244 
Some things, however, are of value 
wholly or primarily for their beauty, and 
if they have any direct utilitarian value 
it is secondary and incidental. This is 
the case with a painted landscape and 
with a landscape park or an ornamental 
garden. The extraordinary difficulty of 
balancing artistic gain and loss against 
utilitarian gain and loss in detail, and the 
manifest weighting of the scales in favor 
of the utilitarian side whenever this 
process is followed, make it important to 
segregate sharply from the vast majority 
of things those which belong to this lat- 
ter class. The first question in regard 
to any one of these things, valuable pri- 
marily for their non-utilitarian beauty, is 
— can we afford it? If not, we give it up; 
if it is portable we sell it to some one 
who can afford it; if it is real estate, 
like a landscape park, we either sell it or 
use it for som,ething else in which the 
beauty-value is secondary to the use- 
value. If we can afford it, we direct our 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
efforts toward conserving and making 
available its beauty, and steadfastly re- 
fuse to use it for anything that will im- 
pair its beauty. We don’t cut a hole in 
a beautiful painting in order to let a 
stove-pipe through, merely because it is 
convenient to use the painting as a wall 
covering at the point where we want to 
put the stove pipe. We keep the paint- 
ing intact, and if we can’t afford both we 
sell the painting and buy some wallpaper. 
The importance of sticking firmly and 
even obstinately to this principle, that in 
certain park lands set apart primarily for 
the public enjoyment of their beauty 
nothing must be done which impairs that 
enjoyment, depends on the fact that 
where an alteration is proposed in any 
beautiful landscape it is much easier to 
see and to state any utilitarian advan- 
tages of the change than it is to see and 
to state convincingly the artistic disad- 
vantages. If an injury to the scenery is 
to be justified on the ground that it is 
“only a little one” and that it permits 
the attainment of some valuable prac- 
tical end, the same argument applies to 
a thousand other propositions the cumu- 
lative effect of which on the scenery 
would be ruinous. 
To sum up these rather vague remarks, 
I would say: First, make your play- 
grounds as shipshape and orderly and as 
attractive in appearance as you can — • 
wherever they are placed. Second, com- 
bine them as far as practicable with fa- 
cilities for other kinds of recreation not 
primarily dependent on the quality of the 
scenery; but still make that scenery as 
pleasant as you can without waste or loss 
of practical efficiency. Third, when deal- 
ing with any piece of park land the 
prime purpose of which is to give en- 
joyment by its beauty, do not on any 
account thrust into it a playground or 
any other so-called “improvement” which 
will impair its beauty. 
*Landscape Architecture for January, 1914. 
PARK SUPERINTENDENTS AT NEW ORLEANS 
The .American .Association of Park Su- 
perintendents held its eighteenth annual 
convention at Xew Orleans, October 10, 11 
and 12, and enjoyed one of the busiest, best 
attended and most profitable meetings in 
the history of the organization. 
riie first session was called to order in 
the Hotel Grunewald, and Park Commis- 
sioner Newman, representing the Mayor, 
ga\'e the superintendents a cordial welcome 
to the city. 
Commissioner Newman said that the 
city’s chief executive and the people are 
enthusiastic to develop parks. He told the 
visitors of recent strides in civic develop- 
ment and declared that in a short time the 
Pontchartrain lakeshore front would be re- 
claimed and converted into a beautiful park. 
.After the close of the luisiness session, 
the local hosts provided automobiles and 
took the entire party for a tour of .Audubon 
Park and City Park, the two great park 
institutions of New Orleans that were de- 
scribed in the .August and September issues 
of P.VRK AND Cemetpzry. Refreshments 
were served at City Park, 
The evening business session was devoted 
chiefly to official routine business including 
the presentation of the President’s .Annual 
.Address, communications, resolutions and 
committee reports. 
The annual address by president Emil 
T. Alische, of Portland, Ore., contained an 
interesting study of modern urban and 
suburban conditions. Air. Alische declared 
the members had a great work to do in 
furthering plans of much value for the im- 
provement. creation and conservation of 
parks. 
Herman W. Alerkel, forester of the New 
A’ork Zoological Park, and chairman of 
the Committee on Nomenclature, told of 
the difficulties being experienced in naming 
plants, and made some practical suggestions 
along this line. 
The address on "Efficiency and .Account- 
ing in Park Administration,” by Frank S. 
Staley, director of the Minneapolis Bureau 
of Municipal Research, was thoroughly ap- 
proved and heartily received. It is printed 
in full on another page in this issue. 
The ne.xt day the sessions gave particu- 
lar attention to consideration of the rela- 
tionship of playgrounds and parks. 
"City Planning in Relation to Park 
Properties,” and "Playgrounds in Parks 
I'rom a Designer’s Standpoint,” were taken 
up at the morning meeting. The latter 
c|uestion was presented by Frederick Law 
Olmsted, landscape architect of Brookline, 
Mass. Air. Olmsted was not present and 
his paper was read. It is printed in full on 
another page in this issue. 
"The Trend of Playground Alovement as 
it .Affects Parks” was considered by Lebert 
Howard Weir, field secretary of the Play- 
ground and Recreation Association of 
.America. Air. Weir spoke of leisure time 
and how it was employed and the prog- 
ress of the playground and the recreation 
movement. He declared providing for the 
use of public time and the guidance of the 
people a public duty and responsibility. 
The public library, the public schools, the 
park departments and the recreation com- 
mission are the agencies through which the 
people may give expression to their inter- 
ests and no single agency, he said, can 
alone handle the leisure time problem. The 
speaker stressed the importance of park 
departments and said his opinion was such 
bodies sliould be active in the shaping of 
the problem, being special agents thereof. 
Beauties of the Pontchartrain lakeshore 
were showm the visitors in the afternoon 
and they w^ere taken through the uptown 
• residential streets in automobiles, then to 
the city filtration plant, and finally to the 
West End, where supper was served at the 
Southern A’acht Club. The party returned 
to the Grunewald about 8 o’clock. 
At the last day’s business session the fol- 
lowing officers were elected : 
President — John F. Walsh, New York 
City. 
First Vice-President — Henry W. Busch, 
Detroit, Mich. 
Second Vice-President — Herman W. Mer- 
kel, New York. 
Third Vice-President — Ernest Strehle. 
St. Louis, AIo. 
Fourth Vice-President — Alexander Stuart, 
Ottawa, Canada. 
Fifth Vice-President — Clarence L. Brook, 
Houston, Tex. 
Sixth Vice-President — Charles W. Davis, 
Memphis, Tenn. 
Secretary-Treasurer — Roland W. Cott- 
erill, Seattle, Wash. 
In a general discussion on the subject of 
bathing beaches the association recom- 
mended for both men and women the 
wearing of a medium length skirt, and 
quarter length sleeves or tight fitting 
shoulders for women, stockings not being 
