84 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
be the manifestation of the right spirit within. Therefore, 
it is primarily incumbent upon all who may be interested to 
strive first for a cultivation of the popular taste in the matter 
of art and artistic development. 
1 cannot unreservedly subscribe to the sentiment, “To make 
us love our city, we must make our city lovely.” I, for one, 
believe that we will make our city lovely, because we love it. 
Adornment, adulation, care and attention are preceded by and 
are the outcome of love, although it must be admitted that 
much of the forward movement in civilization is due to the 
reciprocal action, of the progressive forces. As we grow in 
knowledge and grace, we reflect it in our public life ; as our 
public life advances, it is reflected in higher personal stand- 
ards. 
Lovers of improvement must utilize effort and every oppor- 
tunity to advance the cause. They must strive through their 
own individual efforts to make the world a better place to live. 
They must ever stand ready to co-operate with others to the 
same end. They must realize as Lord Chesterfield wrote 
nearly two centuries ago, “Character must be kept bright as 
well as clean.” 
Sidney Webb in his famous London programme said, “The 
greatest need of the metropolis is, it may be suggested, the 
growth among its citizens of a greater sense of common life, 
i'hat municipal patriotism which once marked the free cities of 
Italy, and which is already to be found in our own provincial 
towns, can, perhaps, best be developed in London by a steady 
expansion of the sphere of the civic as compared with indi- 
vidual action.” 
We, too, may say that what we need most of all in America, 
if we are to achieve our ideals and realize our destiny, is a 
greater sense of common life. All that has been mentioned 
herein has had this in view. All the various bodies that have 
been mentioned have this consciously or unconsciously in 
mind, all the agencies that have been enumerated are making 
for this end, and so it should be. The days of the isolated and 
solitary life are over. We are living in the era of co-operative 
activity. This to be of the highest good and greatest value 
must make for a sense of common life. 
“A more beautiful America.” What greater aim or ideal 
can anyone have? It fills our hearts and minds with high 
resolves and noble ambitions and the awakening we are now 
witnessing everywhere about us is making mightily for its 
early and complete fulfillment. 
Report of the ParK Census Committee, American ParK and Outdoor 
Art Association. 
Read by G. A. Parker, Chairman, at the Buffalo Convention. 
For three years I have worked gathering statistics relating 
to parks. I believe such figures are of value in studying the 
municipal problem, but there are other factors in determining 
the relationship of parks to the other functions of the city, 
which figures do not reveal. In fact, they are apt to be con- 
cealed in our effort to solve them by figures alone, and so, in 
this third report of your Park Census Committee and, with the 
assurance that it will be the last I shall give as its Chairman, 
I ask your indulgence for discussing the subject along a some- 
what different line than heretofore. 
It is very easy to- state the increasing park area during the 
last year is nearly 2,000 acres, so that now there are about 67,- 
500 acres held as municipal parks and pleasure grounds. Also 
that the amount of money appropriated for park purposes 
has not increased in proportion to the increase of area, in 
fact, as near as I can determine there was less money ex- 
pended for park purposes during the last year, even with 
the increased territory, than for the two preceding years. It is 
true that New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, 
and several of the smaller cities are either making, or planning 
to make, a decided increase of, or an improvement in their 
parks and boulevard system. 
Fifty years of park work has brought a generation who 
made their first acquaintance with parks in the baby car- 
riage, and the work is losing its charm of novelty, which was 
a strong factor during the last generation, and now it is 
being valued more by its real worth to the city. And be- 
cause its worth has been somewhat imaginary, and the meth- 
ods suggested somewhat visionary, the park question has come 
to a point where real work is necessary, and the real condi- 
tion known. 
The construction of park features ; that is, its roads, mead- 
ows, plantations and structures, is now fairly well under- 
stood. The relation of one to the other ; that is, the com- 
position of the park picture, is being better and better known. 
The value of parks to a certain class of the people of a city 
is appreciated, but the value of parks and squares to all 
classes is not realized in a way to make them practical ; 
furthermore, it is not always realized that different cities of 
the same population may require entirely different considera- 
tion in the treatment of their parks. 
It is a fact, which I believe cannot have an exception, that 
if the park or a park system is perfectly adapted to one city, 
it will be found unsuitable for every other city in the world ; 
also that different sections of the same city have different park 
requirements. 
Park work at its best never admits of repetition. It is a 
shortcoming of many landscape architects, which is not en- 
tirely confined to the lesser ones, that they do not solve their 
park problems from the study of the community which the 
park is to serve, or from conditions surrounding it, but rather 
from their knowledge of parks elsewhere and by what has 
been done in other cities. It is impossible for any two cities 
to be alike, so the park problem everywhere must differ. 
We have yet to learn how to estimate or measure cities. It 
has been too often the habit to measure cities by their size, 
as if the number of persons living under one municipal govern- 
ment was the thing of all things that determined a city’s 
value. 
There is a country in Africa which selects its king by- 
weight. He who has the largest quantity of fat, who weighs 
the most, becomes king. Perhaps a reasonable method of es- 
timating the value of hogs, but hardly one we should care 
to apply in selecting our rulers ; yet is it not in a similar 
way that the world has measured its cities. The city with the 
largest population being considered as first. This was all 
very well while cities held practically the same relationship 
to the world’s work and progress, but the modern city is not 
limited to one part of the world’s economies, but performs sev- 
eral functions, therefore, there has come to be several different 
types of cities, each of which have different requirements. 
There is an individuality of cities as distinct as the differ- 
ence between races of mankind, or between individuals. To 
illustrate : A citizen of the largest city- in America was walk- 
ing across Boston Common ; behind him came two girls, evi- 
dently employed in a large department store. One girl said 
to the other, referring to the gentleman in front of her: “A 
stranger.” The other replied: “Yes, from New York,” and thus 
that man who felt he was a Cosmopolitan, because he lived in 
New York and had been a world-wide traveler, felt chagrined 
to know that his city was stamped as plainly on his being 
as if it had been branded on his forehead, and the locality with 
which he was identified was as surely known as a countryman 
from way back. 
There is a provincialism of cities as well as a provincialism 
of the country, and the inhabitants of the different cities are 
as clearly distinguishable as the Cape Coder from a York 
State man, or the Westerner from the Southerner. 
There is a composite spirit in every community, be it city 
or country, made up of the feelings, the thoughts and the acts 
of the people who live in them, made up of their different 
personalities and of everything which influences a person 
while within its borders. Every human being living there, 
contributes to that composite spirit, and in return draws from 
it that which influences him, which marks him as being one 
of them. 
Cities of the same type may differ widely, and cities of dif- 
ferent kinds may have very little in common. 
What are the different kinds of cities, and how do they 
differ, and what is it we should look for in order to know 
what manner of city we are considering ? 
In the first place, size has little to do with determining what 
kind of city it is, unless we are making comparisons for size. 
Neither should cities be classified by what they consume 
within themselves, or what they do to support themselves, or 
how they do their own work. All this should not be used 
for comparison unless we want to consider the city’s house- 
keeping. 
Cities like men are classified by what they do for others, 
not by what they do for themselves, and are commercial, finan- 
cial, industrial or capital cities whenever they have more 
trade, money, manufacture or government than- is needed for 
