The Improvement of Springfield , Mass. 
COURT SQUARE-AN EXTENSION OF THE EXTENSION 
Copyrighted igoj y by House and Garden Designed and Drawn by the Author 
1 — New City Hall 
2 — Present Square 
3, 3—Fountains 
4—Old City Hall 
y—Police DeJ>a7‘tmcnt 
b—Fire Department 
7 — V. AI. C. A. 
8 — Memorial Hall 
q—Proposed Hotel 
10 — Band Stand 
11 — Boat Houses 
12 — Boat Landings 
13 — Old First Church 
14— Grammar School 
13—County Court House 
ib—Court Square Theater 
as the city that is. To be worthy to grow 
great, the city must show some quality of 
greatness in its citizens, faith in itself, and a 
live disposition to develop and improve its 
natural advantages rather than to waste or 
ignore them. If citizens believe their city 
has but a narrow future, they may be justi¬ 
fied in planning narrowly for it. The 
narrow action will probably insure the 
narrow result. If they may reasonably 
believe the city has a large future, large plans 
are justifiable, — anything less would be 
reprehensible, indeed, — and large action 
would go far to bring about the large result. 
A further extension of the park system 
should include the wooded grounds about 
Massasoit Lake. The water itself is con¬ 
trolled and protected by the United States 
Government, furnishing power to the Water 
Shops, where the heavier work in the manu¬ 
facture of the army rifle is done. A liberal 
public policy in parking the wooded shores 
would lead to the development of an 
attractive section, and retain one more of 
those native beauty-spots, already rare, 
that otherwise must inevitably disappear. 
One point more not to be overlooked ! 
The prominences projected from the higher 
across the lower levels afford superb 
vantage-points for viewing an extraordinarily 
beautiful valley. The best of these points 
should be held by the city for the benefit of 
the citizens. The city is fortunate in having 
the United States Armory with its spacious 
and sightlv grounds in its midst. 'This 
belongs to the people of the United States. 
The people of Springfield should secure and 
hold such a vantage-point as the wooded 
Rockrimmon. Men travel far and find 
nothing to surpass the loveliness of the 
Connecticut Valley as seen from one of these 
points. In the glow of the setting sun it 
lias a beauty that makes one gasp for very 
joy :—“ when the evening mist clothes the 
riverside with poetry as with a veil, and the 
poor buildings lose themselves in the dim 
sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, 
and the warehouses are palaces in the night, 
and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and 
fairyland is before us.” 
