The Park Systems of American Cities 
a bird’s-eye view of a typical section of buffalo 
Showing the unusually large proportion of verdure 
phia was the exemplar, many cities and 
towns of this country compel their inhabi¬ 
tants to run their latitude and longitude 
separately instead of taking a direct course. 
It will be noticed that this is not true ot 
Buffalo. From Niagara Square, which marks 
the center of the city, the streets branch out 
in several directions, fan-shaped, the handle 
of the fan on the Square. T his means that 
the citizens may reach almost any outlying 
section in the shortest time possible. For a 
city of the present size of Buffalo the plan 
thus simply conceived is admirable. But the 
wisdom of the founders of the city has not 
been handed down or the present engineers 
would have located other foci for radiating 
streets within two miles, at most, of this 
central focus of Niagara Square. They 
would have plotted a diagonal avenue run¬ 
ning southeastward from a point on the 
northern river shore, perhaps opposite the 
southern end of Squaw Island, to Ferry 
Street Circle, thence to Masten Place, and 
on to the limits ot the city, with a Circle at 
its intersection with Fillmore Avenue. Simi¬ 
larly from a point on the lake shore about a 
mile and a half south ot Niagara Square 
there should be a direct route across the 
southern, southeastern and eastern sections 
of the city, perhaps crossing Fillmore Avenue 
at the same Circle. Nevertheless, with the 
business center where it is and, as a result, 
with the main traffic flowing directly to and 
from Niagara Square, the plan of Buffalo, 
taken exactly as it is, is surpassed by only 
one city in this country and that the National 
Capital. 
This radiating plan of Buffalo has meant 
a great deal to its architects. It has given 
them angles of all kinds upon which to erect 
their buildings. It is curious that the 
opponents of advance who are called con¬ 
servatives and who of course are believers in 
the gridiron system, have pitched on these 
irregular corners as an objection to diagonal 
avenues, when as a matter of fact they are 
one of their chief advantages. The photo¬ 
graph here reproduced of a bank in Buffalo 
gives some idea of the possibilities of 
such irregular corners even when the sur¬ 
roundings are unattractive buildings with 
their sky lines shattered, with advertisements 
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