House & Garden 
than required bv the travel—and in a city 
that could boast of leadership in civic art. 
But all the lessons of modern city building 
were ignored, and the ruin of the space has 
been permitted by the erection across it of 
the ugly elevated railroad structure. Pathet¬ 
ically significant is the circumstance that you 
cannot buy in the shops to-day, though the 
elevated structure has been long standing, a 
photograph of the square taken since its ruin 
was thus compassed. With fond memory 
pictures are yet sold of Dewey Square as it 
was before the loss of its artistic possibilities. 
The space before the North Station is equally 
depressing, by reason of neglect, so that 
Boston well illustrates the importance of con¬ 
sidering the arrangement of station squares. 
In front of the Gare de l’Est in Paris there 
is a large space, the treatment of which has 
much of suggestion. Here there is shown 
how much trees can do to give height to a 
flat area—an important esthetic principle. 
The space—of which the photograph shows 
only a portion—is less a square than a 
broadened bit of boulevard that has been yet 
further widened by converging streets. Tram 
communication with various parts of the city 
centers here, as it very properly may, and the 
transfer, or waiting rooms for the trams is 
almost the first edifice that the arriving 
traveler sees when he leaves the railroad 
station. Paris, with all her love of beauty 
and her fondness for esthetic display, has 
here, with abundant opportunity, held herself 
strictly in check. Without permitting such 
barbarity as Boston, she has made the traffic 
her first consideration, and the earliest im¬ 
pression of the stranger is that of a populous, 
busy city; but, withal, one arranged with 
singular convenience, and one in which the 
abundant trees prevent too violent a contrast 
in the swift transition from rural to urban 
scenery. This seems a little matter, and 
doubtless with nearly every traveler the effect 
will be sub-conscious; but after all, it counts, 
and the new arrival at the Gare de l’Est finds 
that he likes his first view of Paris—though 
if you stopped him at the station and asked 
him why, he probably could not tell you. 
When all is said, civic art is the knack of 
THE NEW SOUTH TERMINAL AND DEWEY SQUARE BOSTON 
