92 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
please, but let trees and grass be absent, and can you 
conceive of its being attractive and beautiful for the 
abode of man. Does not your mind turn with restful 
relief to some village like old Hadley, with plain, un- 
painted houses, sleeping in the green sward under the 
great elm, in the arms of the Connecticut. 
I remember a pleasing illustration of the possibility 
of effecting satisfactory and artistic arrangements of 
trees, even upon a large scale, which I received more 
than twenty years ago, when I was the business asso- 
ciate of the well-known landscape architect, Mr. Hor- 
ace W. S. Cleveland, a man who would honor any 
profession, and who now, in extreme age and weakness, 
rests at Hinsdale, twenty miles from Chicago. I went 
to the South Park of Chicago, then in its infancy to 
amuse myself sketching in water colors. Across the 
great lawn, I saw an interesting mass of trees or forest, 
irregular in outline, retreating in bays, advancing in 
capes upon the lawn, broken by one or two Lombardy 
poplars, and I made a rude sketch of it, never suspect- 
ing that it was not an accidental effect. When I 
showed my sketch to Mr. Cleveland, “O yes,” he said, 
“he arranged those trees,” the basis being the fine range 
of old oaks that ran along a slight ridge in the park. 
The most extraordinary ideas often prevail among 
inexperienced persons with regard to the treatment of 
trees and woods. A common impulse is to clean up 
all the underbrush and cut off all the lower limbs of 
trees. I once heard it distinctly laid down by a country 
gentleman, as a rule, that the first thing to do in a 
country place was to take an axe and cut off all the 
limbs of the trees that could be reached from the 
ground. Anything more ruinous to the beauty of a 
place it would be hard to devise, unless you should cut 
the trees all down. 
No principle of the artistic treatment of grounds is 
better established than that open ground and groups of 
trees shou'd each be marked and decisive in their pe- 
culiar character, the open ground perfectly clear, 
smooth and well grassed, excepting where fine speci- 
mens of trees or shrubs are deliberately preserved, and 
the woods dense and closely covered with foliage down 
to the ground if possible — at least along the edges. In 
this way a pleasing alternation of sunny lawn and 
shady grove is secured instead of a confused medley of 
grass and shrubs and trees, such as we often encounter. 
Planting too thickly is one of the commonest mistakes. 
We may roughly illustrate the difference between the 
skillful and unskillful management of trees in this way. 
Suppose we have a belt of trees with thick underbrush 
along the bank of a river or lake — a common thing. 
The chances are that the unskillful forester will clear up 
all the underbrush, leaving the trees with long slim 
stems visible and a partial and unsatisfactory view of 
the water under them. A more experienced improver 
will cut decisive openings here and there, removing 
both trees and undergrowth, and leave the natural 
growth undisturbed in other places, thus producing a 
series of pleasing pictures framed in by the wood. 
The most uncultivated eye could scarcely fail to 
make the right selection when once the choice was 
offered it, but this is one of the commonest of errors. 
With regard to the relation of trees and buildings or 
other artificial structures, the principles are precisely 
those of pictorial composition. The importance of 
background is apt to be overlooked. In extensive 
private places the commonest mistake is to try to set 
the house upon the highest ground. There are utili- 
tarian objections to this, with reference to water supply 
and difficulty of approach. Artistically it is usually 
unfortunate, because of the difficulty of providing an 
agreeable back ground. An artist rarely paints a build- 
ing so that any great proportion of the architectural 
lines show hard and sharp against the sky. He always 
provides a background of trees or hillsides to soften the 
effect, and especially is this true when the attempt is to 
convey an impression of rural repose and homelikeness. 
For this reason it is almost always better artistically to 
set a house halfway down a hillside, upon some subor- 
dinate mound or plateau, than upon the top. 
The effect of large fine trees in the neighborhood of 
a building is so great as to need no enforcement. Vis- 
iting New Orleans, I was struck with the dignified, 
scholastic air of Newcomb College, the women’s de- 
partment of Tulane University, built upon an old 
estate where the walks are arched with great live oaks^ 
as compared with the main buildings of the university 
upon new ground, where the trees are yet to grow. But 
large trees are the product of time; we must go to 
them not they to us. My father, an ardent planter of 
trees, to whom the old town of Exeter, N. H., owes 
much of its beauty, told me in his later years that he 
had discovered how to produce large trees at once, and 
the way was “to set them out a long time ago.” He 
had tried it successfully. 
I wonder that housebuilders do not more often make 
sure of good trees. I have myself bought a tree with 
s ;me land about it, and built my home under it. 
In the case of public monuments, the setting is of 
the same importance, though here the background may 
be either of trees or of architectural works, according 
to the character of the monument. Examples — The 
Lincoln in Lincoln Park, the Students’ fountain, Gen. 
Grant in Fairmount Park. 
Abundant illustrations of the ideas embodied in 
this paper will be found in the photographs exhibited in 
the south corridor of the second floor. 
MUNICIPAL IMPROVEMENT.* 
“The three prerequisites to health, civic beauty and 
normal civic life are space, pure air and sunlight. 
With these ensured, architectural beauty, street adorn- 
ments of fountains, statues, trees and flowers may easily 
follow. Without these prerequisites, provided by wise 
legislation and maintained by constant vigilance, all 
minor beauties of decoration are overshadowed or im- 
periled or destroyed. The four worst causes of modern 
city disfigurement are slum areas, crowded suburbs of 
cheap wooden construction, abnormally high buildings 
and discordant settings for buildings, fountains and 
statues. 
“But the abnormally high buildings of steel con- 
struction, costing from one to three or four millions of 
dollars, is the greatest material obstacle to modern civic 
progress. It cannot be wiped out like the rotten tene- 
ment block. It has come to cast its blighting shadow 
for a century upon its neighbors. 
“The high building per se is not an evil when it is 
well treated on all four sides and shaped like a tower, 
and when it is surrounded on all sides by ample space; 
however, such a building, so far as I know, does not 
'Paper read at lomt session of American Park and Outdoor Art 
Association and Architectural League of America, June, looo By Mrs. 
Edwin D. Meade, Boston, Mass. 
