House and Garden 
his very interesting little pamphlet entitled 
“ Civic Art in Northern Europe,” which has 
been recently distributed in this city, reminds 
us that St. Petersburg—perhaps one of the 
points of Europe most remote from the 
centers of art, and which is, nevertheless, a 
beautiful city when compared with New 
York, is only two hundred years old, while 
New York is two hundred and fifty years 
old. I'his seems indeed difficult to realize. 
He also tells us that it is seldom that any 
municipal improvement is executed in Paris 
for which plans have not been prepared and 
practically decided upon from ten to fifteen 
years in advance. By reversing the state¬ 
ment you will see that the intelligent thought 
is ten or fifteen years in advance of the actual 
necessity for improvements, which is the 
direct opposite of the prevailing custom in 
this country, even in matters of the greatest 
practical import, as for instance the transit 
situation in the City of New York. 
When the Champs-Elysees was laid out 
and the Place de l’Etoile was planned, the 
radiating avenues leading from this square 
were placed on the official maps, and in time 
every one of these avenues with such modi¬ 
fications and improvements as conditions may 
have required from time to time have been 
built and have developed so that every year 
adds to their beauty. 
At the present time the Avenue de la 
Grande Armee, which is a continuation of 
the Champs-Elysees beyond the Arc de 
Triomphe, is being gradually extended so that 
it will eventually reach Versailles. Think 
of it! An avenue of that magnitude, beauty 
and importance and nearly as long as the 
City of New York. 
I venture to say that there is hardly a prac¬ 
tical solution of a single municipal develop¬ 
ment which is presented that cannot be 
made less expensive within a very few years 
by the development of the artistic side and 
possibilities of the problem, whether by 
creating entirely new civic centers, whether 
by adding to the beauty and attractiveness 
of these centers and thereby enhancing the 
value of the property and increasing the tax 
levy, or whether only by making an improve¬ 
ment which is permanent and capable of in¬ 
definite development, so that the first cost is 
not an absolute waste of money. One single 
illustration will place this before you quite 
forcibly : 
Expositions of considerable magnitude have 
been held in different parts of Europe and 
this country. In Europe they have always 
been seized upon as the means of developing 
some new municipal feature of a permanent 
character, so that after the exposition is over 
and the buildings are removed, the city has 
gained not only a building or two, but beauti¬ 
ful parks, avenues, bridges or other perma¬ 
nent municipal improvements. The first 
Paris Exposition developed the lower end 
of the Champs-Elysees between that avenue 
and the river. The second and third Paris 
Expositions produced the Trocadero with its 
wonderful approaches, and to some extent 
the development of the Champs de Mars. 
The last Exposition, besides the general de¬ 
velopment of this entire region, produced 
the two palaces, a new bridge and a new 
avenue opening up a vista over this bridge 
to the Invalides with its wonderfully beauti¬ 
ful dome, besides a great many minor im¬ 
provements. The Philadelphia Exposition 
produced two buildings, and resulted in the 
necessity of thousands of dollars being spent 
to restore the Park, to which little or nothing 
was added. The same is true of Chicago, 
Buffalo and St. Louis, and no effort on the 
part of the architects in charge could per¬ 
suade the people of any of these cities to 
consider such an expense as a means of re¬ 
modeling and beautifying in a permanent 
fashion any part of the city, so that their 
millions have been spent in temporary features 
all of which have disappeared, and beyond 
the passing pleasure and benefit of the ex¬ 
position nothing remains but a memory. 
The principal reason for the great waste 
of artistic opportunity in municipal develop¬ 
ment and some other lines of development 
is without question due to the fact that the 
engineer’s point of view and not the archi¬ 
tect’s has prevailed. The engineer’s point 
of view appeals more strongly to the average 
man than that of the architect, and yet while 
most architects can do good engineering, 
there are few engineers who can do decent 
architecture. The engineer’s point of view 
is strictly quantitative, that of the architect 
almost strictly qualitative. With the average 
engineer twice two are four, and this is the 
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