House & Garden 
THE FAIRMOUNT PARK BOULEVARD 
What has been accomplished must ever 
be greater than what is proposed; and for 
that reason the ordinance placing on the 
plan the parkway just described is more note¬ 
worthy than the ordinance tor an approach 
to Fairmount Park from the City Hall, but 
for that reason only. Most important of 
all the parkway plans that Philadelphia is 
considering, or, indeed, can ever consider, is 
the one for bringing Fairmount Park to the 
very center of the city by means of a park 
road three hundred feet wide for somewhat 
more than half its length and a hundred feet 
for the remainder. The total length would 
be about a mile. The route lies straight from 
the City Hall to the Fairmount Reservoir, 
except that it makes a detour around Logan 
Square. 
It is proposed that the reservoir be filled 
in and given up as a site for a public art 
gallery. Opposite the City Hall, at the 
entrance to the boulevard, it is proposed 
that a plaza be constructed and that a central 
public library be erected on its north side, 
thus providing two municipal improvements 
at the beginning and ending of the avenue. 
One of the branch libraries, the money for 
the erection of which has been generously 
donated by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, will 
doubtless find a frontage on the boulevard 
at the entrance to the Park, possibly opposite 
the Art Gallery. Phis boulevard traverses 
an area completely built up; and for that 
reason, and that reason only, it has not been 
constructed before this time. But while the 
cost will be comparatively great, it will open 
up a quarter of the city which has been 
hitherto extremely slow to advance. 
The diagonal feature promises the greatest 
benefit in the way of utility. At present to 
go from the center of the city northeasterly, 
northwesterly, southwesterly or southeasterly, 
it is necessary to run one’s latitude and longi¬ 
tude separately. One cannot go directly, but 
must take two sides of a right-angle triangle 
instead of the hypothenuse. If this diagonal 
is constructed, it will correct the original plan 
of the city for one quarter of its area; and 
more important still, will form a precedent 
for securing another diagonal, in the form of 
a business street extending from the City 
Hall to the great manufacturing industries 
along the Delaware River front. In the 
estimation of the writer, the latter would be 
the vastest improvement of its plan from a 
purely business standpoint that the City of 
Philadelphia could secure. 
It has been shown conclusively by The 
City Parks Association that the resulting in¬ 
creased valuation of the neighboring proper¬ 
ties would more than pay the interest on the 
first outlay tor constructing the Fairmount 
Park Boulevard. The movement has been 
fostered by “ Idle Parkway Association,” 
comprising the foremost men of Philadelphia, 
and is heartily backed by the T-square Club, 
Idle City Parks Association and other organ¬ 
izations having the utility and beauty of the 
city at heart. ddie Fairmount Park Art 
Association, one of the first organizations in 
the United States formed for the purpose of 
decorating its native city, gave up its last 
annual meeting to a discussion of the project. 
On that occasion a superb brochure, edited 
by Albert Kelsey and published by The 
Parkway Association was distributed. It 
contained many illustrations of what Paris, 
London, Palermo, Berlin, Windsor, the City 
of Mexico, Buffalo, Hamburg, and other 
cities have done in the way of civic adornment 
by means of park roads, and particularly the 
approaches they have made to their principal 
pleasure grounds. It is the finest campaign 
document that has ever been presented on 
this or any other similar project. Several of 
its illustrations we have been kindly per¬ 
mitted to reproduce here. 
Slow though Philadelphia may be, it can¬ 
not be doubted that in ten years the section 
through which the Fairmount Park Boulevard 
is to run, will find itself completely rebuilt, 
and there will be a lasting monument to the 
wisdom of the men, organizations and city 
government that secured its construction. It 
is believed that the agitation thus started will 
result, next month, in the authorization of 
this long desired improvement. In the July, 
1902, number of this magazine an illustrated 
commentary upon the various plans for it 
was published, written by Mr. Herbert C. 
Wise, and the reader is referred to that 
article for a more extended discussion. 
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