is true of the small towns, where similar 
political conditions prevail in a small way. 
Again, the great taxable value of such large reservations 
in the heart of a city, as Boston Common-, New York Cen- 
tral Park, have led to repeated efforts to secure some portions 
of the park for commercial use for public institutes or public 
buildings. The subway is already in the edge of both Bos- 
ton’s Common and its Public Gardens and a group of mu- 
seums is spreading over a considerable portion of Central 
Park, and the proposition , to run streets through these 
reservations crops out periodically. It should be borne in 
mind, however, that neither of these reservations was orig- 
inally designed to be a part of a modern park system. 
It is such considerations that lead me to believe that it is 
not always wise to include in our city park system very large 
bodies of land having a high taxable value, especially where 
they form a barrier to direct lines of travel, as does Central 
Park of New York. Furthermore, the fact that the electric 
car lines and the automobile make the range of a daily out- 
ing so much greater than was possible a few years ago with 
the horse, that our public pleasure road systems must be 
much more extensive than they are now to serve the needs 
of that part of the public who pay the largest share of the 
taxes, while the needs of the people in moderate circum- 
stances who must need the parks, should be supplied by the 
isolated small local playgrounds, or playgrounds upon broad- 
enings in adjacent parkways, to which these people may walk 
daily. They cannot go daily to the large parks, for they are 
at such a distance that they must pay car fares to reach them. 
Undoubtedly the present nuclei of town, city, county, state 
and national parks will expand into a national system, in 
which the steam roads, already great national park-ways, 
and the electric, automobile and carriage roads will have 
their logical place. It will be a system based first upon prac- 
tical .consideration, the reservations being governed by the 
topography and so located as to include the natural lines of 
travel, as the railroads are now located along stream val- 
leys, which are also the natural lines of drainage. 
You are asking by this time what this has to do with my 
Outdoor Art proposition, which you may from its designa- 
tion regard as an aesthetic consideration only. If you do, 
I want to protest against your disposition to set a barrier 
between beauty and utility, for the more you think and ob- 
serve the more you will be convinced that they go hand in 
hand and that intrinsic values are depending more and more 
upon beauty, a gospel that should be preached and preached. 
Bear in mind that our modern park systems are very gen- 
erally extended to include the valleys and shores of streams, 
the shores of ponds, the high bluffs along stream valleys, and 
the summits of hills, land of the smallest commercial value 
on account of occasional submergence or its inaccessibility, 
the land that the owners are most -likely to give for a public 
reservation because of its low value, the land that has been 
neglected and thereby allowed to acquire a beautiful growth 
of trees and shrubs. 
I would again place emphasis upon the fact that those who 
would enduringly improve their town must do more than to 
encourage the planting of flower beds and cleaning of yards. 
These are important details and they all help to educate 
public sentiment in the right way. This, however, is not the 
kind of work that is likely to enlist the earnest support of 
the most far-seeing business and professional men — the men 
who prefer to do big things. Such men, when they once 
realize the importance and value’ of a comprehensive plan of 
the town that will include in a public reservation system the 
land of little value but of great beauty, will put in work that 
will count. 
This association and the majority of its departments are 
enlisting in educating the people up to the point where they 
will do just such work as I have outlined. I conceive it to be 
the special work of the outdoor art department to help the 
people to gain a fuller appreciation of the real beauty of the 
common scenes and objects about them, that can be acquired 
and developed at small cost, to show them how they can 
again at small cost make many hideous objects and scenes 
attractive. I would place special emphasis upon the small 
cost, because I believe if we are to have a more beautiful 
America we must enlist the multitude who have small means, 
as well as the comparatively few with large resources. 
Extension of tHe State Capitol Grounds, Hartford, Conn. 
By Frederick L. Ford, city engineer, Hartford, conn. 
One of the most striking examples of what can be accom- 
plished for the civic improvement and development of our 
American cities, by means of persistent, organized and well 
directed effort, has just been forcibly illustrated by the work 
of the recent Connecticut Legislature. 
As you all know, Hartford is the capital city of the Nut- 
meg State, the home of its executive and administrative de- 
partments and the storm-center of much of its political ac- 
tivity. It is located upon the banks of the Connecticut River, 
and in about the geographic center of the state. 
In order to give you a general idea of what the newly pur- 
chased land adjacent to the state capitol grounds, authorized 
Dy the last Legislature, means to the state of Connecticut and 
the city of Hartford I must reflect a little upon the history 
of the acquisition and development of our famous Bushnell 
Park and state capitol grounds. The condition of these 
grounds in the early fifties is best described in a letter written 
at that time to Donald G. Mitchell, of New Haven, better 
known as Ik Marvel, by Dr. Horace Bushnell, through 
whose earnest advocacy, tact and persistence this park was 
set apart by tbe city of Hartford. In this letter he says: 
“I had been appalled by the God-forsaken look of the prem- 
ises; the New Haven railroad spanned the territory length- 
wise from end to end, having a deep cut under College Hill 
a high embankment through the low ground on the east, 
where it came to a full period in a high, unsightly structure 
of wood standing astride of the river, and serving as a bridge, 
car-house, freight-house and passenger office. Two lines of 
high grading, one from the west end and the other from the 
east, converged as curves at a wooden-covered bridge in 
front of the present station on Asylum street, and made up a 
triangle for backing off to Springfield and New, Haven. In 
the center of the lot was the engine house and a woodwork 
and ironwork repair shop; back of the latter on the east was 
a deep gulf or hole, dyked in by the embankment, into which 
the ashes and cinders were rolling, overhung also on the 
embankment side by a rough wood shed, standing partly on 
legs and having a high water tank and pumping works on its 
