The Park Systems of American Cities 
GWYNN’s FALLS, NEAR BALTIMORE 
A natural feature of great beauty , the surroundings of which it is urged to place under public control 
land is cheap will not answer the purpose, 
which is to give opportunity for exercise and 
active play no further away from children’s 
homes than are the schools to which they 
have to go, and preferably next to the 
schools, so that they can be used during the 
school recesses, as well as after hours. . . . 
There should be in each neighborhood a 
space not open to the hurly-burly of large 
children, but one where mothers may take 
young tots, mostlv under the school age, to 
get out-of-door play and exercise.” For the 
older boys and young men there is a con¬ 
stantly decreasing inducement to take interest 
in small playgrounds, and for them athletic 
fields, provided with outdoor gymnasia, run¬ 
ning tracks and field sports, must be pro¬ 
vided. Swimming pools are desirable for 
adults and wading pools for children. Then 
there are the grounds that have usually been 
denominated parks, which provide for the 
social recreation of the people, for their 
promenades ; and large parks for the enjoy¬ 
ment of outdoor beauty, either that of formal 
design or natural scenery. The formal design 
is more properly limited to the smaller parks 
and squares of the city, where, on account of 
the contiguousness of blocks of city houses, 
it is useless to attempt the effect of rural 
scenery. That effect can only be secured in 
extensive country parks. 
A parkway is sometimes merely “ a broad 
street arbitrarily selected for decorative treat¬ 
ment, a sort of elongated city square, of 
which there are several examples in Balti¬ 
more.” Except when so selected, “ they are 
ordinarily designed to serve as a means of ap¬ 
proach to a large park or as a connection 
between large parks,” thus enabling people to 
visit two or more in the course of one outing, 
without the annoyance, danger and views of 
unsightliness,incident to ordinary street travel. 
The possibilities of development so as to 
ruin or to preserve natural beauty is well 
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