8 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
many cases these bridges have been built to over- 
come or abolish grade crossings, a question which 
is even yet agitating many municipalities. 
The commission has had under consideration 
many other plans for improving the system, mainly 
in the direction of completing the connecting links 
between the several park tracts. This is a matter 
of considerable importance, due to the fact of the 
increasing cost of land, especially in the thickly 
populated districts, and the sooner it is accom- 
plished the better. 
From 1B93 until December 31, 1899, there has 
been expended upon the Cleveland parks $3,411,- 
529.13, which includes $378,585.12 provided by 
the Rockefeller fund. In detail this gives $902,- 
656,97 for land, $1,763,734.35 for improvements, 
$395,137.81 for maintenance, and $350,000 for 
interest. 
Over the system there are some 28 miles of 
roadway and 32 miles of walks. When the park 
system of Cleveland shall have been completed on 
the lines laid down by the present commission, it 
may readily be prognosticated that she is not likely 
to be rivalled, relatively speaking, by any other 
city of the country. 
AN IDEAL CEMETERY. 
An imaginary plan may need to be defended; 
it savors to some of an amusing, but rather futile 
experiment. But the imaginary plan (under cer- 
tain circumstances ) is endorsed by Edouard Andre, 
and when no comi^leted work exists that would 
satisfactorily illustrate an idea, the invention 01 
one would seem to be justified. 
This ideal cemetery is one in which the in- 
numerous ghastliness of tombstones is mollified 
and replaced by foliage and turf. The general 
scheme will be clear at a glance. The slopes of a 
valley and sides of a bluff (shown by the contour 
lines) are covered with planting, the bottom, with 
open lawn and water. The water level is taken as 
zero. The planting is needed to mask the monu- 
ments, the lawn and water to set off the planting, 
and to give the familiar contrasts of lawn and 
planting that nothing else can replace. Roads and 
walks are made to give access to all parts, and for 
no other purpose. The road passes around and 
across the park, and in one place by a subway 
through a high bluff for the sake of an easy grade. 
Where this road emerges from the tunnel the steep 
banks at its sides are supported by rock work 
covered with trailing and other plants. Principal 
vistas are shown by broken lines. 
But the justification of this design is in the ar- 
rangement of the planting. Seen from above or 
below it will appear a practically unbroken mass of 
foliage, relieved here and there by the most con- 
spicuous monuments. To any one walking through 
it, it is a framework of treei ( drawn separately in 
the plan) clothed with shrubbery (tinted darker) 
and enclosing many small and separate lawns. In 
every nook and recess of this shrubbery is room 
for a burial plot and one or more monuments. 
Each little leaf-encircled lawn is a park dedicated 
to those buried therein, distinct from the other 
little parks, and thus in a sense private. Plvery 
headstone is retired from view, yet more-^con- 
spicuous in its owm leafy sanctuary than a large 
obelisk exposed in a huge and naked graveyard 
and lost amid a multitude of others. No monu- 
ment but has its squareness and bareness, not mul- 
tiplied by the others like it, but softened and set 
off by contrast of leaf and waving branch. No 
inscription but has its background of verdure so 
genial and suggestive of life renewed. Here the 
variety and grace of nature are the essentials, the 
monuments the incidents; yet only in such a place 
would the monuments become really individual. 
No gaudy pattern beds or pretentious sub- 
tropical plants are admitted; they do not consort 
with the dignity and solemniiy of a burial ground, 
yet flowering shrubs and herbaceous plants abound. 
Even at the entrance it is thought better to trust to 
stately trees, and their impressive masses of foliage 
than to “color effects.” 
Sites for monuments of all sizes are suggested 
in one corner of the plan. From these it will be 
clear how large a number could be set in the whole 
park. Trees should generally be 01 the more com- 
pact and less spreading kinds to minimize the drip- 
ping of water from them on to the monuments. 
More plots could be cut out of the average 
chess-board cemetery than out of such a one as 
this, yet it would admit a very large number, and 
it might even pay as well or better than the aver- 
age cemetery; the lots would sell for more in a 
place that is and will be preserved beautiful, and 
the cost of maintenance would be less. All plant- 
ing would be done by the directors. Monuments 
would be discouraged in number and size, and the 
natural rough boulder, or one made like it, to in- 
vite the growth of moss, with a planed-off surface 
( with some device to protect it from overhead drip ) 
for the inscription, should be introduced. 
There is no need to defend here the practical 
side of this idea. Its spirit enters, more or less 
scantily, into most of our cemeteries, and into all of 
our best ones. If such a burying ground is found 
to be needful, it will soon be found to be practicable. 
It merely means the assembling of the best features, 
accidental or not, of existing cemeteries into a 
coherent scheme. //. A. Capa)- 7 i. 
