PARK AND CEMETERY. 
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CLAIMS OF USE AND BEAUTY IN PARK SERVICE 
One of the problems wliicli is con- 
fronting park officials e\'ery\vhere in 
America is how best to plan ami man- 
age them for the greatest pulilic good. 
It is in a way the interminable strug- 
gle between beauty aiul utility. It 
may be said in a figurative sort of 
way that man3r parks are too beauti- 
ful to be useful, while others are too 
useful to be beautiful. It is exceedingly 
difficult to draw the line between the 
beautifid and useful in park construc- 
tion and management largely because 
of the great di^’ersity in the charac- 
ter and tastes of visitors. One person 
goes to a park to admire the beauti- 
ful in nature, fine specimens of trees, 
rock work, groupings of shrulrs, beds 
and borders of flowers — in short, the 
better results of landscape art and 
science, while another goes to find a 
comfortable seat, in the shade to read 
the sporting page of a Sunday mon- 
strosity — a “newspa])er,” so-called, or 
finds it a convenient place to stroll 
or “walk off” the effect of a big din- 
ner or "night with the boys." Some 
children go into a park filled with the 
spirit of destructiveness, and devote 
their time and energies to doing all 
the damage they can and escape the 
policeman, while other children enjoy 
a romp on the walk or lying down in 
a quiet spot and reading books. 
The location of a park has, of 
course, much to do with its character. 
Boston Common is essentially differ- 
ent from Bronx Park and yet in most 
parks there is a golden mean between 
the extremes of artistic beauty and 
practical utility. A park like Central 
Park, in New York, which is in the 
direct line of travel of thousands of 
people, cannot be developed in the 
same way as a park miles away from 
the centers of population. In some 
places It seems absolutely necessarj^ 
to sacrifice beautiful lawns, flower 
beds, shrubs, etc., for numerous 
walks, play grounds, etc. On the 
other hand it is difficult to get visit- 
ors enough to a remote park, no mat- 
ter how beautiful and attractive from 
an artistic standpoint it may be. Is 
it not the experience of park officials 
that few people visit parks to see 
nature — no matter how elaborately 
adorned? Broad landscape \-iews and 
artistic groupings of trees, shrubs and 
flowers attract visitors as a whole, 
but the individual elements, the trees 
and plants, are as a rule neither no- 
ticed nor appreciated. The indifference 
of the public to the minor details of 
landscape art is very discouraging to 
those who are working so hard and 
making so many sacrifices to develop 
a finer aesthetic taste along the lines 
of natural beauty among our citizens. 
There is a growing disposition to 
make a sharper distinction between 
parks — that is to say, broad areas of 
land laid out bj' competent landscape 
architects, and developed by trained 
florists and foresters, .and so-called 
playgrounds, out-of-door gymnasiums, 
wading and swimming pools, baseball 
fields and picnic grounds. This is evi- 
denced by the growing rivalry be- 
tween the park and educational de- 
partments of maio^ of our big cities 
as to which shall get the appropria- 
tion and control the expenditures for 
out-door recreation grounds, outside 
the limits of the big parks. It is per- 
haps well that it should lie so for 
there is a wide difference between the 
management of a broad expanse of 
land covered with trees, shrubs, flow- 
ers and grass, and a play-ground. 
There can be no (luestion about 
the ultimate good in a large way of 
every sort of out-door recreation 
An important addition to the park- 
system of the state of Rhode Island 
is likely to follow the offer of Miss 
Ida M. Haynes of Tilton. N. H., to 
give to the state through the Metro- 
politan Park Commission eighty-five 
acres of land on Bullocks Cove for 
park purposes. The land is located 
about five miles south of the center 
of the city of Providence and will 
probabh- be included in the property- 
acquired for the Barrington Parkway. 
It appears that the idea of making 
over the natural conditions of land 
devoted to a park is not a new one. 
Many years ago a writer in Garden 
and Forest said: 
"The care and satisfactory manage- 
ment and maintenance of public 
grounds is a more difficult work than 
their construction. The general de- 
sign of the improvement may be 
clearly^ imprinted on the grounds, the 
controlling motive may be apparent, 
the beauty beginning to develop be 
aijpreciated, and it becomes a popu- 
lar resort for the recreation it was in- 
and any" comparison of the relative 
values of parks, and their modern 
adjuncts in the form of ]niblic baths 
and the like would be futile, and yet 
it is well to l)e;ir in mind that the 
original attd Iiroader idea of a park is 
that of ;tn ideal place of temporary 
sojourn by the e.xhatistcd dweller 
amid the artificiality of modern cities. 
It should be a place of communion with 
nature and nature’s' God — a return to 
ideal itrimitive conditiotis made other- 
wise impossible by the stress of modern 
civilization — an ideal park is as un- 
like ;i modern baseball field as an U|)- 
to-date hotel is unlike an old-fash- 
ioned New England home. There is 
recreation, inspiration and aesthetic 
culture in a broad expanse of land, 
'leveloited along natural lines by com- 
petent .'irtists such as cannot be ob- 
tained through tiny other agency, and 
tile general effect of such a park may 
lie like that of many a notable speech 
or sermon out of all proportion to 
the comparatively small numbers of 
persons who are originally inspired 
by it. 
J. H. Griffith. 
It commands fine views of the city of 
Providence, the Providence river and 
Narragansett bay. 
The gift is a memorial to Dr. 
George B. Haynes of Valley Falls. 
The members of the Metropolitan 
Park Commission have virtually" ile- 
cided to accept the gift and the work 
of development will follow the com- 
pletion of the Barrington Parkway, 
now being built along the east side 
of the Providence river. 
tended to provide. But many mis- 
understand its function, take little in- 
terest in the natural beauty of the 
landscape, look upon drives, rides and 
walks as more important features than 
the scenery in which they are set, see 
in the open greens only an opportu- 
nity for athletic games, in the woods 
only- a resort for the usual picnic 
sports, and in the waters only facilities 
for rowing, sailing or skating, accord- 
ing to the season. So demands are 
soon made that permission be given 
to each class to indulge in the out- 
door pastimes in which each is espe- 
t 
METROPOLITAN PARK IDEA GROWS 
NATURALISM IN PARK LANDSCAPE 
