The Treatment of City Squares 
THE TREATM ENT OF CITY 
SQUARES.—I. 
11 AT is the function of the city square, 
triangle, open space? By common con¬ 
sent the municipality is better for these oases. 
Towns and cities are locating them as oppor¬ 
tunity offers; but the task has never been 
developed into a science. Yet there must be 
some general principles underlying their ar¬ 
rangement. These ought to form one of the 
most interesting chapters in the “Science of 
Modern City Building;” for how complex 
are the uses to which we put them, how var¬ 
ious are the sites which are granted to them ! 
Indeed, the squares can hardly be discussed 
under a single head. There are the spaces 
in a crowded business district, most frequent¬ 
ly before a public building; there are the 
spaces in the residence quarters, formed by 
the convergence of streets at irregular angles, 
or distinctly set apart for areas of beauty or 
tor children’s pleasure grounds ; and there 
are the spaces frequently placed before rail¬ 
road stations. Each group may well demand 
a consideration peculiar to itself. 
As yet, be it observed, the spaces have not 
even a generic name, unless it be that cum¬ 
brous and indefinite title, “open space”— 
which might be street, or river, or back yard, 
quite as well as the thing that is meant. We 
take them, too, as we find them, usually, 
three-fourths of them not purposely created, 
but found existent through fortunate miscal¬ 
culations or irregularities in the urban topog¬ 
raphy. And then we do with them what 
the whim of the moment dictates—perhaps 
to change our minds after a decade, in cases 
of some success, perhaps to wish we had de¬ 
cided on other treatment before the work is 
finished. For we fill in our open space as if 
it were a blank area on a wall that we were 
attempting to “ decorate” or “treat” without 
a thought of the wall around it, without 
THE PIAZZA DELLE ERBE VERONA 
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