PARK AND CCACTCRY 
429 
PARK NOTES 
It i3..propDsed to improve the forty acres about the Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., Institute. Owing to lack of funds, however, no ex- 
tensive scheme is at present contemplated. 
Charles Willard, Battle Creek, Mich., recently deceased, a 
few days before his death deeded that city sixteen acres of land 
on Goguac lake for a public park. By will he also bequeathed 
¥40,000 for the erection of a library building for the city schools 
and $40,000 lor a Young Men’s Christian Association Building. 
41 » « 
The city attorney of Chattanooga, Tenn. , in an opinion on 
the right of the Board of Public Works to cut down shade trees 
when in the way of grading, etc., reports that the board has the 
power so to do under the act, but is liable in damages to the 
owner of the trees which would be subject to rebate in propor- 
tion to benefit of said grading to owner of tree. When shade 
trees become dangerous from age or disease, they come under 
control of city and can be removed as a public necessity. 
* * * 
The new Henry street schoolhouse. New York City, will 
be the largest school building in the country, making a block of 
200 feet by iod feet, five stories high, and having the unique fea- 
ture of a roof garden as a play ground for the children nearly 
;oo feet from the street level. This play ground will be enclosed 
by a wire netting small enough in mesh to prevent anything 
from being cast into the street below. The building will cost 
over ¥300,000 and will afford accommodation for 3,000 children. 
* A- * 
A magnificent gift to Los Angeles, Calif., has just been 
made by Mr. Griffith J. Giiffith in the way of a tract of land 
comprising over 3,000 acres for a public park. It is situated just 
north of the city and is known as the Los Felis Rancho, includ- 
ing within its limits, bottom, foothill, ravine and mountainous 
land. It is a princely gift and wall make Los Angeles, with the 
other parks already existing, one of the best provided cities in 
the country. It is to be hoped that the city fathers will be 
equally magnanimous in their appropriations for its care and 
maintenance . 
* •X’ 
The New York Park Commissioners propose to establish a 
nursery for tlie purpose of raising suitable shade trees for beautify- 
ing the streets of the metropolis. The project is to set aside a 
suitable plot of ground on Washington Heights, and to set out 
hardy saplings of such kinds as will develop into thrifty shade 
trees, finally to be transplanted into the various city residence 
streets. The question of the proper care of shade trees in paved 
city streets is an important one, and one that is receiving con- 
siderable attention everywhere, the conditions surrounding City 
shade trees varying greatly, and involving special study. 
* 41 4f- 
One of the most interesting and practical pieces of patriotic 
work accomplished lately by the Daughters of the American 
Revolution says an exchange, is the planting of thirteen trees 
sent from the thirteen original states to the Sequoia Chapter of 
San Francisco, Cal. These have been planted in the form of an 
arch, 450 feet long, in Golden Gate Park, each one from some 
noted b tttle-ground or historical spat. From the Valley Forge 
camping-ground in Pennsylvania came a cypress, which is plac- 
ed in the centre as the keystone of the arch. New Jersey sent a 
inden from the Wallace House, Washington’s headquarters in 
1778; Connecticut, a scion of the famous charter oak; Massachu- 
setts, an elm from the old North Bridge of Concord; New York, 
a white-oak from the battle-ground of Saratoga; and each of the 
other pimeer stites for.varded a different specimen of equal in- 
terest. 
4t 44 44 
Mr. D. H. Burnham has again presented some views con- 
cerning the proposed parking of the lake shore of the city <■{ 
Chicago to the Park Co.mmissioners, and has pointed out the 
possibilities to be achieved by properly improving the splendid 
opportunity. IMany cities of the old world have become famous 
besides being permanent attractions to a large influx of the 
traveling public, by public improvements which have taken 
centuries, perhaps, to develop, and are now reaping the material 
benefits of such travel. In the case of Chicago, the development 
of this ideal lake front of an enormous city, which could be ac- 
complished in comparatively few years, would make it altogeth- 
er a marvel of nineteenth century city development, and 
would undoubtedly make it one of the greatest attractions of 
home and foreign travel. The possibilities are so apparent and 
the benefits equally so, that it may be assumed that the pro- 
gressive spirit that has dominated the citys' growth will not light- 
ly pass over this great project. 
* * * 
In the public hearings on the draft of the charter of “Greater 
New York” in regard to the Park Department. Mr. Ehhu Root 
counsel for the Fine Arts Federation, presented a chapter drawn 
by the Federation as a substitute for the section relating to artis- 
tic supervision over works of art to be placed in the parks. Ac- 
cording to the New York Evening Snn, it provided that there 
should be a Commission composed of the Mayor, the President 
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the President of the New 
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden foundations, the 
President of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, and six 
others to be appointed by the Mayor from a list to be submitted 
to him by the art societies. Of the six Commissioners to be ap- 
pointed by the Mayor one should be a sculptor, one a painter 
one an architect and three citizens who are not professionals. It 
is also provided that the head of any city Department may serve 
as a member of this Commission on all matters relating to his 
particular Department. No stacue or other work of art is to be 
accepted by the city to be placed in any park or public building 
until it has been approved of by this Commission. 
-» 44 44 
At a recent session of the Onandaga, (N. Y.,) County Far- 
mers’ Club, held in Syracuse, Mr. W. W. Newman, secretary of 
the Onandaga County Cemetery Association, read a paper on 
“Inexpensive Rural Ornaments, or Lawns, Trees, Shrubs and 
Flowers.” The paper was a broad plea for the more general use 
of trees and plants for the adorment of the house, as well as 
touching upon their peculiarities and describing theirseveral re- 
quirements and methods of caring for them. Among the quo- 
tations given as emphasizing the subject is the following from 
Donald G. Mitchell, in “My Farm of Englewood;” “There 
will always be in every moderately free country a great class of 
small landholders, in whose hands will lie, for the most part, the 
control cf our rural landscape and the fashioning of our wayside 
homes; and when they shall take pride, as a body, in giving 
grace to these homes the country will have taken a long step 
forward in the refinements of civilization. I may make my home, 
however small it be, so complete in its simplicity, so fitted to its 
cffices, so governed by neatness, so embowered by leaf and flower, 
that no wealth in the world could add to it without damaging its 
rur.il grace; and my gardeners — Sunshine, Frost and Showers 
are their names — shall work for me with no crusty reluctance, 
but with an abandon and zeal that ask only gratitude for pay.” 
