House & Garden 
PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS IN PHILADELPHIA’S CITY PLAN 
By ANDREW WRIGHT CRAWFORD 
Secretary of 'The City Parks fl ssociation 
B OTH in England and the United States, 
the movement began two decades ago for 
securing small open spaces in cities and 
towns. It has by no means reached a climax. 
On the contrary, it is steadily gaining in force, 
and local organizations have become united 
with national ones, all working to the same 
end. Simultaneously with the desire for civic 
beauty, the promoters of it have advanced to 
an appreciation of the fact that the needs of 
one and the same municipality are different in 
its different sections. Whereas twenty years 
ago it was thought that all that was needed 
was to construct city “ squares ” or “ parks,” 
it is now becoming recognized that frequently 
as much space is needed for playgrounds, 
where the next generation can grow in health 
and morals. 
The movement has evolved a clear recogni¬ 
tion of the want of foresight that has failed 
to secure park reservations before the march 
of city houses had actually encroached upon 
desirable terri¬ 
tory. The great 
cost of securing 
open spaces in 
thickly congested 
districts has made 
our communities 
realize these mis¬ 
takes keenly, and 
they are now act¬ 
ing so as to avoid 
similar errors. 
Larger spaces are 
being secured in 
suburban sections 
and, in one or two 
instances, great 
reservations have 
been taken, the 
benefit of which 
will be felt more 
at the end of the 
century than in 
these firstdecades. 
Along with the 
GENERAL PLAN OK 
Showing the Proposed Improvements ( Prepai 
desire to obtain larger parks beyond the built- 
up areas, there has come a slower recognition 
of the importance of connecting our parks by 
broad, tree-lined thoroughfares, for which the 
name “parkway” seems most appropriate. 
The execution of such schemes began scarcely 
ten years ago; and their present development 
is largely due to the initiative of Boston, whose 
admirable outer park system, with a river 
drive here, a beach front there, a wooded 
reservation or a meadow land, connected by 
an elaborate system of parkways, is becoming 
constantly better known, and is affecting 
other cities more and more. Two or three 
years later, the authorities of Essex County, 
New Jersey, began the construction of a 
park system, and in the last six years have 
secured three thousand five hundred acres of 
land at a cost of four million dollars. But 
not at all commensurate has been the growth 
of parkway connecting links. This example 
affords an illustration of the slowness with 
which the need 
of parkways has 
been recognized. 
Cleveland, 
H arrisburg and 
Milwaukee are 
following Bos¬ 
ton’s lead, and 
the most notable 
proposal that has 
been made, is the 
system that has 
been suggested 
for Washington 
by the Commis¬ 
sion on the Im¬ 
provement of the 
District of Col¬ 
umbia. Great 
attention has been 
paid to the elabo¬ 
rate park pro¬ 
posed between 
the Capitol and 
the White House 
PHILADELPHIA 
ed expressly for House and Garden) 
l 59 
