House and Garden 
A MUNICIPAL MUSEUM 
THE IMPORTANCE OF ARBOR DAY 
/ T'HE conception of a museum of this charac- 
ter for Chicago was suggested by some 
significant groups of municipal exhibits shown at 
the St. Louis exposition. The German cities, 
fresh from the Dresden municipal exposition of 
the year before, brought to St. Louis some of their 
most beautiful and instructive exhibits relating 
to hygiene, housing, parks, recreation and public 
art. A few American cities, in response to a plan 
finely conceived but imperfectly executed, built 
housesin the so-called ‘ ‘Model Street' ’ and installed 
exhibits more or less completely illustrating their 
individual activities. New York, San Lrancisco, 
St. Paul and Minneapolis under the name of the 
‘Twin Cities,’ Boston and Kansas City divided 
the honors in the American municipal section. 
An exhibit of the city of Paris was to be seen in the 
Lrench pavilion, and creditable exhibits were 
shown by several minor Lrench and English cities, 
Budapest and Buenos Ayres. So suggestive was 
the showing made that not a few were impressed 
with the latent possibilities in the Municipal 
Museum idea, but, like so many other good things, 
it was left to Miss Addams to make it “come true. ” 
It is plain that the lines along which it is pro¬ 
posed to develop the Municipal Museum are am¬ 
bitious ones and that the scheme is capable of al¬ 
most indefinite expansion although, fortunately, 
most of the material may be presented in fairly 
compact form if necessary. With space and with 
money—not an enormous amount, but sufficient— 
the institution may be so ordered as to become a 
great educational factor in the community, sup¬ 
plementing in countless directions the work of the 
library and the school. The material employed is 
chiefly that of maps, models, charts, matter pic¬ 
torial and statistical, etc. If allowed to reach its 
logical development the museum should become 
a dynamic university, teaching its lessons through 
the eye rather than through the ear and the printed 
page; selecting, valuing and placing the emphasis 
by the use of color and form so that it shall come to 
pass, in very truth, that he who runs may read. 
The daily attendance since the opening of the 
museum has ranged from two hundred to two 
thousand people. The fact that the museum 
is centrally located, that admission is free, that 
the exhibits deal in a fresh and graphic fashion 
with the simplest and most vital concerns of 
life, that a point is made of the interpretation of 
the exhibits to the visitors— in short that the mu¬ 
seum is alive —is no doubt responsible for its cor¬ 
dial reception. 1 he museum serves as one of 
the means of communication between the central 
office of the American Civic Association and its 
Chicago branches and members. 
PENNSYLVANIA has two Arbor Days, one 
in spring and the other in fall, but so far as 
our experience in Allentown goes, says “The Reg¬ 
ister,” of that city, the law that created these 
days, is practically a dead-letter. It is true that 
the day is observed in spirit, but literary programs 
do not plant trees, neither do they preserve the 
forests. 
What is needed here, as in many other places, is 
the creation of that sentiment which brings about 
practical results and some of the people of St. 
Louis have adopted an idea that would work well 
in Allentown. 
In that city they have a Civic Improvement 
League and to stimulate public interest in the work 
the Tree Planting Committee of the organization 
has issued an announcement to the school children 
relative to the $500 in prizes which are to be dis¬ 
tributed June 1, 1906, for the largest number of 
contracts made by pupils with responsible prop¬ 
erty owners for the planting of trees on the streets 
of St. Louis. 
With the announcement of the contest the lea¬ 
gue is sending out a pamphlet containing the joint 
recommendations of the 'free Planting Committee 
of the league and the Engelmann Botanical Club. 
The report of the committee gives the following 
six reasons for the planting of trees: 
1. They increase the value of surrounding prop¬ 
erty. 
2. They protect the pavement from the heat of 
the sun. 
3. They add beauty and comfort to the city 
streets. 
4. They cool the air in summer and radiate the 
warmth in winter. 
5. They purify the air; the leaves inhale carbonic 
acid gas and exhale oxygen. 
6. They aid in counteracting the unnatural con¬ 
ditions of city life. 
The committee suggests these ten different spe¬ 
cies for the streets: Soft maple, hard maple, syca¬ 
more, American elm, white birch, Carolina poplar, 
Lombardy poplar, European cottonwood and the 
pin oak. 
The committee urges the residents along any 
given street to meet and agree upon one kind of 
tree for that street, claiming that the beauty of the 
tree avenue depends much upon the planting of 
uniform species. 
The report suggests that trees may be planted in 
the spring or fall, but preferably in the spimg, 
that they should be planted about 25 feet apart, 
and that no tree should be planted which is not 
inclosed in a suitable guard. 
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