509 
PARK AND C EM ET ERY. 
One of the most important results of 
the study that has been given to play 
and playgrounds is the very general ap- 
preciation that the play leader rather 
than elaborate equipment is the essen- 
tial feature. Reliable figures, showing 
the appropriations for playgrounds, are 
incomplete, but the returns from one- 
half of the cities show an expendi- 
ture in 1909 of over a million dollars. 
But before we have a widespread and 
efficient system, in which the true func- 
tion of play is recognized, this sum 
will have to be greatly increased. “Only 
in the modern city,” writes Jane 
Addams, “have men concluded that it 
is no longer necessary for the munici- 
pality to provide for the insatiable de- 
sire for play. In so far as they have 
acted upon this conclusion, they have 
entered upon a most difficult and dan- 
gerous experiment, and this at the very 
moment when the city has become dis- 
tinctly industrial, and daily labor is con- 
tinually more monotonous and sub- 
divided. We forget how new the mod- 
ern city is, and how short the span of 
time in which we have assumed that 
we can eliminate public provision for 
recreation.” 
Parkways and boulevards are agree- 
able promenades in themselves, and 
serve usually as pleasant means of ac- 
cess to parks from the various parts of 
the city or from one park to another. 
A parkway is apt to include more 
breadth of turf or ground planted with 
trees and shrubbery than a boulevard, 
giving it a more park-like character and 
inducing a less formal treatment of the 
roads, paths, and accessory features. 
Boulevards are usually arranged more 
formally with rows of shade trees and 
parallel ways for pedestrians and vehi- 
cles. But the chief feature of a city 
park system is the large park, compris- 
ing in most cases from two hundred to 
a thousand acres, or even more. Its 
main purpose is to place within the 
reach of the people of a city the enjoy- 
ment of such a measure as is practi- 
cable of pleasing rural scenery; and the 
justification of its size, interfering as it 
does with streets and other city devel- 
opments, is the necessity for spacious- 
ness in the production of scenery that 
is broad and natural and beautiful. One 
of the chief problems of the landscape 
architect is to make these parks avail- 
able and useful to great numbers of 
people without destroying the natural 
appearance of their scenery. 
The conviction is steadily spreading 
that a city needs not only to provide 
itself with each .class of recreation 
grounds, but that these grounds should 
be outlined, acquired, and developed as 
a system, each part having relation to 
every other part. Just as a city needs 
a street system, a school system, a wa- 
ter system, and systems to provide for 
its other municipal activities, so it 
needs a comprehensive, well-distributed, 
well-developed system of parks and 
pleasure grounds. As yet few cities 
have been able to secure a well-bal- 
anced park plan. Some cities have a 
liberal provision of public squares, but 
few playgrounds and parks, and no 
parkways. Others have large parks and 
boulevards, but no playgrounds, while 
still others have parks and boulevards 
and playgrounds, but few public 
squares. Many examples could be given 
of the unsatisfactory and incomplete 
and one-sided way in which our so- 
called park systems have been devel- 
oped. The public grounds of practically 
all our cities have been selected and 
improved by isolated and desultory pro- 
ceedings. The result in most cases has 
led to an unnecessary waste of money 
and opportunity. Happily, there are ex- 
ceptions. A few of the larger cities 
have, with the aid of expert advice, 
worked out thoughtful and consistent 
plans, and in the Middle West even the 
smaller cities have conceived a system, 
and gradually, piece by piece, this sys- 
tem is being patiently executed. 
One of the greatest influences now 
operating toward a better provisoin for 
parks and other recreation facilities in 
this country is city planning. The 
movement is spreading rapidly from city 
to city and from town to town. Its 
aims are many, but primarily it is an 
attempt to forecast and provide for the 
requirements of the city as a whole, 
and to anticipate by a reasonable pe- 
riod the improvements and develop- 
ments which such a forecast shows to 
be desirable and in some form or other 
inevitable. City planning is, therefore, 
an effort to save waste — waste due to 
thoughtless delay, to haphazard proced- 
ure and to ill-considered plans. When 
city planning is wise it works in har- 
mony with local conditions, takes ac- 
count of topography, and responds to 
the peculiar social and economic influ- 
ences of the locality. One of its domi- 
nant purposes always, however, is to 
promote, to extend, and to make more 
adequate and more perfect the pro- 
visions for public recreation. 
The conclusions that appear justified 
by this brief survey of parks and pleas- 
ure grounds are: (1) That the national 
parks are of inestimable worth, but 
their greatest value requires a some- 
what different administration, and the 
existing parks in the West should be 
supplemented and balanced by parks in 
other sections. (2) That the compara- 
tively small beginnings of state parks 
should be carried to their legitimate 
developments until every state in the 
Union has a comprehensive system, em- 
bracing its most valuable and charac- 
teristic natural scenic resources. (3) 
That city parks should be selected with 
more discrimination, designed with 
more skill, greatly increased in area, 
and developed in a more co-ordinate 
fashion. 
PLAN OP STANTON PARK; LINCOLN PARK SYSTEM, CHICAGO. 
