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MODERN HSHftfcSA&f
OR
THE CITY MADE BEAUTIFUL
BY
CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON
AUTHOR OF
"THE IMPROVEMENT OF TOWNS AND CITIES"
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Ube Ifcnicfcerbocfcer ipress
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903
BY
CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON
Published, May, 1903
fUffl)
'
Ube tfcnfctebocJiet Dre00, flew Uorft
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NEW DAY' FOR CITIES . .
*
. . .
3
II. WHAT Civic ART Is .... . .
24
THE CITY'S FOCAL POINTS
III. THE WATER APPROACH . . . . .
-39
IV; THE LAND -APPROACH . .
59
V. THE ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRE . . . . .81
IN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT
VI. THE. STREET PLAN OF THE BUSINESS DISTRICT . . 101
VII. ARCHITECTURE IN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT . . .
123
I
VIII. THE FURNISHINGS OF THE STREET . . . .
138
IX. ADORNING WITH FOUNTAINS AND SCULPTURE . . 166
IN THE RESIDENTIAL SECTIONS
X. STREET PLOTTING AMONG THE HOMES . .
*
.
187
XL ON GREAT AVENUES . . . ... 206
XII. ON MINOR RESIDENTIAL STREETS .... 228
XIII. AMONG THE TENEMENTS 245
iv Contenta
THE CITY AT LARGE
CHAPTER
XIV. COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING
XV. OPEN SPACES
XVI. PARKWAYS
XVIL DISTRIBUTION AND LOCATION OF PARKS .
XVIIL PARK DEVELOPMENT ....
XIX. TEMPORARY AND OCCASIONAL DECORATION
INDEX
271
287
307
321
337
355
377
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW DAY FOR CITIES.
THERE
is a promise in the sky of a new day.
The darkness rolls away, and the buildings
that had been shadows stand forth distinctly
in the gray air. The tall fa9ades glow as the sun
rises; their windows shine as topaz; their pennants
of steam, tugging flutteringly from high chimneys,
are changed to silvery plumes. Whatever was
dingy, coarse, and ugly, is either transformed or
hidden in shadow. The streets, bathed in the
fresh morning light, fairly sparkle, their pavements
from upper windows appearing smooth and clean.
There seems to be a new city for the work of the
new day. There is more than even the transformation
that Nero boasted he had made in Rome, for night
closed here on a city of brick, stone, and steel; but
the morning finds it better than gold. Sleep had
come to weary brains and hearts, and had closed
eyes tired of dreariness and monotony; the day finds
faculties alert and vigorous; and eyes are opening
4 flDo&ern Civic art
upon beauty. As when the heavens rolled away
and St. John beheld the new Jerusalem, so a vision
of a new London, a new Washington, Chicago, or
New York breaks with the morning's sunshine upon
the degradation, discomfort, and baseness of modern
city life. There are born a new dream and a new
hope. Within these is the impulse to civic art
Cities grow in splendour. There are new stand
ards of beauty and dignity for towns. The science
of modern city-making is being formally laid down
as its principles are discovered and its rules enun
ciated. For the true ideal that spurs to useful en
deavour is that alone which is based on study and
facts. As the dawn transforms none but real cities,
so can this "new day" come only when the town
of familiar experience has commenced to become
what it should be and might be. In one place this
may be soon, in another late; in one place there is
already long progress toward it, in another there
are only the yearnings and painful beginnings. But
everywhere a desire to some extent is present,
efforts are put forth to attain to the noble and beau
tiful in city-making, and there is proud remembrance
of such urban glory as the past can claim.
Out of this irregular progress a law appears of
municipal evolution. Though the development be
slow and tedious, it is sure; and if the course be
marked, the law noted, the vision at the end described,
doubtless something will have been done to hasten
an advance that was never so swift as now, however
H mew S>a$ for Cities. 5
laborious to the impatient the process seems. Con
sidered merely as a morning picture, the new day
for cities has its ancient promise in the tower and
steeple gleaming in the sunlight. Its newer morn
ing pledge is in the light that, glancing on the dewbathed
flowers and grass of the people's parks, studs
them with jewels as sparkling and as precious to a
city as were the gems in the prophet's vision of the
new Jerusalem. It appears again in the beams that,
falling athwart the open space, change it to a bright
oasis whither pallid multitudes flock from dreary
homes, and where little children play, the sun upon
their hair.
Progress toward a better day for cities owes more
than might be guessed to the impetus of dream and
hope and high resolve, for these furnish the inspira
tion to practical achievements. Merely as a measure
of the advance, however, the latter alone have first
to be considered. Observe how much the modern
city is indebted not merely for comfort but for dig
nity and beauty to recent discovery and invention.
The dark streets through which the pedestrian form
erly made at night an uncertain way, with his indi
vidual lantern, now glow at midnight as at noon.
The refuse once poured from upper windows to the
streets, in proudest capitals, flows now in subter
ranean streams, unknown. The pavement, that at
best in other days was a racking way of cobble
stones, is now made hard and smooth. Streets,
once so crowded by enclosing city walls as even in
6 fIDofcem CMc art
capitals of empires to be narrow, treeless slits be
tween the buildings, now alike in the humblest
and most thronged communities widen broadly, per
mitting the traffic to move with ease, and still leave
room for grass and trees, and ever and again for
flowers. Water is had in abundance to clean the
pavements and lay the dust. The mesh of wires
that inventions brought with them as a temporary
urban evil are now assembling in orderly strands
beneath the ground; and there is promise that the
smoke, which has hung in a dark cloud above the
modern industrial community, is shortly to be dissi
pated by the ingenuity at work upon the problem.
All these are powerful factors. They lay a strong
and suitable foundation upon which a superstructure
of civic art may be consistently built up. If, indeed,
our cities be spacious, well paved, and clean, with
the touch of God's fingers in open space, park, and
street, to what mingling of comfort and nobility may
there not be aspiration in these days of municipal
resource and power? From such a foundation it
must, inevitably, be possible to build statelier cities
than ever before. So modern civic art appears.
Of all the prerequisites to this progress the most
potent is the extension of cities over a greater area.
That the normal city can increase vastly in popula
tion, with no proportionate increase in congestion,
is a condition of supreme importance. This is the
aid of rapid-transit to the cause of city beauty. We
are not even yet realising fully what it is to mean,
H IRew a$ for Citie0*
for it has brought with it at first a financial and con
structive embarrassment in the greater burden of
public property to be cared for, extending and multi
plying sparsely built-up streets that have to be
paved, lighted, provided with sewers and water, and
guarded from crime and fire. And this embarrass
ment is one which many cities have gone half-way
to meet through the extravagant extension of their
boundaries, so that it has early had an undue pro
portion of the emphasis. But the net advantage of
widening the area available for city expansion re
mains very great. Therein rests the solution of
many problems of city development that have to be
solved before the new science of city-making can
advance any claim to thoroughness in results ; and
if we have hastily gone half-way to meet the one
great disadvantage, striving first of all to overcome
that, we already know the worst and may expect in
the fast coming years to reap a profit which will
then appear to be almost wholly net.
1
And what is this profit to be ? Of its immediate
and superficial benefit, in such broadening of thor-
1
In the United States where, through multiplicity of examples, the first results
of the extension of city boundaries can be most conveniently observed, a newspaper
took a census at the opening of the twentieth century of "the greatest needs "
of
a score of the larger and older cities. Overwhelmingly they were :
(i) pave
ments ; (2) extension of water- and sewer-pipes ; (?) additional water supply.
Such practical wants in old and rich communities would have been inexcusable, and
undoubtedly of nothing like this predominance, had not the city's area been recently
extended greatly in every case. The census was taken in a period of national
prosperity, and as this was prolonged great urban expenditures were undertaken to
supply the wants. A compilation made by the Municipal Journal two years later
put the anticipated expenditures for municipal improvements in that one year in the
United States at upwards of a billion dollars. This included $24,000,000 by New
8 fIDofcern Civic Hrt
oughfares that there is room upon them not only for
the traffic but for the soft and brightening touch of
nature, there has been already a suggestion. The
change can be better appreciated in the old world
than in the new, for there the razing of the walls
marks distinctly the transition from the ancient
method of city-building to the modern. Within a
stone's throw we may find the old, narrow, treeless
chasms that did for streets, and the broad new
boulevards with trees and turf. But without the
provision of some means of urban transit that should
be cheap, swift, and frequent, this razing of the con
fining walls could have accomplished little. Hap
pily, however, one promptly followed the other.
The town, having been given the opportunity to
expand, found the means to do so. Thenceforth, in
the United States, and wherever the self-confident
commerce of late years has built new cities, the
towns have begun expansively.
The advantage, however, far exceeds an outward
and purely aesthetic gain. It promises to check that
sad phase of urban development in which, heretofore,
York, mainly for subways, bridges, paving, and water ;
about $20,000,000 by
Philadelphia, mainly for the improvement of the water system ; and, as an example
of the effort by smaller cities, the laying of at least one hundred thousand square
yards of paving in St. Paul. These estimates, it should be remembered, were simply
on work to be actually done within the twelve months. The commitments for the
future represented a far greater sum. In New York, for instance, the rapid-transit
tunnel alone was to involve a total cost of $35,000,000. To this more than half a
dozen millions were to be added by the tunnel under the East River, Three new
bridges, on which work was in
progress, were expected to add $60,000,000 a total
in these items of more than a hundred millions. Then there were bridges over the
Harlem, development of the Bronx district, new street openings, paving, etc., to a
very great amount. Clearly, the new obligations were courageously attacked.
1Rew 3>a$ for Cities.
the increase of population has meant a closer huddling
of the poor. For this there could have been no
relief while city walls lasted; it must have gone
from bad to worse and have made in the misery of
the poor a horrible mockery of the efforts for city
beauty; and these walls, we need to remind our
selves, did not have to be of stone. Much more
relentless than embattlements of masonry are those
gateless walls that time and space throw round about
a city. Until rapid-transit lowered these, municipal
art held out no promise to the poor.
The tenement we have with us yet, and it seems
too much to hope that we shall ever be without it; but
it may be an improved tenement, with a playground
for the children very near it and a lovely park not far
away. Thanks to rapid-transit, modern civic art
can now hope to banish
"
the slum," thus to redeem
the tenement, and to make its own conquests
thorough. For the expansion of the town resultant
from good transit facilities acts in two ways upon the
slum. It lessens the pressure from within by making
possible the removal of some of the surplus pop
ulation; it lessens the pressure from without by
permitting the increase of the town's accommodation
to be by concentric rings. What this means to
the community can hardly be appreciated in the bare
statement; but the greatest of our humanitarian op
portunities lies within it.
That, now, the civic renaissance to which we tend
must include an entirely new art of city-making is
io flDofcern Civic art
clear from the character of the factors which have
been already considered. Not one of them was
operative in the most superb city of ancient times.
The opportunities that are offered by recent inven
tion and discovery, the levelling of restricting city
walls with the consequent lessening of pressure
within the town, an outward movement from the
centre for the express purpose of improving industrial
surroundings so robbing the great rise of modern
industry of its menace to civic aesthetics, all this is a
recent development. It is a happy adjustment to new
conditions, seeming to make possible the creation of
a city beautiful on lines that are not antagonistic to
any development which may be essential to modern
urban greatness, and on lines also that should be
more permanent and splendid than any civic creation
of the past, if the science of city-building be care
fully evolved and adhered to.
But there remains one factor more. To describe
an art movement in the industrial phraseology of the
day, it is as if we had a clear track for our locomotive
and an engineer eager to draw the throttle. We
need only the steam. If this be conceived of as the
power derived from wealth, the gauge should now
be marking an extremely high pressure. We are
rich enough to-day, not in the United States alone,
nor in Great Britain alone, nor in France or Germany.
For, whatever may be the per-capita wealth of
nations or cities, this is the day of great individual
fortunes, which is to say of vast opportunities, and
1Rew Ba$ for Cities,
more and more it is the fashion to use these for
the public good. It is the day also of ready com
munication, so that the treasures of the world, the
various materials, and the taste and ingenuity of
man lie at the hand of him who can pay for them.
The city that would make itself magnificent has the
whole world to draw upon.
And in this connection, note these thoughts:
Bayet in his Precis d'Histoire de VArt observes of the
Renaissance cities of Italy that "the accumulation of
wealth by these enlightened communities made for
artistic progress.
" 1
The statement is interesting as a
historical justification of the claim that in an age of
enlightenment wealth does make for art. Art, de
pendent on slow painstaking, must have its patron
who can pay. Bayet again speaks of the Italian
cities as republics "which by their commerce and
industry became prosperous and rich, and in which
political life was especially ardent." This is of
interest as showing that the eager feverishness of
municipal politics does not necessarily hamper the
development of civic art. Nor is it perfectly clear
that such art has to develop in spite of, rather than
1
Ernest Gilliat Smith in his Story of Bruges notes an exactly similar phenomenon
in the Flemish Renaissance. During the prosperous fifteenth century, when the
Renaissance was at its zenith, he remarks that aside from the splendid work done by
the great city companies and by the nobles, the movement toward civic art became
truly popular. He says:
" The new men who had recently amassed fortunes vied
with the old aristocracy in the magnificence and luxury of the mansions which they
now built; plain, well-to-do merchants were everywhere constructing those roomy,
comfortable abodes, which, with their high-stepped gables and their facades en
circled with stately panelling and Gothic tracery, still render the streets and squares
and waterways of Bruges the most picturesque in Europe."
12 flDofcern Civic art
because of, such interests. For where political life is
ardent, the civic consciousness is strong; the impulse
toward creative representation is fervent; and state,
government, the ideals of parties, are no longer
abstractions, but are concrete things to be loved or
hated, worked'for, and done visible homage to. The
strain and stress of city politics to-day are not, then,
a factor essentially antagonistic to civic art."
The final thought is this :
Engineering, upon
which the aesthetic aspect of cities is so largely de
pendent, differs from pure art in that it need not
be the child of inspiration. It is an exact science
and, as such, wealth can buy it, can even import it,
bringing to the city the engineer who can make the
municipality splendidly correct, if among its own
citizens there be no lover who has that power. Here
again in the modern effort for the physical improve
ment of cities there is singular good-fortune. The
science of city-building does not wholly depend upon
high impulse or inspiration. For its plainer and yet
essential victories the intellect is sufficient. And
yet, over and above this requirement which we can
hope to meet so easily, there are the high motives
that must surely give birth to inspiration.
Thus the modern, dawning, civic art appears as
[the latest step in the course of civic evolution. The
flowering of great cities into beauty is the sure and
ultimate phase of a progressive development. It has
represented the crown of each successive civilisa
tion. If decadence has followed it, if the storied
S flew 2)a? for (titles 13
beauty of Babylon, if the splendour of Carthage as
Turner painted it, if the chaste loveliness of Athens
and the magnificence of Rome marked in each case
the culmination of an empire, it has been through no
effeminacy and weakness inherent in the develop
ment itself. Rather has it been because the glory
showered upon these cities was a concentrated ex
pression of the highest civilisation and the highest
culture of which the empire was capable.
All that is best the city draws to itself. As mag
nets acting on filings of steel, the cities attract from
their dependent fields whatever there be of learning,
culture, and art. The adornment that was lavished
upon Venice, Florence, and the minor city-republics
of Italy, and again upon the Flemish cities, repre
sented, not weakness, but the virility and rich abundance
of those qualities of mind and heart which
expressed themselves in the Southern and Northern
Renaissance. Had the cities been less beautiful, the
Renaissance had been less notable. They mutually
interpret each other ;
and cities begin to bud and
flower in beauty only when learning, culture, and art
are flowering around them.
The development will differ in aspect, of course,
as the civilisations differ in character. The art of
Greece was sculpture, and the glory of Athens in her
golden age was the chiselled art of the Acropolis.
Rome was imperial, and her- glory found expression
in construction that was colossal and magnificent.
The art, again, of the Southern Renaissance was
14 flDofcern Civic Hrt
painting, and we find in frescoes and in the more
delicate, more pictorial, phases of architecture the
triumph of the Italian republics. To-day, the spirit
of the time is commercial and industrial, and our
modern civic art reveals itself in forms that com
merce and industry comprehend. That our civic art
must differ from that of other times does not mean,
therefore, that it is not art, or that the new day for
cities will be less brilliant than of old. Rather, if it
be truly the heir of the past, it must be the new glory
of a new time.
Commerce and industry now express themselves,
in the realm of city aesthetics, in great highways, in
commercial palaces, in bridges, and wharves, and
stations. The love of nature, the lately aroused
consciousness of what may be called sentiment for
landscape, brings vegetation into the busy city to
soften and brighten ;
and then the spirit of practical
philanthropy so evident to-day locates play
grounds, builds schools, and insists that modern
civic art shall pervade all quarters of the town, re
modelling alleys as well as avenues.
Now, if civic art be a phase of urban evolution,
it should be possible to trace the steps by which
it is approached. Let us consider what these have
been in the rise of modern cities: There came first the
aggregation. Where no city had been the people
flocked the reason need not now concern us
until there was a city. The aggregation continuing
led quickly to congestion, at least in parts of the
a IRew 2>a$ for Cities. 15
community, and close upon congestion came squa
lor. We had now a large city, a crowded city,
and a miserable one. Out of misery came corrup
tion, debauch of the popular conscience, and from
such favourable conditions political knavery. These,
swiftly, are the steps of the downward course. But
all the time there were forces at work for good.
The very evil into which affairs had passed created a
disgust that vastly aided the reform endeavours.
So reform efforts gained gradually in importance.
Ideals were put before the people, and to some
extent assimilated. There had already been evid
ences of aesthetic aspiration, first noted in those
quarters in which was congregating wealth that
wealth which had begun to accumulate in accord
ance with the laws the foreseeing of whose opera
tion had induced the growth of the town. But such
is the force of good example that aesthetic aspira
tions spread broadly. Elementary construction, also,
had begun. At first this was for the sake of the
traffic and of sanitation ; but by degrees it had a
more distinctly aesthetic purpose. Of these forward
steps, some, of course, were taken coincidently with
the backward, for the community did not march
first one way and then the other. Two forces were
pulling in opposite directions; and if political knavery
turned constructive efforts in the public works to its
own evil purposes, the physical condition of the
town in its turn gained something from the official
eagerness to rob it and the stupid dormancy of
16 flDobern (Civic art
the popular conscience that afforded the opportunity
for such outrage in constructive work. Thus the
early improvements were purchased at an immensely
extravagant price; but there were improvements
and they were hastened.
With varying celerity the conscience now awak
ened. The reform efforts enlisted individuals, and
then associations of individuals, who were concerned
in bettering not alone the government, but the
aspect, of the town. Where officials were dis
trusted and individuals and associations tried to act
by themselves, or where the trust in officials was
misplaced, there followed necessarily much waste,
extravagance, and positive injury by poor taste.
As the like result followed either of these choices,
we find its expression, indeed, almost universal.
Then appears another phase in the civic develop
ment. This is perception of the waste, extravag
ance, and lack of artistic judgment, and willingness
to seek their correction by submission to expert
guidance. With this come co-operation, eagerness
to learn the experience of other places and to profit
by it, and dependence on those authorities whose
knowledge, genius, or talent is broadly recognised.
With this new chapter, wherever it is now entered
upon, begins modern civic art as distinguished from
merely the improvement of cities.
In the broad field of cities, examples can readily
be found to illustrate the successive steps in this
general evolution. The phases will differ slightly
H mew 3>as for Cities 17
here and there, as national and local peculiarities
stamp the development; but the course is clear,
essentially uniform, and leading surely to civic
aesthetics as its visible crown. So civic art properly
stands for more than beauty in the city. It repre
sents a moral, intellectual, and administrative pro
gress as surely as it does the purely physical. It
stands for conscientious officials of public spirit,
and where the officials are elective it is evidence
of an aroused and intelligent populace.
Perhaps the steps of this civic evolution will
show more clearly if we turn from abstractions to
the concrete.
The census bulletins of the United States declare
that in that country during the nineteenth century
there came into existence five hundred and thirtythree
communities of eight thousand or more in
habitants each. If we call them all by the name
that doubtless four-fifths ot them claim, we shall
group them as cities; and can say, in the census
phrase, that in 1800 the urban population was con
tained in twelve communities and represented four
per cent, of the total population, while in 1900 it
constituted five hundred and forty-five communi
ties containing more than thirty-three per cent,
of the total population. This is a group of statistics
that illustrates conveniently that nineteenth-century
phenomenon which is known as the
"
urbap drift/'
and which was no more marked in the United States
than in other nations most notably in Germany
i8 nDofcern Civic art
and England. This, as representing the
"
aggrega
tion," constitutes what we have called the first step
in the civic evolution.
To find some of these communities that are yet
in the earlier stages of the subsequent development,
we may turn with best assurance to the Western
States. In the newer towns congestion will not,
happily, be revealed; but that is a spectacle too
familiar in cities of all nations and all times to need
illustration, and wretchedness has not waited for
congestion. We find the town growing on lines
determined partly by accident and partly by the
push of enterprising real-estate holders, not at all
according to artistic design. There is little that can
be reasonably called architecture. If a man wants
a store, a barn, or a house, he goes to the carpenter,
and the carpenter puts up the long, single-gabled,
frame structure that is the simplest and cheapest.
Possibly, if the owner be a merchant and ambitious
to have his emporium impressive, a square front,
built to the height of the roof peak, may be put
before the skeleton structure; but this, misleading
no one, hardly serves to change the type. If there
be no time to build attractive houses, certainly
there is none in which to lay out gardens. People
have not come to live in the place because it is
pretty, but because they want to make money; and
they have not learned yet to love the town. It will
not even represent "home" to them for several
years. Clearly, civic aesthetics are at the antithesis
a IRew Bas for Citiea 19
of this phase; we are yet at the beginning of urban
development. In fact, such public spirit as there
may be is so crude and sordid that it counts any
thing even a water-tank as growth. The moral,
intellectual, and political conditions in this dreary
town need not here concern us. But they cannot
be high.
We may pass now to those thriving cities of
about thirty thousand inhabitants which, met so
frequently in the more closely settled portions of a
country, well represent another stage in the devel
opment. In the United States they are frankly in
dustrial communities. Political affairs are in that
condition when, out of the sore need of reform en
deavours, there is a more or less continuous series
of spasmodic reform efforts. But the physical im
provement of the town has gone steadily, though
expensively, forward. The town is well lighted,
most of the important streets are paved, and there
are rather more sewer- and water-pipes than perhaps
are needed or, if the aggregate be not excessive,
their location is not of the best, for they have been
extended on some streets that may not be built up
for a decade at the expense of others that are popu
lated. The industry of the town has begun to roll
up the expected private gain. The old type of
building has given way again and again to some
thing ornate, garish, and showy. Iron is favoured
because it can be made to suggest stone, while being
cheap. There are stores with cast-iron fronts; there
20 flDobern Civic art
are lawns with red iron deer; there is a soldiers'
monument of iron. It is the iron age. The houses
are now of all kinds. From the extreme of monot
ony the town has reacted, seeking the extremes of
originality. But the residential streets are lined with
trees, the square in front of the court-house is kept
in order, and most of the houses stand in little gar
dens that add much to the attractiveness of the place.
The people have begun to love their city. It is their
home, and they like to have strangers call it
"
attract
ive." There are distinct yearnings toward better
things. ./Esthetic ambition has been born.
The next step in the evolution develops rapidly.
A park is laid out. If it is done somewhat apologet
ically, with a pushing forward of philanthropical rea
sons, no one is deceived as to the relative importance
of these. Gifts are made to the town. The memo
rial fountain is really stone, for the iron age has
passed; and the new public library is so unmistaka
bly a thing of beauty that, although it did not cost
as much as the post-office, it is shown to the visitor
with no less pride. The new public schools are not
barracks within and do not resemble factories on the
outside. The factories themselves are improving;
and public sentiment has so crystallised that a society
has been formed to insist that rubbish be not thrown
into the street, that the station grounds be improved,
that flowers be generally grown, and that the waste
places be taken care of.
This improvement effort is, however, unguided.
H mew 2>as for Cities* 21
There is immense scope for the poor taste of un
trained individualism. And as the city grows larger
and its resources increase, the public works become
more spectacular and permanent, so that mistakes in
them last a long time and are striking. The need of
artistic guidance, both in public and private construc
tion, is more keenly felt; the extravagance and
wastefulness of duplicated effort are realised; the
value of an authoritative aesthetic control is perceived,
and it is appreciated that to make true advance in
civic art which is now frankly a goal there is
needed something more than means and impulse.
Various efforts are made to provide the required
artistic supervision. If these are reasonably success
ful, the city now rich, self-confident, ambitious
for its higher life and its development in beauty
has reached an advanced and healthy phase in its
evolution. Without much regard as to what the
means are, so long as they are successful, there
dawns a day of civic art.
The plan may be to elect as administrative officers
of the city persons whose education, refinement, and
culture as well as executive ability and business
sagacity are a guarantee that the right things will
be done and done well. This has been for the most
part the outcome of the civic reform efforts in Great
Britain, and has hastened the dawn among British
cities of a civic art based on business principles. In
France, under the leadership of Paris, the method has
been to summon to the service of the municipality,
22 flDobern Civic Srt
in an advisory capacity, the best experts and art
ists of the city; and the result has been the develop
ment of civic aesthetics on thoroughly artistic lines.
In the United States, where the effort has included
the appointment of "art commissions/
7
the banding
together of cities and of conscientious city officials in
leagues, the association for the public good of artists
and architects, and an immense amount of effort by
popular improvement societies, with the usurpation
by them of critical functions, the tendency, so far
as there may be said to be a tendency, is toward
federation, co-operation, and the exchange of experi
ences, to the end that there may be evolved so
precise a science of city-building that henceforth no
community need be ugly.
The German theory of city administration is based
still more emphatically on scientific principles, almost
to the exclusion of other considerations; but it differs
from the American in that its dependence is not so
much upon a science as upon scientists. The burgo
master and his magistrates are the best experts procur
able, and the council of the latter does not pretend to
be citizen-representative, but is made up of honoured,
highly paid, professional, and permanent employees,
trained to the work of city administration. In Ger
many, therefore, civic art takes on something of the
thoroughness and exhaustiveness of German science.
The varying national developments of this late
phase of urban evolution are thus interesting mainly
as emphasising the fact that the modern movement
B 1Rew Da? for Citie0, 23
toward civic art is truly international. They reveal,
too, that, however the exact course of the evolution
may vary in different places, municipal aesthetics
the flowering of cities into beauty is the ultimate,
the highest, step. It is the phase toward which all
the other urban changes tend. In our day it has
been at once hastened and elevated by many ad
vances in science, by discovery and invention. But
that it is the inevitable goal of the progress, the final
triumph of municipal development, is shown by the
history of the empires of many times.
The novel requirements and the new opportunities
of a new age must change, however, as we have
seen, the character of the civic art of to-day from
any that has been before. What, then, this modern
civic art will be, what is the promise of the new day
now dawning for cities these are the inspiring,
pertinent questions that are confronting the student
of city development. It is much to feel that the
moment for their serious asking has arrived.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT CIVIC ART IS.
THE
question properly arises as to what muni
cipal art is. Granted that the progressive
modern city develops gradually in beauty
and splendour, is this normal improvement, which is
yet more or less haphazard, civic art? Is the term,
after all, a relative one; stands this art alone among all
the arts in having nothing absolute, nothing sure ?
Is there civic art, or merely progress toward civic
art, when macadam is laid where no pavement was,
or when a bit of waste ground along a river bank is
secured by the municipality in order that it may be
never used for private ends to the exclusion of the
public ? If that be civic art, what shall we say if the
town, having secured the plot, never develops it; or
if, in an effort to
"
improve/' it follows wrong coun
sels and degrades with tastelessness what might have
been a charming feature ? Shall we let the spirit
of the thing count and still cry
"
Hail
"
to civic art ?
In other realms of art there must be a joint worth!-
24
THflbat Civic Hrt He, 25
ness of impulse and execution, else the act is not
recognised as art. The child, or, untaught man,
who would paint a Sistine Madonna and succeeds in
making only a daub, is not greeted as a master, nor
hears the work called "art," though his impulse be
of the highest and most artistic. So in the plastic art
and the tonal art, there is something absolute a
standard below which no handiwork is art, whatever
be the impulse; above which beauty is surely recog
nised and where the highest art of all is possible
the coupling of worthy execution to high resolve and
noble impulse.
So it is not enough that we should see the
progressive city tending normally toward physical
improvement, and should lay down therefore a
dictum that civic art is a late step in civic evolution.
We may well pause to ask ourselves just what is
municipal art, and whether we mean only a con
tinuance of improvement, an extension of sequence
with never a conclusion, when we talk of civic art as
a goal
Perhaps the common trouble is that our minds
are not fixed upon perfection in this art, so that we
forget that there may be perfection in it. For most
art, it may be noted, serves a useful purpose in
cidentally, finding in its own perfection, in its own
beauty, such justification that often men seek art
for art's sake alone ;
while with municipal art the
utilitarian advantages and social benefits become
so paramount that they are not forgotten, are not
26 flDobern Civic Hrt
overlooked, in straining for the sensual pleasure and
for that full rounding of positive attainment which in
itself may be the artist's goal. Here, then, in this
distinction, comes a suggestion for the first qualify
ing clause in the definition of municipal art And
how natural this first step of definition is! This art,
which serves so many social ends, is municipal, in
the sense of communal
It is municipal first of all. If men seek it they
seek it not for art's sake, but for the city's; they are
first citizens and then, in their own way, artists, and
artists in this way only because they are citizens.
We do not find men and women banding them
selves together to create a public sentiment and
fund in order that some sculptor may do a noble bit
of work to the glorifying of his field of art. But
they so band themselves and so commission sculpt
ors, painters, artists, and landscape designers, for
the glorifying of civic art not just because it is art,
but because it is civic. They are not asking the
town to help art, but art to help 'the town ; the
artists, not to glorify their art, but by their art to
glorify the city.
This, then, is the first consideration, and it is
worthy of more emphasis than might appear. It
does something else than conveniently differentiate
civic art from any other art. It explains why its
disciples may care little for artists though giving
commissions, why its clientage should be all the
urban world the art ignorant as well as the cult-
Wbat CMC Hrt 110. 27
ured ; why it must be delayed in coming until
civilisation is at its flower, since not dependent on
individual and selfish ambition ;
and why, when
coming, it will magnificently make all other purely
art endeavours but handmaids to its one great effort
because this is social and the public is behind it.
Thus is civic art first municipal, and has ever
attained its largest victories when cities were mighti
est. For in so far as it is art, its principles are
eternal as the truth, and its conquests must be at
least as old as cities. Down through the Middle
Ages, poets and painters dreamed of the "city beau
tiful
"
;
the Irish Gaelic poets sang of it ;
barbaric
Nero strove to realise it ;
the inspired apostle tran
scribed his vision in its terms ;
Greek philosophers
drew inspiration from the measure of Athens's at
tainment of it, and the great prophet named Babylon
as "the glory of kingdoms." As anciently as the
dawn with its golden radiance has transformed cities,
there has been a dream, a sigh, a reaching forth,
with civic art the goal.
And what precisely shall be the definition of this
art, ancient as all the arts, but distinguished from
them by its contentment to be servant, not mistress,
in the glorifying of cities ? What is any art but the
right, best way of doing a certain thing ? This art,
which is so utilitarian in its purposes as to be civic
first and art afterwards, may be defined, then, as the
taking in just the right way of those steps necessary
or proper for the comfort of the citizens as the
28 flDobern Civic Srt
doing of the necessary or proper civic thing in the
right way. Thus is its satisfaction quite as much
intellectual as sensual, and for popular appreciation
it must wait because of its very practicalness
upon popular education.
So civic art is not a fad. It is not merely a bit
of aestheticism. There is nothing effeminate and
sentimental about it, like tying tidies on telegraph .
poles and putting doilies on the cross-walks, it is
vigorous, virile, sane. Altruism is its impulse, but
it is older than any altruism of the hour as old as
the dreams and aspirations of men. We talk much
about it now, because we are living in a period that
has witnessed more building and remodelling of cities
than any period of history, and therefore in a period
that compels us to turn our thoughts to the best
ways of making improvements and to the principles
that ought to guide in building the modern city.
And those are the laws of civic art, of the great art
that is of the people and for the people, that is
closest to their lives, and that draws more than half
its charm from the recognition of perfect fitness in its
achievements. There is much said now of civic art
because it has become at last a popular goal this
art of doing civic things in the right way, which is
ever the beautiful way. Because this is true there is
a civic art.
As an art that exists not for its own sake, but
mainly for the good of the community, first for the
doing of the thing and then for the way of doing it,
Wbat Civic Brt 10. 29
there can be only one successful civic art. This will
be one which joins utility to beauty. Cities are not
made to be looked at, but to be lived in; and if in
the decoration of them there be any forgetfulness of
that, no successful civic art will follow and the effort
will defeat itself. Realising this, we should try to
discover some general rules for guidance, and if we
succeed, by noting the requirements and the vari
ous means that have been tried to satisfy them, we
should be able to that extent to translate our art into
a civic science that will be more or less exact into
the science of city-building, which is the text-book
of civic art. Where the art fails, the cause has been
neglect of the rules, through forgetfulness or ignor
ance.
Precedent, of course, to transcribing the science,
there are to be considered the functions of civic art.
If the end be to clothe utility with beauty, and In
providing the beautiful to provide also that which
will add to the convenience and comfort of the
citizens, we shall best find its opportunities for use
fulness by studying what has been happily called
the anatomy of cities. In this there appear three
"groups of requirements: Those that have to do with
circulation, those that have to do with hygiene, and
those that have to do distinctly with beauty. No
hard lines separate these classes. If in the street
plan, for instance, we find the convenience of circu
lation/, e., readiest adaptability to the traffic
the most pressing point, we come in the broad open
3o flDobern Civic art
space, shaded with trees and planted with grass, to
a problem that is to be approached still from the side
of circulation since convenient short cuts maybe
offeredand yet from the side of hygiene, and from
that of aesthetics. But the classification remains
convenient, for in seeking urban welfare and comfort
we must act in one or more of these groups. It may
be briefly asserted, therefore, that the function of
civic art is the making of artistic which is to say,
of aesthetically pleasant provision for the circula
tion, for hygiene, and for city beauty.
It is important to note that beauty itself is the ob
ject in only one of these three departments of effort,
and even then, as in the case of a bit of sculpture,
which certainly belongs under neither hygiene nor
circulation, other considerations, educational or com
memorative, may easily modify the artistic aspiration.
Thus the greater part, if not the best, of civic art is
that which first does something else than please the
senses. And that is why public-spirited men of all
interests, striving to ameliorate civic conditions along
many lines, find in municipal art one desideratum
upon which they all agree, and for the furtherance
of which they all by many paths are working.
Having observed the purposes of civic art, we
come to the means to be employed in gaining them.
Here we must seek rules for guidance and may take
up art principles. These are not new nor are they
novel. They, are as old as beauty and as broad as
art. They are the three dominant chords on which
Mbat Civic Hrt Ha 31
is built up the melody of all art. They are unity, t
variety, and- harmony.
If our civic art will not stand its double test
first, the civic test, as to the urban good it does; and
then the aesthetic test, it fails. And this latter test is
a more rigorous requirement with civic art than it
is with any other, for municipal art cannot stand
alone, to be judged without its environment and
the field in which it stands is so broad to have unity,
so varied to have harmony, so much the same in
parts to have variety. Consider how easily civic art
may fail with this test applied: a thrilling statue on
an unkempt street is not successful civic art, because
its surroundings are not harmonious; a park, lovely
in itself, may fail, from this broad standpoint, for
want of that unity in the city plan which would lend
to its location. seeming inevitableness. Building re
strictions designed to insure harmony, but made too
severe, may lose their artistic effectiveness by the
repression of variety to the verge of monotony. But
If it is easy to fail, as surely it is, success is better
worth the winning; and where a city, or part of a
,
city, is built up from the ground plan to the street
furnishings and construction with regard for these
three principles of art, how beautiful, consistent, and
intellectually satisfying is the result!
The desirability of obtaining such a thorough,
general, and artistic plan of improvement for every
community is evident. The chance to plan a city on
paper before it is built comes but rarely nowadays,
32 flDofcern Civic Hrt
and the best we can do is to see to it that the cities
grow artistically, that their extensions at least are
beautiful, and that every change in the city itself shall
bring it one step nearer to the ideal. The trouble with
most improvement effort is that it is planned all by
itself, that the benefit to the neighbourhood is studied
rather than that to the community, and that the first
half-dozen years after the improvement is made stand
out with more prominence and importance receive
more consideration from tax-payers and tax-spenders
than all the years that are to come thereafter. But
in wise city-building we would consider not five
years, nor ten years, but posterity. And to do this
would be cheaper in the end.
In an effort for civic improvement, therefore, the
first step that is best is one very seldom taken. It
is almost the only step that can insure the highest
tpye of modern civic art, for the requirements are
greater now than when artists and master builders,
dressing with beauty the narrow streets of Italian
and Flemish cities, created the civic art of five cen
turies ago. In those cities urban hygiene and circula
tion made no demands on civic art. Nowadays these
things are fundamental, and unless there be a well
thought out, artistically conceived, general plan to
work on, our civic art will go astray, with lack of
completeness or continuity. So it will fail, because
isolated and spasmodic ; because it will mean a tine
park, some patriotic statuary, three or four good
streets, and a few noble buildings rather than a city
TKBbat Civic art 10. 33
dignified and lovely as a whole where the open
space does not stop with balancing the slum, but re
deems it. We have set for ourselves a more complex
problem than was dreamed of by the Renaissance, and
unless our modern urban art can gain it the result
will not satisfy.
It is no reproach to the present thai so much has
been done without the guidance of general plans. It
merely shows that our art impulse outran our art
intelligence a very common procedure. The archi
tect, the artist, the landscape gardener, all enthusi
astic, have gone too fast for the civil authorities,
who represent the people ;
and so the underlying
principles, the great laws that should determine the
laying-out and the up-building of cities, have not been
set down and studied, as they should be, from all
sides. Many a good thing costs more than it ought
to, or has to be done over, and often the people have
the common-sense argument thbugh the ideals of
the artists are true and high and their dreams need
only a little pruning and a little injection of worldly
wisdom to be made thoroughly practical. The great
thing, the significant thing in its promise for the
future, is that there are such dreams, for it is easy to
prune, and worldly wisdom is ever cheaper than in
spiration. If, out of the abundant experience now
available, out of the many costly experiments of the
recent years that have witnessed in so marvellous a
degree the rise and growth of cities, we can now
find enough lessons that are pertinent and suggestive
34 flDofcem Civic art
to formulate a sort of science of city-building, we shall
have something to guide the artist and something to
awaken the interest and enthusiasm of him who can
not dream. It will be not the gospel which is in
the heart but the law and the prophets of modern
civic art.
That, in fact, is one of the great theoretical wants
of the day. The dreamers of the city beautiful, the
countless artists and laymen who are working for the
improvement of cities, towns, and villages, want a
theory of civic art to which they can turn." Practi
cally, the need of the day is the local application of
this general theory to every interested community.
It is the attainment of this end which is sought in
urging that the first step in bringing civic art to a
town should be the provision of a general plan of
development and improvement ; of a complete and
consistent plan, to the end that henceforth every step
taken should be a sure step of progress.
To the greater part of the population, also, the
plan that is thus set forth will represent a new ideal,
and one which they will find readily comprehensible
because concerned so plainly with the conditions
before their very eyes, to the avoidance of abstrac
tions. The value to the community of a civic ideal
scarcely needs exposition. Since realisation of this
ideal is dependent ultimately upon the public's ap
preciation, it will be brought a great deal nearer by
the public's perception of it. Of course an immense
responsibility will be thrown upon its makers. The
Kttbat Civic Hrt 10. 35
best expert advice should, unfailingly, be obtained ;
but if the laws of city-building have been put on
paper, it will not be hard to measure the suggestions
by these laws ;
and the very prominence of the work
will give to it a publicity broadly inviting criticism,
while the fact that the progress toward the ideal must
continue through a long series of years will demand
that the plan proposed be able to bear the changes
in special interest and point of view which lapse of
years will bring. The plan once secured, the public
spirit and artistic sense of the community can hardly
fail to insist that it be adhered to. Educationally, it
may be parenthetically remarked, knowledge of this
plan, which is the perception of a concrete ideal, will
offer a short cut, doing in a few months what can be
accomplished only very slowly by the efforts to
inculcate in school children civic pride and aesthetic
appreciation. These efforts will be continued, but
they will be given direction and practicalness.
The provision of this ideal, the setting before all
the people of a tangible vision of their own possible
city beautiful, will have other value than merely that
of popular education. It will offer them inspiration.
Nor will this inspiration be material only, but as
clearly moral and political and intellectual. The pride
that enables a man to proclaim himself "a citizen of
no mean city
"
awakens in his heart high desires that
had before been dormant. "To make us love our
city we must make our city lovely
"
was taken as its
motto by the Municipal Art Society of New York
36 fIDobent Civic art
when it was organised, and he who loves his city is
a better citizen and a better man.
There will be other than merely general inspira
tion, for the dream of what one's city should be, and
may be, and even some day must be, will be a special
inspiration to all those professions of the fine arts
upon which the beauty of the city ultimately depends.
There is not an architect of spirit who will not feel a
new incentive when he thinks that he is planning
buildings that are to be part of the city of the future;
not a landscape gardener who will not plant with
greater care because of this vision ;
not a sculptor
who will not throw himself more devotedly into the
modelling of the civic monument that is to be one of
the new city's ornaments. And down from the pro
fessions to the workers, and from those who execute
the commissions to those who give them, will be
felt the spur of the dream, the hope, the goal.
"I do not want art for a few/' said William
Morris,
"
any more than education for a few, or free
dom for a few
"
and civic art is essentially public
art. It has been likened to "a fire built upon the
market place, where every one may light his torch;
while private art is a fire built upon a hearthstone,
which will blaze and die out with the rise and fall of
fortunes."
THE CITY'S FOCAL POINTS.
37
CHAPTER HI.
THE WATER APPROACH.
NO
work of art is satisfying and vigorous if it
have not defmiteness of expression. Un
less it has something to say as to its own
character, and says it, not here and there, but
with such harmony of its parts that each adds its
voice to the others in united expression, the result
is not pleasing. That, in fact, is the goal in mind
when it is said that the three underlying principles
of art are unity, variety, and harmony.
Considered from the standpoint, then, of civic
art, a primary fault with most towns and cities
is the lack of defmiteness in the impression they
make as one approaches them; and it is the un
conscious perception of this want which explains
why the approach by night is generally so much
more satisfactory than by day. At night the glow
in the sky, and then the countless lights gleaming
in serried rows, and every string of golden beads
standing for a street, mark the town clearly, with
39
40 flDofcern Civic art
no conflict of expression, and with irresistible appeal
to the imagination. Pinned thus against the lone
liness and blackness of the night, the composition
has a single message that of warmth and life,
of the juxtaposition of comfort with ceaseless effort
and burning desire which is the true message of
the town. There is no jar, there are no distractions.
The picture suggests a single thought and its voice
is unmistakable and beautiful.
And as a work of art, the municipality has a right
to be considered in this impressionist way. Socio
logically, indeed, the details alone are important;
but artistic details never make an artistic whole
unless they harmonise; and if we propose by mod
ern civic art to rear the city beautiful, the picture
is to be considered as a unit. As we see it first,
.
afar off, we may study it as a composition; and
then, as we come nearer, we shall see details but
the first impression counts.
Does this seem to be a fantastic, aesthetic idea ?
Remember the often painted and million times lov
ingly remembered view of Florence from San Miniato
heights Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's tower
making the centre of a composition which is an
urban picture never to be forgotten. Do you know
the view of Rome from the Campagna, with the
dome of St. Peter's rising high over the Church's
city; do you remember the sea view of Venice, the
water lapping the walls of its palaces; have you seen
New York from the Upper Bay, its tall buildings
Mater Bpproacfx 41
clustered like a forest of silver birches, gleaming in
the brilliant light and marking the town with unmis
takable personality ? Ask yourself if these strongly
marked pictures have no value to the communities
that form them ? Are they a worthless asset in civic
love and civic pride ?
On a road leading out of Boston into the suburbs
there is a view through an arch of trees of the gilded
dome of the State House on Beacon Hill; from a
point on the Thames there is a loved view of St.
Paul's with central London clustered about it a
vignette that stands for much. Upon just such little
things as this is fixed the citizen's love" for his city;
its towers and domes pin his affections, and the
more because in every case the composition has in
evitably a meaning, a clearness and accuracy of
significance, that makes it more than merely a pretty
picture. It is a work of that art which speaks not to
the eye alone, nor to the head alone, nor to the heart
alone; but, unitedly, to senses, brain, and sentiment
And what elements go to make this picture of the
city! What a story it tells of human progress or
human fall with broken hearts or blasted lives
among its shadows, and its spires and towers that
gleam in higher light the proofs of efforts that have suc
ceeded, of dreams that have come true! Think what
you look upon when you see a city, and reflect that if
it has defmiteness of expression, if it says to you one
beautiful and appropriate thing clearly and distinctly,
it is the greatest work of art that man can create.
42 flDobcrn Civic Hrt
What the thing that it says shall be, therefore,
whether a huge advertisement dominates the
scene, whether great black chimneys, or towers and
spires rising above the trees, determine the picture's
character, is a question that may well make pause
those who have a voice in the selection. It is not a
question only of civic art, unless that art be in
volved with broad and heavy responsibilities. It
is a question in part of civic pride, and so of good
citizenship; and its solution is like the solution of all
such questions. It depends on the willingness of
the individual to surrender a little of his private
liberty; to build, not exclusively for his own profit,
or even under the dictates of his own artistic sense,
but with a feeling for the resulting whole.
The most favourable place from which to view a
city is usually, as even the cited examples suggest,
the water. There no distracting element intrudes
between scene and seer. The waves are a neutral
foreground, sufficiently detailed, and yet with no
detail to arrest the eye; and beyond with distance
to idealise and harmonise the city rises in a con
trast sharp and urban. The water view is one that
civic art, then, cannot overlook. Happily, from the
aesthetic standpoint, the city is rare which is not
located upon water; and yet there is scant thought
of the water-front appearance, scant regard for the
possibilities of the urban picture where it should be
seen most advantageously. The shore must long
and perhaps always be one of the community's focal
Mater approach 43
points, but the tendency is to appear to turn the
back upon the water. At the water's edge the town
began, and pressing inward and climbing higher the
beginning is forgotten or ignored, as if a cause for
shame. But rather is it cause for pride, and as the
city grows the water gate is still the entrance, the
view across the waves the first picture still for
growing numbers. If civic art is anywhere to be
jealous of results, there is no point that can more
fittingly demand attention than this the picture of
the city from its river, its lake, or sea. Whatever
the body of water, it will bear its multitude of ob
servers, for if the narrow river would seem to have
fewer than the port of sea or lake, remember that the
farther shore, and every bridge that spans the stream,
affords the water view.
As to details, civic art, as the effort to make cities
beautiful, cannot afford to let slip the opportunity of
a bit of natural open space in such location. For
here, at last, however close the buildings press upon
it, the breezes play at will and the sun shines in un
broken radiance. No expression of nature is so wel
come in a city as is water, with its care-free, gay,
and tireless playfulness. Even in the street fountain
it is a ceaseless pleasure and in the park's artificial
pond or stream a constant joy. No city with so
great an aesthetic asset at its feet should fail to utilise
it, or part of it, for aesthetic purposes, though there
be ever so foolish an indifference to the picture that
the city itself may make when seen across the waves.
44 fIDobern Civic Hrt
This accepted as a primary principle of civic art,
it is to be understood that there is no need for such
use of the water-front to interfere with that commercial
or industrial use of it which was a cause of
the town's location there. If the stream be swift
enough to furnish power, it has a natural beauty
that requires only a place for observation ;
if the
body of water be large enough for navigation, the
craft afloat upon it will furnish life and picturesqueness
to add the charm of variety and human inter
est to the natural majesty of the scene. To give up,
then, the practical use of the water would be even
to rob it of some of its urban attractiveness. In fact,
because the city represents essentially man's conquest
of nature, the water within its confines and which
induced men to settle there may most fittingly ap
pear as "harnessed," to do men's work, or as
bridled, to bear their burdens. yEsthetically, we
should not demand the abandonment of the use of
the water only a place whence, with all its activ
ities, it may be seen, for civic art assumes that the
stream on which a city is located will not be trans
formed into an open sewer.
But the problem of the water-front, which is so
fascinating in the concrete example, since a scenic
effectiveness can be certainly added to convenience
and utility, gains in an abstract consideration almost
baffling complexity. There are so many kinds of
shore line, both as respects the topography and the
use to which the shore is put, that in general dis-
tlfoe Mater approach. 45
cussion only the broadest rules can be suggested.
On this point, more than in any other problem of
modern civic art, there must be a feeling of concrete
incompleteness and of total inadequacy in the abs
tract consideration. For all the time there must be
the consciousness, so discouraging from this point of
view, but so inspiring from another, that for the
particular water-front that may be most in the mind,
there is possible a thrillingly noble solution which
'here is hardly touched upon and to which much
even of what is said has the scantiest pertinence.
Among the varieties, then, of town and city
water-front there can be few qualities that are
universal ;
but generally it can be assumed that
there will be an accessible space somewhere along
the shore that is not required for docks or wharves
or mills. This should be reserved for the public en
joyment of the community's chief aesthetic asset
not relinquished to individual exclusiveness. But
if there be no inch of shore that commerce and in
dustry do not demand, there still are the upper floors
of the piers, and generally the banks rising from the
water's edge an opportunity for a drive or prome
nade so elevated that the demands of commerce
must be satisfied below the level of this pleasure
ground, since its needs have to be met at the water's
margin. Finally, if our water be a stream, with
broad mud-flats on one or either side, which only the
freshets or incoming tide conceal, the solution gen
erally is to confine and quicken the current within
46 fIDofcetn Civic Hrt
the town by walls of masonry, so that with more
rapid movement it shall scour its bed and shall carry
off the surplus waters of the freshet without a flood,
or with the flowing tide shall rise harmlessly with
in its walls. Then the flats can be reclaimed and
changed to park lands ;
and the new value of the
adjacent property, and the shortening of the bridges,
involving reduced cost of building, will offset much
of the expense involved.
But to return to that first picture of the city as it is
seen across the water by the approaching voyager,
to that view which in so far as civic art is art may
logically demand the first consideration, and which,
as the first revelation of the city, is to mean so much,
what is the character that it ought to have ? We
have seen that scenically it should be the best view.
The sloping or terraced site, the orderly edging of the
town, the neutral foreground all these are conditions
very favourable to an urban picture that will please.
But in the reality the scene that should be so splendid
is too often mean; the edge of the town that should
be orderly is ragged and bedraggled; where cleanliness
should be easiest, filth is common; where relative
age should give an appearance of permanence and
stability, there still are temporary structures. The
town has turned its back on its best feature, and
again and again whatever of it is most shabby, mean,
and sordid crowds upon this natural vestibule. The
explanation will vary with different localities. Here
it is the greed of commerce and a hasty surrender to
Mater approach 47
its demands; there the railroad came in, to the
destruction of some of the usefulness of the water,
and the town, turning away in disgust, gathered
around the station, forgetting until too late that what
had been a source of commercial wealth and power
might be still a source of beauty. But long before
the wretchedness of details impresses the voyager, he
must usually look in vain for definiteness of character.
What is the definite impression he ought to gain?
Here is the water gate of the city. He should see
before him the special, not merely the general,
character of the place. The latter will be inevitably
revealed by the clustered buildingsbe they the
hotels and villas of a resort, the warehouses and
dominating chimneys of an industrial community, or
the surmounting minarets and domes of an Oriental
seaport; but the stamp of national and local charac
teristics should not suffice. The thing to be sought
is the relation of this town to this body of water the
special meaning of its own particular water-front.
In jnost cases the function of this is to be a vesti
bule. It is an entrance to the city, and generally the
entrance that means most to it. There should be,
therefore, dignity, nobility, and prominence. To the
portal suggestion of the term
"
water gate" there
should be given structural expression; of the import
ance of this focal point there should be topographical
evidence. The voyager should be made to realise,
as he comes nearer to the apex of the curving shore
line, that he is coming to the entrance of the town.
48 flDofcern Civic Hrt
To the architect, the occasion offers a rare oppor
tunity, not merely in a personal sense in the setting
of his building and the certainty that it can be ever
seen in perspective; but in a civic sense, to the
degree that a chance is well-nigh changed to a duty.
To the landscape gardener, if there be some of the
water-front that commerce can spare to beauty, the
opportunity is equally noble. He has here, and
at last, a canvas that can be studied in its whole as
well as in parts. And finally the municipality itself
finds on the water-front a condition to which civic
duty clearly pertains in the opportunity so to con
struct the public works that they shall enhance the
attractiveness of the city and shall do justice to its
importance.
These, clearly, are the general principles that
should guide in the treatment of the urban water
front. Specifically, the problem is more abstruse
owing to the many kinds of water-front and the
many uses to which it may be put. Even in the
same community the problem may have many
sides.
The city of New York, for instance, has about a
hundred miles of water-front; but it is fortunate
in having at the Battery a spot that is clearly the
centre of the composition from every standpoint.
Here, inevitably, it was proposed to place the naval
arch and to make the formal entrance to the city.
The structure was to be of great size, and it was
intended that the treatment of the sea wall, basin,
Mater Hpproacb, 49
beacons, steps, etc., should not merely harmonise
but should form a very important, and by no means
the least beautiful, part of the design. The project
was interesting as a concrete development of the
principles and theory of water-gate treatment. It
thus reduces to a splendid specific illustration what
had been an abstract argument, just as does, on a
smaller scale, the harbour treatment of Bordeaux,
of Genoa, and of a few other foreign ports. It pict
ures what a city ought to have.
In the miles of docks and flimsy pier sheds, in
the meanness of the long water-front streets, New
York, like most American seaports, teaches what
should not be done, rather than what should be
done. European cities must be sought for examples
on a large scale of adequate commercial treatment
at the water's edge. The raised promenade of
Antwerp or, better yet, of Algiers, and the con
structive orderliness of Hamburg, for instance,- are
suggestions that have not failed completely of appli
cation. The need is not so much to appreciate
wretchedness where it exists, nor to point out
means of improvement, as to translate aspiration
into action. New York itself, as a city, has begun
with the necessary elementary construction of new
docks and widened streets, and conscious aesthetic
effort may follow. Certain it is that with a hundred
miles of water-front there must be spaces that
commerce can spare to pleasure; some areas, more
accessible and greater than have been yet dedi-
50 flDofcern Civic art
cated to public use, where the ceaseless beauty
of the waves, the free breezes, and the tireless pan
orama of the shipping can be popularly enjoyed.
But even now, with the scanty provision of these
spaces, the water-front problem of the greater city is
one of many typical phases. The universal problem,
however, can be best considered doubtless by ex
amining examples of various types of water-front
treatment wherever these may be found, without
regard to a single city.
Paris, with the quays along the Seine, and London,
still more successfully, with the ambitious Victoria
Embankment, represent an elaborate, formal treat
ment almost common in Europe when a river bisects
a town. Examples of such treatment gradate from
the simple quays of Florence and Pisa and the brick
walls of Amsterdam's placid canals to the long prom
enades and broad walled-gardens of Budapest, or
even to the sea-front, as at Nice. Passenger travel by
light steamers is easily cared for under these condi
tions, and from the standpoint of modern civic art
the formal, the architectural, and the urban character
of the treatment, with its engineering excellence and
hygienic merits, is wholly to be commended. It has,
as the best civic art must have, the beauty of utility.
It is dignified and harmonious; it fittingly sets off
the architecture that lies beyond it; it builds the city
to the water's edge with orderly stateliness; it offers
the desired vantage-points for observation. It is an
old form of treatment, but in its spirit and in the
IKHater Hpproacfx 51
results accomplished it is thoroughly modern. Bos
ton has been discussing it for the Charles River, and
a recent State law of Iowa passed at the request
of awakened communities gives to towns bisected
by meandering streams the right thus to narrow the
channel and save aesthetically (as also economically)
the reclaimed land.
Upon the quays there will be a shaded prome
nade and, if they be long enough and broad enough,
a drive. Beyond this, which itself may be beyond
a strip of turf, when that can be provided, will
come the buildings. The quays will not straighten
the shore-line, but will follow its pleasing curves, so
gaining new points of view and vistas that had else
been lost, and new points of observation whence to
study the facades. The device may thus be called
an urbanisation of the always pleasant rural shoreroad.
It is that road extended, where space is too
precious to permit the river to wander freely and
flood its banks at the whim of storm or season
that road made formal and stately, to harmonise with
the construction that presses upon it, and made be
coming the wealth and resources of a city. It is
adapted to all the variations of conditions where
town and shore-line meet. Here there may be broad
planting at its side and villas set far back; there it
will take its devious way before lofty buildings and
at the head of crowded streets, now rising to a via
duct that commerce may flow beneath it unhampered
by its invitation to luxurious indolence; and now,
52 flDofcern Civic Hrt
circling the tenement district with a necklace of
lights, it broadens here and there into a playground.
Where the shores are low, and there is not. space for
a broad park on the water-front, and where the level
of the river falls and rises sharply, this is quite the
ideal treatment.
In the case of a stream, bridges must form a very,
important feature of the water-front development,
merely considered architecturally and scenically. The
bridges that spring from the quays of Paris seem an
inseparable part of the construction. It happens that
they are separable, and rarely coincident in date with
it; but this does not appear. The bridge that begins
and ends in the quay must harmonise with the quay;
and the quay must provide, in broadened plaza and
hospitality to converging streets, a bridge approach
that shall be at once suitable and convenient for the
travel. The surface appearance of the bridge be
longs to another discussion. We are here considering
the town's water approach, where only a lateral view
of the bridge is offered the one view, however,
that adequately gives the structure's architectural
value; and with its art importance alone is there now
concern. Engineering merit is assumed.
Stone construction, or at least stone piers, are
obviously invited strongly by the masonry of the
embankment in order to secure harmony. Beyond
this, the charm of the bridge will lie mainly in long
horizontal reaches. Perpendicular motives will not
be necessary; and though it is quite the fashion, in
Mater approaclx 53
the rare cases of an effort to make bridges monu
mental, to put a tower, or towers, in the centre, there
is always a danger that these will have an isolated
appearance. The place for the monumental treat
ment is at that point on the shore which is to be
emphasised as the water gate; but the bridge, if de
signed conscientiously as a work of art that shall be
permanent, as cities go, and always very conspicu
ous, may be made a thing of beauty with no such
piling on of ornamentation. Of course at times the
necessity for a centre draw justifies, and even re
quires, perpendicular motives; but these need not be
deliberately invited to make the bridge imposing. If
they are invited, the ideal place for them is at the
structure's end. There they may easily emphasise
the portal significance which all bridges have when
the water which they span forms the boundary of the
town. Interesting examples of this effect are offered
by, for instance, the Karl Bridge at Prague, and the
railroad bridge at Mayence. In fact, of the latter it
has been remarked that while the bridge is of the
very ordinary truss type, the architects have saved it
aesthetically by providing "a handsome and impos
ing, not to say romantic, entrance, which not even
railroad tracks can ruin." Further than that, it is an
entrance, we may note, that has meaning.
There are other principles which will be useful as
guides in choosing bridge designs that are likely to
please. Not only should the structure harmonise, as
far as possible, with the quays and with its general
54 flDofcern Civic art
setting, not only should its beauty be sought mainly
in long horizontal reaches, to the distrust of perpen
dicular effects, using the latter at the bridge ends if
at all (when this is possible), but it must be remem
bered that the beauty of the bridge as a whole de
pends most on its main lines. Any attempt to deceive
as to the nature and position of these by concealing
them with ornament can only fail, being false to
every principle of art. To beauty of form in these
main lines, there must then be added symmetry.
Imagine a stone bridge of several arching spans. It
is not enough that the lines of these spans be lovely.
There must be symmetry between the spans them
selves, so that, for example, on either side of the
centre they shall be equal in number and size an
obvious matter, and yet one often ignored. And the
bridge must seem to harmonise with its natural set
ting and its purpose as well as with its constructed
terminal. This applies to the degree of its massiveness,
to the character of the scenery, or, if it be in
the midst of a city, to the style of the architecture
amid which it stands.
Let it be recalled that while the purpose of the
bridge is utilitarian there is no other structure in
the city that has greater permanence, or as great a
prominence, for good or ill. There is nothing that
should be built with more consideration for the art
istic result. Indeed, is it not true that a bridge across
the Thames in London is upon the same plane of
monumental and architectural importance as is St.
Mater Hpproaclx 55
Paul's itself, and so makes demand for the like
skill and taste to design and to embellish it ? The
Romans, who were the great bridge-builders of an
tiquity, had no higher title to bestow than the term
"Pontifex Maximus" greatest builder of bridges.
And to-day, in an industrial age, it may be re
marked, the bridge and viaduct are to us about what
the town gate was to the builders of ancient times,
so that it behooves us to demand not merely strength
but dignity and a civic splendour, in their construc
tion. Every city bridge is an opportunity; and as to
the smaller towns, how charming a memorial a beau
tiful bridge might be! The triumphal arch can be
made effective only at great expense. It is a vain
glorious type; while in the bridge the arch is at the
service of humanity.
Of the river-front fa9ades, as seen from the water
or across the quay, it is difficult to speak as fully in
general terms. But it can be said that where the
buildings stand close, a degree of uniformity in height,
and harmony in style at least, will add very greatly
to the appearance of solidarity a desideratum in
the water view of a city. And it has been already
suggested that if the shore-line be permitted to retain
its curves, the fafades will be thereby rendered more
effective, their planes changing to conform with the
curves of the shore.
Finally, it should be pointed out that of the famous
cities of the Old World that are situated on rivers,
many owe a large part of their splendour to the
56 fIDo&ern Civic art
aesthetic use of the water-front. Examples are: Lon
don, of which the chief monumental features are the
embankment and the bridges; Paris, where every
inch of the river bank is utilised; Rome, with its
vigorous bridges and new development of the river
course; Budapest, which finds in the river the key
to its whole scheme; Prague, where the aesthetic
interest is largely centred on the embankment
and fine bridge; Berlin, where the bridges are
made monumental, though the unimportant river is
slighted; Dresden, which has pointed the way for
many a smaller place; and Munich, with its Quai-
strasse.
When the land terminates in bluffs that can be
planted, at the top at least; or when even with a
low shore opportunity is offered for a water-side
park, however narrow, we may have a chance for
the pleasantest kind of water-front treatment. There
is no need to go into specifications here, for it is the
charm of landscape gardening that it is as infinite in
its varieties as the earth itself, being an adaptation to
topography and all natural conditions. But to bring
nature to nature, so to dress this important part of
the town that looking into the water it sees mirrored
there laughing nature, is a more pleasing art than
formal building to the water's edge. There is needed
only a trained mind and eye to make much of the
possibility, and so fair is the result of such blessing
to the city that it may reasonably be urged that all
the stream banks of a town that are not actually re-
Gfoe Mater approach 57
quired for commerce should be put in the hands
of park commissioners, to be defended, in natural
beauty, from rubbish heaps and spoliation. Even if
the stream be one which furnishes power, the banks
may be reserved. We shall refer to this again, under
"
Parks."
And there is another thought in regard to the
water-front. When the body of water is navigable,
here is an appropriately beautiful site for many a civic
pageant. Nowhere does music make more sensual
appeal than on the water; with far more beauty than
on the street can the pageant that goes by water be
invested, and in greater variety can it be dressed.
The very fact of holding the pageant here will tend,
too, to emphasise the value of the waterway as a
thoroughfare, and will make the public ownership of
the banks, whence its beauty may be seen, of a value
better understood and esteemed.
So, to recall the points observed, modern civic
art requires for the water-front, all too commonly
neglected,' primary consideration. It would consider
first the far-off picture, of the town as a whole; then
the nearer view, when we seek for definiteness of
character, and look along the shore for something to
indicate the significance of this portal to the city;
then the details when, drawing yet nearer, we es
timate the city's importance and wealth and genius
by the way it is built to the water's edge, and if
there be bridges, by the beauty of these. What is
the city's attractiveness; are its public works beauti-
58 flDo&em Civic art
fill; has it regard for sanitation; have its people free
access to the shore and a chance for enjoyment there,
or, as if in bondage have they allowed greed to hud
dle them into the inland streets ?
Modern civic art, as one can guess by these quest
ions, is never a mere aesthete. Loving beauty, it
loves humanity yet better. It wants the surround
ings of men to be clean, wholesome, and uplifting, as
well as pleasant to see. Personified, modern civic
art appears as a sort of social reformer, for if the eye
be that of the artist, there yet is surely in it the tear
of the philanthropist.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LAND APPROACH.
THE
city that has only a water approach is too
rare to be taken into the calculation. Civic
art has to consider quite as certainly the re
quirements and possibilities of the approach by land,
and it finds in the problem not only great importance
but an interest that might hardly be anticipated.
This problem had in the past a worthier treatment
than had the approach by water, because when the
cities were walled it was necessary to make a special
and formal provision for the land entrance. But this
worthier treatment ceased after a time, for when the
walls were razed, or when towns were built without
surrounding walls, the problem became too diffused
for visibly concentrated solving. The city was suf
fered simply to "taper off" on the land side, with
no mark of its end or beginning unless it were a
light, a pavement, or a curb. There was no adequate
recognition of so important a matter as the city's
threshold.
59
60 fIDobern Civic art
The period was one of transition in the develop
ment of cities, but it was one of vast importance. It
meant a better day for them, for more aesthetic possi
bilities were involved in the change than could at
once be grasped. The city now had room to grow,
to spread out in all directions, to shake itself loose,
after long compression, and, like a plant restored to
its natural environment, to thrust out its streets as
tendrils binding it to the earth again. This was the
first, almost involuntary, effect, and every countryleading
thoroughfare became an
"
entrance/'
Not only were these land entrances to the city
too numerous now for elaborate topographical or
structural designation, but their location was con
stantly changing as the tendril-streets grew longer
and reached farther, while the whole impulse of the
movement in reaction from the previous huddled
condition of cities was toward an obliteration of
the line that had once divided town and country.
This was to be effected, not by the urbanisation of
the country but by the ruralisation of the town, by
the breaking down of barriers so that the country
might flow with unrestraint through city streets.
Thus there was scant wish to mark formally the
inland entrances to the town.
With the coming of the railroads conditions again
changed. Passengers by rail had a single definite
point of arrival and departure, which for practical
purposes was to them the town's entrance. Here
they left the city to enter the train, or left the
%anfc approach 61
train to emerge into city streets. Their senses had
here the first opportunity for a "time exposure" in
which to secure a lasting picture of the town. From
the moment of passing the city boundaries until the
station was reached there had been at best a chance
for no more than
"
snapshots/
7
the first serious view
proving that obtained as they issued from the station
portaL And to add importance to this new civic en
trance, the passengers by railroad became far the
greater portion of all those who entered or left the
town by land. In its railroad stations, therefore,
the town had suddenly new, permanent, and formal
entrances.
This urban significance, with its architectural
opportunity, not to say obligation, was hardly
grasped popularly. Here and there an architect
comprehended it, and made his design in accord
ance perhaps with a good deal of personal satis
faction but with so little public appreciation that
the efforts appear sporadically. That so obvious a
significance could be overlooked, must be attributed
in part, no doubt, to the circumstance that the
railroad in succeeding the stage-coach was long
regarded as merely a development of the latter. In
Europe the cars are still made in semblance of the
body of a coach, and in England they are still called
"carriages." So the railroad station was thought
of as an inn or roadhouse in highly advanced form,
and very often to-day the station proper the wait
ing rooms and platform is made only secondary
62 flDofcern CMc art
and incidental to a hotel, the architect throwing
the outward structural emphasis on the latter
function.
Much of the neglect of the station's real meaning
is due, then, to that distraction and confusion con
sequent upon the mistaking of incidentals for es
sentials. In this confusion a factor of some influence
appeared in the entirely natural development of a
portion of the station structure as a clock tower.
The necessity of punctuality on the part of the
citizens when going to the station invites the fixing
here of a clock that can be widely seen, and so in
station after station the clock tower is found. There
is nothing in this construction incompatible with
a portal expression, if only the wish to make the
latter be kept in mind '; but what with the use of
an important part of the building for offices or
for a hotel, with this arrangement of a clock con
spicuously on its exterior, and the recollection that
the railway itself is the successor of the stage-coach,
the permanency of whose right-of-way was never
fixed, there is many a temptation to forget that
the station is the gate of the town. The costly new
Paris terminal of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterra
nean Railroad, for example, has about its ornate
and Frenchy facade, from a corner of which a decor
ated clock tower is tossed jubilantly into the air,
no suggestion whatever of the portal of a city.
Yet, we have said, portal significance is not en-
1
Witness: The Gross Horlage in Rouen, or the Clock Tower in Bern.
3Lant> approach 63
tirely ignored. Not only do architects occasion
ally appreciate it and indicate it deliberately, but
the very sweep of a train-shed's arched roof in the
terminal station is so suggestive of an entrance that
many times the structure quite inevitably assumes
that character when there is offered no opportunity
to screen the curve, while the architect who de
sires to emphasise the portal idea finds therein a
strikingly good chance. Again, the very volume
of the travel here, reaching in its convergence and
dispersion all parts of the town, has invited for
practical convenience the provision of a broad open
space before the station and the centring to it of
radial thoroughfares all this lending that topo
graphical importance which would naturally charac
terise the gateway of a city. So the railroad station
became, not merely practically, nor merely theo
retically, but to a large extent also visibly and in
spite of structural distractions, the new land portal
to the city. And as the consideration of municipal
art and of what has been called the science of citybuilding
becomes more thoughtful, this civic re
lation is better appreciated and is becoming better
recognised in the planning of stations and streets.
It gives a key to the civic significance to be ex
pressed in station and square.
The utilitarian point of view must, of course,
have first thought in civic art, but from a concep
tion which is all utilitarian it is no long step to
the thought of the importance of treating artistic-
64 flDo&em Civic Hrt
ally a point that is to mean so much to the city.
For as far as the citizens are concerned the station
is a focal centre, and as far as the rest of the world
is involved it is the point from which the first
serious impression of the town is gained. It should
be, then, one of the first and most important points
to be considered in making a general plan for the
development of the city on thoroughly modern
and rational lines, and for its beautifying. It is the
first point that logically should be thought of after
the water-front, if it be proper to regard the latter
as the natural entrance. Nor will the railroad com
pany find an addition to the attractiveness of its
station less to its interest than will the town. If
by a pleasing station and an attractive setting for it
travel is apparently shorn of some of its repellent
discomforts, the railroad company gains as much
by the greater willingness of the townspeople to
travel as the town gains by the more urgent invita
tion thus extended to travellers to stop there. Per
haps this advantage to the railroad seems theoretical
and problematical, a bit too dependent on sentiment
to merit expenditure by a "soulless corporation."
If it does, we should recall that as yet a majority
of the cases of station improvement, as regards the
surroundings no less than the station itself, have
owed their initiative to the railroad companies and
have been mainly or wholly paid for by the latter.
The character of the station, whether terminal
or way, should of course determine the treatment
Hanfc approach. 65
to be adopted in its
approaches; and the advantages
of attractiveness in the station and in its setting
apply as certainly, if somewhat less obviously, to
the course of the road through the town. Thus we
come to the natural divisions of the definite dis
cussion.
Let us take up first the character of the station.
The common failure to grasp the really civic signi
ficance that pertains to it, the failure to look at
it, as civic art must, from the standpoint of the
municipality instead of merely from that of the rail
road which owns or rents the structure, has led
to the addition of a third type to the two kinds of
construction that strictly railroad conditions must
have suggested. There are not only the terminal
and the way station,-^ the two inevitable and wholly
appropriate types, but because the roadhouse and
inn theory still lingers, finding an excuse in some
practical convenience, and because the company's
claim upon the structure even to the decision of
its style is held to be paramount to that of the com
munity, there is developed, as we have seen, a type
which may be called "the disguised." In this the
architect screens the train-shed, putting before it a
structure that is sometimes a hotel, as often in Great
Britain, and sometimes an office building, as often
in the United States, and from which all visible
significance as a portal has vanished. He doubtless
does this at the behest of the company; but in so
doing he not only gives civic art cause to mourn,
66 flOobern Civic Srt
he robs the station of that importance, of that
appropriate character, and even of the accurate rail
road significance with which frank treatment as the
city portal might have stamped it.
The terminal Gare du Nord in Paris as seen from
the short street leading up to it, the station at Ham
burg with the turrets flanking its castellated main
pavilion, the many-portaled front of the Gare de
FEst in Paris, and the station in Genoa with its
enclosing arms are striking examples of the portal
treatment. Of the suburban, or way, station con
ception, the new station at Cologne is an example
on a large scale; the station at One hundred and
twenty-fifth Street in New York is a familiar illustra
tion; and the type may be found in innumerable
towns in all countries perhaps in no villages more
prettily and appropriately than in those suburbs of
Boston where a series of structures designed by
H. H. Richardson are framed in bits of landscape
that owe their arrangement to the genius of F. L.
Olmsted. Of the "disguised" type, the familiar
St. Pancras in London may stand for the hotel, and
the Philadelphia stations of the Pennsylvania and
Reading roads for the commercial.
Upon the amount of space available, the travel
offering or likely to offer, and upon the character of
the station as it conforms with one or another of
these types must depend, if there are to be consist
ency, harmony, and good sense, the treatment that
the city will give to the space before the station..
ICbe Uanfc approach 67
And this problem, originating as it does with mod
ern civic art, is one which can be taken up with a
more hopeful confidence of results than that with
which the choice of the style of building is consid
ered. The latter depends upon matters that are far
removed from civic art, while the development of
the station square is essentially a problem in that
art, and a most interesting one.
Turning, then, to the community's own treat
ment of the land entrance, we find that stations
always should, and not uncommonly do, front upon
open public spaces. They should be thus situated,
first, to place, as ever in civic art, utilitarian ad
vantages foremost in the discussion, that the large
and hurried travel of a busy centre may be commoded
; second, that the station, of which the
importance to the community can scarcely be ex
aggerated, may have all the topographical promi
nence that it deserves, and that the city may thus
emphasise and dignify the structural value of its
chief land portal ; third, for the gain in the city's
aesthetic aspect. First impressions are notably virile
and lasting, and the stranger must form his first
impression of the city from the view which meets
his eyes as he passes out of the station to enter the
town. A square will be pleasanter than a street, if
only for the space it gives.
Some years ago the city of Genoa set itself to
improve the area in front of the railroad stations
There it placed, appropriately, the statue of Colum-
68 fftobertt Civic art
bus, and in surrounding this with turf and flowers it
did so "in order/' as the Genovese authorities ex
pressly declared, "that the first impression of strang
ers coming to our city may be favourable." The
like course has been followed for a like reason,
though not always so frankly confessed, by a great
number of towns and cities. Thus it is that in
"station squares" we come upon a distinct and im
portant group of problems of "portal square"
problems which it is appropriate to discuss apart
from other open spaces.
This square in front of the principal railroad sta
tion in Genoa is an unusually well arranged exam
ple. Architecturally, the building exemplifies a city
portal conception, and very markedly. Its walls are
turned in a concave around a corner of the square,
so that they seem to enfold the town, and over two
adjacent streets converging from beyond the station
are thrown conspicuous gate-like arches, joined to
the station as if a part of it. The station portal
which is in the centre becomes, then, one of a series
of three perfectly apparent entrances to the town
that are united in one elaborate triple gateway.
Before the station there is an open space which is
larger than needed for business, and the municipality
has gone to work to give to the incoming traveller a
pleasant first impression. The town is at once indi
vidualised and set in its proper niche of history by
the memorial to Columbus, placed here that it may
appropriately be the first sight to greet the traveller's
ttfoe Xanb approach 69
eye. This is a reminder that, other conditions being
favourable, the square before the station is an ex
ceedingly appropriate place second only to the area
before the town hall for a distinctly civic statue.
With some room still to spare after erecting the
statue, the Genovese authorities gave to it a park
setting, though the area nearest the station was not
planted, that it might be free whenever needed.
By this device, also, the statue was set far enough
back for good perspective. Turf, shrubs, and trees
were planted, that it might have verdure for back
ground; and yet there was retained a thoroughly
formal treatment, consistently urban in suggestion.
The result is that the arriving traveller's first impres
sion is of a city rich and handsome, while not too
large for the softer graces of vegetation ;
and of a
town of the historical interest of which he has full
understanding and assurance. The departing travel
ler, on the other hand, has reminder that he is de
liberately leaving the delightful city when he enters
the portals of its station, that it is no urban jaunt he
is to take for he is passing through the city gate.
It has seemed worth while to note thus, with
some detail, the station square at Genoa, not merely
for its own merit as an example of a bit of distinctly
modern civic art, but for its suggestiveness to in
numerable towns and cities of like or smaller size.
At the extremes, however, of population, for cities
that are much larger and for villages that are
much smaller, other treatment will often be advisable.
70 flDofcern Civic art
We may easily find hints. Mere room does not
mean success.
Hamburg, which has done much on lines of civic
art, failed lamentably in the treatment of the space
before its new station. The square was of inviting
opportunity in its area, and the city began well by
making liberal provision for the travel which, con
verging at a station, was especially likely to esteem
time as a factor of importance. There are broad
walks and a very wide expanse of pavement, and
the roadways lead directly to the door, and yet large
areas remained for planting. A good thing was done
in providing amply for illumination, and the electriclighting
apparatus is frankly decorative. But the
wide flat spaces that are given to planting are grass
plots enclosed by low wire fences, with their mono
tony almost unrelieved, the few flowers, that
ought to have been shrubs, proving inadequate for
the broad area. There is, indeed, an effect of spa
ciousness ;
but the spaciousness of lawn that a city
can show in front of its railroad station is not very
impressive to those who have just been travelling
through the open country, and if this effect be
ignored there is nothing left The space has no
character. Along with this failure we may recite
the well-known and pitiful failures of New York
before the "Grand" (!) Central Station and of Bos
ton before its North and South Union stations.
The trouble in these cases is that there was not
even an attempt at worthier treatment. The arriving
ttbc Xanb approach 7*
traveller in New York, passing with gratitude out of
one tunnel, gazes into another yawning cavern and
gains an impression wholly unworthy of the brilliant
city. Boston, which has been a leader in the United
States in many phases of civic art, relinquished to
the ugly elevated railroad the broad spaces of pre
cious opportunity before its stations.
In great cities the treatment of the area in front
of the station must generally be strictly urban. The
open space exists at this point first for the facilita
tion and convenience of traffic, and only secondarily
for aesthetic purposes. Except, therefore, where the
available area is very large in proportion to the
travel across it, and the value of the land rises ex
actly as the need for the open space increases, the
practical problem is rather that of treating utilities
artistically and of making the aesthetic best of a
probably bad situation than of deliberate effort by
gardening. In this connection the space in front of
the Gare de 1'Est in Paris has suggestion. It is not
so much a square as a broadened bit of boulevard
that has been yet further widened by converging
streets. Trees have been planted, giving height to
the flat area, an important aesthetic principle, but
except for this Paris, with all her love of beauty and
fondness for display, has here held herself strictly in
check. Tram communication with various parts of
the city centres here, as it very properly may, and
the transfer- or waiting-room for the trams is
almost the first edifice that the arriving traveller
72 fIDobern Civic Hrt
sees when he leaves the railroad station. Without
permitting such barbarity as Boston, Paris has here
made the accommodation of travel her first consid
eration. The earliest impression of the stranger is
that of a populous, busy city but, withal, one ar
ranged with singular convenience, and one in which
the abundant trees prevent too violent a contrast in
the swift transition from rural to urban scenery.
Where, we may observe, there must be this
contrast, it should be made so marked that there
will be no danger of comparison. The area should
be so handsome, so superbly architectural, as to sug
gest civic wealth and splendour. The Senate Com
mittee on "A Plan for the Improvement of the
District of Columbia
"
(Washington) thus formally
describes in the preliminary report its scheme for the
new Union Station
1
:
The plans call for a station longer than the Capitol, the
building to be of white marble, the facade to be Roman in style
of architecture. . . .
Facing the Capitol, and yet not too near
that edifice, the new station will front on a semicircular plaza,
six hundred feet in width, where bodies of troops or large
organisations can be formed during inaugural times or on other
like occasions. Thus located and constructed, the Union depot
will be in reality the great and impressive gateway to Wash
ington.
Again, of the plaza it says : The proposal is that it
shall be
six hundred feet in width by twelve hundred feet in length,
ornamented with fitting terrace, basins, and fountains. This
1
Fifty-seventh Congress, first session. Senate Report No. 166.
fcbe Xanb approach 73
great station forms the grand gateway of the capital, through
which everyone who comes to or goes from Washington must
pass ;
as there is no railroad entering the city that will not use
the station, it becomes the vestibule of the capital. . . .
The three great architectural features of a Capitol city being the
halls of legislation, the executive buildings, and the vestibule, it
is felt by the railroad companies that the style of this building
should be equally as dignified as that of the public buildings
themselves. Therefore it is that the design goes back to pure
Roman motives.
The central portion is derived directly from the Arch
of Constantine, and into subordination to this the
wings are brought, so emphasising the portal con
ception.
If great cities can rarely make the station square
a component of the park system, smaller communi
ties may, .obviously, quite often develop it in this
way. In fact, as one goes down the scale of popula
tion, the point is reached at last where the railroad
itself, by the improvement of its ample station
grounds, can supplement the community's efforts to
give an invitingly park-like character to the entrance
to the town.
In these smaller communities the station has
rarely the appearance of a terminal, being one neither
in fact nor aspiration. Really a way station, it is
consistently treated as such; and the edifice, both in
its architecture and its setting, which, as a bit of
landscape work, will not be out of harmony with the
structure, follows the lines of a shelter or transfer
building in a park. Of this type there are, as has
been said, hardly lovelier or more satisfying examples
74 flOoDcrn Civic art.
to be found in the United States than in the little
structures and station grounds on the line of the Bos
ton and Albany Railroad upon what is called the New
ton Circuit, just out of Boston. Here well designed
stations, built of stone, and so adding to their grace
suggestions of stability and permanence, rise from
parks developed in the natural style, to fit
pleasantly
into an environment of nature as seen by the traveller
who is hurried through wood and field. The bloom
of hardy perennials in masses of flowering shrubs
here takes the place of the stiff beds of summer
flowers seen in most station grounds that pretend to
be improved. In groups, they wed the building to
the grounds, they frame with waving lines the patches
of lawn, or hide the too-near corners, while the
changing foliage, the masses of many-coloured stalks
and twigs, and the green of the conifers prolong
through all the year that colour and attractiveness
which in carpet gardening is too often seized for only
the brief weeks of summer.
The new station at Cologne offers architecturally
an interesting example, because on a large scale, of
the city development of this way or suburban type
of construction. As such it is indeed noteworthy.
Both in itself and in the approach to it which the
municipality has arranged, it has suggestion; for the
type though not as flattering to cities as the term
inal, or even as the disguised is inevitably common
with them. In appearance the Cologne station is
suggestive of an exposition building in permanent
3Lanfc approaclx 75
materials. It is the immensely amplified ornamental
shelter of a park. Constructively, the train-shed's
location parallel to the street iterates the fact that
this is not a terminal; and though in the direct, near
view this effect is slightly negatived by the great
arch of the main entrance, still it may be said that
the impression on the whole is that of a splendid
way station, rather than of the meeting of town and
road at a gate. There is a very long facade, as relat
ively there must always be in the way-station type,
and the city, in considering the demands of the
traffic, finds that length instead of breadth can ac
commodate all that centres here. The open space
before the station is laid out, therefore, as a broad
parallel street with cross streets leading up to it
a plan which can generally be followed with the
way-station type of structure. The spaces between
the cross streets the corners rounded for the con
venience of the travel are set out as grass plots,
adorned with shrubs and flowers, and so making a
pleasant introductory to the town. Just inside these
enclosures, where their suitably flaring bases make
no trespass on the pavement, are placed the ornate
electric-light poles. The whole arrangement is well
fitted to the given conditions.
But it is proper to ask how the conditions might
have been improved. The tracks entering the station
at Cologne are elevated, so that the natural place for
the main floor would be above the level of the street.
The architects to solve their difficulty adopted the
76 flbodern Civic art
high-basement plan of facade. Instead of doing
this, the station might have been built at the track
level, and the space before it have been terraced.
This arrangement is one that may be often and
happily adopted, now that the abolition of grade
crossings is so widely demanded, and it need not in
convenience the travel. The carriage approach can
be lifted by grade to the level of the main floor; and
if the van approach, with unchanged level, be carried
under the terrace to the real, though concealed, base
ment, there will be a considerable gain from various
points of view. To this lower approach, also, the
city surface cars might come as they so success
fully do in the new station at Providence, Rhode
Island. The arrangement relieves the area before the
building, and adds to the comfort of travellers in en
abling them to change from steam to urban transit
without leaving the building. As to civic esthetics,
the joint dignity of town and station at this meetingplace
not a little endangered by the "glorified
shelter
"
conception can thus be fully assured, for
in balustraded terraces urban art has rich oppor
tunity.
But before the arriving traveller has emerged from
the station he has generally gained some sort of an
impression of the town. If his views of it have been
as
"
snapshots," they have been serial; and if the
opportunity for deliberate judgment has been lack
ing, a prepossession at least has been gained. The
railroad must enter the town in one of three ways,
Bpproacb* 77
or in combinations of them. It must enter on the
level, or on an embankment crossing the streets by
an elevated structure, or in a cutting. The last way
is comparatively rare, being costliest, and either of
the others offers a general survey. But the view
is not flattering. Building sites are chosen in prox
imity to the railroad only out of necessity for the
facilitation of business, as in the case of warehouses
or other large receiving or shipping establishments,
or because the land not needed for these purposes is
cheap. Manufacturing plants and warehouses are
seldom beautiful, and on the cheapest land the cheap
est residences are built, while in any case the smoke
and dirt of the railroad would tend quickly to blacken
all structures within their reach. So it happens that
the city turns its most forlorn side to the railroad,
edging the route with the dingy and prosaic.
To do something toward ameliorating this con
dition, which can give no pleasure to the traveller, is
within the power of the railroad corporation. There
may be planting along the borders for long distances,
and mere neatness will do much. The result is as
well worth effort as the improvement of the station
grounds, and certainly it means so much to the town
that the latter should require the railroad, as a con
dition of its entrance, to keep in order and sightliness
the whole of its right of way within the city limits.
It need hardly be stated here that there ought to
be no grade crossings. They are characteristic not
of the modern city, but of a transition stage out of
78 flDofcern Civic art
which the modern city which, if we have not built,
we can at least foresee is developing. It were
far better and cheaper, both for the railroad com
pany and for the town, that the need of abolish
ing the grade crossing were recognised at the start,
as law is now more and more insisting that it shall
be. Once recognised, there would be laid down in
advance a complete and definite plan. The railroads
would enter on the line that offered fewest engineer
ing difficulties to the avoidance of grade crossings;
they would have a union station, conveniently situ
ated, suitably approached by converging streets, and
with before it an ample area that could be appropri
ately developed. So the land entrance to the town
would be, as a whole, pleasing, impressive, and dig
nified, and at the station the architect scarcely could
fail to recognise and express its real significance.
In the matter of elevated construction along the
permanent right of way, there would be insistence on
something more than that the embankment be turfcovered,
or the retaining walls handsomely faced.
There might be some gardening on the banks, with
well placed shrubs where opportunity offers even
that can now be occasionally seen; and there should
certainly be a demand that so important a struct
ure as the bridge by which the railroad crosses a
thoroughfare be designed on artistic lines. These
bridges which the railroad is permitted to throw
across the streets close the vistas of the streets and
have such civic prominence as few structures in the
Xanb approach 79
town possess. It is of the utmost importance that
they be not hideous, and there is no reason why
they should be. Yet where is the town or city that
has made serious protest against the ugliness of the
bridges that the railroad has hung so conspicuously
over its streets ?
Thus the problem of the land entrance to a town
spreads out into problems of approach as well as
of terminal. And because there must be considered
the prospect from both road and town, because it
is impossible that there should be any unsought
natural beauty about this entrance, and because again
the whole reason for the construction is utilitarian
and profit-making, to the end that it is vain to
depend unreservedly on aesthetic impulse, there
arises many a perplexity and embarrassment. The
purely ideal can hardly be expected. But it is clear
that certain good things that make for modern civic
art can reasonably be looked for.
It will be to the advantage of the railroad as well
as of the town to have a worthy entrance; but it re
mains for the town to insist upon this. If in its first
plotting there are laid down the lines and propor
tions of the local main street, how much more appro
priately now may there be determined the best lines
for the through travel, the course and station of the
railroad that is to build up the town and to give
to the world its view of the town! If in the com
munity's growth the water entrance be developed by
the municipality, is there less reason that it should
8o flDofcern Civic art
provide for the busy inland entrance approaches
that shall be dignified, worthy, and convenient ? If
in constructing the bridges that carry its own streets
the municipality exercises artistic care, shall it be
negligent in the matter of the bridges that, crossingits
streets, present lateral views so striking and far
visible? If it constructs parkways, demands well
kept streets, and requires its citizens to preserve the
orderliness of their gardens, shall it fail to enjoin less
care on that permanent right of way on which the
railroad is permitted to bisect the town and from
which the travelling public gains its view of the com
munity ? Civic art must surely rise to recognition
of the importance and true significance of the modern
railroad route and station as the land entrance of
the modern town; and, recognising it, there must
be demand for a treatment that shall be worthy
because at once sensible, appropriate, and artistic. It
should be the worthy portal of a worthy city, and
for this end the community and railroad must work
together.
CHAPTER V.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRE.
CE
an artist choosing the central figures of his
group before he begins the composition, or
as a landscape designer notes the dominant
natural features of the given site before drawing his
plans, we, in the study and practice of modem civic
art, must pass from the portals of the city, from the
entrances by water and by land, to the administrative
centre of the town. This is the point that should nat
urally demand our next attention, for this should
be the heart of the town. Its municipal life should
be centred here, and it should be a distinct and
definite point.
To the buildings of the government, which
would go to constitute the architectural elements of.
an administrative centre, there ought to be given
not merely a central location, which will be invited
by considerations of convenience even more strongly
than by those of sentiment, but all the additional em
phasis and conspicuousness that site can offer. No
81
82 fIDobern Civic Hrt
other structures are so appropriately entitled to the
best position that the town can afford, convenience
and appearance being jointly considered, as are those
that officially stand for the town. And this being
true of the leading public buildings, they are gregar
ious. They belong in about the same location, the
oretically, without regard to (because above) the
temporary matter of land values and the claims of
individual real-estate interests. And not only do
these structures belong together, but each gains
from the proximity of the others. There is, for
example, a utilitarian gain, in the concentration of the
public business and the consequent saving of time;
and there is a civic gain, in the added dignity and
importance which the buildings seem to possess.
Collectively, they appear to make the city more
prideworthy; they suggest the co-operation of
departments rather than that individual sufficiency
which separate buildings recommend and which is
at the root of so much administrative evil; they make
the municipality, in this representation of the mighti
ness of its total business, seem a more majestic thing
and one better worth the devotion and service of its
citizens. They make it seem better worth living for
and working for, as of larger possibilities for good,
than could the same buildings when scattered about
the town and lost in a wilderness of commercial
structures.
It scarcely needs to be said, further, that a group
ing of these buildings may be as advantageous aesthe-
Hfcministrative Centre. 83
tically, for all of them and for each of them, as it is in
a civic sense and utilitarian sense, and as from those
points of view it would seem to be natural. A prom
inent architect, in discussing this matter at a national
gathering of his profession, has maintained that
"isolated buildings of whatever individual merit are,
insignificant in comparison to massed constructions, ;
even if these latter be comparatively mediocre in
i
quality/' This is a very strong claim, but even if it
be pared down as the architects did not require that
it should be there remains enough of undoubted
truth powerfully to endorse on aesthetic grounds the
grouping of the public structures. Granting this,
consider what a waste of opportunity there is in the
erection of monumental buildings for a city what
ever the landlord represented by each that are so
separated as to make it impossible to see them
together. Probably without additional expense,
certainly without addition proportioned to the re
sulting gain, they might be put together, and to
every building there might thus be given some
thing of majesty by its mere setting among its
neighbours. So there would always be created, if
natural laws were followed, a civic, or administrative,
centre in each town.
But the buildings represent various landlords
national, state, county, and urban and even those
that are municipal represent various sections of
the city government executive, legislative, educa
tional, or judicial that usually are too independent
84 flDo&ern Civic art
of one another to pool their interests in choosing
sites. So it has repeatedly happened that the postoffice
has been erected in one place, the court-house
in another, the city hall in a third, and the public
library and high school in yet others, even when
as in the typical New England village there is
reserved a public area unbuilt upon in the heart of
the town (the "green
"
or
"
common "), upon which
the official structures would most appropriately face.
To be sure, in the old towns of New England the
earliest church was erected here; but that circum
stance merely testifies to the appropriateness of
the site, for there was no real grouping of public
buildings.
The objection may be made that the vicinity of
the city buildings would be a poor place for a school,
or even for the library. A good deal depends on the
character of the officials. With politics at low ebb
morally and intellectually, the city hall may not be
the most desirable of neighbours. In Birmingham,
on the other hand, where politics have been on a
higher plane than in most American cities, the art
gallery and the council chamber were long under
one roof, with the town hall across the street on
one side and the new art school across the street
on the other. Even the new gallery is separated by
no more than a street's width from the council
chamber. But speaking generally, we may say that
the educational structures can be fittingly separated
from the executive and legislative and from the
HMninistrative Centre. 85
judicial, for in these days cities have grown too
large to crowd into a single space quite all that is
important. In the physiology of cities it is not ac
curate to-day to speak of "the heart" of the town;
but, rather, of a series of nerve centres. Thus it
is possible to have, with no contradiction of terms,
more than a single centre. There may be, for in
stance, an administrative centre and an educational
centre, just as we have already found collecting and
distributing centres all of them focal points of the
town at the water gate and the land entrance. A
peculiarity, it may be noted, of the beautiful street
plans of Washington and Paris is their topographical
provision for a great number of such nerve centres.
It is possible and convenient to discuss under a
single head the administrative and educational foci,
because they are alike in being, in each case, a group
of public buildings. The same laws bring the struct
ures together, the same principles of civic art com
mend their concentration and suggest the governing
of it. Alike, they are architectural aggregations, pro
bably, before in practice they are topographical foci,
and the arrangement of the streets that lead to them,
or of the streets or squares upon which they front,
all the generous provision for a large circulatory
requirement, will be determined by the location
of the structures, instead of itself determining this.
Here, then, is one of the few points in city-building
where the topographical procedure may be perfectly
rational, a result of forethought rather than of
86 flDofcecn Civic art
chance even, if necessary, to the rebuilding of
that portion of the town. As the public's interest is
greater than the interest of any individual or set of
individuals, the ideal alone should be considered in
the placing of the public buildings. Let us consider
what the ideal placing would be.
Most of the structures of a city are arranged in
rows, fronting on the streets. This is an extremely
undesirable arrangement for public buildings. Need
less to say, they might form a very stately series;
and there are a host of examples notably the
handsome row of public structures on the Ringstrasse
of Vienna that could be named to endorse
such a location. But Vienna's Ringstrasse is to be
counted out for the present, and of the other cases
in which public buildings are collected into a group
arranged along the side of a street, it may be
doubted whether there is a single one in which the
effect would not have been better with some other
disposition. The main objections to location on a
street, even assuming that there be no commercial
interruption of the series, are: (i) the endangering
of what is called the scale of the buildings; (2) the
lacfe of opportunity for perspective owing to the nar
rowness of the street; (3) the loss of apparent re
lative importance.
If the side of the street opposite to the public
buildings be not built upon, if it be a park or other
reservation, the buildings, as far as civic art is con
cerned, face not on a street but on the reservation,
ZCbe Hbmini0trative Centre, 87
which is quite another matter. If the street be built
up on the opposite side, private ownership of that
land puts in jeopardy the beauty and dignity of the
public structures through the possibility of mingling
inharmonious architecture, of making a squalid and
unworthy outlook, or of destroying scale by the
erection of a "sky-scraper," or any colossal build
ing, that would dwarf the public structures. The
danger that threatens on the farther side of the
street threatens also at either end of it, except that
there the possibly unworthy outlook becomes an
unfortunate approach. If, on the other hand, both
sides of the street be reserved for the public build
ings, so that they face each other in two series,
the space between becomes simply a court. This,
clearly, would serve the buildings better if it were
wider than a street and were not open to all kinds
of traffic if, in other words, it were really a court
and not a street.
The narrowness of a street, again, is a serious
matter because of its denial of opportunity for per
spective, the public buildings being deliberately
monumental. The architect should not be discour
aged by a thought that the beholder of his work for
the municipality can get no more than eighty or a
hundred feet from the base lines. Such discourage
ment would be a sad thing for the city; and if there
were no disheartenment, and lovely buildings were
still erected, their beauty would be well-nigh wasted
by the necessity of having to look straight up their
88 fIDofcern Civic Hrt
walls to see them. In the case of Vienna's Ringstrasse,
the street is extremely broad so broad as
to become at any point, with its trees and turf and
"parking," a little park; while its great width is
further enhanced by the curve of the street, that
renders possible long and changing oblique views of
the facades. That is why the majestic Ringstrasse
is not to be taken as an example of the normal
street. It is hardly fair to call it a street at all, for it
is more like a long, curved plaza. Finally, if the
public buildings be crowded along the edge of a
street, what is there to distinguish them from the
other structures of the town, to give them character,
prestige, and the surpassing dignity and conspicuousness
that should be theirs ? To set them back
from a street elsewhere built up closely would be
even to conceal them further. For all these reasons
together the street is the least satisfactory location
for the public buildings of a community, a fact that
is even emphasised by the circumstance that it is the
usual position for buildings of other kinds.
Location on the water-front is in many cases to
be strongly urged. It will frequently happen that
this is not a geographically central location, as when
the water forms the boundary of the town. But
even when that is the case and often, on the
contrary, a bisecting stream will fix the town's geo
graphical centre more surely than could an arbi
trarily chosen site the water-frontage is likely to
be, nevertheless, extremely central in a commercial
Hfcministrative Centre. 89
sense, the population and business of the com
munity crowding close upon it. If such a site be,
in fact, sufficiently central to satisfy the convenience
of the community, there is much to commend its
selection for the location of the public buildings.
The advantages are double, as they should be,
the site benefiting the appearance of the city as a
whole and the aspect of the public buildings con
sidered by themselves. As far as the city is con
cerned, the grouping of the public buildings along
the water-front offers an opportunity for that har
mony of water-front treatment, that visible perman
ence of construction, that stateliness of architectural
facing, that may mean so much to the town in the
water view. As far as the buildings themselves are
concerned, the water outlook is something more
than pleasing. It safeguards them from the inter
ference of private construction; and it invites care
fully treated approaches with an irresistibility which
makes them unquestionably fitting. The very rise
of the bank, with its suggestion of terraces or sloping
ascents, adds to the dignity and seeming importance
of the buildings.
From a picturesque standpoint the site is, then,
an entirely favourable one. A drawback is that
the government buildings excepting a possible
custom-house have little essential connection with
the water. Utility does not demand their location
along its edge, as it does demand the location of
many other kinds of structures, and for this reason
90 flDobern Civic Hrt
the municipality is likely to need its water-front
space for other purposes, if the' body of water has
commercial or industrial value. But even in those
cases we have recommended the setting aside of
some area for enjoyment, and upon this public
reservation if it be large enough, or at least to front
upon it, the municipal buildings might often be
arranged with advantage. So would be served a
twofold purpose. The public buildings would face
upon the water-front, and a portion of the water
front would be preserved for public enjoyment. The
artistic treatment given to the plot would constitute
a beautifying of the buildings' approach or site at
the moment that it was also park development.
With scarcely less certainty than the possession
of a water-front, most communities have an emin
ence. If it does not command the whole town, it
yet commands a considerable area, so that whatever
structure is reared upon it possesses a conspicuousness
above that of the town's other buildings.
Various considerations urge the reservation of this
site for a public pleasure ground. The urgency of
the considerations grows as the height of the emin
ence increases, for a far view is a precious pos
session; but when the height is not very great, when
the ascent is neither so long nor so steep as to inter
fere seriously with traffic, and when the summit, if
centrally located, is given over to building, as it is
likely to be under this combination of conditions,
then it would be difficult to find more fitting ten-
Bbmini0tratit>e Centre, 91
ants than the structures that house the government
of the city.
There they would visibly dominate the town. To
them the community would look up, seeing them
lording over it at every turn, as, in fact, the govern
ment ought to do. The buildings would appear, to
that extent, as a free people's appropriate creation in
succession of the castle of the feudal lords. And,
apart from this sentiment, the height of the location
would emphasise the relative importance of the
buildings, without making too great a demand upon
the architect or involving too high a cost for con
struction. They would gain in seeming importance
and in dignity, merely because of their situation;
and here once more there would be invitation for
those balustrades and terraces that may do so much
to place a building to advantage. In the distant
view of the city the buildings of its government
would be, fittingly, the first and most striking objects
of the scene. The Capitol at Washington suggests
itself immediately as a familiar example. Of its loca
tion, an English critic, Frederic Harrison, has lately
declared:
I have no hesitation in saying that the site of the Capitol is
the noblest in the world, if we exclude that of the Parthenon in
its pristine glory. . . . Londoners can imagine the effect
if their St. Paul's stood in an open park, reaching from the
Temple to Finsbury Circus, and the great creation of Wren
were dazzling white marble, and soared into an atmosphere of
sunny light.
As to the advantages that grade itself offers to
92 flDobern Civic art
buildings, the
"
Papers Relating to the Improvement
of the City of Washington
"'
contain these very im
portant reflections:
Abrupt changes of grade are not obstacles, but opportuni
ties. We have been abundantly satisfied if our buildings were
planted, not set; that is, if the surface were levelled for them and
they had no apparent connection with the ground on which
they were placed. . . . There is nothing more attractive
than walls, steps, terraces, balustrades, and buttresses, which are
integral parts of most (public) buildings abroad, and which,
when the natural grades have not given excuse for their exist
ence, have been deliberately created as necessary setting to the
buildings.
The monumental treatment of grade may, then,
very greatly enhance the imposing effect of a build
ing. As the paper continues, this work is of im
mense variety:
It can be made to soften too great austerity of design and
to dignify too great license. In many cases the approaches to a
simple, inexpensive structure exalt it above a pretentious but
undeveloped neighbour, and in any scheme for the embellish
ment of a city, too much stress cannot be laid on these important
accessories to the higher architectural achievements.
Finally, and more prosaically, the very site safe
guards the public buildings from the intrusive elbow
ing of private structures that might dwarf them,
that might screen them from view, or might shut
out their light. As was assumed at the beginning
of this chapter, no site can be too good for the struct
ures that officially represent the town. Here again,
1
Senate Document 94, Fifty-sixth Congress, second session. Paper by C.
Howard Walker.
administrative Centre. 93
as on the water-front, if it be impossible to secure
some of this advantageous situation to public enjoy
ment by means of a park, the end may be indirectly
gained by dedicating it to the public buildings.
But many communities, having neither a suitable
eminence nor an available bit of water-front on which
to locate their public structures, are compelled to
make choice along the existing ways be they the
streets, parks, or squares of the city. This, be
cause the question has been long neglected so that
the best natural sites are pre-empted, is the common
problem; and when it does arise, it is taken up too
often with no courageousness of spirit or comprehens
iveness of plan. Then there is secured no grouping
of the buildings; but, one by one, as necessity occurs,
the question of situating single public structures is
dealt with half-heartedly at how great a loss to
the total impressiveness, beauty, and majesty of the
city! Even, however, amid these discouraging con
ditions, it is possible to find a rule that will help im
mensely in obtaining results which, though far from
the ideal, are yet comparatively favourable for build
ing and for town.
We have said that the street, using the term in
its ordinary sense, is the least satisfactory location
for the public structures. The reproach may be
modified and an exception made, when a site is
chosen that puts the building at the axes of im
portant thoroughfares. From the standpoint of the
town, the building then suitably closes street vistas;
94 flDofcent Civic art
and from the building's standpoint, it may then be seen
in perspective and has as great a conspicuousness as
a relatively built-in site can give. The location, if
not equal to the water-front or an eminence, is, all
things considered, fairly good. In the original street
plan of Washington much stress was laid upon the
axial position of governmental structures. In Paris
there is given to such monumental constructions as
the Opera House, the Arch of the Star, the Made
leine, and the Hotel des Invalides axial treatment by
causing a convergence of streets to them and by
making their location complementary to similarly
massive construction at the vista's other end. In
the new street planning of London, Washington,
and countless other cities, this axial position for
important buildings is again endorsed, both for the
building's sake and for the street's. It not only
terminates with a satisfactory mass the street vistas
that were only wearisome if not thus closed, but it
prevents the buildings of special prominence and
size from destroying the scale of ordinary structures
or from thrusting themselves too intrusively upon
the street.
To recapitulate, then, the government buildings
should be grouped. That is, there ought to be a
civic centre. If grouped, they should not be strung
along a street. The street position is on the axis
at a focal point. When grouped, they belong at the
edge of squares or plazas; or, best of all, if the site
be sufficiently central, on an eminence or upon the
Hbmini0tratit>e Centre* 95
water-front. If the public structures be educational
institutions, the water-front might well prove unduly
distracting. The ideal neighbour of an educational
centre is a public reservation suitable for the play of
little children, and inviting, by its quiet and leisure,
the reflection and study of adults.
But the requirements of civic art in the grouping
of the public buildings are not exhausted by these
considerations. We have noted only the relations
of the buildings to the town as a whole. They have
relations to one another. A number of these are
comprised in what the architect calls scale the
adoption of a certain module to which all the build
ings must strictly adhere, as they can with no loss
of individuality. If they so adhere that no building
clashes with its neighbour, we may hope to attain
that beauty of harmony and repose of which so
many non-professional persons gained a new con
crete conception in the
"
Court of Honour" at the
Chicago Fair. If they do not adhere to it, the
grouping will prove of doubtful aesthetic value.
Oftentimes it will be possible, also, to emphasise
the group plan, or to appear to group existing build
ings that are really somewhat scattered, by joining
them by means of arcades or colonnades or if
they be too far apart for that by formal avenues
of trees, with balustrades and sculpture. This is a
course that may do much for civic art, not only in
the end to which it leads but by the means it uses to
reach that end.
96 flDo&ern (Civic art
Of the relations of the now really or apparently
grouped buildings to the structures near them,
something has been already said. Here require
ments of scale are hardly less pressing than in the
group itself. In European cities building regulations
which determine not merely the height of the struct
ures, but of the -cornice line, are so common that
the matter of scale can be easily governed. In Amer
ica, however, there is danger. Boston imposed a
special restriction as to height upon structures erected
on Copley Square, with a view to safeguarding the
beautiful buildings of a public character that had
gathered there. In New York, where the chaste
little City Hall occupies the centre of a green that
has not been thus protected, dozens of millions of
dollars have been expended upon structures that
edge the square and that shut it in with lofty walls
which utterly dwarf the municipal building. The
same huge sum of money might have secured a
series of structures that would have been civic orna
ments. Those that have risen, while fairly good of
their type, do not include a single one that is an art
possession, such as would have been appropriate
around the edge of this little park which is the centre
of the municipal life of the chief city of the United
States. The apparently lost opportunity points to
the lesson that it is well to go one step beyond the
grouping of the public buildings, and to assure the
maximum success by regulating the character and
size of the buildings that bound the group.
Bbministrative Centre. 97
It should here be said that the Municipal Art
Society of New York appointed a committee in 1902
to consider the possibility of securing an administrat
ive, or civic, centre in New York, by grouping pub
lic buildings in a central location. After careful
study, the committee reported in favour of making
the present City Hall Park the centre of such a
scheme. It recommended that the park be cleared
of all buildings except the beautiful City Hall, which
is in the middle of it, and that the municipality pro
ceed to acquire all of the property (a portion of which
it already owned) facing the park directly on the
north. On this area, and on a block to be acquired
on the east, it should then erect new administrative
buildings. These, it was pointed out, with the
Post-Office on the south, would furnish at least a
partial frame that might be dignified and fairly har
monious. The committee added that the trans
formed park, "attractive and spacious to an extent
that can now be scarcely imagined," would be "a
fitting site for generations to come for every class of
adornment that may make beautiful the place, or
commemorate historical events or characters." Even
if the recommendations of the report, which were
presented in a persuasive financial as well as aesthetic
light, were not to be carried out, they would have
interest as showing how keenly is felt the need of a
civic centre.
Though conditions be ever so discouraging, as
certainly they appeared to be in New York, modern
98 flDobern Civic art
civic art will not be content to forego dreams of their
betterment. It will yet have that civic centre vision
which was the climax of the civic art of the Flemish
and the Italian Renaissance. The dream of New
York is surpassed, as conditions warrant, by a plan
in Chicago for grouping public buildings on the
lake-front; and in Springfield, Massachusetts, and
Cleveland, Ohio, where circumstances have given
exceptional advantages, the "group plan," on a
square that leads to the water-front, is being actually
secured. In each of these places, also, it is the
earnest popular interest which has rendered possible
this result.
Finally, it may be suggested as a fitting conclusion,
that the architectural grandeur of Athens, Florence,
Venice, Budapest, Moscow, Antwerp, and Paris,
to name but a few examples, is due largely in each
case to the concentration of the chief buildings.
Imagine its chief buildings as separated and isolated,
and the beauty of each of these cities departs.
IN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT.
CHAPTER VI.
THE STREET PLAN OF THE BUSINESS
DISTRICT,
M'
ODERN civic art, having fixed certain definite
foci, having determined that here shall be
the formal entrance to the town by water,
there its entrance for those who come by land, and
that in such a place its public business shall be trans
acted ; having laid down the principle that an open
space is desirable at each of these
"
nerve centres-/
5
and that important streets should converge to them,
civic art, having established these bases and gone so
far, is ready to take up the larger and more intricate
problem of the street plan of the business district
The problem is important, interesting, and difficult.
In the anatomy of the city there is no point at which
the circulatory demands are so great, so insistent, so
impatient, or where failure to provide adequately for
them is so injurious. In the existing city there is no
portion where it is more difficult to make changes,
nor is there any district that has been allowed to
grow with so little scientific planning.
102 flDofcern Civic art
In the average town in the United States, ever a
most attractive field for the student of community
development, the broad, straight Main Street of the
village has become in fact, as it already is in name,
the main thoroughfare of the town. From it the
business has overflowed into a series of narrow
streets that cross it at right angles, and on the
broader of these it may extend some distance. The
arrangement, stretching the business along two sides
of an uncompleted triangle, is the most inconvenient
possible, involving greatest loss of energy and time.
Or the business, having found no cross street of
especial invitation, may extend equally along a series
of them and then spread over a thoroughfare that,
paralleling the main street, connects them. So it
will overflow a rectangle, and perhaps a series of
these, until there is a large business district tending
to be rectangular. In no other equal area is space so
precious, or time and distance more important fac
tors; yet, to go from any point on one street to any
point on one that is parallel, two sides of the triangle
must be traversed. Furthermore, the traffic, far
larger than had been intended for these streets,
doubtless chokes them. Every slowly moving truck
impedes every vehicle behind it. The great business
houses, barely seen from the mean and narrow
thoroughfares, lose their dignity. Rapid-transit facili
ties, crowded on to one or two broad highways,
contract these for general traffic and, consequently,
the attempted rapid-transit is delayed. In London
Street plan of tbe Busine$0 2>i0trict 103
where, thanks to excellent police regulation, the
traffic moves with relative celerity, a calculation has
been made that "every omnibus and cab that uses
the main streets of the
'
City
'
and its approaches is
delayed on an average half an hour each day through
blocks and partial blocks." Could the money loss
of this to passengers in cab and omnibus be esti
mated, consider what would be the aggregate !
A problem that, for all its difficulty, so urgently
invites solution has not lacked for thought. There
are such practical requirements that civic art must
have had pressing claims to be heard among them;
and yet it is heard, for if the centre of the city be not
imposing, if there be here no handsome sites, no stateliness,
no majestic thoroughfares, and the conveni
ence of the business be not consulted, the modern city
has lamentably failed to realise the ends of civic art.
The courage with which this hardest of all the prob
lems has been attacked in the world's great cities is one
of the most interesting and inspiring, as it is one of the
most suggestive, episodes in the history that relates
the rise of the new ideal for cities that ideal born
of new conditions and which cannot therefore be a
fruitless dream.
This essential newness of the problem is well
illustrated by one of the most striking attempts that
have been made to solve it. On Christmas day in
1857, as a result of preliminary agitation, Emperor
Francis Joseph of Austria issued a decree addressed
to the Minister of the Interior, requiring that "the
fIDobern Civic art
enlargement of the inner city of Vienna, for the pur
pose of its suitable connection with the suburbs,
should be undertaken as speedily as possible." It
was suggested that the surrounding fortifications
and ditches, which are always the great opportunity
of the cramped old Continental cities, be removed,
and that at the same time there be made adequate
provision of sites for a new war office, a city marshall's
office, an opera house, imperial archives, a
town hall, and the necessary buildings for museums
and galleries. The decree required that there be
opened a competition for plans for the improvement,
the jury to consist of a commission of high officials
representing various interests, these commissioners
before making the awards, however, to
"
submit the
plans to a committee of specialists appointed by
them." Three designs were to be selected for prizes
and the premiums were to be two thousand, one
thousand, and five hundred gold ducats. This was
the opportunity, the perception and courageous
seizure of which have since made Vienna so superb
and famous. Eighty-five designs were submitted,
and though none of the premiated plans was literally
carried out, they gave suggestions and set the stand
ard for the final scheme. But this, as the decree
required, dealt rather with the enlargement of the
inner city and its convenient connection with the
suburbs than with a remodelling of the district itself.
Thirty-five years later, in the last decade of the
nineteenth century, the municipality took up the latter
Street pan of tbe Business District 105
problem, inviting the architects and engineers of the
world to compete in the submission of plans for the
remodelling of old, central Vienna. There were two
prizes often thousand florins, three of five thousand,
and three of three thousand florins. For "part de
signs which do not comprise the whole city, but
consider only a few questions of the improvement,
or means of communication/' there were prizes of
three thousand florins and under; and finally prizes
were promised for plans that were good in parts
though not satisfactory as a whole. The jury was
composed mainly of professors, leading architects,
and engineers ;
and far-off Vienna proved again
that she had nothing to learn either as to modern
municipal ideals or civic spirit from Berlin or Paris
or Rome or from the hurrying cities of England and
America.
The early days of Philadelphia and New York
offered exceptional opportunities for a scientific plan
ning of the business districts in communities which,
as could be even then foreseen, were destined to
become great cities. That the outcome in each case
is a failure, an example of what not to do, shows
how little progress had yet been made in the physical
science of cities. There was, however, conscious
ness of the problem and its thoughtful consideration.
For Philadelphia no less a personage than William
Penn made a plan. Its feature was a long series of
rectangles that were almost squares, the straight
highways unrelieved by curve or diagonal, with two
106 flDofcern Civic Brt
of the streets, which crossed at right angles in a big
open space nearly in the middle of the tract, consid
erably broader than the others. If there was little of
art or science about the design, there was enough
forethought to appreciate the value of frequent open
spaces for the admission of light and air to a
crowded section, for the provision of good building
sites on the ground facing the public areas, and for
relieving the monotony of the district. Penn's plan
shows five such spaces, each half as large again as
an ordinary block, in a district only five blocks broad
by twenty-two long.
1
Had the same proportion
been secured for the closely built-up sections of the
city when it extended beyond this district, as the
Consolidation Act of 1854 directed should be done,
there would have been two hundred and eighty
small parks in the city plan of Philadelphia at the
beginning of the twentieth century instead of the
forty-five that were actually there. But there was
not enough public appreciation of the importance
of the problem to secure the adoption of even the
one redeeming feature of Penn's plan. The straight
streets and rectangular blocks, unrelieved by frequent
open spaces, extended over the growing city and
were adopted as a model by the thirty or more out
lying towns and villages that have since been in
corporated in it.
When New York came to wrestle with the pro
blem, in 1807, the public held it serious enough to
1
The area between Vine and South streets and the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.
Street plan of tbe Busine0s District 107
demand the consideration of a formally appointed
commission. This laid down tradition says with
a mason's hand sieve the familiar gridiron plan.
The one irregular thoroughfare was Broadway, al
ready a road of too much importance to be molested,
and to that happy chance New York owes the only
opportunities for civic stateliness or beauty afforded
in its street arrangement. Broadway has developed,
too, as the great business street, just as the diagonal
Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia has become, in spite
of its narrowness, a street of shops. If, as wisely
remarked, "the shop-keepers go where the travel is/
7
the value of the diagonal thoroughfare for circulatory
purposes is attested.
But there are other faults in the rectilinear plan.
Frederick Law Olmsted has put some of them well
in saying of the commission's work :
Some two thousand blocks were provided, each theoretic
ally two hundred feet wide, no more, no less ;
and ever since, if a
building site is wanted, whether with a view to a church or a
blast furnace, an opera house or a toy shop, there is, of intention,
no better place in one of these blocks than in another. . . .
If a proposed cathedral, military depot, great manufacturing enter
prise, house of religious seclusion, or seat of learning needs a
space of ground more than sixty-six yards in extent, from north
to south, the system forbids that it shall be built in New York.
. . . There is no place in New York where a stately building
can be looked up to from base to turret, none where it can even
be seen full in the face and all at once taken in by the eye; none
where it can be viewed in advantageous perspective. . . .
Such distinctive advantage of position as Rome gives St. Peter's,
Paris the Madeleine, London St. Paul's, New York, under her
system, gives to nothing.
io8 fTOofcern Civic art
The plan offers the maximum of building area,
but the minimum of effect.
Costly failures where there might have been
magnificent successes are not confined to the United
States. If modern civic art has learned, the world
over, a lesson, if it has been taught to recognise the
worth of a street plan for the business district that
shall consult convenience of travel and stateliness of
result, it has done so by dear experience widely dis
tributed. To devise on paper a plan intelligent and
comprehensive required no impossible genius ;
to
secure public appreciation of such a plan required
examples not only of its success but of the failure
of simpler plans. In London after the great fire
there was presented an opportunity as thrilling as
any that America has had. Here, in the heart of the
world's greatest and richest city, a large district
could be replanned. There was a genius who saw
the chance and contrived a scheme that would have
rendered London superb among the cities of to-day ;
but the design of Sir Christopher Wren was in ad
vance of the age, and you must seek diligently now
to find it in the archives of an Oxford college. Four
hundred and thirty-six acres had been burned over ;
a cathedral and eighty-seven churches were to be
rebuilt ;
a site was to be found for a new exchange
and for other public buildings; and of about fourteen
thousand structures, some of which might have stood
in the way of a new planning, not one was left.
But London was rebuilt in the old way, and such
Street {plan of tbe Business District 109
improvements as have since been made, unsatisfactory
as they are, have cost enormously. From 1798 to
1821 ten select committees made reports on particu
lar improvements. In another twenty years, from
1832 to 1851, Parliament appointed eleven or twelve
select committees to take into consideration plans
for the improvement of London and to advise as to
the best means for carrying out the plans. These
committees did little more than report on the causes
of the crowding which were obvious enough and
on the difficulty of making changes owing to the
great cost. All this was impressing the lesson. At
last, however, conditions became so serious that vast
expenses had to be assumed. In the thirty-four
years from 1855 to 1889 the Metropolitan Board of
Works expended upon street changes and improve
ments more than fifteen millions sterling. The net
cost, after recoupments from the sale of surplus land,
exceeded ten millions sterling, while a million and a
half pounds more had been paid out by the board
in grants to local districts, to aid them in bearing the
cost of the smaller street improvements. It was
at about the end of this period that the chairman
of the improvement committee of the London County
Council observed that the streets of London meas
ured some two thousand miles, and that in the thirty
years ending with 1889 the board of public works
had succeeded, with its great expenditure, in con
structing a total length of fifteen and four-fifths miles
of new streets, with an average width of sixty feet.
i io flDobern CMc art
He noted this with pride; but those who know
Wren's plan, who recall how easily it might have
been adopted, and its lines extended over the whole
metropolitan area as London stretched farther into
the country, can see only pathos in his figures, and
realise more keenly than before the value of care in
original street planning.
The plan of Sir Christopher Wren for the re
building of burned London was in accord with the
principles of civic art as they are recognised to-day.
Wren was surveyor-general, so that his masterly
design took a natural precedence; it was accepted
also by the king, and what now seems the mere
accident of a lack of ever so little ready money and
a desire for haste were allowed to prevent the future
splendour and convenience of the great city. The
main features of his plan, which well repays study,
were to be, going from west to east: (i) A circular
space at the top of Fleet Street hill, about on the site
of St. Dunstan's Church. From this eight streets
were to radiate, the eight to be connected with one
another at a suitable distance from the centre by
cross streets, these forming an octagon in relation to
the circle. (2) A triangular space in full view from
Fleet Street hill. This was to widen toward the east
and was to include St. Paul's and Doctors' Com
mons. (3) An open space in the centre of which
should stand, on its old site, the Royal Exchange,
and grouped around this space were to be the public
buildings. From this point, which was to be the
Street plan of tbe Business District m
topographical centre, there were to radiate ten
streets, each sixty feet wide. Three of these reached
directly down to the river, offering from it a noble
view of the Exchange. Along the river bank there
was to be a broad quay, and opposite London Bridge
a large semicircular space with arterial streets radiat
ing outward. Here and there, where radials of dif
ferent systems crossed, there were established new
open spaces and new centres. The plan showed, in
brief, that use of broad, straight streets linked to
gether by monumental buildings, that provision of
commanding sites for important structures, that use
of diagonals, of open areas, and of curving streets
with their changing view-points, which the accepted
plans of Paris, of Vienna, and of Washington have
now made familiar.
The opportunity was allowed to pass, and all the
subsequent and costly changes in the London plan
have proved inadequate, because it since has been
impossible financially to carry out a single compre
hensive scheme that should bring every part into
direct relations with every other. In all street
planning there must be regard for the through lines
of travel as surely as for the local, and it is these
through courses which scattered improvements
generally fail to benefit to great extent. The through
travel in its usually heavy volume demands arterial
thoroughfares that shall be wide, uniform in their
width, straight, of easy gradient, and on the direct
line between important foci. These requirements
ii2 fIDobern Civic art
alone involve a considerable dignity of aspect. To
gain the best spectacular results, however, civic art
must be mindful also of other factors. Perhaps the
most notable of these in the business district is the
architectural effect.
The relation between the architecture and the
street plan is reciprocal. Each can do so much for
the other that while, on the one hand, a street
may be opened or widened simply that a monu
mental structure may be the better seen, on the
other hand the precise location of a new street may
be determined by the position of existing structures
that are prominent, according as they would or
would not close the vista of the street, and so
enhance its beauty. For in a city mere distance is
not fine. There should be set up visible limits, or at
least accents, and the ideal would be to proportion
the breadth of the thoroughfare to the distance
between these limits or main accents. We have
seen in this connection how Sir Christopher Wren
built up his street plan from the focal points offered
by important buildings and then on the minor axes
obtained variety of treatment. We may observe
also how the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is made a
topographical centre whence twelve great streets
radiate, and how fully again the method is exempli
fied in the plan of Washington.
A few years ago there was a project on foot in
Brussels to prolong a certain street
1
in order to
1
The Rue du Lombard toward the Rue Saint-Jean.
Street plan of tbe Busineas District 1*3
establish direct communication between two im
portant points. The utilitarian advantages of the
proposed street were overwhelming, but the matter
was not decided until that national society of workers
for civic art, L'QEuvre Nationale Beige, had prepared
a report on the aesthetic effect. This report showed
what view of the Palais de Justice the new street
would reveal, what views it would afford of two
churches that were on its line, the character of the
new view it would open of the Hotel de Ville, and
finally what would be the general aspect of the
street itself and of the lateral streets as seen from it.
The incident is a happy illustration of the many points
that civic art would have kept in mind when arranging
or changing the street plan of a city's centre.
And there are some other requirements even than
these. There is to be considered the general line of
frontage, or building line, for this may be set back to
widen a narrow street; the erection of porticoes over
the walk, the projection and height of balconies and
awnings, and finally the regulation of building heights
if we would have an imposing thoroughfare. In
the European cities, where more frequently than in
the United States the central authority pushes new
streets through closely built-up districts, there are
statutes to control all these matters. Though these
deal so directly with the architectural aspect of the
city that they may be considered more fittingly under
that head, it is well to observe here that their special
design is to preserve the dignity of the street.
ii 4 fl&ofcern Civic Srt
In laying down, then, an ideal street plan, for the
business district of a city, there should be first a
comprehensive scheme, a skeleton of arterial thor
oughfares to provide for the through travel from
point to point. These great roads will be direct,
broad, straight, and free from heavy grades. At the
focal points there will be open spaces and from these
the great streets will radiate. Then, in laying down
the precise location of any one of them, we shall note
what views it opens, what its accents are, and, if
possible, we shall proportion its width to its length
or seeming length. On the lateral and minor streets,
designed for local traffic, we shall obtain a pleasing
variety in the street lines even if it be only that of
sudden regularity. Later on we will safeguard the
appearance of the street by building regulations; we
may even swerve it a little to preserve an historic or
beautiful edifice; and we will take care that if it is to
pass upon viaduct or bridge, or if a bridge is to be
suspended over it, the majesty and beauty of the
street shall not be destroyed by a hideous structure.
In carelessness of civic art, in haste, in wonder at the
prowess of modern industrialism and awe of our
cunning with iron and steel, we have suffered a
hopelessly unaesthetic truss bridge, cheaply made
and quickly put together, to become a common and
well-nigh prevailing type. The marvel is not that
iron and steel are used, but that we submit to their
use in ugly lines. Suppose, it has been suggested,
that under the eaves of Notre Dame in Paris there
Street plan of tbe Bu0ine0a district 115
were, instead of the graceful sweeps of the arched
bridges across the Seine, a couple of truss construc
tions like, for example, the bridge by which rich
Chicago has permitted State Street to be demeaned,
how the aspect not of a street alone, but of Paris,
would be changed! How much poorer in urban
beauty would be the world!
As to the focal points, earlier chapters have sug
gested what these are likely to be. The government
buildings, the entrances to the town, by water and
by land these are sure receiving and distributing
centres. Wren's plan has suggested the artificial
creation of additional and local foci at convenient
points, and the plan of Paris shows how such topo
graphical centres may be located with reference to
monumental constructions (as the Arc de Triomphe)
that are not in themselves magnets of travel but the
conspicuousness of which is desirable on spectacular
grounds. That the creation of such local centres
may very greatly enhance the commercial value of
their building sites, in the business districts of cities,
is obvious enough. But the importance of an arbi
trary focus can be still further enhanced, so that it
becomes more than local.
An interesting example is found in the plan of
Dalny, the new city that Russia is building as a
Pacific seaport terminal for its Trans-Siberian Rail
road. The street plan of this entire city was made
in the office of the Russian engineers before any
building was commenced. There are many diagonal
n6 HDobern Civic art
arterial thoroughfares, the crossing points of the
different systems of radials creating local centres, and
in front of the railway station there is a plaza which
is an important focus. But in the heart of the town
a circular public space has been laid out. Ten long
straight streets converge upon it, connected by a
circular street that forms the circle's circumference.
Built around this, with excellent effect it can be
imagined, there are ten structures, each in its separate
little block. Yet they include and it must be re
membered that the list was made out in an office,
before a house had been put up buildings of as little
individual importance as a private bank (three), a
theatre, a club-house, a post- and telegraph-office.
Still the aggregate result, the town hall and some
government offices being added, locates the heart of
the city. It is a valuable suggestion for towns of
minor importance.
But the opportunity for new planning on the scale
of Dalny may come only once in a hundred years.
Such transformations as have been wrought in Paris
and Vienna, such extensive changes of street plan and
aspect as Berlin and Rome have brought about, and
such magnificently comprehensive projects as now
accepted for Washington, are possible only under
a government that is locally autocratic. Most cities
of England, and especially of America, must make
their revisions step by step. For this there is no less
need of a good general scheme. That every step
may count, that every improvement shall bring a lit-
Street plan of tbe Bu0ine00 District 117
tie nearer to realisation that complete scheme which
would be best, there must be a fixed ideal in mind.
That is why civic art insists so earnestly on the value
of the principles of a general street plan. If we have
not these, we shall be in danger of widening at great
cost a street that comes from nowhere and leads to
nothing, that for all its width will be deserted be
cause the through travel takes a route that is more
direct; we shall be opening spaces to which there is
no convergence of thoroughfares, or we shall make
a mockery of "improvement" by choking a corner
with criss-cross travel through focusing important
streets where there is only a street's width to handle
the converging traffic.
That such dangers are before us always, that the
problem of the street plan even in the business dis
trict is not theoretical, there is abundant proof. Con
sider the changes that London is making, while this
is being written, in the widening of the Strand and
the opening of the great new thoroughfare from Hoiborn
to the Strand. In New York the administration
is having public hearings on the plans for street ap
proaches to the new bridges. In Pittsburg the Archi
tectural Club has lately had a competition of plans
"for the improvement of the down-town districts."
In Toronto the like project is under earnest public
discussion. In San Francisco it has been seriously
taken up. New stations, new bridges, new build
ings, and, above all, the growing congestion of an
increasing population so sadly felt where there is
n8 flDofcem Civic Hrt
no scientific plan of circulation are forcing these
problems ever before us.
When the new charter for Greater New York
was prepared, the need of rectifying the street sys
tem, and of doing this in accordance with a compre
hensive scheme that should not be unduly influenced
by local considerations, was felt so keenly that pro
vision was made for a general Board of Public Im
provements. An accident of politics put on the first
board some incompetent men, and in disgust the
board was abolished when the charter was revised.
But the need remained, and there came to be de
manded even the creation of an expert commission,
such as that which was working so successfully for
Washington. The problem in its universal applica
tion is not, as we have seen, merely that of circu
lation. The traffic is not alone in clamouring for its
solution. It is presented also that adequate building
sites may be provided sites that may be large
enough for a great building, sites to which impressiveness
of effect belong, and to which there may be
noble approaches, sites that can offer a frontage on
at least three streets without the necessity of owning
half a block.
There is, perhaps, too common a notion that the
way to secure comfort and convenience for the travel
and to bestow on the business district of a city splend
our of appearance is simply to widen streets. As
well might one think that the one way to emphasise
a word in speaking is to scream it, and that therein
Street pan of tbe Bu0ines0 District 119
lay the secret of the art of oratory! The error must
be clear from what has been said; but to emphasise
it we may note that in Paris the Avenue de 1'Opera
is one hundred and twenty feet wide, and the Rue de
Rivoli one hundred feet wide, while in London Hoiborn,
Oxford Street, and Bayswater Road have a width
of seventy feet (and reach for four miles). Regent
Street is eighty feet broad, and Queen Victoria Street
seventy-five feet. We may ask ourselves how much
of the difference in the impressions that these streets
make is due to difference of width. As far as appear
ance goes, the architectural termini and the relative
length are always stronger factors. The width de
manded by the traffic alone is not, also, to be determihed
merely by the traffic's mass. The grade and
the speed at which the travel moves must be carefully
considered in interpreting the requirements of its
volume.
There is, too, something to be said about the
choice of the local improvements that are to be under
taken for bettering the urban conditions. There
should be remembrance that it is the municipal,
as much as the local, condition which it is necessary
to improve. The committee of the London County
Council which has this matter in charge states that in
preparing its annual recommendations to the council
it
"
gives the fullest consideration to the requirements
of each district, and accordingly selects, from all parts
of London, such improvements as are most urgently
needed and which will be of the greatest advantage
120 flDobern Civic Hrt
to the general through travel" This states the rule
precisely.
Now, as to securing the radical street changes
that may be required, there are in general five meth
ods of procedure :
first, the constructing authority
may acquire only those properties the whole or por
tions of which are actually needed for the new or
widened street. This is the method usually adopted
by the London County Council. Second, there may
be secured more land than is actually needed for the
improvement, with a view to the gaining of valuable
building sites. The plan is suggested in the quoted
decree for the improvement of Vienna. Third, pro
perty over a large area through which the improve
ment passes may be acquired, with a view to
abolishing a slum district for instance. Examples of
this are found in some of the provincial cities of Great
Britain and where large land improvement companies
have operated. Fourth, the acquisition of only that
property which is to be added to the public way and
the levying of an improvement charge upon the ad
jacent lands. This is a familiar American method.
Fifth, a modification of the third scheme to the extent
that the acquirements are confined to freehold and
long leasehold interests, the short leaseholds being
allowed to run out. When the acquirements exceed
the needs of the new or widened street itself there
may be important recoupments by the sale of the
sites made so much more valuable through the im
provement. When the acquirements are not so con-
Street pan of tfoe Business District 121
siderable as to constitute good sites, or when no land
is secured beyond that needed for the street itself,
which is pushed ruthlessly through, regardless of the
cutting of lots, there may be left along its edges
building sites so meagre and fragmentary as to be
comparatively worthless. In such case the improve
ment, instead of affording a handsome thoroughfare,
results for a longtime in only a dismal collection of the
backs of buildings and of patches of vacant land.
Such an outcome must be anticipated and guarded
against in making the new street.
There is one other consideration to influence some
times the location of new business thoroughfares, or
to add to the estimate of their value. It has been
found that often there is no better way to redeem a
slum district than by cutting into it a great highway
that will be filled with the through travel of a city's
industry. Like a stream of pure water cleansing
what it touches, this tide of traffic, pulsing with the
joyousness of the city's life of toil and purpose, when
flowing through an idle or suffering district wakes it
to larger interests and higher purpose.
There is, finally, this to remember, and it is the
especial text of municipal aesthetics. Until there is a
good street plan, modern civic art can come to little.
A Greek sculptor charged his pupil with having richly
ornamented a statue because he
"
knew not how to
make it beautiful" Beauty is dependent on a fine
ness of line, a chastity of form, the lack of which can
be atoned for by no ornament that is superimposed,
122 Civic Hrt
by no added decoration. And this is no more true
in sculpture than in the street plan, which is the
skeleton of the city, the framework of the structure
in the highest and most complex of all the arts the
art of noble city-building.
CHAPTER VIL
ARCHITECTURE IN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT.
WE
have seen that a street which is badly
planned can look for little stateliness or
even beauty, however meritorious is
the construction along its borders or the decoration
heaped upon it. Conversely, we have seen that the
best planned street requires, for full effect, the safe
guarding of its architecture, the establishment of a
building line, probably of a cornice line, and the pro
tection of statutes regulating the height of balconies
and awnings and the construction of porticoes over
the walks. These are all matters that deal indeed
with the architecture, but their design primarily is
to guard the beauty or dignity of the way. The
regulation and the obligations of construction be
come, then, a distinct phase of civic aesthetics.
This is not merely because architecture is so
important in itself that whatever protects it or adds
to its imposing character adds immensely to the im
pression made by the city. It is because the street
123
124 fltofcern Civic art
is so dependent on the architecture for the effect
which is offered, that the latter becomes practically a
constructive element of the street. Especially must
this be true in the business district, where the lots
contain no open space before the structures that will
divide responsibility for the aspect of the way. In
this district particularly, then, would civic art cherish
the architecture, and with an equal zeal for the street's
and architecture's sake. In this district, too, the archi
tecture is of so distinct a type from that in the residen
tial area as to offer in any event a separate problem.
The most striking modern characteristic of the
construction which is to be found in the business
districts of cities is height. There are not wanting
some indications of a reaction; but for the present at
least, and for some years to come, the surpassing
height ofgreat office buildings will be the most domin
ant feature of the business area. More than this, the
permanent level of building height for the whole
district has been raised so greatly, whatever the pos
sible reaction, as to constitute in itself a clear division
between old and modern construction methods.
The influence of this on civic art is pronounced.
Tall buildings are concentrators of business. Great
office structures, side by side or facing each other
across a narrow street, may easily house a daytime
population of three to five thousand persons. A
population as large as was spread over a square mile
or more of these same streets, in the days of the vil
lage from which the city grew, is now crowded upon
Hrcbitecture in tfoe Business District 125
one block of one street. It is this circumstance
which has lately urged, with an insistence that has
become compulsion, the widening of many thorough
fares, the cutting through of new streets, and the
study of a scientific system of street planning. The
tall building requires a wide street quite as much be
cause of the congestion of travel it brings as, because
it shuts the sunshine out of narrow streets or because
it cannot be fitly seen without a perspective sufficient
at least to offer an appreciable visual angle. Yet
these latter considerations are potent also. They
belong more obviously to the field of art. They ex
plain the aesthetic desirability of wide streets where
tall buildings are. In the present discussion, how
ever, we are assuming the street and have to con
sider the building.
A degree of harmony if not of uniformity is clearly
to be desired in the buildings along the thoroughfare.
The business street is essentially formal There is
nothing in the world more artificial, for there is not
a stick or stone of it which has not been placed by
the hand of man. Orderliness, therefore, is required.
We can liken the side of a street to a line of type.
The letters need not be of precisely the same height
and should not be of exactly the same form and
width, but glaring contrasts will shock and offend.
A line composed of such a mingling of exclamation
points and periods as might well stand (with here and
there an interrogation inserted) for many a business
street would be a total failure artistically. The same
126 flfcofcern CMc Hrt
would be true of a line in which colours were hope
lessly jumbled. Some regularity, then, in skyline
and in lines of balcony and cornice is desirable, with
a harmony of tint. The pauses, however, will be
clearly marked. These are the accents of the street.
There ought to be an established maximum of
height above which no edifice shall rise. A defeat
of efforts to establish such a limit can be due only to
the strength of private interests. The larger, public
interest is altogether in favour of the restriction. Any
extensive construction of tall buildings inevitably
leads on narrow thoroughfares to a street congestion
so unbearable that remedies must be had and these
remedies will be extremely costly. The restriction is
required, then, (i) for the street's sake, from various
points of view; (2) for the building's own sake, since,
the ground area being limited, there is a height at
which the proportions cease to be pleasant; (3) for
the protection of every meritorious structure so that
a neighbour, towering immensely higher, may not
dwarf it. The first requirement is made the basis of
the familiar building statute in European cities, which
proportions to the width of the thoroughfare the
height of the structures bordering upon it, with a
designated maximum limit moderately increased,
sometimes, of course, where the street widens into
a plaza.
1
The second requirement is in the heart of
the architect, but save in buildings of exceptional
1
A similar ordinance is occasionally found in the United States as in St.
Louis, for example.
HrcWtecture in tfoe Busincsa 2>i0trfct 127
artistic character or in public structures may not
have expression. The third requirement is embodied
in occasional local legislation, of which the special
building regulations enacted for Copley Square in
Boston that a tall apartment house should not
dwarf, as projected, the existing examples of beauti
ful architecture is a notable illustration.
Equally desirable, and for similar reasons, is the
establishment of a minimum building height for any
given street, and this need also is recognised by
statute in Europe. In fact, it has been seriously sug
gested in London that when a new street is planned
it were well for the committee of the County Council,
when formulating the proposal, to invite the views
of leading architects and engineers, and on their
recommendations to draw up a general scheme pro
viding for the principal feature of the building eleva
tions. In due time the avenue would then have not
only convenience but dignity and beauty. If this
were done, not in London only but wherever new
streets are planned for commercial districts, the pro
gress of contemporary civic art would be more
striking.
That the greater height of building, made possi
ble by the modern method of steel construction, will
in itself add much to the imposing character of the
business district, to its seeming importance, solidity,
and impressiveness, if it be so curbed and regulated
that there is a degree of uniformity in the rise of the
building level, scarcely needs a saying. Between a
128 fIDobern Civic flrt
street forty feet wide lined with low brick or stucco
structures, and a thoroughfare eighty feet wide with
a border of modern commercial buildings, there is no
comparison, as far as strictly urban effectiveness
goes. But everything must be in scale. The tenand
eleven-story buildings that make a striking
group around the Old Granary Burial Ground in
Boston, where the law has limited building heights
to one hundred and twenty-five feet, would lose
their impressiveness in New York. There the inter
polated twenty-story structures would dwarf them.
"Sky-scrapers/
7
however, which rise from two
hundred to two hundred and fifty feet are necessarily
scattered, if only to protect their own light. They
establish a standard to which there cannot be uni
form adherence, and the failures to adhere to it look
puny. So there is lost all that impressiveness which
comes from mere order and regularity, while elsewhere
lower structures lose nothing of seeming importance
if there be no higher by which to measure them.
Regarding the size of buildings, and especially
their height, there is, too, another thing to be ob
served. This is the proportion to be maintained with
respect to the vista in which they come. There has
been note of the value of monumental construction
at focal points. Is there need of the statement that
the construction should be adjusted to the view which
is aiforded from converging streets, that it may be
neither too massive nor too small and insignificant?
This will not be an easy thing to adjust by statute.
architecture in tbe Busine00 District 129
It also must be in the heart of the architect, or, if the
building antedates the street, in the heart of him who
plans the latter. The south end of the Treasury, in
Washington, as it is seen from the Capitol, has been
happily cited as an example. Large as it is, it is
too small to count in a view down the length of
Pennsylvania Avenue.
The conscientious architect will strive also to
establish a relation between the height of his build
ing and the length of its fafade; and if his building
is at a topographical axis or centre, where promin
ence is thrust upon it and large size is excusable, if
not indeed required, he will see to it that the struct
ure shall still form a definite composition with its
neighbours. Finally he will try to put into the
appearance of the building something of appropriate
ness to its purpose, to its location, and its architect
ural period. When old London Bridge was demolished
and a new one made, there was wisely planned a
broad approach on the Southwark side. High Street
at that time was rich in pointed gables, florid plaster
work, diamond casements, and half-timbered over
hanging stories. These picturesque features were
swept away with the broad approach; there followed
a line of monotonous brick fronts genuine, if
homely and then these were superseded by a row
of "Grecian and Italianised fafades" that in South
wark could have no meaning beyond a homesick
dream or silly imitation. Civic art is in the broad
approach and the clearing out of unsanitary rookeries;
130 fIDobern Civic Hrt
but there goes with it such a loss, also of civic art, in
the style of building which has succeeded, that the
beholder does not readily appreciate the existence of
a net advantage. These are not, however, matters
readily reached by law, unless there be established a
commission to pass upon the artistic features of the
plan of every projected building as certainly as upon
its sanitation. But the thoughts emphasise the
many obligations of the architect, and civic art's great
dependence on him.
In that remodelling of cities which new condi
tions make so conspicuous a feature in modern urban
development and which is a potent stimulus to
municipal aesthetics, it must often happen that in
the older communities the location of a new street
might endanger some building of historical or
architectural interest. But the charm of a street is
not dependent on newness. Historical interest is
not to be lightly ignored and beauty is ever fresh.
The special committee of the London County Council,
which in such cases is charged to consider and re
port on the course of action to be taken; the com
missions of experts to which these matters are
relegated in French cities; the zealous official guard
ianship in Italy, Belgium, and Germany, all this
shows that the European cities which have had long
experience, and where such opportunities come with
more frequency than in America, value highly the
chance thus given to secure or preserve picturesqueness,
variety, interest, and assured structural beauty
architecture in tfoe Business District 131
on the street. Modern civic art would not be all
modern in its expression. It is no iconoclast where
beauty is concerned. And therein is one secret of
its power. Speaking merely from the architectural
standpoint, it would draw gladly on the treasures of
the ever lengthening past.
At the same time, every effort must be made to
render the present and future worthy of the best
remnants of the past. In France and Belgium, which
to-day are leaders in the more decoratively aesthetic
features of modern civic art, municipalities offer
prizes for the most beautiful facades. In Paris these
prizes go to owner, builder, and architect, the former
being exempted from half of his street tax and the
two latter receiving highly cherished medals. So in
the new conception of the city beautiful is impressed
the lesson of obligation to the community, the re
minder that good taste love of beauty and ability
to gratify it should not be so selfish as to hide a
lovely or splendid interior behind a plain exterior,
and that to the city which has made possible a hand
some street something in its turn is owing in a visi
ble contribution to the general weal It is not safe
to leave all this to the results of individual rivalry.
The facades, so long monotonous, in New York and
Philadelphia, and the homely fronts and high garden
walls that often hide beautiful interiors in England,
show the folly of so doing. It is proved again in
the familiar custom of the individual, when leasing
or selling part of a tract, to require that a certain
132 fIDofcern Civic art.
minimum sum shall be represented in the exterior of
the building to be erected. Once such rivalry has,
by artificial means, been started, there is needed no
great spur to keep it active, but rather that artistic
guidance and control which can be given in the
building regulations.
In the business portions of a city the effects that
are desired are rather those which can be called
"stunning" than those dependent on the fineness
and niceness of delicate design. In the business
street there is inevitably much that is bizarre, blatant,
and distracting. It is, further, the very purpose of
the business house to attract attention, and civic art
has something to be grateful for when, instead of
making use of hideous advertisements, or striking
colour, or great height, or sudden littleness in a wil
derness of "sky-scrapers," the dependence for effect
is placed on the dignity of the building's appearance,
on the majesty of its proportions, on the impressiveness
of its architectural treatment That is why
"stunning effect" can properly be desired in the
structures of the business district.
For the topographical conditions that most favour
the attainment of this effect there is more and more
demand. The public buildings cannot well vie in
height with commercial structures, they cannot ap
propriately attract attention by their diminutiveness,
and even a dormant public spirit would awake in
protest were it sought to attract attention to such
structures by vivid colours or great signs. Hardly
architecture in tbe ^Business district 133
t
less marked than this need by the public buildings is
the need, for similar reasons, by the banks, by the
clubs, by the homes of the exchanges and commerc
ial bodies, by institutions financial, educational, and
benevolent.
1
The greater the city becomes the more
urgent is the demand for topographical conditions
advantageous to architectural effect. The result of
the demand, the available number of such positions
being limited, must be their rapid pre-emption by
this class of structure and their increasingly worthy
development. That an occupation of such sites by
handsome buildings means much for the aspect of the
town, there is no need of saying. It means so much
that we must provide many lots of this character
with the certainty that, if so abundant as to be avail
able at last by even commercial structures, such op
portunities will be offered to these that many even
of them will seek their effectiveness by artistic
means.
It has been pointed out that the ample provision
of favourable sites is one of the merits of a diagonal
street plan. It should here be said that where there
1
Good illustrations of the want of such sites are afforded by the important
buildings that now line narrow Chancery Lane in London, or by the situation of the
new Chamber of Commerce and the new Stock Exchange in New York. Of the
latter Russell Sturgis has said, in an article in the International Quarterly (December,
1902): "There is a building in which for purposes of utility the most has been
made of a lot really too small for its purpose. ... No courtyard, whether
of entrance (cour d'honneur) nor yet central and surrounded by buildings to which
it gives light, no showing in any one direction of the whole building or of any large
mass of it, two facades on two parallel streets, and nothing else 1
" Yet this costly
and beautiful structure is in its design one of the most ambitiously decorative in
NewYork, and it fails of its full purpose mainly because of the poor chance to see it.
flDofcern Civic art.
are no open spaces or advantageously placed corners,
architecture may yet discover opportunities. In
seeking these it will value the broad, curving street,
and in itself as an art will find no fault with
grade. Approaches, also, count strongly with a
building. The thing most to be dreaded is the -nar
row, straight street, with rectangular crossings and
every block alike in size and given over to building.
That condition is thoroughly discouraging.
There may once have been some reason for a
notion that the cities of a democracy could be hum
drum in their business districts. Unless we imagine
such an idea, how shall we account for the failure to
provide noble sites when the plans of the new cities
of America were laid down on paper ? There must
have been a well-nigh universal thought that the
splendour of empire and monarchy being over, the
need of palaces and of provision for pageantry hav
ing passed, and a people having settled down con
tent to be tradesmen without an
"
upper class," there
would be, in the parts of the town where they did
their business and with entire equality earned their
livings, no need to have one street differ from
another save as volume of travel might require
greater or lesser width. But if that idea was ever
held, the time has gone when it could be seriously
put forward or supported from facts.
The fast increasing wealth of the United States is
reflected nowhere more strikingly than in the grow
ing splendour of city structures, and naturally so
architecture in tbe Business District 135
since toward the cities is the strongly marked trend
of population, and they must be always the financial
centres. In them, too, there must be massed, in a
congestion eminently spectacular, those evidences
of riches, luxury, and aspiration that, if widely scat
tered, might mean as much, but would prove far less
striking. When we think that in a single city, for
example, within a space that may be traversed by
rapid-transit in half an hour, there are congregated
such evidences of financial wealth as the new Stock
Exchange in New York, of commercial precedence as
the new Chamber of Commerce, of shipping import
ance as the noble new Custom House, of business
resources as afforded by such private structures as
the Equitable Life building with its wonderful mar
bles, of ecclesiastical welfare as Trinity Church, St
Thomas's, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the Cathedral
of St. John the Divine, of magnetic power to wealthy
transients as offered by a dozen palatial hotels, of
private fortune as shown by the splendour of in
numerable individual homes, of the ability to gratify
aspirations in art as revealed by the Metropolitan
Museum and its noble housing, or educational aspir
ations as shown by the Public Library and the build
ings of Columbia University, or the yearnings of
philanthropy as shown in St. Luke's Hospital, or of
patriotism as indicated by the Soldiers' and Sailors'
Memorial or the Grant Monument, when to name
a very few illustrations of a very few types there
are congregated in small compass such a variety of
i 36 flDofcern Civic art
noble structures, structures at least upon which the
artistic genius of the day has been lavishly expended
and from which money has not been withheld, it is
clear that cities cannot be, as they never have been,
humdrum. They make demand for a supply of com
manding sites and, these afforded, there will be raised
structures of a pretentiousness and straining for effect
that will insure variety, and of a significance that
will guarantee the interest of the way.
Nor has modern civic art occasion to fear lest
these buildings offer to the architect, in purpose and
requirement, less opportunity or inspiration than did
their prototypes of the golden days of earlier civilisa
tions. There were never any cities larger than those
of the present time, there was rarely such wealth
massed in them as to-day, there was never before so
long a past from which to draw the lessons of. ex
perience, and never a people so familiar with that
past. There was never so broad a world to be ran
sacked for treasures as we have now, never so wide
a field from which to select genius, never such a con
course of spectators as in this travelling time from
which to win applause or condemnation. Now that
we have suddenly turned our thoughts in this direct
ion, there is not lacking the spur to great achieve
ment. Of all the huge buildings in the United States
there is not one as large as a certain city hall, with
its nearly five thousand tenants; and of all the beau
tiful buildings nine out of the ten that have been ad
judged the loveliest are public structures. The vast
Hrcbitecture In tbe Business District 137
city hall happens to have little of art about it, but
the opportunity it offered was magnificent. The
great cities, now so rapidly re-building, teem with
architectural chances; the most favourable sites com
mand highest prices; and civic art is working at no
problem with such eagerness, with such assurance
of immediately transforming results, as at the re
construction of cities in the new housing of their
activities.
The need of to-day is not so much to incite as
wisely to restrain, pointing out that in the long run
the height that most counts in a building is the
height of the architect's ideal; the richness, that of
his fancy; the solidity, that of his self-restraint. The
need is that he should realise that his problem is not
that of a building only, but of a city.
CHAPTER VHL
THE FURNISHINGS OF THE STREET.
A
STREET consists of more than a passage
cleared for travel with a line of building
lots on either side. Although assuming, as
modern civic art does, a good pavement, even curbs,
well-laid walks, and an absence of overhead wires,
with pavement and walk kept clean, there still re
main other factors to mar the prospect or to adorn
it These are the street furnishings details, in
deed, but in as far as civic art is art it does not dare
to scorn them. Rather, it will expend upon them
that loving care, that fond attention, which art must
ever give to the particulars which fill in and complete
the picture after the main lines have been laid down
and the dominating features are established. As furn
ishings of the business street, we may include the
necessary lighting apparatus; the street name signs
and post boxes that add so much to the convenience
of the way; those isles of safety that are almost an
essential at busy crossings; the public-comfort sta-
133
jfumisMngs of tfoe Street 139
tions, in so far as they are visible; the fire-alarm
signal boxes; the trolley poles, if the overhead sys
tem be in operation; and, finally, those innumerable
and variegated advertisements with which business
placards the way.
The opportunity is urgent, broad, and varied. It
is independent of merit or demerit in the street plan
or in the construction at the street's edge. It may,
if ably handled, do much to adorn a street noble in
lines and splendid in edifices, but it is not the less
pressing where conditions are unfavourable. The
problem is, also, we should note, strictly modem.
With the street plan and the construction at the
building line, the civic art of the earliest civilisations
had to deal. With the furnishings of the street, as
this term is understood to-day, it had no concern.
An interesting illustration of the gradually de
veloped necessity of our street furnishings, and the
evolution of their present type, is found in the light
ing apparatus. This might well have been, one
would think, a problem of the earliest cities. Yet in
the beginning it was considered a private rather
than a public matter. In the civic Renaissance of
Italy, for instance, the street lighting was left to the
facades of the abutting structures; and how well the
problem, when thus changed, could be handled, that
ancient civic art now discloses in the lanterns of the
Strozzi Palace at Florence. But the thought of light
ing cities had already been long postponed through
the fact that those who had to see their way at night
fIDobetn Civic art
were individuals, not the masses. Nor is it
strange,
since every lamp required separate care before it could
be lighted, that when, at last, their provision in the
street could be conceived as a civic duty, lights were
still made individual charges. If the individual
pleased to shirk so publicly his obligation to the com
munity (newly conceived as that duty was), street
lamps were omitted altogether.
Mankind began, we should remark, by staying
home at nights, taking the hint that darkness meant
that day was over; and if his duty or his pleasure
did take him forth, he went at his own risk and car
ried, as he still carries in the country, his own light.
The notion that the street before his door might be
kept lighted, for his own convenience when he went
abroad and at other times for the profit of his prowl
ing neighbours, came, then, very slowly, and it
might have been yet longer in arriving if there had
not been perception that the fixture for the light
could be made a highly decorative feature of the
house. So, quite like the balcony, ornamental as
well as useful, the street lights were left to the mercy
of the builders, and civic art, as civic, took little heed
of them.
The public function of the lights was slowly
appreciated better as their number multiplied, and
when it became possible to lay gas mains through
the streets and so to keep all the lamps simul
taneously in readiness for lighting which now
required only a touch of flame the city could ap-
3furni0Mna0 of tbe Street
propriately and conveniently take charge by contract
of the lighting of its streets, henceforth to run no
risk of individual delinquencies. The manifold ad
vantages were apparent; and the oil lamp, though
less convenient to manage than the gas lamp, was
similarly made a street furnishing, and was cared for
indirectly if not directly by employees of the town.
By the time that modern civic art began, oil lamps
were considered no more than temporary make
shifts, abandoned, for the most part, to outlying and
sparsely settled portions of cities, or to small vil
lages. The new art felt little call to give thought to
them, and it was just turning its attention to gas
lights when electricity appeared. For this reason
its conquests in gas fixtures, though here and there
important, are yet so widely scattered that the gas
lamp of the city street is still usually ugly multi
plied by tens of thousands in the strictly utilitarian
shape in which it first came from the factory. The
electric light required such an entirely different kind
of apparatus as in its turn to present a new problem,
and civic art is but just finding time seriously to
consider its artistic possibility.
As to the gas lamps, which must still be con
sidered, the candelabra of Paris, arranged for single,
double, or grouped lights, are probably the best.
Naturally the open spaces, the showy and more
decorative parts of a city, have first attention in
efforts to bring beauty into street utilities, and we
find no examples in Paris more elaborate and ornate
142 flDofcern CMc Hrt
than the fixtures on the Place de la Concorde. In
Brussels the "little Paris" in so many things a
prize offered by L'OEuvre Nationale Beige early in its
career was for an artistic street light, and was
awarded to the designer of a single candelabrum to
stand on the Place de la Monnaie, where it was
subsequently erected.
The terms of this competition, conducted by a
national society organised for the furthering of
civic art, had invited the municipalities to "desig
nate those public places" which it was desired to
light artistically. A long step in advance was made
by such recognition that the site and apparatus had
a relation, that the kind of fixture which would be
beautiful and artistic in one location might fail in
another because no longer in harmony with its sur
roundings or proportioned to its position. This was
a new idea. If there had been any thought of bring
ing beauty into the lighting apparatus, it had hereto
fore contented itself with a desire for a better design
which should be universally adopted as far as any
particular town was concerned. Perhaps even this
new expression of an old art truth, that particular
environments demand particular treatment, owed
something to an economic condition. Certainly a
costlier fixture was more likely to be adopted for a
showy square, where a few examples could be con
spicuously fixed, than on the streets, where a great
number would be needed and comparatively little
noticed, once their striking ugliness were removed.
Gbe furnisbinas of tbc Street 143
To secure, then, for the open spaces of the town
especially made designs, that shall fit with cer
tainty into their location; to secure for the business
streets a design of lighting post that shall be at least
correct in its proportions, appropriate in its style,
and graceful in its lines, and its universal adoption
on those streets; and then to secure for the resi
dential streets a third and perhaps a fourth design,
altered to suit the new environments, that is am
bition enough for most developments of modern
civic art Nor does such a possibility fall far short
of the ideal. For such is the formality of a city
street in the essential evenness of its lines that regu
larly recurring light fixtures may properly have a
formal likeness of pattern in a given portion of the
town where surrounding conditions are similar. If
alike graceful and sufficiently conspicuous they will
not unpleasantly emphasise the formality of the
business street, while the break that is made by the
open space will be, in turn, the more strongly
marked by the adoption of a different and here bettersuited
style of apparatus.
It is natural, as noted, that the beginnings of
civic art should be characterised by efforts to secure
the beauty of the exceptional, but particularly notice
able, light rather than of the ordinary. In New
York, the resuscitated Municipal Art Society, desir
ing to do a popular thing, which was to say a
practical and conspicuous thing, announced early in
1902 a competition for an electrolier to be placed at
i 44 flDofcern Civic art
the edge of one of the most important open spaces
of the city the intersection of Fifth Avenue and
Twenty-third Street. This particular electrolier was
to be combined with an isle of safety, there greatly
needed; but for the present it is enough to note
that the first undertaking was an attempted decor
ation of the street by providing a beautiful utility, and
that the utility chosen was the lighting apparatus at
a notable point The competition aroused much at
tention, both among artists and laymen ;
and of
the three designs for which prizes were awarded,
one at least was commonly considered to be very
good. The event's art significance, however, lay
not so much in the victory there gained as in the
grappling of the problem, in the elaborate effort to
obtain beauty in a public lighting fixture. The stu
dent of civic art cannot fail to be interested in this
occurrence. In what other period in the history of
the world have private citizens banded together and
contributed money that a light fixture on a street
might be beautiful ?
And yet the student, looking closely, must won
der whether the development has reached its end,
whether civic art will not progress beyond the need
of any fixture for street lights ; whether, to be ex
plicit, the uprights, though they be ever so orna
mental, are not as distinct a transition phase as is
the old wooden post of the oil lamp, even when the
village improvers paint it green. For now there is
hardly a lovelier picture on earth than the night
ftfoe jfurnteMngs of tbe Street 145
view of a great city its thousands of lights twink
ling in a mighty constellation. Here is a firmament
comprehensible because earthbound, but not the less
marvellous for that. Its stars sing together, and their
song is of the might of ourselves. The little heaven
is rolled out before us, as a scroll. We know its
lines well, we can read in our hearts the possible
meaning of every star. Their very number is writ
ten. And the myriad lights have such beauty, inde
pendent of sentiment, that their effect has sunk deep
in the hearts of men. We would make our exposi
tions lovely; and lo! with the new-found power of
electricity we print on the darkness in miniature the
glow of a city's lights. Ever as our mastery of
electricity becomes cornpleter, the picture is made
lovelier by multiplying lights. The roofs, bases, and
corners of buildings are outlined with them. Every
cornice, balcony, pinnacle, glows. The darkness of
night is turned to the brightness of day, with the
addition of a fairyland of mystery. The streets of
the exposition are bright almost as in sunshine.
The wonder of the display and the ease with
which it is gained make an impression. The cities
begin to have buildings outlined in hundreds of
lights. Here and there a dome hangs in the sky as
if pinned there with golden pins. The strands of a
great bridge hang like a necklace of brilliants. A
cross of fire among the stars means that a city's
church spire there points heavenward. It becomes
necessary to enact legislation prohibiting a barbarous
146 flDobern Civic Hrt
use of lights. The business streets nightly blaze
with them, as never for a festival a few years since.
And civic art ? Does it wrestle still with the problem
of separate fixtures, placed at regular intervals, occu
pying precious space and costing much ? Has it
no dreams of lighting the business parts of cities as
expositions have been successfully lighted? It is
doubtful if a harmonious general scheme of such
illumination would cost more than is now expended
privately on the shopping streets. Certainly it
would cost no more than the total of the public and
private lighting together ; and into what a scene of
beauty and enchantment the business district would
be then transformed at night! May not this be the
near solution of the lighting problem in that city
beautiful which is the dream of civic art ?
Already, sections of cities have been turned into
such fairylands for gala nights. The illumination of
the "Court of Honour" in Philadelphia, at the Peace
Jubilee in 1898, when to a section of a business
street there was given the night glory of an exposi
tion ;
the transformation of seven blocks of State
Street in Chicago for the Fall Festival of 1899, when
eleven thousand electric lights and nearly four hun
dred flambeaux flung their radiance on the street ;
the lighting of the public buildings and boulevards
of Paris for the fete of July 14*, in 1900; the il
lumination of Monument Square in Cleveland for the
Grand Army of the Republic encampment in 1901 ;
and the lighting of a district of San Francisco, in
jfurnisbittfis of tbe Street 147
honour of a gathering of Knights of Pythias in
1902, when eighteen thousand two hundred electric
lights were used on the few blocks of the chosen
area, exclusive of the lamps that outlined the colonades
and dome of the City Hall, the high tower of
the Ferry building, and a great commercial structure,
these are typical actual applications of the new
lighting plan in cities, showing its feasibility, its
popularity, and its aesthetic merits. Merchants, per
ceiving the commercial advantages of a district
especially attractive because of its night beauty, will
do well to combine to the end that by co-operation
such radiance as now floods parts of Broadway, in
New York, for example, may be made harmonious
and lovely instead of glaring and crude.
The Municipal Art Society of New York in an
nouncing its competition for an artistic electrolier,
required that it should be fixed upon an
"
isle of
safety" by which is meant a raised platform of
refuge where the hunted pedestrian may take breath
in crossing the crowded road. It is easy to imagine
such a platform without a lighting fixture, but one
will be rarely found. Both the location and the
purpose invite the fixing of one or more lights upon
it. Raised but a few inches above the pavement, it
is necessary that there be erected here something of
sufficient height to be seen at a distance, for there is
not only the danger otherwise of driving upon it,
but one of its purposes is to divide the travel into
distinct streams of opposite direction. As the need
148 flDo&ern CMc Hrt
of seeing the tall structure is as great at night as by
day, what more natural than that it should be a
light ? Again, the pedestrian who has taken refuge
here, has done so that he may wait a favourable
chance for the rest of his journey, so that the street
isle should be not merely one of safety but also one
well fitted for observation. Finally, the location
here of the lighting apparatus removes from walk or
pavement a fixture that occupied precious space. It
is natural and common, therefore, that lights should
be found on the isle of refuge, and that civic art
should make of the two structures a single composi
tion, as the Municipal Art Society of New York re
quired should be done and as Paris has repeatedly
done with success.
In Paris and other European cities a clock is often
added to the light on the refuge, and the conspicu
ous fixture is also, especially when at a street inter
section, an excellent and appropriate place for the
street signs. In all such cases, the refuge is the
pedestal, or base, of one or more superstructures,
and artistically is to be treated not as a separate
problem but as a phase or part of a larger problem.
In its proportions, however, in its relations to the
street on which it is, and in the curve of its outline,
the artist will find even in the refuge itself a worthy
subject.
In regard to street name signs, we have here a
street fixture of extreme importance. Their position
on the lighting apparatus of an isle of refuge, while
furnishings of tbe Street 149
appropriate, is a comparatively rare event, for street
name signs are, or should be, at the intersections
of all streets, and the isles of safety even in large
cities are few. In addition to their number, the signs
have importance because it is essential that they be
made conspicuous objects of the way. They must
not thrust themselves upon the traveller, but they
must be readily found and easily understood when
he sees them. A glance must suffice to find and
read the sign, for often the traveller will be whirling
past his corner at a rapid rate. They must be as
clearly visible by night as by day; and, finally, as
such prominent objects of the street, civic art must
insist that they have the aesthetic attention deserved.
These requirements lay down certain principles:
the street name signs should have a regular and uni
form location not necessarily the same throughout
the urban area, but always the same under the same
conditions. This will enable the traveller, perceiving
the character of his surroundings, to look at once to
the right place for the name of the street. Again, the
system employed in conveying the sign's information
should be uniform. If at a given corner the street
name should be, for example, printed parallel with
the street named, the arrangement should be identical
throughout the community. Finally, the name must
be so located that there will be a good light on it at
night. This requirement has suggested making it a
lamp so that a light burning within shall compel its
message to be very plain; and it has suggested the
i 5o nDofcern Civic art
-fixing of the street names upon the regular lighting
apparatus on the globe, in the case of the gas lamp;
and on the pole, possibly with reflectors to draw
rays of light down to the sign, in the case of the
electrolier. But this need would not interfere with
the sign's location on the wall of a structure built
flush with the walk, for the corner street lights
usually render such location perfectly distinct while
it has the further advantages of solidity, relative per
manence, economy of cost since it requires no special
standard, and economy of precious street space.
The main objection to the location is the difficulty
in obtaining uniformity. Not only will the height of
the sign vary, but frequently there will be no building
to attach it to, and in any case different varieties of
architecture will suggest different styles of lettering,
so that the bewildered traveller will not know exactly
where to look nor precisely what to look for. The
use by Paris of illuminated advertising pillars, that
contain also letter boxes, suggests that the street
name sign might be written here and the column,
which is really a source of municipal income, be made
to serve many useful public purposes besides. Ameri
can cities, however, are not, as a rule, ready for such
municipal business undertakings as the provision, for
revenue, of public advertising columns. There is,
further, the general objection to putting the street
name here, that it will lose its immediate effectiveness
in a confusion of lettering.
A need for new street name signs throughout the
Ifurni0bina0 of tbe Street 151
borough of Manhattan in New York, and an officially
expressed determination that the design adopted
should be not only convenient but possessed of as
much artistic merit as possible, presented in 1902
an unusual invitation for experiment. This was
availed of by the Municipal Art Society, by local im
provement associations, and by firms and individuals.
Thus a very interesting collection of designs was
obtained. Of these it may be said that the most
successful added the sign to the existing lighting
apparatus, finding in the material of the latter the
substance from which to make a suitable frame. As
every corner has its street lamp, and the signs may
be placed at a regular height, there is secured that
uniformity of location which is so essential. The
similarity, again, in the style of street light makes
possible, without architectural incongruity, that
likeness in shape, colour, and size which is necessary
in order that the merest glance will leave no uncert
ainty as to the meaning of the legend borne. It was
shown, also, that it is possible to make here again
a single composition, the street sign becoming an
integral part of the fixture without losing its own
identity and sufficient prominence.
Mention of the municipal advertising columns
opens one of the most difficult problems of street
furnishing. This is the advertising on the public
way. It may as well be admitted that there will be
advertising. A commercial street, lined with impos
ing architecture, the fafades unmarred by lettering,
152 fbobern Civic Hrt
no screaming signs, by day no glaring colours, by
night no flashing advertisements, all dignity, repose,
and self-contained placidity, this would possibly be
the vision of the city ideally fair and stately. But
modern civic art is nothing if not practical. It would
dismiss such a vision as unattainable, and perhaps as
not wholly desirable. As civic art, it would not
crush out of its ideal the whirr and hum of traffic, the
exhilarating evidences of nervous energy, enterprise,
vigour, and endeavour. It loves the straining,
striving, competing, as the most marked of urban
characteristics, and when it advocates broad streets
conveniently arranged, it does this not to silence the
bustle of commerce, but to make the efforts more
surely and quickly efficient. So modern civic art,
coming to the advertising problem, should feel not
hostility but the thrill of opportunity. It will recog
nise evils in the present methods, but will find them
the evils of excess and unrestraint, and it will perceive
possibilities of artistic achievement by which even
the advertising can be made to serve the ends of art
dans la rue.
The first duty would be, doubtless, to curb unre
straint and to check, so far as might be, excessiveness.
The street at least civic art can claim as its own pro
vince, bidding advertisements stand back to the
building line. No hindrance should be offered to a
clear path for travel by walk or road; no announce
ment should break the vista of the street, nor thrust
itself before the wayfarer by hanging over the walk
furni0Mn$s of tbe Street 153
or standing upon it at door or curb. The street
should be a clear passage that is its object in the
making; and there is as true a need that every inch
of it be open to the sky as that the vista of the way
be unbroken. This means that civic art, turning its
attention to the furnishings of the street, would frown
upon all projecting signs; that it would prohibit all
bulletin boards, signs, and transparencies on the side
walk or at the curb; that it would have no banners
hung across the street, nor would suffer any public
utility or ornament of the way to be placarded. It
would sweep the street itself clean of advertisements
from building front to building front.
Does this demand 'seem too large, the ideal too
high to be practical? There is not a particle of it that
has not now been somewhere framed in city ordinance
revealing a public approval of each individual item
in the count and an imagination that popularly has
tried its wings and needs only daring to fly far.
Projecting-sign ordinances are extremely common.
Even where these do not entirely prohibit the signs,
they make it necessary to ask permission for their
erection, and then almost certainly limit the height
above the walk at which they may be fixed.
1
In re
gard to the removal of bulletin boards, signs, and
1
As far back as the reign of George HI. in England this matter of clearing the
street of sidewalk obstructions was a recognised necessity. The preamble to an
Act of II.
George HI., cap. 23, 1771, recites that the passage through certain streets
in the parish of Aldgate, in the county of Middlesex, was "greatly obstructed by
posts, projections, and other nuisances, and annoyed by spouts, signs, and gutters."
The enactment is "that all houses and buildings hereafter to be built or new fronted
shall, for the effectual and absolute prevention of all manner of projections, annoy-
i54 fIDobern Civic Hrt
transparencies from a position on the walk, probably
the most interesting case to be cited is that offered
by the Merchants' Association of San Francisco. The
special interest of this is the circumstance that the
prime movers in demanding the enforcement of
the existing ordinance and the increase of its restric
tive power were merchants, not a few impractical
and visionary merchants, but the whole great body of
the city's business men, the advertisers themselves;
and that the action, taken formally and after long
thought, was that of the association which repre
sented them and which is one of the strongest com
mercial bodies in the United States. The Merchants'
Association Review summed up the action in these
words:
"
It has been decided by the board of direc
tors, after full consideration, to recommend to the
Board of Public Works that all bulletin boards, signs,
and transparencies on the outer edge of sidewalks be
removed, and that nothing of this character be
permitted hereafter." The whole discussion and
ordinance are most interesting and suggestive.
1
ances, and inconveniences thereby, rise perpendicularly from the foundation." In
1
834 an act made all
signs, sign-irons, sign-posts, barbers' poles, dyers' poles, stalls,
blocks, bulks, show-boards, butchers' hooks, spouts, water-pipes, and other pro
jections in front of the houses in Bermondsey liable to removal at the demand of the
local commissioners.
1
The ordinance as finally drawn up presented a compromise in regard to
"
signs
and transparencies on poles," at the outer edge of the walk. These were to be
permitted if they were of a design approved by the Board of Public Works and if
they bore a clock, which should be kept accurate, or lights having a minimum
total of 192 candle-power, to be kept lighted every night from sunset to midnight at
the expense of the person erecting or maintaining the sign. The argument was that
the sign or transparency
Cl
would thus benefit the public in
exchange for occupying
a portion of the public thoroughfare." As a practical compromise this was interest
ing, but it is
hardly to be approved as a civic art ideal.
3furnl0Wna0 of tbe Street 155
In this connection there will be thought again of
the advertising kiosks of many Continental cities,
notably of Paris. Paris has done so much in civic
art that she has gained for herself a reputation that
makes it easier to judge kindly than justly of her
experiments in the furnishing of the street and the
adornment of the city. Could the municipality that
has so bridged the Seine and lined it with no
ble quays, that has transformed slum districts into
magnificent boulevards, that has made the Place
de la Concorde one of the most brilliant scenes in
the world and yet considers it but an incident in that
belt of urban splendour of which the gardens of the
Tuilleries, the long vista of the Champs EIyse6s, the
streets radiating from the Arch of the Star, the Ave
nue du Bois de Boulogne, and then the Bois itself
are but other parts, could that city have made a
mistake in permitting the erection of kiosks along
the walks ? How picturesque these kiosks are, and
how much better to concentrate the miscellane
ous advertising upon them than to scatter it along
the highway ! Little wonder that other cities have
followed the Paris example. But civic art should
have before it a vision of a city beautiful that is no
more Paris, though equally practicable and attainable,
than it is any other particular place. The question is
not, "Does Paris do this ?
"
but, "Is this the best
practical solution?" The kiosks are picturesque,
and it is better to concentrate the poster advertising
and put its aesthetic character under control than not
156 flDofcern Civic art
to restrain it. This much may be admitted ; and
yet can any one, walking along the Paris streets and
giving an unbiassed judgment, declare that these
thoroughfares would not be better were all the
newspaper kiosks and advertising columns re
moved ? As a step in the right direction, the experi
ment is to be commended ;
but it is to be considered
a step, not a goal. There is, too, a peril in partial ad
vance, lest satisfaction with relative relief grow into
contentment. It were better and safer to banish at
once all the advertisements from the walk.
Finally, as to banners across the street and the
placarding of public utilities and ornaments. The
Review, published by the San Francisco Merchants'
Association, editorially declared, with reference to
the first point, in 1901 : "The constant opposition
of the association has resulted in freeing our streets
from this conspicuous disfigurement." The object
ion to over-street banners, of which this action in
San Francisco is an expression, is common.
What has been said of advertising columns and
newspaper kiosks should of course apply with added
force to the posting of placards or advertisements on
any fixture of the public way, on any utility, such
as the lighting apparatus, or the trolley poles and
bicycle racks where these exist. With still greater
emphasis, again, must it apply to such decorative
furnishings of the street as trees, to the very vitality
of which injury may be done by attaching signs, or
as statues and public monuments. New York or
jfurttteMnas of tfoe Street 157
London would not permit so atrociously incongru
ous an act as the posting of bills on the latter, and
yet, it is significantly to be noted, this became so
serious an evil in Paris that a special committee was
appointed to look into the subject just after the Ex
position of 1900, when the criticism of foreigners, so
it is said, aroused the French to a realisation of the
impropriety. It is fair to say that an ordinance
already, existed which forbade the attachment of
commercial posters to such structures, but the ped
estals of statues and the walls and even the doors
of public buildings were plastered with political an
nouncements. So we find even Paris markedly neg
ligent regarding one widely recognised necessity of
civic art. But we have seen that in the broad review
of cities there is now enforced somewhere, though
individually, each item of a list that in the aggregate
would sweep the streets free of advertisements from
building wall to building wall
These are the restrictive demands. Civic art, it
was said, however, should perceive in the advertis
ing in the business districts such possibilities of good
as almost to forget hostility in the thrill of the
opportunity. For it would not destroy the com
mercial aspect of the streets, it would not have
them shorn of the marks of enterprise and com
petition. It would ask only that the public way itself
be free and clear, that irrelevant announcements be
not thrust upon it, and that glaring ill taste and
offensive gaudiness be not shown in the display.
158 fIDofcern Civic Hrt
The subject is too large to be gone into here with
detail, and the author has treated it pretty fully in
another book
1
;
but the ideal can be summed up
briefly: After the restrictive demands, it would ask,
as the positive requirements, that all window an
nouncements be made in gold leaf, neatly and with
as few words as may be; that there be encourage
ment of the rebus sign, in which an arbitrarily chosen
device symbolises a trade, as the three golden balls
stand for the pawnbroker's, so taking the place of
considerable lettering; that all advertisements at
tached to building facades be below a certain height,
thirty feet has been suggested, and that their
size be proportioned to the front surface area under
the adopted advertising height-limit of the building
to which they are affixed; that all the signs externally
attached, and all rebus signs, be made, as far as pos
sible, a decorative element of the structure itself, so
harmonising with and entering into the architecture
as to increase rather than lessen its effectiveness;
finally, that there be a genuine effort to bring art and
beauty into the sign, in recognition that it will then
gain better commercial results than when hideous.
It is proper here to say that ugly assertiveness
secures only an instant's attention and is turned
from with disgust; beauty and fitness, which is to
say art, are looked at long and with pleasure and
are turned to again and again. In most cases, also,
1
See
" The Advertisement Problem," Chapter V. of The Improvement of Towns
*nd Cities, G, P. Putnam's Sons.
jfurntefoinas of tbe Street 159
they can be secured at no greater cost than that
involved in providing the strikingly ugly. There
has been successful test of this in the competitions
conducted by L'QEuvre Nationale Beige, which have
lately resulted in the placing of many beautiful signs
on the streets of Antwerp and Brussels; and in the
exhibition held in the Hotel de Ville, Paris, in 1902,
when some two hundred shop signs were submitted
in a competition of artists. It may be objected that
the ancient, pictured sign-board rose out of a need,
in the illiteracy of the times. When servants and
many masters could not read, there was a real
urgency that it should be possible to recognise a
shop by its picture sign, and that one should be
able to direct an enquirer to
"
the sign of the rose,"
etc. The reaction came when printed words suf
ficed. But if now we refuse to read the printed words
attentively as most of us do there is as good an
excuse as of old for a sign that shall not only arrest
attention but dwell pleasantly in the memory.
The requirements as a whole are so obviously
reasonable, and are becoming so widely endorsed
even without their formal statement, that enuncia
tion of them seems almost trite. Many large ad
vertisers are already showing, by their works, their
faith in the mild Belgian dictum that in advertising
"art is not incompatible with economy and the
necessities of trade." What a change in the aspect
of the business street would be caused by faithful
adherence to these requirements! Civic art would
160 dDofcern Civic art
have something to be proud of, if it could point
to a modern business street the vista of which was
unbroken by overhead banners or projecting signs,
the walks of which were clear for travel, and on
which, at the building lines, there were harmonious
facades of approximately even balcony and cornice
heights, with no advertising above a certain reason
able limit, and below that all the signs so in harmony
with the architecture as to seem a part of the struct
ures, and beautiful and interesting; while above the
chosen height there were window announcements
only, in gold leaf self-contained, harmonious, and
dignified. The attractiveness of the street would be
immensely increased, its interest no whit lessened,
and the competition of the merchants still kept
keen, while transferred to a field more rational,
more inviting to their self-respect than now, and
to one very full of promise for art and artists.
There will again be need, however, at the build
ing line of some negative requirements. Gableend
lettering, and advertising on blank side walls
even below the assumed advertising height-limit,
would have to be prohibited. Civic art would
frown, too, upon sky-signs, which is to say rooflettering,
if the requirements as to the fa9ades
did not cover this point. When building operations
are under way, it would safeguard the new struct
ure from the depredations of thoughtless advertis
ers with no less vigilance than it would defend a
completed building, for this is equally a factor in
jfurntebinge of tbe Street 161
the aspect of the street. While a fence encloses
the operations, that fence would be kept free from
advertisements. Similarly, the fences in front of
vacant lots and the erection of bill-boards on vacant
property would be made a matter of concern. In
the latter case, the boards should at least be put
back of the building line, so as to be visible only
when one is directly before them, and their erection
should be dependent on the permission of the
owner of the opposite property. Finally, restrict
ions would be placed on night advertising, especi
ally as regards the use of flashing electric signs; but
this, it is to be hoped, would be better provided for
in the rise of a new ideal of street illumination based
on the new conditions with their new possibilities.
Of all these advertisement requirements, positive
and negative, and of the suggestions that accom
pany them, there are only two which are not
known to the author as actually now incorporated
in city ordinances, and as enforced, somewhere.
The vision does not seem so remote and unreal,
nor modern civic art so far from the attainment of
the dream.
Some other, though perhaps less essential, furnish
ings of the business street remain, and are found
with more or less frequency. The poles for the
overhead trolley, the temporary evil of a trans
ition time as there is reason to believe, in business
districts certainly, are still widely existent. The
waste receptacles, the post and fire-alarm boxes, the
1 62 flDobern Civic art
public-convenience stations, and the waiting-rooms
for surface transportation all these appear, when
they appear at all, as public utilities, and as such
furnish fitting means for the decoration of the
street.
For it is to be observed that the business street,
strictly and solely utilitarian as it is, can be ap
propriately decorated within itself only by improv
ing the artistic quality of its regular furnishings.
There is rarely any excess here of space, for squares
and public areas are to be separately considered,
and "the business street" is held to refer to that
portion alone of the thoroughfare which is given
up to business. Almost its sole chance then, within
itself, for the finer and more decorative touches of
civic art, thus rests on the street furnishings, and
from that point of view none of them is so humble
as not to deserve be it post or sign, letter box
or isle of safety real artistic thought and care.
Whether the property of the municipality or of
private corporations, this artistic character should
be equally insisted upon, for in so far as the furnish
ings occupy space on the public way they are
public in the effect that they produce as well as in
the function they perform. The use of the street
can be properly withheld from a public-service cor
poration if it will not agree to use the street with
adequate aesthetic circumspection.
Municipalities themselves are not beyond the
need of such warning. The city of Berlin receives a
ffurnisbiw of tbe Street 163
large income annually from the lease of sidewalk ad
vertising columns or boards, and we have mentioned
the kiosks of Paris and the columns for theatrical
posters. In New York a few years ago an ordinance
was introduced, and promptly smothered, to grant
to a private corporation the right to place waste cans
along the streets, the cans to be of a certain definite
size,
"
designed and contrived in a suitable manner,"
maintained at all times
"
in a neat and sanitary con
dition," and without expense to the city in fact to
the city's profit, the company agreeing to pay into
the treasury twelve and one-half per cent, of the
gross income received from the lease of the advertis
ing space. It was estimated that the lease of the
advertising would easily be worth a half-million dol
lars, and might be worth a million, a year. The
terms which the company offered reveal that it would
be very profitable, and had they been made generally
public must have caused many a town and village
and, sadder, many an improvement association of
town or village to blush for the privilege it has
thrown away for nothing, except the setting up of
the cans. It must have made them ask themselves
whether they had gained anything even in securing
these, if for rubbish concealed there was substituted
a new stream of advertising on the walks. The in
cident measures also how great is the artistic potenti
ality of even the humblest street fixtures. What
furnishing of the way would be so little noticed as
the can for waste ? And yet it was calculated that
1 64 fIDobern Civic Hrt
business men would pay perhaps a million dollars a
year in New York to get their names upon the cans
a proof of their estimate of the visual importance of
these receptacles.
But this chapter's discussion has been vain, if it
has not made clear that economy of space is a first
requisite in planning the street furnishings. Nothing
will do more to improve the street's appearance than
the avoidance of a multiplicity of fixtures. The
complexity of modern urban life and the highly re
fined character of its requirements necessitate the
provision of much apparatus for which the modern
business thoroughfare can ill afford the space. The
first requisite, then, is to dispense with all that is
not absolutely essential to the greatest 'convenience
of the street as sidewalk advertising; and of the
remaining furnishings to combine as many as may be
in single fixtures. Finally, the fixtures thus arranged
should be rendered as appropriately decorative, which
is to say as artistic, as possible. There is much to
recommend that those which belong to the muni
cipality should bear the city's crest.
The public-convenience station is best under
ground. That the trolley pole and probably the
lighting apparatus may ultimately be removed from
the business street there is reason to hope, and the
pole for overhead wires is assumed to be banished.
Meanwhile the isle of safety and the lighting appar
atus (until the latter also disappears) invite combina
tion; and the street name sign, the waste can, the
jfurnisfoinas of tbe Street 165
fire-alarm and letter box may be conveniently added
to the post that supports also the light. The economy
of providing the single fixture instead of the sev
eral that now support these utilities separately
would leave ample funds with which to secure and
execute a beautiful design. Thus we would have a
business street much freer than now for traffic, not
less conveniently supplied, and of greater dignity
and completeness of effect. A street of noble lines
and handsome buildings may quite lose its splendour
if marred by conspicuously numerous and ugly furn
ishings ;
and since these are such small details, so
easily controlled by the single governing body to
which the streets belong, failure here is particularly
sad.
Street furnishings have been acquired one by one,
by such gradual evolution as noted in the case of the
lighting apparatus, and each has been with its
separate owner a separate problem, handled by
itself and so constructed. It remains for modern
civic art to weld them, to grasp the problem as a
whole, sift out the non-essentials from the relevant
and necessary, and, treating the street as a canvas to
be thickly peopled, to concentrate the furnishings
that remain in a beautiful and single composition.
The furnishings of a street, like the furnishings of a
room, should add not only to its convenience but to
its aesthetic aspect.
CHAPTER IX.
ADORNING WITH FOUNTAINS AND SCULP
TURE.
IN
the building and dreaming of beautiful cities
there is happily no need that civic art put all its
dependence, even in the business district, on
the street crowded with travel. The decorative
quality that can be given to the public utilities is
only a detail. The potential splendour inherent in a
scientific street plan will have little notice, if atten
tion be not drawn to it by a bold seizure of the op
portunities for urban embellishment which it affords.
The basic lines of the city may be faultless, the
furnishings of the street may be as concentrated and
as beautiful in fixtures as is consistent with their use,
and yet the city must fail to attain to the common
est standards of civic art, if there be not conscious
decorative effort.
It has been said that modern civic art, in which
the practical quality looms large, would require on
that portion of the business thoroughfare which is
166
aborning witb fountains anfc Sculpture* 167
strictly street no erections that have not some other
than aesthetic purpose. It would even resist the in
trusion, on such precious space, of the purely artistic.
But we have seen that in the scientific street plan
the areas of unrelieved streets are never large, that
even the longest thoroughfares are broken at close
intervals by open spaces, by diagonal crossings,
focal centres, or at least by architectural accents.
Each one of these breaks presents an opportunity to
civic art. The open space, the diagonal street
crossing, the bridge, the architectural accent,
each calls for aesthetic treatment. Indeed, the last
seems almost to involve artistic development, and
we have seen how certainly the former call for
decorative lighting. Hardly less urgent is their
invitation to adornment with fountains or civic
sculpture.
Long, in fact, before there was thought of a brill
iant lighting of the cities, fountains bubbled in the
squares, chiselled heroes were enthroned as masters
of the scene, commemorative arches stood at focal
points, and bridges were the stateliest parts of urban
highways. Years afterwards, but still before attempt
was made to render the lighting at such points part
icularly brilliant or spectacular, the area that could
be spared in public spaces had been planted with
turf and trees, and later with flowers. The open
spaces in the city's heart have thus been inevitably
valued from the first as the vantage points of civic
art. The most untrained municipal art ideal has
1 68 fJDobern Civic Srt
seen that these might be the city's jewels. The de
mand of the modern and trained civic art is that they
shall be considered not by themselves, but as com
ponents having a direct relation with all the sur
rounding city plan; that they be embellished, not
with reference merely to their own improvement,
but with regard to the effect as seen from converg
ing streets. In brief, it would have us realise that
the opportunity which is offered by such spaces for
the increase of urban amenity lies not in making
here a brilliant structural area and there a bit of gar
den, but in the decoration of the city by the shed
ding of splendour over humbler adjacent streets.
The function of the open space of a city is not, as
understood by modern civic art, to surprise with a
sudden loveliness that had been hidden until come
upon unexpectedly. It is to cast its radiance as far
as possible over the surrounding area.
The main dependence, then, of a city for its
decorative effect is to be placed on these breaks in
the monotony of its closely built-up streets. As the
street plan becomes more scientific, the breaks, of
one kind and another, occur in increasing numbers.
It becomes possible to give an air of splendour, of
elaborate embellishment, to the city at large, with no
trespassing on the precious space of street. The eye
travels from one decorative object to another, finding
the thoroughfare only a brief connecting link. The
ideal is that of the maker of a beautiful chain, joining
his brilliants by links simple in themselves but appro-
Burning witb ^fountains ant) Sculpture. 169
priate to their purpose and rendered lovely by the
frequency of the jewels that they unite.
And yet the maker of a chain, working caressingly
at his task, will put upon his links such chasing as
he can without injury to its function. So the build
ers of beautiful cities will sometimes be able to bring
into the street itself some decoration. There has
been noted the effort to make utilities beautiful. We
should go further if occasion offers. If the business
street be broad in proportion to the travel offering,
there may be space even here, without prejudice to
utility, for fountain or for statue. So there will be
led on to the highway itself the ornamentation of the
open space. Or we may find room for a row of small
and formal trees that will not be inconsistent with
the character of the way, while bringing into it a
strip of colour and joining planted square to planted
square by a welcome, if slender, stream of nature.
There is much to commend the placing of statues,
fountains, and trees on the street, even the business
street, if there be sufficient room. Nor are the ad
vantages aesthetic only. The trees, though small
and trimmed in formal shapes as fitting the business
street, cast a welcome shade when the sun is hot,
and soften, it is said, all extremes of temperature.
The fountains, if serving to quench the thirst of man
and beast, as will doubtless be their purpose in
such location, have an eminently practical use.
They perform also a pleasant function in bringing
into the street that sound of running water which,
1 70 flDo&ern Civic Srt
in its idle play, its music reminiscent of the wood
land stream and of nature's care-free abandonment,
has in the city so rare a power to charm. It has
been well said that something about us, some linger
ing touch perhaps of the race's primitive days, gives
to the running water of the city fountain that re
lation to public life which the fire in the open hearth
has to private life. To appreciate this to the full,
the fountain should be in the square, where there
may be leisure to sit before it. But even in the roar
of the street the fascination of its music is not lost.
As to the statues, the street with its ceaseless multi
tudes offers, if it has room to offer any site for sculpt
ure, a location that must be full of inspiration to him
who would commemorate in permanent materials
the deeds of great citizens, the examples of national
heroes, the causes for civic pride, and the incentives
to high resolve which are offered by the past.
With double advantage, then, in economy of space
and in effectiveness, the fountain and the sculpt
ure might be combined. And if the joint struct
ure can be thrust back to the building line, given
a place in a narrow corner where an acute angle
would rob a building's faade of serviceability, or
at a point where converging streets make a lot
that is very small, it will give to the way a charm
grandiose or picturesquely quaint and unexpected
that civic art must highly esteem. The French and
Italians, in their lavish use of fountains in cities, offer
many an example of a fountain that, placed on the
Hborning witb fountains ano Sculpture. 171
building line, is yet able to change the character of
the street. Of the first effect, the Fontaine St. Michel
in Paris is perhaps the most obvious example; for
the second, a fountain in a corner of the Rue de la
Grosse Horloge, Rouen, will serve. In both of these
sculpture is added conspicuously to the fountain.
Or it may be possible to connect the sculpture with
the architecture of the way. This, in fact, is done
repeatedly, and plainly it may be done with great
success in the case of the public buildings. Upon
them civic sculpture may serve a triple purpose:
adorning the structure and giving to it fitting ex
pression, adorning the city, and conveying, finally,
that public message which is one of the functions
of urban sculpture. An illustration of such use is
found in the beautiful carving over the entrance to
the Doges' Palace in Venice, where a doge in all his
lordly state kneels with reverence and humility be
fore the lion of St. Mark a reminder that he who
enters serves, and is not master of, the State. So in
the recurring wolf of Sienna and lily of Florence
there were frequent patriotic appeals in the sculpt
ured stone of the Renaissance.
But we have said that a city depends mainly for
decoration, in its business district, after its architect
ure, on the adornment of its squares and plazas.
Here the sculpture will rise with greatest freedom;
here there is ample room for the play of fountains
and their enjoyment; here trees and shrubs and
flowers and grass have space to flourish; and here
172 flDofcern Civic art
first the city lighting will be brilliant in its power
and decorative in its fixtures. Here individual largess
will first reveal itself and private taste first embrace
an opportunity to stamp its imprint on public pro
perty. Nor will it do so, where modern civic art pre
vails, to the making or marring of the space alone.
Its influence will be felt as far on all the converging
streets as the open space can be seen.
So it happens that a need is felt, in the decoration
of cities, for an authority of expert taste and educa
tion to which these matters may be referred, in or
der that results may be anticipated, mistakes avoided,
artistic discernment encouraged, and ill taste curbed.
There must be a standard of civic art, by which all
that changes the aspect of the way shall be judged
to be condemned if falling below it, to be approved
if rising to its height. That standard must be high
and there must be authority to enforce adherence to
it, but those who have this power must be generous.
In public art there should be no bigoted repression;
individualism is to be not less feared in the judging
than in the creating. The ideal authority would
be a thoroughly educated public taste. When there
is not this to depend upon, the jury must have much
catholicity of sentiment. It must be firmly didactic
only in the broadly recognised essentials of art.
Paris solves the problem by calling to her service
in advisory capacity the leading artists and archi
tects of the city. Some American municipalities
as New York, Boston, and others have tried to
witfo jfountaina anb Sculpture, 173
follow her example by establishing municipal art
commissions. But they have been at great pains to
safeguard the composition of the commissions and
to limit their powers. The act which creates the
commission names many of its members by ex-offido
appointments and closely limits the groups from
which the others may be drawn. This is designed
to insure the high character of the commission, its
broad culture, and its independence of politics. There
is then given to it only the negative power of a veto,
in order that the art impulse may remain popular
and that inspiration may be free. It is told to stand
aside and merely to criticise what others propose
to do. It has no initiative power. Instead of work
ing with the officials of the city, it may work directly
against them. They do not have to seek it in con
sultation when planning the public works, as in Paris;
but they make their plans and then the commission
criticises with no power to offer suggestions that
will be heeded. It has authority to forbid, but none
to advise until requested so to do. The device at
best, therefore, is a poor makeshift; but it is a con
quest of modern civic art to have recognised the
need and, in trying timidly to satisfy it, to have
guarded so zealously the publicity of public art, to
have feared to take any step that would discourage
the close connection that should exist between the
people and the beautifying of their city. For modern
civic art differs from that of any earlier civilisation in
few essentials so urgently as in this: it is democratic.
174 fIDobern Civic Hrt.
There is little that is pleasant in criticising a wellmeant
offering. Especially is this true when a pro
posed popular gift must be rejected on technical
grounds. But we have learned the necessity, if we
would have noble cities, of offering such criticism
fearlessly and of making an artistic condemnation
authoritative. We have perceived that, however
unpleasant the task, it is better that the criticism be
made in advance, in time to prevent the public mis
take, than after the harm has been done. For if an
ugly structure be erected, the criticism will follow
that might, by coming before, have saved the city
an eyesore of which the influence will reach as far as
the structure is visible. And the criticism that would
have ceased as soon as the proposal had been re
jected will now last as long as the structure lasts.
If in the decoration of our cities there is a great
opportunity for good, there is also a great power for
evil Modern civic art recognises and perceives that
it must battle against this.
There is need, however, of the courage that not
merely defends, but is aggressive. It is improbable
that popular interest in the embellishment of the city
would be discouraged by definite suggestions. If the
art forces of an urban district could be so marshalled
in its behalf that they would as keenly feel the re
sponsibility for making creative suggestions as for re
pressing the crude and ill-advised, there surely would
be a great gain. If they would point out the im
provement that might be given to a city, the embel-
witfo fountain ant) Sculpture, 175
lishment that could be advantageously placed here
and there, would submit designs for the artistic
treatment of the public areas, would designate the
proper sites for sculpture or for fountains, popular
interest would be heightened rather than diminished.
Often the chief bar not only to giving, but to any
interest, is the lack of a convincing because concrete
ideal.
It is to be noted, in this connection, that the plac
ing of the city ornament is as vital and almost as
truly an artistic matter as is the character of the de
sign. The question, too, is one regarding which the
public feels less diffidence about asserting its ability
to decide than regarding the design, and much less
doubt concerning its right to an opinion and to hav
ing its own way. The expert commissions of all
kinds have learned this to their sorrow. They have
had to solve no more frequent or troublesome pro
blems than those concerning the location of structures
that are intended to be civic ornaments. For the
design that would be artistic and beautiful in one
place may be ruined by location in another, where it
is out of scale and inharmonious with its surround
ings. In the decoration of cities the place for each
work of art is as much a question for artistic judg
ment as is the device itself, and each separate case
needs as certainly a separate decision. One may
say, indeed, that the question rises also in regard to
every public or semi-public building, in regard to
every structure that is meant to be an ornament
176 flDobern Civic Hrt
to the way. But in these cases there are other pur
poses to be served as well as those of ornament.
The question is complicated. There can be, then, no
more distressing failure than a civic monument raised
to adorn the city and failing in that respect, be it
through faulty design, through faulty placing, or
through both.
There are certain general artistic principles that
should govern the placing of civic sculpture, such as
the consistency of placing the ideal in an idyllic
scene, and the sculptured wild animal amid less
civilised surroundings than the business street
principles that, strangely, are more marked in the
breach than the observance. There are, again, certain
principles that may be called civic, such as a require
ment that statues of only universal or of an especial
national or urban interest shall be placed at an
intersection of important thoroughfares, and that
they must be of undoubted beauty and appropriate
in size. But each instance will require, as we have
said, a separate decision; and where individual beauty
and scale are factors it is of little use to lay down
"general principles."
This only should be said: in the city, the bridge,
the viaduct, the open space, present unusual oppor
tunities, and this not for their own adornment only
but for that of the streets which lead to them.
Modern civic art here follows in the steps of that of
all the ages. It is making no experiment, is advanc
ing no new claim; it points for illustrations of its
witb fountain atti> Sculpture. 177
possibilities to the splendid cities of all times. If it
has a conquest to make, it is only with regard to
obtaining from the modern bridges their just tribute
to civic decorativeness. We have lately turned to a
new material in the making of bridges for cities and
as usual its earlier application is strictly practical. It
happens, too, that iron and steel lend themselves to
beauty of construction far less readily than does stone,
so that there is need of constantly impressing the
aesthetic obligation. This has been already referred
to more than once. The point to be made here is
the fitness of the city bridge as a site for sculpture.
The bridge offers in its own construction so
admirable a pedestal, or an architectural background
so excellent, that there is little reason for surprise in
finding it considered in its completeness as a monu
mental structure. This is the conception which
created the beautiful Pont Alexander III. in Paris and
to which are due the designs for memorial bridges
in Washington. Every such case teaches a lesson
and emphasises the appeal that civic art now makes
urgently of the officials of town and city: that in the
making of a bridge-design an architect at least, and
perhaps a sculptor, shall co-operate with the engineer;
and that the structure be classed among the works
of public art to the end that its design, which is to
mean so much to the aspect of the city, shall have
expert artistic criticism before it is approved. In
the making of the design, too, let there be remem
brance that here, where sufficient space can be given
1 78 fIDobern Civic Brt
and where no future building can rise to destroy the
proportion and harmony now obtained, is one of the
most favourable sites for civic sculpture. There is
only one location that may be better. That is the
square or open space, or the area just before it, where
trees and shrubs may give that background of verdure
by which some sculpture is improved.
Matters, then, which civic art would have the
builders of cities which is to say all the urban
residents keep in mind, are :
(i) the wish for, and
even the necessity of, frankly intended artistic em
bellishment for the city; and (2) the eager desire to
make the most of every opportunity for securing
this, especially where space can be afforded with no
danger of unduly crowding the public way. But it
would point out, that on the business street sculpture
or fountain can appear as little more than incidental,
while in the open space or on the bridge it can be
made the centre of a picture of which every detail
adds to its importance. Finally, it is necessary that
we remember how the artistic factor, not less as to
location than as to the design, must be guarded with
especial zeal in the case of that which is avowedly
intended for a civic ornament. In that specific ins
tance civic art will not forgive a failure. Unless the
work is a success aesthetically, its best reason for
existence has passed.
In the desire to give to a city the impress of art,
there arises a tendency to choose some especially well
adapted and conspicuous site in which to emphasise
witfe fountains anfc Sculpture. 179
this quality. The result is the creation of the show
place of the city. Here the municipal architecture is
at its best, here sculpture is lavishly provided, here
we may even find formal balustrades and terraces.
It is like a stage scene, set to represent the majestic
city's resources and pride. Civic art has here full
opportunity, and on great days this is the centre to
which the people flock.
The tendency is not peculiar to modern con
ditions. It is, rather, a seemingly inevitable result of
popular interest in municipal aesthetics; and, since
modern civic art still is young, it is less found to-day
than in the days when earlier civilisations attained
their glory. Such a centre was the Acropolis at
Athens, such was the Forum in Rome, such were
market places in the Mediaeval cities. It is signi
ficant, then, of the hold of civic art that there should
be a reappearance of the tendency. In Paris the
Place de la Concorde is such a place; in London
Trafalgar Square will fairly serve for one, until the
completion of the proposed Victoria Memorial as the
state processional road shall render a contracted
makeshift unnecessary; in Berlin, the Unter den
Linden has now been supplemented by the Sieges
Allee; in the United States, the
"
Court of Honour"
at the Columbian Exposition was a hint that has had
brief following in the temporary creations of a score
of cities; and in New York there are indications that
the heights of Riverside Drive are to be thus con
stituted the city's crown.
i8o flDofcern Civic art
Considered in the abstract, civic art would with
hold its unqualified approval. It would fear lest the
city as a whole might suffer from a concentration
of the decorative emphasis. It would prefer a city
beautiful throughout to one that had lavished half
of all its splendour on a civic centre. But practically
there is to be recognised the extreme difficulty of
diffusing the higher expressions of civic art through
out the city, and the wearying and possibly dis
couraging tediousness as well as the arduousness of
the process this to be contrasted with the spect
acular and prompt results to be gained by concen
tration. And once such a centre of decorativeness
is successfully established in the city, there is no
question that it has a beneficial influence. It pre
sents a concrete picture that elevates the popular
ideal, for it is understood by the unimaginative. It
stimulates by its examples of what has actually been
achieved. It raises the aesthetic level of the sur
rounding streets.
An interesting development now appears in the
tendency of modern civic art to transform this civic
centre from a plaza to a street. An ideal location for
such decorative emphasis is, of course, the square
around which the public buildings have been
grouped. No site could be more appropriate than
the town's
' '
administrative centre.
"
But the trouble
with our cities is that there rarely is an "adminis
trative centre," for the public buildings are so seldom
grouped about an open space. Civic art has thus
aborning witb fountains anb Sculpture. 181
been unhappily free to choose, and repeatedly it has
selected the street or avenue. Berlin confirms the
Unter den Linden's suggestion in this direction by
the Sieges Allee; New York selects Riverside Drive;
Boston an avenue; the new Washington is thus to
develop the Mall. Even Paris supplements her Place
de la Concorde with the Champs Elysees. The re
sult has at least the merit of extending its field of
influence and of stretching out perhaps to widely
different quarters of the town the decorative ef
fect. The cities of to-day have grown too large to
gather around a single little central square, and yet
visibly show to their outer rims the influence of
its splendour.
In the creation of the Sieges Allee there was a pe
culiarity which is to be observed. This Avenue of
Victory, with its abundant verdure and noble trees,
was already beautiful. The Emperor resolved that he
would here glorify his ancestors, adorning Berlin the
while and patronising the art of sculpture, by giving
to the nation thirty-two marble groups of historical
sculpture and stretching them along the avenue, six
teen on a side. It should be, indeed, the Sieges
Allee. Sculptors were selected and commissioned,
and in the course of seven years at the end of
1901 the series was completed. The Emperor
then made an address to the artists who had served
him, and in this he emphasised earnestly the point
that may be mentioned here. This was his wish to
pose in his imperial capacity as a personal patron of
1 82 flDobern Civic Hrt
the arts; and to prove, by the success of the under
taking, that
the most favourable auspices for the solution of an art problem
are not to be found in convoking commissions or in instituting
all sorts of prize juries and competitions, but rather by following
the old and approved methods of Classical times and of the Mid
dle Ages I mean those direct relations between him who gives
the order and the artist. ... A parallel might be drawn
between this work and the great artistic achievements of the
Middle Ages, or of the Italians, where the ruler and sovereign,
who was a lover of the arts and who set the artists their task,
did not fail to find the maestros.
Impartial critics have expressed a doubt as to the
artistic success of the undertaking having been great
enough to
"
prove
"
anything. But there cannot fail
to be interest in so conspicuous a revival to-day of
a characteristic of the civic art of the Renaissance
and of
"
Classical times.
"
In the United States the
tendency is strongly in favour of commissions and
limited competitions, as perhaps is more fitting for a
democracy; but even there one can note the in
creasing frequency with which individual wealth is
identifying itself with one or another phase of art,
and how frequently in the smaller towns private
fortune becomes the patron of the civic art. The
best progress will doubtless be made when the
movement gains its impulse from the people. But
an artistic Renaissance does not break over civilisa
tion with all the suddenness of a tidal wave. It
would be ushered in by just such methods. A few,
who are on the mountain heights, will be the first to
aborning witb fountaine anb Sculpture. 183
see in concrete form the storied "city beautiful/'
They will commission the artists to picture the
vision to the toilers who are still in shadow down
in narrow streets where the dawn of a new day, as
it gilds the roofs, is yet unseen. The pictures that
these artists paint will educate, reveal, inspire.
They are the pioneers; they point out the way; and
the people will follow so joyously, so eagerly, that
from the people themselves there will come new
pioneers. The decoration that can be brought to
day into our cities is thus more than a conquest. It
is a pledge of larger victories.
IN THE RESIDENTIAL SECTIONS.
185
CHAPTER X.
STREET PLOTTING AMONG THE HOMES.
IN
the discussion of modern city-building, we may
now turn from the distinctly business district
to the distinctly residential. In studying the
former, we found that the focal points were first to
be considered. Until these had been selected as
bases, it was idle to give thought to the street plan.
The moment the residential area is entered, these
"nerve centres" become too distant to have great
influence. In their place the district contains no
points of general command. Instead, a number of
local, or neighbourhood centres would tend to have
a disintegrating effect were it not that the business
part of the town still acts as a magnet, holding the
residential area about itself with a firmness that al
most balances the decentralising attractions of these
and of the country's spacious beauty. The resid
ential district is thus the battlefield of two forces,
one pulling outward and one pulling in, and as one
or the other is stronger there is crowding or roomy
187
1 88 fIDobern Civic Hrt
expansion. This is a contest to be kept in mind,
for it makes easier of understanding many urban
peculiarities that may properly be traced to these
forces.
When the walls of cities came down, the cen
tralising power within had no ally pushing from
without; when the lines of rapid-transit were laid,
the cords that pulled men to the centre were so
loosened as to pull much less tightly; when indus
trial suburbs were created, counter attractive mag
nets were established; when the business part of the
city increased in brilliancy, fascination, and splendour,
the centralising power was in its turn strengthened.
So the fortunes of the contest have varied, and even
in the case of single cities there is little uniformity in
results. Here we find compression and there we
find expansion, according as local or neighbourhood
factors influence the outcome, until the residential
parts of any city, taken as a whole, can be said to
have no more than a similar general character*
To make, now, a practical and rational plan for
these sections of the city, it is necessary to appreci
ate the contest of which they are the battleground.
But there is a need of doing something more than
that. We have to ask ourselves which side civic art
will favour, for he who lays out the streets of these
districts has it in his power greatly to aid or obstruct
either tendency.
Consideration that the residential area is where
people are to live, are to build their homes, let their
Street plotting among tbc 1bome0. 189
little children play, and take their own ease when
work is done, removes all doubt of the answer.
Civic art would have as much room, for individual
privacy and for communal beauty, as is compatible
with the impatient demands of the city's workaday
centre. The first question becomes, then, how can
we satisfy the demands of energy and labour with
least sacrifice of the reposeful character of the dis
trict ? This must be answered in the street plan.
It is clear, at least, that in leaving the business
district and entering the residential we are con
fronted by an entirely new problem. Not only is it
possible to imagine a new scheme of plotting, but
the appearance of a new purpose makes it very
desirable to do so; and a change in basic conditions
through the substitution of local for general foci
even renders unavoidable a change of method. At
the same time, the one system must be joined closely
to the other so that both rest on a single, solid frame
work that reduces to a minimum the expenditure of
force in transition from the one to the other; and it
must, further, be possible for the business district to
expand, making conquests in an area that is now oc
cupied by residences, without loss of its own con
venience.
In plotting the streets of the business district, we
found that the first essential was to build up the
framework, or skeleton, of arterial thoroughfares. In
that case we had certain focal points for bases. We
lack these points in the new problem; but we may
190 flDobern Civic art
extend the old framework founded upon them, car
rying out the lines until they form the structure of
the new. If we do this, we shall gain the three
objects that we most desire with reference to the
centre: we shall unite the two systems so that
they become, or -seem to become, one harmonious
scheme; we shall establish direct lines of communi
cation with the business district as a whole and with
each of the town's great focal points. These lines,
again, as the shortest distance from the residential
arcs of the circumference to the business centre, will
offer the natural routes for travel by rapid-transit or
other means. They will be the great "through
lines
"
and can be made wide in accordance with
their anticipated usefulness. Incidentally, they will
thus furnish the natural lines on which business may
extend when, outgrowing its present quarters, it
tends to overflow into the residential district and
so there will be gained the third requisite with re
ference to the centre.
We shall discover, in further consideration, that
the business in overflowing through these streets
does the slightest possible injury to the character of
this quiet district. In brief, the line of least resist
ance is become also the line of least harm. Our
framework of radial arterial thoroughfares is substan
tially, if indirectly, a system of safety-valves to meet
increasing pressure in the commercial district. We
have now adopted that hint for a city plan which,
as Colonel Waring once pointed out, is contained in
Street flMottina among tbe 1bome0. 191
the spider's web. In this the quickest way of reach
ing the centre from any given point is, clearly,
obtained; and in the plot of the residential section of
the town we have to remember, not as a pleasant
but as a primary fact, that time is money.
In the establishment of these radials we gain yet
another advantage. There is required in this section
the provision of a large number of neighbourhood
foci, instead of only two or three great focal points.
That is to say, there is a demand for many locally
effective sites. The public buildings of the district
are the schools and churches, the sub-stations of the
post-office, of the police and fire departments, and
the branches of the public library. All of these de
mand convenient situations with reference to the
district which they serve, and some of them should
have also conspicuous sites, for the aesthetic value
hardly less than the serviceability of public structures
depends on their location. The radial highways,
inevitably cutting the general street system at irregu
lar angles, and themselves the trunk lines of daily
travel, will of necessity offer many such sites of
prominence. These locations will be, also, conven
ient of access not only because they are on the
trunk lines, which are broad, direct, straight, and of
easy grades, but, since those thoroughfares are de
signed for lines of through travel, every minor street
system will be connected with its own particular
artery in the closest and most immediate way. Thus
any structure on the radial streets will be easy of
flDofcern Civic Hrt
access from the streets on either side of it, in the
district it would serve.
Except for the almost incidental requirement that
there shall be a possibility of effective sites for the
local centres, civic art, in as far as it stands for
the wish for urban beauty, has been as yet very
quiet. Its own first demand in plotting these streets
would be for aesthetic results. It would seek the
restful, lovely, and artistic above everything else.
But municipal art, to gain its ends, must have the
foundation of utility. In fact, art is, first of all,
the doing or the making of the useful thing in the
best possible way. That art which has to do with
city-building, therefore, must be content, when tak
ing up the problem of a street plan for the resid
ential district, to learn first what the requirements
of usefulness are; and then, having put duty be
fore pleasure and having made this provision, it
will do the best it can to stamp the whole with
beauty, harmony, and repose, and to give to refined
individual taste opportunities for expression. If
modern civic art failed to take this course, its own
ends would be defeated. A beauty gained at the
expense of convenience gives no pleasure, and the
urban beauty with which we would surround our
homes has no purpose more pressing than to please.
Happily, the essentials from a workaday stand
point that are required of civic art, in the plotting
of these streets, amount to no more than a conven
ient framework. They may all be provided without
Street potting among tbe Ifoomes. 193
injuring the attractiveness of the district. Indeed,
they have the great artistic merit of giving an ap
pearance of unity to a scheme that now may be
varied generously in its details. They invite also
the convenient use of themselves as service roads,
whither the heavy through travel and the main
lines of urban transportation may be thrown, leav
ing us free in developing the intervening areas to
consider such questions as grade and directness
secondary at last to the wish for beauty.
At liberty now to seek frankly for beauty, we
shall recognise the charm of variety. We will have
broad streets and narrow streets, straight and curv
ing ways, and regularly built up districts sprinkled
through with open spaces, where there may be
playgrounds for children or gardens for the delight
of all. And here again there will be certain funda
mental provisions, carrying a little farther the frame
work of the streets. There will be, for instance,
at least one broad avenue, intended for wealth and
fashion and on which there will be no lines of
rapid-transit, and where heavy teaming will be
discouraged if not indeed forbidden. There will
be, in this avenue, or as supplementary to it, at
least one parkway, by which the parks will be
suitably approached and the beginning of their
charm brought far down-town. There will be
system about the provision of the open spaces,
their number will be sufficient to give character
to the district, and each will be so availed of in
194 fIDobern Civic Hrt
the street plotting as to lend the maximum of effect
to the streets. This means that there will be arranged
such convergence of streets to each of them that
it will not find its beauty shut in by building walls,
but will be able to spread its pleasant influence far
over the surrounding area. Instead of the common
appearance of haphazard scattering, there will seem
to be a reason for the exact location of every such
open space.
The discussion of the treatment of the spaces
may well demand a separate chapter; but we have
to recognise here the necessity for their generous
provision. They are to be the gardens for those
who have no gardens of their own; they are to
bring into the vista of the street a new and unex
pected beauty; they are to vary its monotony, to
give room for air, invitation to idleness, to joy in
nature, in the bloom of flowers, the song of birds,
the play of light and shadow, and the wondrous
poem of the season's change on tree and shrub.
They are to make provision, in the fundamental
structure of the city, and on a generous and com
prehensive scale, for the sports and games of the
children who will be living near. They are not
to be added as luxuries; there should not be need
of inserting them, at great cost, vast inconvenience,
and with poor effect after the district has been built
up. Modern civic art has behind it enough expe
rience to have had their value thoroughly attested;
and, when the opportunity arises as it often must
Street plotting amona tbe 1bome0, 195
to include them in the original street plan, to
find for such act not merely ample justification but
an obligation that is moral and civic as truly as it
is aesthetic
In this section of the city, too, topography be
comes a matter of extreme importance. In the
business district, where speed and ease of transport
ation and communication were primary and all-per
vading essentials, difference of level offered only
obstacles to that flatness which was to be desired
that grades might be almost avoided. Here ascent
or descent may be one of the greatest charms of the
way. The natural contour of the land becomes so
probable and powerful an aid in procuring beauty
and individuality, where time and heavy teaming
have no longer to be considered seriously, that it
has been well said that no precise plan for a resid
ential part of a town which is not absolutely flat can
be devised, with satisfactory results, if there be not
thorough knowledge of the topography. Nor does
this relate only to varying elevations, for every
natural watercourse may present an opportunity.
To bring out, then, in the street plotting, rather than
to repress, the characteristic native beauty of the
tract should be one of the first aims when planning
the lesser residential streets. And if this be well
done, the beauty which is thus given (or permitted
without despoilment) to the town will surely stamp
it with an individuality all its own.
There is in the exhibition of deference to the
196 flDobern CMc Hrt
topography, and especially with reference to con
tour, a further very practical advantage. This is
economy in construction. Clearly, the cost of push
ing streets with relentless engineering exactness in
undeviating lines through a rocky or hilly tract must
be much greater than if they were allowed to follow
the lay of the land. Nor is the difference one only
of construction, for where there are deep cuts or
steep embankments the value of abutting property
is seriously depreciated, if not almost destroyed, so
that it cannot justly be heavily assessed for an
"
im
provement.'
7
Even in cases where the established
grade departs comparatively little from the actual
level of the land, the cost of cutting and filling
within the lots, when houses are to be erected, will
amount to considerably more in the aggregate than
does the slight addition to the length of pavement,
curb, walk, and sewer, which is to say of the street,
that is occasioned by deviation from a rigid straight
line or by following the natural surface. It may be
added that filling or cutting very often kills fine
trees that might have been saved had the street
risen or fallen a little with the natural contour, or
that it might be well worth while to swing a street
a bit out of line, if so a noble tree could be spared.
It will not be necessary always to climb the hills at
their highest point, nor to descend to their lowest
valleys. With the well-proved charm of the curv
ing street, we may wind around the hill at less cost
than cutting through it and with more satisfaction to
Street plotting amone tbe fbomes, 197
the traffic than if a shorter distance were bought by
a steep gradient. There is too often need of learn
ing that the railroad ideal of directness and an un
varying elevation is unfitted for residential streets,
and particularly for those of suburban districts.
The value of the curving thoroughfare where
there are hills to be surmounted has been suggested,
and its beauty has been taken almost for granted.
It will be well, however, to consider with something
more of defmiteness these claims to aesthetic merit.
They are not dependent merely on the circumstance
that "the curved line is the line of beauty."
That alone would be a point in its favour
1
; but,
as the street is occupied, other advantages appear.
The houses show far better on a curved than on a
straight line. Each advancing step discloses a new
view of the fafade, and, in fact, more than one face
of the house is now in evidence. Conversely, the
view from the windows is much pleasanter if the
house stand on a curving street, for then windows
both on front and side command a vista of the way.
Building operations, whether for the poorest class
of homes or for the best, are more likely to be suc
cessful on an attractive thoroughfare; and not only
is there no need for most houses to be built on
straight streets, but they will be pleasanter if they
J
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, in his book on the life and work of his son, Charles
Eliot, Landscape Architect, quotes Professor William James, the psychologist, as
saying, after he had lived for several years at the junction of two curving streets,
"that the daily sight of the curve of Scott Street added much to the pleasure of
living in his house or, indeed, in the neighbourhood."
198 (IDofcem Civic art
are not.
1
The curving street has the better chance
for picturesqueness, and at any point the curve
brings the lawns and gardens into the vista of the
street, giving to it a very pleasant and appropriate
character for a street of homes, and there is assured
a charming variety in the light and shade. Finally,
it may be noted, that parks and open spaces with a
waving boundary line are more attractive than if
the abutting streets marked them off in straight
lines.
The curved street should, of course, be broader
than the straight one; it presents some sewerage
problems that are not, however, difficult; and if the
curve be sharp the street should not be very long,
lest, instead of pleasing, it annoy by its relatively
extravagant demand on time and space. But with
these warnings the curved street may be approved
for its change, even though a level tract does not
insist on its adoption. It may be noted, incidentally,
that in our imagined plotting of the residential area,
the circle that the latter is supposed to form about
the centre has been already cut into small arcs by
the system of arterial radials. The diversified street
systems would be confined between consecutive
radials, so that the length of curving streets would
be naturally restricted.
Perhaps it will be wise here to turn aside from
the discussion of the theory of street plotting, and
1
Some of the arguments printed here are borrowed from the very excellent
special report of the City Parks Association of Philadelphia (1902) on "The City
Plan."
Street plotting among tbe Ibomea. 199
to note some examples that concretely illustrate
abstract contentions. There is no surer means to
weigh an argument.
Of the value of radial thoroughfares, for the main
lines of urban transit and direct communication with
the centre, the street plan of Vienna offers a con
spicuous proof. There are fifteen main radials, and
the street railways, coming in by these, centre their
operations on the inner Ring. It is said that in
Vienna the daily ebb and flow of population takes
place with greater ease than in any other large city.
The street plans of many municipalities, European
and American, illustrate the usefulness of such
streets less strikingly only because they illustrate
it in part instead of as a complete system, as does
Vienna. Of the broad avenues planned for the
residences of the rich and fashionable, of the park
ways carrying the approach to the parks far down
town, and of the boulevards, there are many exam
ples. Euclid Avenue, a street that early gave fame
to Cleveland, Ohio, is a case in point; or better, per
haps, is the lower end of Commonwealth Avenue in
Boston, where the double roadway and the broad
middle strip of turf and trees is carried so far into
the closest built-up residential section that it joins
the Public Garden and the Common with the outly
ing parks, so that one may walk if he will from
the very heart of business Boston on a tapis vert
to the parks that girdle the city. Such another
example of the purpose is the Avenue des Champs
200 flDobern Civic Hrt
Elys^es and its connecting Avenue du Bois de Bou
logne, in Paris.
And from what might have been, but is not, we
can gain a hint of the value of such provision. The
commissioners who laid down the street plan of New
York declared at the outset that Fifth Avenue should
be the middle one of the great longitudinal high
ways. Suppose they had had the foresight to anti
cipate the consequent development it would be
likely to have, and had had the courage to provide
for this by making the central avenue wider than
the others, broad enough for trees, and perhaps for
a strip of turf, how magnificent a change would
have come upon New York ! In Philadelphia there
has been earnest proposal that the present street
plan be rectified in this respect, and a great park
way be cut from Fairmount Park to the City Hall
It is considered that the result will be worth the
enormous cost.
As to the squares and open spaces in the resid
ential portions of the city, the plan of Washington
will at once suggest itself. Here, each formal space
of turf, square or circle, as the case may be,
flower-jewelled and statue-crowned, is made a centre
of converging streets.
Coming now to curving streets, Vienna, Paris,
Brussels, Florence, or many another ancient city that
has been modernised, furnishes having availed
itself of the opportunity offered by a demolition of
its old confining walls an example of long boule-
Street flMottina atnons tbe 1bome0. 201
yards circling in slow curve the city area. In the
United States the corresponding thoroughfares as
in Chicago, for instance have been often developed
as parkways. There is much to commend the
establishment of these encircling streets, offering as
they do such convenient routes for belt-line travel,
joining radial directly with radial, and forming circles
of street pretentiousness and beauty in concentric
rings around the urban district. But for example
of the more picturesque, because shorter and more
sharply curving, streets, it is not so easy to point
to thoroughfares of world-wide reputation. These
must be, as in our plotting theory, the minor ways.
But in England we may note, for instance, the
pretty streets of Edgbaston, a suburb of Birming
ham; and in the United States those that make so
lovely the towns and little cities which constitute the
"metropolitan district" of Boston. From Boston,
too, we may draw one example that is justly becom
ing widely known. This is in the long suburban ex
tension of Commonwealth Avenue, now stretching
its sinuous length many miles into the country. But
aside from the sinuosity of the street, a succession
of lovely curves applied to an avenue of stately
width and exceptionally long and elaborate surface
development, this highway might well demand
attention. It is a most striking illustration of a
street following the natural contour of the land. It
rises and falls with the gentle hills and valleys of the
region through which it passes, and discloses at
202 flDofcern Civic art.
every turn and every changing level a new beauty.
There are innumerable small examples of the attract
iveness of such street plotting, but here is one so
great and conspicuous that it may be cited for all.
There should be consideration now of the width
of the minor residential streets. In discussing the
plotting of the business district, it was observed that
a narrow thoroughfare might be considerably wid
ened, as far as effectiveness goes, by thrusting back
the building line. In a district where the construc
tion seldom, or it may be never, covers half the
entire building lot, it is very easy to push back this
line without injury to the lot owner, and indeed
with such benefit to the street as to profit him.
This fact makes narrowness on these minor streets,
which have no through travel, a matter much less to
be dreaded than in the business district, while to re
commend it there is the circumstance that a narrow
roadway costs so much less than a broad one to
construct and maintain that the same expenditure
will furnish a better pavement and keep it cleaner.
There are, however, three questions to be asked
in determining the width of a minor residential
street: (i) Is there locally the legal power to estab
lish a building line? (2) Is there a probability that
with the growth of the city and the extension
of its business centre the street may be required
for trade or industry? (3) Would it be desirable,
even if there were not that danger, to plan a broader
street and so have room for parking?
Street Potting among tfoe Ibomes. 203
The surface development of the street need not
be here discussed; but it is evident that a consci
entious putting of any one of these questions may
demand a wide street. If there be not authority to
establish the building line, there is more or less
danger that some of the construction will be at the
street's edge. This means, if the way be narrow,
lack of air and sunshine and a consequent tendency
ultimately to squalor. If the business does over
flow on to a narrow street, jagged lines will mark
the transition. Commercial structures, often of a
cheap and undesirable aspect, will be built out to
the walk, while the better residences, recessed back
at irregular intervals, will be hidden. The full con
quest of the street by business will mean serious
crowding on the narrow walks and cramped road
way. None of these results can be contemplated
with pleasure by modern civic art. All must be
averted.
In closing this discussion, a word should be said
of its pertinence. While that tendency which is
called the modern urban drift continues, there can
hardly be found a town or city that is finished. In
the business portions of the settlement, growth will
generally mean remodelling a process sadly handi
capped by previous conditions, and slow and costly.
In the residential portions also there will be some
remodelling; but for the most part, as far as street
plotting is concerned, growth here will mean ad
dition. There will be free play for theory; and it will
204 flDobern Civic art.
be a pity if no beauty is brought into the street
plan, through study of the science the considerate
reasonableness and the art of municipal aesthetics.
On the borders of every city, and even within the
borders, there is a constant opening of new tracts.
These present opportunities by wise plotting for
gaming picturesqueness and variety. Often the
problem offered by such a tract may be, and has
been, solved with better effect, both aesthetically
and financially, by giving a chance to the landscape
architect than by leaving the design to an engineer.
For once the main through lines are laid down, the
leading avenues provided, and the open spaces ap
portioned systematically through the district, the
short streets that fill up the little arcs and in the ag
gregate contain so many houses, should have the
picturesqueness and variety of individuality of ex
pression. It should be possible here, where the
homes are, to get away from the depressing mono
tony of a uniform system. Experience is every
where teaching the lesson of the popularity of this
course, by the higher prices that lots in such sur
roundings bring, and by the better class of dwellings
erected in these tracts.
As to remodelling, it is a mistaken idea that an
adopted city plan cannot be changed, or that a vast
amount of energy is required to change it. The
plan is changed constantly. The same power that
adopts the map, usually the municipality's legislative
body, can alter it by an ordinance, and the result in
Street plotting among tbe 1bome& 205
most large cities is almost a daily changing of plotted
streets, or a vacating of those that have been already
opened. To make these changes worth while is the
harder task, and the task of civic art. It is one,
however, to be undertaken not merely with the
courage born of confidence, but with an unwonted
zeal. For what higher call has civic art than to
make beautiful the surroundings of the homes of
men; to make refined, lovely, and truly lovable,
that environment in which they have leisure for^
enjoyment or for misery, and where are reared and/
taught by sense impressions the children who will
be the future citizens ?
CHAPTER XL
ON GREAT AVENUES.
TWO
great groups or kinds of streets have ap
peared in the discussion of the topographical
plotting of a city's residential area. They
are the great avenues, forming the skeleton or frame
work of the district, and the minor streets that fill in
the system's details. Of each group there are sub
divisions. The minor streets are of wide variety.
The great avenues include the encircling boulevards,
the radials that bear the heavy travel to and from
the centre, the broad streets set apart for the grand
est residences, and, by our earlier classification, the
parkways that offer suitable approaches to the parks
and stretch enticing suggestions of park beauty far
into the busy, workaday sections of the town.
These parkways are not, however, to be treated
quite as streets. Their very name conveys a hint
that in considering the development of the thorough
fares another classification will be now convenient.
We shall take the parkways from the group of great
2O6
n (Breat Bvenue& 207
avenues, as having a kinship nearer to the park sys
tem than to that of the streets, and give to them a
later study. For the present the group comprising
the principal highways of the residential section may
be considered as composed of the encircling boule
vards, the radials, and the finer, in the sense of the
more pretentious, residential streets.
The first duty of the thoroughfares contained in
such a group is to afford ease of communication.
This has been already looked after in the plotting,
and it is mainly by virtue of the excellence with
which they do this that it becomes possible to
describe these streets as prominent. The second
requirement is that they shall have a certain digni
fied and stately beauty. In the business district,
architectural magnificence and civic splendour of
decoration is largely depended upon to make the
thoroughfares handsome. In the residential quarters,
where the decreased relative importance of the
buildings will not justify the placing of the depend
ence for stately street effects upon the architecture,
there is need that beauty be brought into the street
itself. To consider how this may here be done is
logically civic art's next step.
The necessity of affording ease of communication,
and of adapting the facilities to comparatively long
distance travel, has made certain characteristics
obligatory in these streets. These are breadth; and,
in the case of the radials at least, and very often of
the encircling boulevards, a provision for car tracks.
208 HDobern Civic Hrt
The requirement of breadth is favourable rather than
otherwise to the attainment of that stately beauty
which is desired. The inner and outer boulevards
encircling Paris have an average width of one hund
red and forty feet throughout their twenty miles.
In a couple of districts, for a total distance of four
miles, there is a width of two hundred and forty
feet. The Avenue des Champs Elysees is two hund
red and seventy-five feet wide. If all this width
were required to accommodate the traffic, the condi
tion would be discouraging in the extreme. But
the invitation to breadth, naturally and appropriately
extended by the present and prospective traffic, is
supplemented so earnestly by a desire to emphasise
the importance of the streets' relation to the general
system, and to render them stately and beautiful,
that there is often given a greater width than the
necessities of mere transportation require. Land is
not so needed for building purposes in the region
through which they pass as to make such sacrifice
of space too dear for the results obtained. So we
find provided, almost as a matter of course on these
streets, the breadth which is often desired vainly in
the business district, where it might have done so
much to accommodate the traffic and to give an air
of civic magnificence.
The necessity of arranging for car tracks on many
of the streets of this group would seem a less happy
condition, but it is possible to provide them in such
a way as to involve little injury to the appearance of
n Great Hvenues. 209
the street. It should be said that the rapid-transit
facilities offered by these thoroughfares will be con
fined, as far as visible apparatus goes, to the surface.
The noisy and ugly elevated railroad will not be
suffered to destroy all the potential majesty, or even
attractiveness, of the way; and if there be under
ground construction, there will be nothing of it
apparent, save an occasional station which is artistic
in design and so situated as not to block the street,
or even to seem to do so. For rapid-transit on the
surface which, as the natural method, promises to
be always the pleasantest and most popular we
may assume electric power. It has been said that
Frederick Law Oltnsted was the first one frankly to
accept the car tracks as a permanent feature of the
avenue and one that could and should be turned to
decorative purpose. On the Beacon Street Boule
vard, Boston, he arranged that the tracks should be
thrown into a separate turf-planted strip at the road's
border, where only the gleaming lines of steel would
show upon the greensward. The advantages were
not confined to the appearance of the street. They
included a lessening of noise and dust, and a possibil
ity of greater speed, and so evident were these gains
that the plan was adopted far and wide, and regard
less of the location of the strip whether at an edge
of the road, at each side, or in its centre.
The system in use on the Beacon Street Boulevard
is the overhead trolley, as we have to suppose at
this writing that it usually will be on long routes^
flfcofcern Civic Hrt
that are not closely built up. Modern civic art of
course looks forward to the day when, the wires of
the trolley underground or a storage battery in use,
there will be no need of a double column of frequent
sentinel posts to mar the street prospect. Here and
there the vision is already realised, but where its
realisation is delayed, the use of a separate strip of
greensward for the cars can be made an effectual
means of reducing the injury of the posts. They
may then be placed down the centre of the strip,
with an arm outstretched over either track a device
that substitutes a single for the double row, that does
away with guard wires, and that, by its essential
symmetry, is more favourable to artistic design than
the posts at the track's edge. Or, on this separate
strip, there may be such planting as to make side
posts, when painted an unobtrusive green, scarcely
noticeable features in the scene. It may be that vines
can be trained over them, or festooned from post to
post to form an effective and pretty barrier between
the carriage road and the tracks, when the street has
left the stone of the city far enough behind to make
such treatment appropriate. Then the posts become
only details of a thoroughly pleasing composition.
And before the vines are thus made use of, there may
be upon the edge of this grassy strip a planting of
shrubs and bushes that will more than half conceal
the posts, and transfer attention from them to the
surpassing beauty of the plants with their varied
loveliness of flower and twig. Until business
(Breat avenues. 211
marches upon the radial and renders incongruous the
strip of greensward, and is covetous of the space
thus occupied, there is no reason why the tracks of
the street railroad should not have such setting as
will make them a decorative adjunct of the street.
It appears, then, that neither requirement which
utility may make, in even its most exacting mood,
of these leading thoroughfares need prove antagon
istic to their handsome development. The great
thing is to determine that the streets shall be hand
some, that they shall be handsome considered by
themselves and irrespective of whatever buildings
may be put along their borders. We must take the
purely civic point of view and demand that the city
in its corporate capacity, independent of anything
that individuals may do, shall lay down, as the lead
ing thoroughfares of its residential district, streets
that are worthy of the highest development streets
can have. We should realise that it is shameful,
disgraceful to the high selflessness of the sociology
of brotherhood which may be called the modern
religion that large groups of men should be care
less regarding the street on which they occupy
splendid homes. When noble houses replete with
comforts are erected on streets devoid of beauty, and
there is no effort to supply the omission, there is
given an evidence that something is the matter with
the occupants. The obvious fault of the city in per
mitting this neglect may reasonably be laid to their
own doors. They publish broadcast their lack not
flDobern Civic Hrt
of public spirit only, nor merely of civic spirit, but
even of neighbourhood, or social, spirit. They live
for themselves alone, and with so little foresight as
not to see that what one has done for one's city one
has done for one's self and one's home.
Assuming, then, a desire to have these streets
stately and worthy, we find that the attractiveness
of a leading residential thoroughfare, its own lines
as to directness, length, and breadth having been
properly laid down, will depend on the following
elements: the pavement and sidewalks; the street
furnishings; the use of vegetation, in street trees and
turf; the building along the street's borders; and the
street's adornment for adornment's sake alone.
It will hardly be called the duty of civic art to
determine the character of the street pavement, but
there must be requirement that it be well laid and
well maintained both as to cleanliness and repair.
Civic art will even go so far as to advocate a com
parative noiselessness. The glory of the modern
feature in our civic Renaissance is that such require
ments as these can now be taken for granted. No
civic art of other times has rested on so firm and
elemental a foundation. Storied Carthage, splendid
Athens, kingly Alexandria, imperial Rome, the
Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Bruges and
Ghent of the Northern Renaissance none of these
considered the pavement under the horses' feet a
prerequisite to their civic art. Even a sidewalk was
rare. We, on the other hand, do not begin to talk
(Sreat avenues. 213
of civic art, if we are logical, until the street is paved
and clean.
The walk, since it may become a decorative ele
ment of the street, may demand more attention than
the paving of the roadway. The opportunity will
often come when, beneath a long row of trees, there
may be a walk of fine gravel or well packed dirt.
After the hard pavement of the business streets, there
could be no change which is at once practicable and
so pleasant. But commonly, in the damp and rigor
ous climate with which many cities must do bat
tle, there is need of a footing that is dryer and more
substantial. The prepared stone, or cement, walks
that have lately come widely into use make a hum
ble, but certain, contribution to municipal aesthetics.
One who has written and thought much on town and
city improvement has well said
1
: there is "nothing
more agreeable for eye or foot than long stretches of
granolithic walk, commonly laid with broad margins
of turf on either hand, the smooth, clean light-gray
in beautiful contrast with the velvety verdure. And
there is no surer way to save the precious grass from
trampling feet than to give it such a footway neigh
bour.
"
In the residential area, even on these lead
ing streets of it, there are no other kinds of walk
to be advocated. If the demand of pedestrianism
be light, these can make for it the lightest pro
vision. If it be heavy, they can be made broad to
1
See series of articles in The Century Maga&ne, 1902-1903, by Sylvester
Baxter.
flDobern Civic Bet
care for it. They are easier to the feet than the great
stone flags of the business district; and if the lat
ter were carried into the residential portions, one of
pedestrianism's pleasantest marks of the transition
the change from stone walks to these softer ways
with their lovely grass borders would be lost.
Of the furnishings of these streets there is small
occasion to speak now, for civic art's ideals in this
regard have been pointed out in discussing the busi
ness thoroughfares. For the most part, the furnish
ings are the same the street lights, the street name
signs, the possible poles for trolley or other wires, the
flag-staffs that should be made architectural adjuncts
of the buildings they are erected in connection with
or else frankly decorative features, the fire-alarm
and mail boxes, etc. If it be the ideal of civic art
that these furnishings have artistic design, that they
be made to harmonise with their surroundings, and
be treated, hence, as distinct problems in distinct
portions of the city, there will arise a need, no
doubt, for new designs when we come into the main
avenues of the residential district, but hardly for new
discussion until, by a definite street or city, a con
crete problem is presented.
On these avenues, however, there may be wanted
some furnishings that had not been required by the
business streets. Such are seats placed at intervals
along the way. The necessity or advantages of
these will be considered appropriately when we
come to the trees and turf. It is enough now to
it (Breat Hvenue0, 215
note that civic art will not observe their desirability
alone, but will be keen to see if they be of appro
priate design and colour, so that they blend harmoni
ously into the scene, and that they are kept in
repair.
"
Out at elbows," as the saying is, is a con
dition that no town .with pretensions to civic art can
anywhere permit. In European cities (as Paris)
where the provision and rental of some of the chairs
on the public way is a
"
concession
"
let by the
municipality to private contractors, a clause of the
agreement requires that the seats conform to a
model approved by the administration and be al
ways in repair. The attitude uniformly adopted by
civic art to all the details of street furnishing will be
one of deep respect. Far from considering these
beneath its notice, it will see in them the opportunity
to complete, for comparatively trifling sums, pictures
that are grandiose in scale but that will never per
form their full function until so perfected. Many a
noble building, many a lovely square, many a stately
street is marred, after vast expenditure, by the lack
of that little additional care and that small extra
expense that would have finished worthily the
decoration.
Coming now to the use that is made of vegetation
on the great highways of the residential area, we
reach their most distinguishing feature. Nothing at
once separates them so markedly from the other
streets of the city in both its business and resi
dential sections or gives to them a character so
2x6 flDobern Civic Hrt
instantly and strikingly their own as does this. Few
things, also, mark more distinctly the modernness
of our civic art. The great avenues will often have
turf even if it be only between car tracks and rows
of trees. Frequently there will be a middle strip
planted with the latter. The city that was once
forced to shut out the country with wall and bastion
throws open the gates and levels the walls, counting
now no ornament of its proudest ways more precious
than carefully tended nature can give.
The whole conception of the street changes. It is
probable that outside of their public squares no paral
lel is offered in the ancient cities. The way is no
longer a mere means of communication. Even the
great radials of the residential area, which are so
primarily this, find their development modified by
the new idea. It becomes possible to class them,
trunk lines of travel as they are, with the parkways
and noble residential avenues. The new idea is to
make an open-air salon of the street; and these thor
oughfares that are not, on the one hand, choked
with travel and wearisome with the press and din
of business, nor yet, on' the other hand, minor ways
dull with a lack of life and motion, these avenues,
with their constant movement and gaiety, their ebb
and flow of passing that is animated but without
the rush of desperation, these are the ideal location
for the "open-air, public, parlours."
The conception came from the Continent of Eu
rope, apparently, where soft airs and sunny days in
it (Breat Bvemies*
long-continued sequence offer irresistible invitations
to an out-of-doors life. The alamedas of Spain and
her colonies are broad walks shaded with trees,
bordered with carefully nurtured grass, shrubs, and
flowers, with rows of chairs or benches. All day and
evening happy throngs stroll up and down or loll
upon them. No sports or games are here, except
the ever-changing game of life. The smooth, dustless
driveway that is often part of the alameda is
thronged at certain hours with slowly moving lines
of carriages. Their occupants are the players to the
gaily chatting multitudes upon the walk; just as the
latter are, in their turn, the players to these spectat
ors in the carriages. In Paris, and the cities of
France that copy her, men sit at little tables in the
street so long eating, drinking, smoking, reading
the papers, and watching the life of the way that
it is impossible to dissociate the boulevards from the
"boulevardiers." And here again, for the pleasure
of the people, the streets are lined with trees, with
now and then a strip of verdure under foot. Again,
too, in Hungary, South Germany, or Austria, no
restaurant can succeed if it have not seats for its
patrons out-of-doors, and there, as in Switzerland
and Italy as well, you will find chairs and tables on
the walks and vine-covered trellises over part of the
public way.
Busier America and cloudier England have not
fully caught the out-of-door spirit in their towns;
but the ceaseless throngs that on holidays and fine
flDo&ern Civic Hrt
afternoons parade Fifth Avenue in New York, or the
Serpentine in Hyde Park, London, and the unanimity
with which all the seats in all the squares are occu
pied, would have given proof enough of the popular
ity of such avenue provision for enjoyment had there
been need of proving it. So we find this new pur
pose changing the surface development that these
thoroughfares will have, and since they have been
already made broad, direct, arterial, and serve well
their primary function it dictates the character of
the furnishing and decoration that may be given to
them.
In so far as this consists of the use of trees, civic
art would urge that the planting be harmonious. It
were best, indeed, that the larger, or permanent,
trees on any street or those at least that are
between consecutive accents of the street should
be of one kind. They will be far more effective so,
and we may then hope for a natural symmetry in
growth. The trees should also be cleanly, hardy,
naturally long-lived, and of appropriate form. On
these broad streets they should have stateliness and
ample foliage, and if they be set out in the turf strip
their roots will have the better chance of nourish
ment. The trees, it would urge, should not be left
to the care of individuals, nor should their provision
be entrusted to private persons. They are here as
distinct a furnishing of the way and a public benefit
as are any of the street utilities. Considered as the
property of the municipality, it should be held
n <5reat Hvenuea. 219
responsible for their provision and maintenance,
either through the park commission or a city forester.
In many cities tree nurseries are already maintained;
and in nearly all that are progressive so precious a
possession as the street tree is safeguarded by ordin
ances defending it from the carelessness of drivers
and the thoughtlessness of bill posters. Civic art
would insist on a very strict enforcement of these
ordinances.
As for the strip of turf, or parking, since its sole
purpose is to beautify, it will necessarily be well
kept. There will be waste receptacles, as incon
spicuous as may be, at sufficiently frequent intervals
to make easy the maintenance of its neatness, while
careful cutting and watering are to be assumed.
Flowers will frequently be used. Perennials that do
not grow so high as to interrupt the vista may be
approved; and where there are beds of annuals, con
ventional or grotesque shapes will be avoided in
favour of those straight lines and borders that fit
most harmoniously into the long prospect of the
street. There should be seats at frequent intervals,
far more frequent than is common in the streets of
American cities, for we ought to encourage the poor
to seek the fresh air and sunshine, and should make
it easy as well as pleasant to take care of little child
ren out-of-doors, instead of keeping them in stufify
rooms. Contact with the bustling, busy world may
be as good for the caretakers as is the fresh air for
the children. There is something to be said, too,
220 flDofcertt Civic Hrt
for the European custom of supplementing the gen
erous municipal provision of the out-of-door seats by
a concession to private contractors which enables
the latter to make a small charge for the use of the
chairs. This results in the possibility of nearly al
ways getting a seat in the more advantageous posi
tions, and it gives a degree of exclusiveness, which
unhappily is sometimes welcome, to this very slight
extent, on the public way. The contractors' con
duct of their business must, of course, be carefully
watched.
From what has been said of the Spanish alamedas,
it must not be supposed that the ideal of all
these streets, even from the standpoint of pure en
joyment, is a place for dawdling in the open air.
If that were all, the park or the planted open spaces
were better fitted to serve the end. The special at
tractiveness of such avenues to the persons who
dawdle upon them lies in their brilliancy and anima
tion, in the happy flow of their normal traffic. In
our street plan we have imagined not more than one
or two of the avenues thus developed as simply a
pleasure drive; the rest are arterial thoroughfares,
are boulevards, or avenues of fashionable residence.
It is the triumph of modern civic art to transform
these necessary girdles and girders of the structure
of the city into ways of pleasure and beauty. Here
the whirr of the electric car, there the pomp of the
swiftly passing carriages these are elements of
the scene that may count not less distinctly in the
(Sreat Hvcnuea 221
total power to please than does the verdure. For
this reason, the construction which is along the
edge of such streets becomes an important factor in
the scenic attractiveness of both street and town.
The development of the street border in such
cases falls under three general subheads. First, in
the case of the purely beauty or pleasure road, there
may be very little building, or perhaps no building
on one side as illustrated, for example, by Riverside
Drive, New York, with its extensions secured and
proposed. In this case a lovely view is substituted
for buildings, on one side of the road, with an enor
mous gain in picturesqueness and beauty. The
opportunity was, however, exceptional. Unless the
road borders a park, or tortuously climbs a steep hill,
as the road that ascends to San Miniato, Florence,
or is on a high bluff, as is the Riverside Drive, such
a chance is not presented. If these conditions be not
existent and there still be little building, we have to
assume either frequent stretches of vacant land or
residences surrounded by grounds so relatively
spacious that the gardens count for more than the
structures in giving character to the way. Because
the vacant land is considered a merely temporary
condition it is liable to receive too little attention. A
few cities have now adopted ordinances that pro
hibit the erection of bill-boards on vacant lots abut
ting on parks, parkways, or boulevards. This is well
as far as it goes, but the land, whether occupied or
not, that borders a street is so inseparable a factor in
222 fIDobern Civic Hrt
its possible amenity that on these streets at least,
where beauty is so earnestly sought, vacant property
should be strictly governed. The cutting of the
weeds, the general care of the land, and the main
tenance in perfect repair of its enclosing boundaries
should be insisted upon. For the private lawns and
gardens there is seldom a need of anxiety. The
wealth that affords a long frontage on such streets
can usually be depended upon to make it a creditable
border to the way.
Second, there are the avenues built up, in vary
ing degrees of density, with handsome residences.
The effects are many. There are the garden-sur
rounded villas, homesteads, and pretentious mansions
of the fashionable avenue of a city that has ample
room for growth and no great population; there are
the stately rows of closely built apartment houses,
as on some of the proudest streets of Paris; and there
are handsome but sadly crowded residences, as on
Fifth Avenue, in New York. But as far as the
preservation of street stateliness and beauty is con
cerned, these conditions differ little from those on the
avenue lined with broad estates, where the abutting
property may be safely left in the hands of those
who occupy it, without dictation by the municipality
other than that involved in quite ordinary building
regulations.
The placing of the residences on all the great
avenues, and on the minor streets as well, is a matter
to which civic art would fain have more thoughtful
n (Breat Svenues, 223
attention given than is usually secured. The term
"
placing
"
of the house, here means both its placing
in relation to the street and the development of an
appropriate beauty: (i) in selecting the angle at
which it shall face; (2) in setting it off with terraces
or well planned approaches; and (3) by turning to
good account such natural beauty in tree or rock
or irregularity of surface as the site may have. All
this is part of the landscape architect's profession and
it would doubtless be well if he and the architect
could more frequently co-operate. The vista of
many a good street is marred by the needless placing
askew of a house.
Finally, on the great radials, which we have
imagined as the residential district's main lines of
travel, there may be not only the residences which
are characteristic of all these streets, but, as we
have seen, the public buildings that are the local,
or neighbourhood, centres. These should be made
worthy of their importance. They become promin
ent objects of the way, and will gain not a little
from the attractiveness of the setting offered by the
street. The bareness of the school will disappear
as the vines climb its walls, and as swaying trees
fleck the sunshine on door and window and send
shadows scudding across the walk, like children late
to school. The branch post-office and library will
have a new and grateful, and here a wholly appro
priate, air of domesticity with an outlook on turf
and trees and flowers, while the importance of the
224 flDodern Civic art
street is dignified and emphasised by the assemblage
thus upon it of the locality's most consequential
structures. There come, too, a special variety and
interest as post-office, library, school, and church
punctuate the building line.
It can be fancied that in the ideal construction of
an ideal city the municipality, in laying out these
arterial radials, would reserve certain sites on ad
vantageous corners that they might surely be occu
pied for public purposes. There would be for this
the further inducement that because these streets
are diagonal, in reference to the street systems they
cross, there will be many corners that are difficult
of treatment unless more than one lot be included in
the tract to be built upon. In that case the site may
offer a noble architectural opportunity, while if left
in the hands of private owners the small corner lot,
now cut down to a triangle, may seem of so little
worth as to have scant attention. That this is a real
danger and one of serious import to the street ap
pears from the action taken by the influential TSquare
Club (of architects) in Philadelphia, when
the project for pushing a diagonal parkway from
the City Hall to Fairmount Park came before the
public. The year's competitions were all devoted
to the building problems that would arise from the
construction of the thoroughfare. The first of these
was to plan "a house on a triangular lot"; the
second was "the treatment in elevation of the angle
of a private residence
"
on such a lot. It is evident
n (Brcat avenues. 225
that there was keen appreciation of a menace to be
guarded against, as well as of an opportunity to
be embraced.
In the elements of street attractiveness we have
now considered, in regular order, the pavement and
walks, the "furnishings" of the street, the use of
verdure, and the influence of the building along its
margin. We have come to the final factor: the
adornment for adornment's sake. This must consist
of decoration with sculpture, with fountains, exedras,
arches, and statues. There is clearly no more ap
propriate place for such adornment than these great
show avenues, with their room to spare. On what
other streets could fountains play more fittingly than
on these with the flowers and grass; where else
than here, where seats are well-nigh a necessity,
will the exedra be so natural and useful an ornament
of the way; and where but here, with the proffered
background of foliage and yet with no "naturalness
"
of design that must be marred by sudden formalism,
can the statue show so picturesquely ?
A notable example of such a great avenue, muni
ficently adorned with sculpture, is offered by the
little known Paseo de la Reforma in the City of
Mexico. This is three miles long and very broad.
At each of five places on its length there is laid out
that circular broadening that in Paris is called a Rond
Point and in London a Circus, but that the Mexicans
more aptly name a Glorietta, the Paseo is a dia
gonal on a gridiron plan, and each of these is
15
226 fIDofcern Civic Hrt
dedicated to sculpture exalting a national hero.
At regular intervals on the road-lawn there rise stone
pedestals. They are allotted to the states of the
nation, that upon each of them may be commemor
ated, in a life-size statue, a hero of the state ; while
on the far side of the footway and so facing the
avenue there are numerous monumental seats of
stone.
As for the arch, returning to the subject of sculpt
ure on these streets, it hardly rises in one city
among a score. But where it does, there would be
no site of more theoretical suitability than at the
beginning of one of these great avenues, or at its
terminus and crown. So, at the beginning of Fifth
Avenue, rises the Washington Arch in New York;
so, at the entrance to Unter den Linden, in Berlin, is
the Brandenburg Thor; and so, at the convergence
of avenues, looms the Arch of the Star in Paris.
We speak of the arch as triumphal; but more
surely than of triumph is its effect one of pomp and
majesty the two qualities which these avenues are
expected especially to stamp upon the town. And
as this is said, we should consider the changed
conception of civic art. It has become an end in
itself. The arch that rose to glorify a conqueror may
rise to magnify a city's splendour. The statues that
commemorate proud events and worthy citizens are
put up the more willingly because they make hand
somer a highway. The fountains that had their
origin in the need of a public place for drawing
<S>n <5reat Hvenues. 227
water are erected now that they may beautify a
street; and the long straight thoroughfares that were
laid down as principal lines of communication are
broadened to become the salons of the city, and are
adorned to stamp it with majesty. Thus are ex
pressed the new ideals of civic art those dreams
that make it modern, because a city's splendour, and
beautiful majestic streets, are now desired for the
greater happiness and welfare of its citizens.
CHAPTER XII.
ON MINOR RESIDENTIAL STREETS.
A
CITY is not all grandiose. Even in an age
of industry and commerce, or of ruinous lux
ury, according to the point of view, the
city is not all business or all pleasure, nor business
and pleasure merely side by side. Earners and
spenders have home life, and the city presents no
aspect more inspiring, more appealing to civic art,
than that of an aggregation of homes. It has no
element which commends so earnestly the civic-art
ambition and endeavour.
If the town existed merely for business in trade
or manufacture there would be scant gain in mak
ing handsome thoroughfares; and if it existed merely
as a rendezvous for the rich, they might be left to
seek beauty elsewhere. But the city brings together,
as the major part of its population, those who, hav
ing to work indeed, are something better than ma
chines men and women who dream dreams, little
children in whose faces the wonder and glory of
228
n flDinor t?e0tt>ential Streets. 229
Paradise should linger still, youths with love's refin
ing finger on their souls, the aged in whose hearts
the vision of the city of God is cherished expectantly.
Upon these, the multitudes of the city, rests more
than ever before the hope of humanity. They are
now the straining vanguard of mankind.
"
He who
makes the city makes the world/
7
for he makes the
environment of these, the world's workers. As this
environment is lovely and uplifting, or mean and de
pressing, as it feeds or starves the brains and spirits
whose outlook upon earth it compasses, it may be
supposed to influence the battle to help the for
ward or retrograde movement of the race. So a new
dignity, a moral quality, comes into the plea for civic
art when it touches the homes of the people.
And is there no yearning for beauty and the com
fort of peace and harmony in the home ? We recog
nise it too well to make the question deserve an
answer. The unexplained but long observed and
well-nigh unanimous growth of cities to the west
ward, by the addition to their west side of the homes
of those who are able to choose, seems like an un
conscious yielding, after the weariness and toil of
day, to the beckoning quiet and beauty of the sun
set. Is it not the constant repetition of that beaute
ous sign in the sky, when work is done, that
unconsciously calls men thither ?
Civick
art has, then, a new and higher impulse
when it comes to the homes of the workers, and it
finds a field waiting and ready. Its problem is not
230 flDofcertt Civic art
the collective, civic, and splendid, as on the great
avenues; it is not to teach and incite, as in the busi
ness district. It is to harmonise individual efforts in
order that private endeavour may serve the public
end. The exterior of your home, said Ruskin, is not
private property. So he stated, boldly and strik
ingly, a principle that has wide legal recognition
that the outside of the house and such part of the
grounds as may be seen from the street are the very
real concern of the neighbours. They, indeed, see
more of the outside of the house than does he who
dwells within it; and if he receives, or would receive,
pleasure from their homes and gardens, he should do
his share in making a contribution of his own to the
attractiveness or beauty of the street. On that firm
basis, then, of give and take a dependence some
what surer than unselfishness, if not so lovely rests
the inviting character of the minor residential street
in so far as it depends on individual homes.
And this dependence is very great. Except a
probable row of trees at either curb, the minor street
of the older residential area has seldom any feature
to give beauty to it save the abutting private pro
perty. Even the trees are not here assured. The
long bare blocks of New York, the standard
"
object
lesson," are duplicated in many other cities. It may
almost be said, in fact, that the normal residential
street of minor significance, in the central part of
great cities, is a hopeless problem aesthetically except
as private property may redeem it. There is need
n fIDinor IReefoentfal Streeta. 231
perhaps of reminder, in this assertion, that road, curb,
and sidewalk however necessary and however
excellently built appear as beautiful only to the
professional eye of a well-pleased engineer. Yet, if
a little variety be brought into their construction, if
the colour of walk and grass make pleasant contrast,
if the sidewalk in obedience to natural conditions
now and then rise a little from the level of the road,
or make slow detour in curving line to save a tree,
we shall have an effect to which at least beauty is
not so foreign as to be denied, should the develop
ment on the borders of the street be favourable. But
departures from line and level are almost uniformly
renounced in the older parts of cities.
On the outskirts and in the newer quarters, where
modern civic art has had a chance to alter old condi
tions, or to create new ones better suited to its taste,
there is not only a greater probability of street trees,
but it is likely that the topography has been changed.
There are streets here of slowly curving lines, and
thoroughfares that gradually rise and fall with the
natural surface of the ground, to the end that they
have elements of beauty in themselves. Yet even
here the larger house-grounds, made possible by the
lessened pressure at such distance from the city's
centre, impose new obligations on the residents of
the street. In fact the opportunity of the housegrounds
here to mar or improve the street's ap
pearance is thus increased.
As to trees, the subject is a large one. In the
232 flDobern Civic Brt
specific instance offered by each city there are a
hundred things to be considered. But the general
principles applicable to all towns, regardless of
whether the natural growth be the palm of Algiers,
the linden of Berlin, the acacia of Paris, or the elm of
New England,
1
are not many, and such as they are
these have been fairly summed up in the preceding
chapter. There is only this to add: Since these
minor streets seldom have space for more than a
single row of trees on each side of the road, the
trees should be planted, not directly opposite, but
alternately. So with seeming greater frequency
there may really be ample room for growth. For
these streets, too, where the buildings are not high
and are set well back from the walk, there may be
chosen trees of large growth and these should be en
couraged to grow to their full height. We shall not
fear now to seek the splendid individual specimen
nor, finding one, shall we fail to cherish it. It may
quite properly become here the feature of the view,
for the ideal development is no longer that of the
strict formalism in other portions of the town. The
very abandonment of the engineering standard, in
substituting curves for straight lines and permitting
grades where levels could have been obtained by
simply cutting and filling, invites more laxity in the
adornment with vegetation and suggests a tendency
towards naturalness. But of course even this prin-
1
Witness, as testifying to the urban value of these native trees : the Avenue
des Palmes in Algiers, Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Avenue des Acacias in Paris,
and the frequent Elm Street in New England.
n fIDinor IResfoentiai Streets, 233
ciple can be called general only in its application to
the suburban or less crowded streets. It may still
be necessary on solidly built-up thoroughfares, how
ever minor these be in the town's topography, to
have small and formal trees.
And finally there is to be emphasised again the
value of municipal control of trees. The park board,
into whose hands they are very often placed when
such control is exercised, has responsibility enough
in the squares and parks. In the fascinating pro
blems which are offered by these, and the striking
effects that can be secured in them, there is a
temptation to overlook the trees or to delegate their
care to a superintendent whose work has little over
seeing. It is safer at once to vest him with the full
responsibility, and for the city to obtain a better
officer by making the custody of the trees a distinct
department, under the charge of a warden or forester.
In the United States this is already decreed by
several State laws; and it is an interesting evidence
of the foothold of modern civic art that an intellig
ent provision for the care of these ornaments of the
street pure ornaments as they are commonly
thought to be and details of street furnishing that
the splendid cities of antiquity scarcely made a use
of, should now be forced upon towns by the laws
of states. Even "Antioch the beautiful," whose
epithet would suggest a use of the luxuriant vegeta
tion of its plain, depended for distinction on the
splendour of its palaces and temples.
234 flDofcent Civic Hrt
There are many other considerations than the
aesthetic on which to commend a planting of street
trees. Trees not only cool the air, in addition to
affording a shade that in itself is cool compared to
the sun's direct rays, but they purify it, by absorb
ing poisonous gases and giving forth oxygen. They
also tend to absorb that surplus water in the soil that
may make basements damp. It is claimed, too, that
they have a commercial value to cities, in that peo
ple remain much further into the summer in the
towns that are well planted with trees. These con
siderations, however, re-emphasise, rather than sup
plant, the entirely sufficient ground of attractiveness
on which modern civic art would urge the planting
of trees in cities. And having urged their planting,
it would urge consistently their care the safeguard
ing of their bark, while they are young, with nettings,
baskets, or iron guards, and always with stringent
ordinances; the proper nurture and protection of
their roots; and the defence of their branches from
spoliation by linemen, insects, and too vigorous
trimming.
Where there are no trees, or where they are so
poor and far between as no longer to be a factor, ex
perience would bid us assume the street to be narrow,
straight, level, and closely built up a street in the
inner system of a large city. Here the sole depend
ence for the beauty of the way must be placed on
private property. It is a discouraging condition, but
it must be bravely faced, and the individual residents,
it fBMnor 1Rc0toentlal Streets 235
who certainly have already an inducement to make
their homes attractive, are to be encouraged in the
task, that conditions may not dishearten them,
and led so to co-operate that there may be a
harmonious result and that each effect may be
heightened by its neighbours. An enthusiastic at
tempt to transform one of the solidly built-up blocks
of the borough of Brooklyn in New York into "the
block beautiful
"
is a recent and an almost pathetic
ally striking instance of the effort and its courage.
The block selected had barely a tree. The houses
were built in a solid wall, extending unbroken and
with monotonous fa9ade, from corner to corner; and
there was no possibility of lawn or flower-bed. The
plan was to secure a uniform planting of trees, and
by the co-operation of the residents to engage a
gardener who should plant vines against the houses,
and arrange and care for porch and window boxes,
the latter to be placed on the first and second stories.
The moderate measure of success attained amid even
such conditions is rich in suggestion for minor resid
ential streets. In the gay window boxes of German
cities and in those that bring so much beauty to
the dull street walls of London, this lesson is
immensely emphasised.
From such a street as described every change,
while still among private homes, must be one of
increasing opportunity. As the houses retreat from
the walk, there comes a space before them for flowers
and grass; as they draw apart from each other, there
236 lD<ftern Civic art
comes a chance for vistas of lawn, for shrubs, and
perhaps for beautiful trees on the house-lots them
selves. The front fences come down; party fences
are abandoned, at least to the building line; and the
narrow street is seemingly widened by the breadth
of the visible gardens on either side. By degrees
these play a more and more prominent part in giving
character and beauty to the street's appearance. It
is suddenly realised that the individual homes, upon
which civic art is here putting its main dependence
and for whose occupants it exists, are bearing brave
ly their part. They are making beautiful a street
that in itself had little beauty; and when, at last,
the newer portions of the town are reached, and the
street rises and falls with the gentle undulation of the
natural surface, or winds and curves in lines that are
essentially beautiful, it is observed that every chang
ing view-point, every angle, offers a new glimpse of
private ground with its opportunity to enhance or
lessen the beauty of the street.
In these portions of the city even the minor street
will often widen enough to admit of parking. But
the dependence on the house-lots will not vanish
under such conditions, though it be no longer com
plete. Until there is the parking which is street
gardening by the community, local or municipal
civic art has no task more urgent than the guidance
of private taste, which is to say its persuasion into
harmonious action, its aesthetic education, or the in
struction of those whose taste is already refined but
n fBMnor IResifcential Streets. 237
whose practical experience is slight. Therein lies
the opportunity of the societies for outdoor art, and
on this need rests their popularity. They are making
known the one great modern feature of our civic art
which is of a personal concern to every householder.
They are teaching the lesson of the use of vegetation,
and its use when necessary in subordination to the
general weal, that can be learned by no conning of
the civilisations of the past. With their every wisely
taken step these carry forward the march of modern
civic art.
Regarding the lessons to be taught, there must
again be limitation here to the most general prin
ciples. The local conditions that may properly ex
aggerate or modify desired results do so too naturally
to need a notice, even were it possible to speak speci
fically of every varying locality with its different flora.
It means much for civic art that considerations so
abstract and large as "general principles" should
have a popular attention, and that the immediate and
showy effects of contrasted colours and carpet bed
ding should be relinquished for those quieter effects
which are indeed of untiring loveliness, but which
require for full appreciation a more cultured taste,
and for anticipation a trained mind. Modern civic
art, considered in the abstract, has nothing more press
ing to do for the improvement of the minor residen
tial streets than the popularising of those general
principles of landscape design that may be applied to
the house-lot in the city.
238 flDobern CMc art
In briefly condensed statement, these principles
require the massing and grouping of shrubs in
boundary plantations, and the clearance of the lawn
thereby of the spotted and unstudied planting which
is commonly the first expression of outdoor art
ambition. Value is placed on the quiet and beauty
of an unbroken lawn, bounded where necessary with
belts of foliage that break hard lines by an undulating
edge reflecting the varying width of the border plant
ation. This plantation will screen all necessary but
unattractive structures, and may take the place of
a fence even of a front fence where privacy is
desirable, as it often is. A hedge is better than a
fence, but an irregular belt of planting is better than
a hedge. The border will have an irregular sky
line, and on its lawn face will taper down almost to
the grass the lower-growing plants being placed
in front. This border will have such variety of foli
age and flower as to be a lovely feature in itself.
Into its bays or openings a herbaceous or hardy
flower border may at times be pressed, while the
lawn left clear, perhaps as far back as the house
will seem to give to the latter a statelier setting and
to add no little width both to street and house-lot.
The service yard, at back or side, will be screened
from the street; and where the house rises from
the ground an edging of shrubs, again in lines of
natural irregularity, will break the harsh contrast and
hard angle between lawn and structure, wedding
them in a lovely union. Now and again, but usu-
it fIDtnor IResibential Streets. 239
ally in a place so sequestered as regards the street
that it will not affect the latter's appearance, there
may be an opportunity for formal gardening. More
often there will be a carriage road to provide; but
this our landscape designer considers, however neces
sary, little better than an evil and renders as incon
spicuous as possible.
The use of trees, in groups or singly; the utilisa
tion of beautiful or noble specimens which may
already stand upon the lot; the planting of vines
that their graceful drapery may clothe bare walls,
soften sharp corners, or bring new beauty and picturesqueness
to piazza, porch, and balcony, all these
are details that will suggest themselves so powerfully
in each specific case, and require such distinct de
cisions, that there is no need to emphasise them
here. It is only to be said, as another general prin
ciple of landscape art, that the vine should be used
with restraint, in remembrance that the architectural
effect of a structure should not be sacrificed to the
beauty of a luxuriant vine-growth. The vine may
be lovely in itself and may bring into the structure a
gentleness that the architect failed to secure; but we
must not create, as the total of our composition, an
apparent substructure of fluttering leaves to support
an upper story of stone or brick. Nor can the vine
always
"
be left to grow in its own wilful way/' It
may need to be watched carefully and trained.
The main points that civic art would urge, in con
sidering the house-lots in their capacity for bringing
240 fIDobcrn Civic art
beauty to the street, may now be summarised.
They are: (i) that it is not enough that the house
and its grounds be even neat and orderly, essential
to street beauty as these qualities are; (2) that in
attempt to secure positive beauty there be regard
for the elementary principles of landscape art; (3)
that with such regard there be some harmony, if
not actual co-operation, among neighbours, so that
every individual effect may have the support of all
the others; (4) and as partly explaining the first and
third requirements, that there be remembrance that it
is the street, and even the town as far as may be,
which we are to make more beautiful; and thus that
the problem of our outdoor art, at this point, is not
merely that of a garden, or of shrubbery, or of
wedding a house to its site or of giving to it a beauti
ful setting; but is the larger, more difficult, more
virile, and inspiring one of civic beauty. In this,
pre-eminently, art must be founded upon rationality
and fitness, and its triumph must be democratic.
In those undertakings for municipal aesthetics
which have their roots in sociology, there has lately
been much emphasis on the
"
improvement
"
of back
yards. The back yard is a problem that sociology
cannot overlook, and even from the standpoint of
landscape art it may offer an area equal to that which
is clearly visible from the street. If it does, the rules
to be applied are not very different. They are modi
fied by the probable necessity of setting aside a por
tion for a service yard, and by the greater desirability
n fIDinor ^Residential Streets* 241
of privacy, with the increased opportunity thus given
for the expression of individuality. From the stand
point of civic art, the back yard has significance only
on the theory that our municipal aesthetics are some
thing more comprehensive than art dans la rue; that
they concern not simply the aspect of the city, as
the stranger may see it in superficial examination, but
that they are to enter into the very structure of the
town, refining the home as well as the avenue, and
changing the unseen as well as the visible. And of
course the back yards of a community do affect the
view from the house windows, and so have in them
the possibility of adding to the beauty and attractive
ness of the city in the eyes of its citizens and the
guests in its homes. Here, however, civic art treads
close on the rights of privacy, and it would do no
more than urge in a general way a study of the prin
ciples of good design and a respect, not perhaps for
the rights, but for what may be the privileges, of
neighbours.
The landscape treatment of a street which has a
strip reserved for parking on each side of the road is
a problem entirely distinct from the development of
street beauty by means of the house-lots. The de
pendence is not now quite so completely upon them;
civic art has before it a task that partakes much more
of a community character, since the expressions of
individualism should clearly enter but little into park
ing. The work on the reserved strip is to be done
by the municipality through one or another of its
16
242 fIDobcrn Civic Hrt
departments, or by the residents of the street acting
as a group, for surely it were a mistake to divide a
section of the public street into parcels and then
abandon each to the whim or neglect of an individual.
There is offered in the centre, or more frequently
on each side of the road between the road and
walk, a strip that is not dedicated to travel This
should be developed as a ribbon of loveliness that,
laid lengthwise from street's end to street's end, or
as far as the eye can see, will so stamp its character
on the thoroughfare as to make it beautiful. Thus is
parking a new privilege, which has been given only
to modern civic art, and one rich in opportunities.
The long strip on residential streets where travel
is not heavy will surely be planted with turf, and the
most prominent objects upon it will be the trees.
These will be planted here, for their roots will have
a better chance for nurture than where pavement and
walk shut out moisture from the ground. The posi
tion of the trees is usually in a formal row, with
regular intervals between as the commoner ideal for
city planting. But it sometimes happens where there
is parking that they may stand in little groups of two
or three. Especially may this be done when the
trees antedate the street. When such groups are
found, it might probably be that the appearance of
the street would be more hurt than aided by their
removal. This group planting is not as favourable
for symmetry, but it will permit, with its greater
naturalness, the use of several varieties of trees,
n minor IResibential Streets. 243
while a row requires uniformity for good effect. Much
will depend, of course, on the style of the treatment
given to the strip of parking. The thing that civic
art would note is the opportunity for "natural
"
de
velopment, if this be desired.
In addition to the trees that now rise from neatly
kept turf, it will often be well to plant the strip with
shrubbery or flowers. Where there is "natural"
treatment, the trees may rise from masses of foliage
as they so frequently do in nature; and when the
treatment is strictly formal, the shrubs or flowers will
lend themselves readily to the composition. The
streets, however, on which flowers are expected to
bloom need to be secluded, and far removed from
those sections of the city where flowers are rare, lest
their beauty prove too great a temptation and be de
spoiled. The shrubs, too, are not available except
when the strip of parking has considerable width, for
it is important that they should not overhang walk
or road, and if they be planted too near the curb
horses will nibble at them. At corners, also, they
must be of low growth lest, by shutting out the
view, they invite collisions. And yet, even with
these restrictions, they are frequently used, immensely
adorning and beautifying the street so that it ceases
to seem a public way a means of public communi
cation only and appears rather as a lovely avenue
in park or private grounds. But the original function
of the street is still served admirably the better,
indeed, for the pleasant change in its character.
flDofcern Civic art.
For what is the function of the minor street in the
residential section, if it be not, as far as each in
dividual is concerned, to prove a prolongation, for the
public convenience, of his garden walk ? It is the
connection between his home and the great arteries
of the city; but it is something more than only a line
of communication. It is to be as pleasant a line as
possible; it is to soothe the tired spirit and delight
the eye; to carry the word
"
Home "
far out to meet
him when he comes, and to take it with him, with
lingering caress, when he departs. It is, in its multi
plication, to delight with beauty the thousands in
the city who still have eyes to see and ears to hear
and appreciation of the beautiful. So its influence is
to be refining and elevating, and the little children
who play upon it are unconsciously to drink in beauty
that will make strong their souls, and that perhaps
will repay the city a thousand times in the making
of better citizens and the nurturing of genius.
It is a moving, almost a dramatic, circumstance
that in the beautiful adjustment to this beautiful end
and is not that the sum of civic art ? there should
be need to put so much dependence upon the people
themselves. We have, too, to realise that civic art,
even in this its gentler phase, is not sentiment, but is
merely the right fitting of this part of the city to its
real urban purpose of home making. That fact gives
assurance of a success, if men be true to their ideals,
that may be hastened, but which we cannot, if we
would, arrest.
CHAPTER XIII.
AMONG THE TENEMENTS.
SOCIAL
problems are to a large degree problems
of environment. This with increasing posi_
tiveness is the conclusion of modern scientific
study into the depths of sociology. Give to the boy
and girl a chance; make it possible for them to work
off sheer animal energy in harmless amusements;
render homes pleasant, and satisfy the craving of
men for brightness, entertainment, and fellowship
without throwing them into temptation ;
let an
abundance of fresh air and sunshine into living and
sleeping rooms, and the slum will be ancient history
and many of sociology's hardest problems will be
solved. The Juvenile Court would not have busi
ness enough to keep it going; the saloon would have
its vigour sapped by a substitute; the hospitals
would not require constant multiplication. There
would be more of manliness; there would be purer
souls, for there would be less temptation; there
would be saner minds because of stronger bodies,
245
246 flDobern
Civic art
And out of depressing social conditions grow polit
ical evils. In the city slum smoulders the fire which
breaks forth in revolution; in the conditions of the
slum are bred those iniquities of politics or the
circumstances which make them possible that may
render revolution justifiable.
Corrective rather than punitive measures have
long been the goal of sociology. The ounce of pre
vention weighs far more than the pound of cure
even if there be cure, which is always doubtful
where there are human lives to be saved, where
are concerned citizens, where souls as well as bodies
must be fed or starved. Obliterate the slum of the
city, and shall we not in very truth see "a new
heaven and a new earth ... the holy city, new
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven ?
"
No two opinions can exist regarding the desira
bility of the slum's abolishment. The question is
whether it can be abolished. We may certainly
dream of remedying its worst features, and we must
act as well as dream; but when all is said and done,
is not the slum, in an improved form, a necessary
evil of city life ?
Modern civic art, pausing at the threshold of the
tenement section of a city, is confronted by that
question. It would be sane and practical, whatever
the loss of lovely visions; and yet it would be true
to itself. In the scientific rebuilding or creation of a
city, it would produce a genuine work of art, and
can it permit one such blot, such fatal blemish, on
among tbe enement0* 247
its product ? The city or town of large population
will surely include the very poor. To house these
comfortably, to bring into their lives as much of sun
shine and innocent pleasure as possible, to keep
them in touch with the great pulsing life of the busy
city where the might and joyousness of its industry
shall reach and thrill them, to give to the children
space to play, to the babies and mothers fresh air
and quiet, to make the homes not only livable but
attractive, to awaken ambition, to encourage the
love of the beautiful would not this, this glorious
aggregate, be the first task that civic art would un
dertake? And behold! The old charm has again
proved true; the magic road to happiness seems
ever to lead in an oblique direction: we would
take the first steps to help the residents of the slum,
and before we finish the slum is gone!
Comfortably to house the very poor this was to
be an early step in the procedure. Here sociology
joins hands with civic art in most earnest endeavour;
but it will find some preliminary steps that it must
take by itself. To secure better housing, there must
be less crowding, and to gain that result two courses
of action are open. Both must be availed of. There
must, on the one hand, be furnished a vent that will
make it possible for the homes of the poorest work
ers to cover an enlarged area. On the other hand,
some of the workers must be drawn away, if possi
ble, to another centre than that limited district
against which the trade, industry, and wealth of the
248 fIDobern Civic Hrt
city is forever pounding in pitilessly encroaching
waves. For the residue, always the more numerous
portion, that still remains, new and better conditions
are to be devised.
To enlarge the area available for tenements, there
must be cheap rapid-transit. These workers are
compelled to live near in time to their employment.
From the nomadism of the push cart to the fixedness
of shop or fruit-stand, there is requirement that the
home of the worker be of quick and easy accessibil
ity. As competition is keener and hours of labour
are longer in the descending scale of employment, it
becomes more and more essential economically that
home and work be near. Civic art must give up any
idea, however attractive, of bringing the poor from
green fields to daily labour in the city's heart. Either
the labour must be removed to the fields, or the
workman must be housed in the city in close prox
imity to his work. He has no time for a long trip
and no money to pay for it The rapid-transit
offered, then, must be to aid the poorest of the
cheapest and most rapid.
There is no means of conveyance as cheap as
walking. If this mode of progress can be accelerated
by giving direct lines and streets so broad that there
are no crowds to obstruct the pedestrian, then,
clearly, the area available for the homes of those who
must live near their labour has been much extended,
and the congestion may be partially relieved. At
the same time, the broadened thoroughfares can be
Hmong tfoe tenements. 249
made pleasant, cool, and refreshing in summer with
the shade of trees and with the air musical with the
ripple of running water. The relation of the city
plan to the tenement district becomes thus manifest,
and there is revealed a need of the same diagonal
thoroughfares that were so convenient a feature
of the well planned business district and, for
pretty much the same reasons as here, so necessary a
device for the framework of the general residential
area.
Now, if these diagonals through the poorer sec
tions of the city be only those constituting the main
urban structure, we shall gain several unfortunate
results. First, they will not form appropriately
pleasant approaches to the better residential quarters;
second, because they are diagonal arterial thorough
fares leading directly to the focal points of the city,
they will offer to business so irresistible an invitation
that it will sweep through them, probably destroying
the trees that had been planted to make them cool
and pleasant, congesting the broad walks so that
progress is retarded, and, as if each were a main
outlet stream from the tumultuous sea of the business
centre, bursting the banks and overflowing in rivulets
on the side streets, to the increase of pressure against
the tenement district and to the wresting of territory
from that space which is already so cramped. The
probability of this second result is to be considered
on those occasions, which will therefore be rare,
when it would seem well to purge a degraded
250 flDofcern Civic Hrt
district by thrusting through it a broad stream of
business traffic.
There is need, then, of a distinct street system.
The framework of this should consist of independent
diagonals converging on local centres that will be
just off the main lines of the general urban plot but
with direct communication with them. These local
centres might appropriately be open spaces, de
veloped as playgrounds for the children to whom
city streets were else the total of "all outdoors."
And, however developed, such spaces would be airwells,
deserving the name of lungs in city anatomy,
and located precisely where they would benefit the
greatest number of people. To streets converging to
such centres and independent of the main system of
the city, business would be little drawn. The thor
oughfares could be made as broad and pleasant as
desired, and yet they would form cutting through
this district in diagonal lines and converging on
points that are just off the main highways of the
city direct channels of approach to the streets
where work is done. The labourer might live much
farther in space from his work, while no less near in
time, for instead of narrow, crowded, tortuous streets
through which slowly to make his way, he could now
advance to it by swift and easy strides, unimpeded,
and on the shortest lines. So there would be a little
more of pleasantness brought into his daily life and a
little less of crowding into his surroundings the
latter the first essential to better housing. So, too,
Hmong tbe tenements. 25*
this portion of the city would be better adapted to
its purely urban requirement, and that is the goal of
civic art.
The second step to relieve the crowding was to be
the absolute withdrawal of such portions as possi
ble of the tenement population from the necessarily
limited area available for its housing in and near the
city's heart. Since it is essential that those in
the lower scales of employment shall live close to the
workshop, the workshop must itself be removed.
For many forms of employment, notably manufacture,
there are fortunately advantages to the employer as
well as to the employee in removal. The cheaper
land values, for instance, the pleasanter and wholesomer
natural surroundings, the consequent better
physical condition of the employees, and the lessened
distractions to tempt them (with a resulting greater
steadiness in labour as well as capacity for it) offer
in the aggregate powerful economic inducements to
employers for removal whenever satisfactory trans
portation facilities can be arranged. As a result,
industrial suburbs are now springing up where the
habitable area is not closely limited in short, on the
outer rims of cities, precisely where significantly
enough the British Garden City Association has
designed in its model towns to put them.
These manufacturing suburbs, especially when
they have grown around a single industry so afford
ing to the humanity and public spirit of a few persons
an opportunity to achieve substantial results, are
252 flDofcern Civic art
often developed on very artistic lines. Thus they
are fraught with much less danger than might be
fancied to the residential portions of the town. In
the first place, the more exclusive and fashionable
quarters will be shunned owing to the greater cost
of land. In the second place, the area over which
the plants can be scattered is so enormously increased
large establishments may locate as far as twenty
miles from great cities that there is none of the
former crowding with its attendant evils. Finally,
the taking place of the movement has been coincident
with a more scientific regard for town construction,
while the very spur to it is so largely found in the
wish to secure surroundings that are pleasanter and
wholesomer that the factory itself, now vine-covered
and garden-surrounded, is less to be dreaded. The
homes and street surroundings of the residents,
earners of low wages though these be, are rendered
attractive and even beautiful. In fact, the residents
no longer represent a tenement population. They
are that population transplanted, and not merely
transplanted but thereby transformed, and their
homes are no longer tenements in the usually ac
cepted sense.
The point to be made here, then, is only this:
that the act of removal is a blessing to the real tene
ment quarters even when influenced by economic
considerations alone; while frequently it is really an
achievement of that phase of civic art which finds its
incentive in a sociological impulse. The popular
among tbe tenements. 253
lectures in England on the housing question, that
were endowed by a legacy of the late Earl of Shaftesbury,
take, for example, the removal of manufactures
to the suburbs of cities as the panacea they especially
commend.1
This is also the main hope of relief held
out by Dr. Weber in his exhaustive study of the
growth of cities.
2
Pressure in the tenement district having been
relieved as far as practicable, both by the withdrawal
of some of the population and by the enlargement
of the available area, we have to consider the im
provement of the district's internal conditions that it
may be as little of a blot as possible on the city.
Where there are concentrated so many elements of
picturesqueness, civic art should certainly secure some
contribution to the interest and charm of the city; and
where so large a portion of its population finds a
hon e,
3
it is under particular obligation, moral and
social, to make life not merely bearable but pleasant.
1
Striking illustrations may be pointed out of this new industrial movement in,
for example, Port Sunlight, England, with its model cottages, its allotment gardens,
garden plots, and flower shows; in Cadbury's Bourneville Village Trust, just out of
Birmingham; in the Krupp city of Essent Germany; in the Westinghouse com
munity near Pittsburg; in the transformation wrought by the National Cash Re
gister Company at Dayton, Ohio; and in the developments at the Acme White Lead
and Colour Works, Detroit, where there has been adopted the motto,
" Take hold
and lift," The success of these settlements indicates that industrial regard for civic
aesthetics is not a concession to sentimental impulse on the part of manufacturers
who are willing, for its sake, to sacrifice something of efficiency; but that it is
a phase of the effort to secure the latter. It is based on a recognition of the fact that
the labourer is a better workman if the environment of home and shop be shorn of
dreariness; if his higher impulses be fed, not starved, and he be made more man and
less machine.
*
The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century, by Adna Ferrin Weber.
8
It is not unusual in large cities for half of the population to live in tenements,
using the word in even its narrower sense.
254 flDofcern Civic Hrt
It should be understood, of course, that the tene
ment population is really of as many gradations as
that in the other residential areas; and we have to
assume in scientific city-building that there has been
a constant drawing away, from the small and con
gested tenement district, of the upper stratum of
the population. The influx is at the bottom; the in
ternal effort, so far as it exceeds a mere struggle for
existence, is to rise; and the removals are from the
top. This is a discouraging condition as far as the
abolishing of the slum is concerned, though one full
of encouragement in its broader humanitarian aspect.
The upper stratum when drawn away is scattered
about the city, in a higher grade of apartment houses
or tenements, standing by themselves and inhabited
by those whose work is in their neighbourhood.
It does not create a new tenement district; and
thus the reference to such an area is to be under
stood as applying simply to the section of the city in
which are huddled its poorest citizens and where the
city's aspect is normally most dismal and depressing.
By artificial means of .rapid-transit, the withdrawal
and dissipation of the upper stratum may be con
siderably facilitated, pedestrianism being happily not
the sole resource. But even with the best facilities
there is little chance of more than balancing the in
flow with the out-take, and the district is yet to be
considered.
A right conception of the municipality's obligation
to its residents would insure, as it now is insuring,
among tfoe tenements. 255
though rather through considerations of hygiene
and sociology than those of political justice, the
supplementing of good street planning with im
proved surface treatment. Broad walks are more
necessary here than broad roadways, although this
change in conditions is almost never recognised in
the street's development. Even the pavement,
where so much of life is spent on the street, will
be largely used as a floor, and cleanliness is a prime
necessity.
In this part of the city, then, modern civic art,
largely because it is modern, must concern itself
with the rudiments of city-building. A convenient
and potentially beautiful arrangement of streets; the
broadening of the main thoroughfares in order that
there may be easy progress through them, that they
may be made pleasant with trees, and that they at
least may allow the free circulation of air; the broad
ening of the walks; and the most improved surface
development of the streets the paving of the road
ways with asphalt and their frequent flushing, and
the provision when possible of a central strip on the
main highways where the trees shall stand and a
pleasant walk may pass beneath them all these
quite elementary steps will be the goal of civic art
itself and logically will precede the attempts at better
housing. As to the location of the reserved strip, it
may be well to point out the advantages in this
district of placing the trees in the centre of the road
way instead of at the curbs. First, the arrangement
256 flDofcern Civic art
is better for the trees. They will have more room
for symmetrical development than if placed at the
curb, for the houses will be built flush with the
street leaving only the walk's width between tree
and house; their trunks will be subject to less fre
quent and less serious injury, while there will be
also a better opportunity for the nourishment of the
roots, both by enriching the soil and by the ground's
absorption of moisture. Second, it will be better for
the residents, since trees planted at the curb if
they did flourish would darken the houses. Third,
it will be better for the appearance of the streets,
individually and collectively individually because
the trees will grow better, and collectively because
open space will be united with open space by a belt
of green instead of standing as isolated, disjointed
oases without seeming connection or structural
naturalness. Fourth, and finally, the arrangement
will be better because of its division of the traffic
into separate streams of opposite direction, to the
considerable increase of rapidity.
On the central strips of this district there should
be no attempt to provide turf. They should be
great bare playgrounds overhung with trees, and so
stretched out that every portion of the area may
have one which is readily accessible. Through the
middle of them there should run a broad walk, with
crown enough to keep it dry, and with seats at
close intervals on its edges. If there be surface
traction on the street, it should not be suffered to
Hmong tfoe 3enement0 257
trespass on this middle space that will prove so
precious to the children. Once on the middle strip,
they should be as safe as in a designated play
ground. Finally, the strip must be well lighted, that
it may be as safe at night for adults as in the day
time for the children.
Coming now to the housing question, a subject
is approached that has immense importance, an al
most baffling complexity, and absorbing interest. A
student of the problem who is also an active settle
ment worker has written, after a sojourn in England
among those who are trying to solve it, that he
could not escape a feeling that the country is
"
a bit
hysterical" on this matter; but he adds that un
doubtedly "England has no municipal problem
paramount to that of housing," and that "in New
York and one or two other American cities
"
the ex
isting evils are not less flagrant.
1
We have first to
remind ourselves, then, that our own subject is not
sociology but civic art. The themes merge again
and again a fact that is the chief glory of the
modern conception of civic aesthetics so that the
distinctions have sometimes to be purely arbitrary.
We may reasonably assert, however, that civic art
need concern itself only with the outward aspect of
the houses, and therefore that for such details
sociologically pressing though they are as sunless
bedrooms, dark halls and stairs, foul cellars, danger
ous employments, and an absence of bathrooms,
1
See Municipal Affairs, voL vl, No 3.
258 flDofcern Civic Hrt
civic art has no responsibility, however earnestly it
deplores them.
In the first place, it should be observed that in
the tenement district mere density of population is
not a sure indication of overcrowding that is, the
number of persons per acre may rise without a cor
responding increase in wretchedness and, it may
even be, with a bettering of conditions. A surer
test is the ratio between the population and the floor
area. On the broader streets of the district, civic
art, recognising that a very dense population must
be cared for, will advocate the erection of higher
buildings, if there be sufficient fire protection. For
the two or three upper floors of a series of tall build
ings, or for a very large structure, it should be
possible to provide elevator service. The halls on
the upper stories of such a series of buildings could
be connected so that one elevator would serve them
all, and the greater height above the ground would
thus involve no hardships that had not full com
pensation in the lessened noise from the street and
the better air. It may be expected also that the
large buildings, representing a greater investment,
will be better constructed.
On the side streets the dependence will be mainly
on strict adherence to a tenement-house building
law that has been framed in obedience to enlight
ened opinions and humanitarian purposes. This will
demand that a reasonable proportion of each lot
shall be left free from building. Such requirement
among tfoe {Tenements. 259
gives a chance for air wells and for light
1
The
method of constructing the "model tenements/'
whether by the municipality, as so frequently in
Great Britain; or by co-operative societies, as famili
arly on the Continent; or exclusively by private
capital, as in the United States, is not a problem for
civic art. It has to be concerned with the more
serious question of whether these houses intended
for the very poor are really occupied by them, and
not by people of superior means and less need.
There will be danger that the latter, attracted thither
by low rents, comfortable quarters, and pleasant sur
roundings, may drive out those of greatest poverty
for whom all this had been devised. This is not an
easy thing to regulate; but if the city be so planned
and built up, and its wise ordinances so enforced,
that there are no rookeries, that there is nothing
worse than this to which the poor can go, it still
will succeed in its general purpose. For then, if
driven forth from here, they would only be scattered,
faring no worse wherever they went as far as lodg
ing goes.
There is, however, one step that may be taken
of which the tendency will be a restriction of resid
ence in the district to the class for whom the district
is designed. And in most cases this designing, we
should remember, is not a theoretical allotment of
space, but will be simply a readjustment, to increase
1
The ordinance adopted in New York, after the Tenement House Commission
had reported in 1896, designated one-fourth, an amount subsequently increased to
thirty per cent.
260 flDofcem Civic art
the comfort of those already quartered there. This
step will be based on the circumstance, not less true
in London than in any city of America, that the low
est stratum of society is largely made up of foreign
ers. In the effort not so much to naturalise them
as, rather, to conform them to an accepted type of the
native poor, the usual depressing effects are secured.
The ideal is low; the hearts of the subjects cannot
be in it, for it is alien as well as wretched, and only
miserable results are obtained. On the other hand,
there are in this population extraordinary elements
of urban picturesqueness. Representations of the
home life of the poor of all the Continent of Europe
and of half of Asia may easily be huddled on six
hundred feet of street-front in London, Chicago, or
New York. In each city, too, there are neighbour
hoods given up to the settlers from a single distant
land and called foreign "colonies/
7
But all the
picturesqueness and as much as possible of the
romance have been crushed out of these, and one
would hardly know, save for rich complexions, that
here was "Little Italy"; and, save for queues, that
there was "Chinatown."
Now if, instead of crushing the natural instincts
and starving the national longings, these were frankly
catered to by the city, in so far as they violated no
broadly conceived laws, or just standards of morality,
there would be developed here altogether the most
interesting section of the town. To accomplish this
and so to add much to the happiness of the people
EmoitQ tbe ^Tenements, 261
as well as to the interest of the city., the municipality
could well afford to be liberal in the local interpreta
tion of its regular ordinances. And having once
developed here the street features that respectively
make the German, Italian, Frenchman, and Chinaman
entirely at home in the street, there would be much
less danger that more prosperous natives would come
back to a quarter where they could not feel at home,
even though it had been successfully transformed for
*,
the comfort of the poor.
Much is said of the necessity of assimilation in a
city; but if the ideal of the happy and prosperous
classes of their own home beyond the sea be put
before these people, instead of that of the lowest
stratum of the native population, and the philanthropical
forces of the community co-operate in
the work, there is hardly room for doubt that better
citizens would be made. Incidentally, they would be
happier, and that is a factor. It should be said, too,
that all the time the city will be impressing its
own individuality on the district. On every piece
of municipal apparatus even here the city's stamp
will appear; and by reiteration there will arise a con
sciousness and love of that abstract thing, the city,
as surely as the love of the concrete neighbourhood,
just as the flag, flying everywhere, comes to be loved
as the symbol of the nation, so this insignia will be
loved because it stands for a loved city, apprehended
by this means as the all-embracing entity. And
sentiment, in this part of the town particularly, is
262 flDofcern Civic art
the most powerful offerees for social and civic good
or ill.
With the housing problem civic art, its attention
on the outward aspect of the town, has little further
to do. In the quarter or more of the building lot
which the law will require to be left open, it may
find a chance for the development of a court or back
yard; but unless several of these adjoin one another
the opportunity will be small and it must, at best, be
individual, not affecting the urban prospect from the
street. The plotting of the thoroughfares, their sur
face development, and the treatment of the open
spaces upon which they are to focus constitute the
proper problems of municipal aesthetics in adapting
to its purpose that part of the town where dwell the
poorest citizens. The treatment of the squares now
alone remains to be discussed.
In plotting the open spaces, suggestion was made
that they might be developed as much-needed play
grounds in a section densely populated with children
and far removed from the country, or from those
roomier portions of the town where private gardens
dress the streets with beauty and afford space for
play. It was said that, at all events, they would
prove breathing places where the people of close
streets and narrow quarters might come for air and
rest and freedom. The questions now are whether
they should be anything more than vacant areas, left
bare that children may romp at will, or, possibly,
furnished with gymnasium apparatus; or whether,
among tbe tenements. 263
on the other hand, there should be attempts to make
them beautiful; and, in the latter case, the kind of
beauty to be sought.
If it be assumed that the plot of the tenement dis
trict shows a number of open spaces separated by
little distance, there will be much to recommend
variety in the treatment. The district will include
people of a variety of taste in recreation, and while
at least one open space may be developed as a play
ground and furnished with swings, outdoor gym
nasium apparatus, a wading pool, and a public
comfort house, and with numerous seats for the
mothers, another, with equal reasonableness, may
have a band-stand as its dominating motif, while a
third, perhaps no less popular and certainly no less
loved, will be a garden spot gay with flowers and
beautiful with stretches of greensward and great
trees.
The first two types of development hardly require
pleading or apology. If there be fear that the third
be not quite worth while lest it be not fully appreci
ated among the tenements, assurance may be drawn
from facts and figures collected by Jacob A. Riis, the
most sympathetic of tenement students, and one
thoroughly reliable. He refers in one of his latest
studies, the story of the "Ten Years' War "
to better
social conditions among the poor of New York, to a
finding of the Tenement House Commission. This
showed "three hundred and twenty-four thousand
persons living out of sight and reach of a green spot
264 fIDofcem Civic Srt
of any kind/' sorely an evidence of unwise city
planning, and a condition for civic art to shudder at.
When an open space had been created among the
huddled homes of this population, he describes the
significant spectacle of children "gazing in rapt ad
miration at the poor show of a dozen geraniums and
English ivy plants, in pots on the window-sill of the
overseer's cottage/' adding that "they stood for ten
minutes at a time resting their eyes upon them. In
the crowd were aged women and bearded men.
They moved slowly, when crowded out, looking
back many times at the enchanted spot." Referring
to a playground in Chicago, Riis suggests the civilis
ing influence of a bit of nature's beauty.
' '
The police
lieutenant," he says,
"
has had a tree called after him.
The boys that did that used to be terrors. Now they
take care of the trees. They plead for a low limb
that is in the way, that no one may cut it off." In
the aristocratic portions of the town, few would care
if a troublesome limb were removed, and the citizens
would not think to name a tree for their hero.
For such truly appreciative spirits as these should
civic art's republic be created. If there be induce
ment to bring beauty into the city for the sake of
those who may find it by travel if it be not around
their homes, how much more is there inducement to
provide it for those who hunger for it and have no
other place to seek it; for those who, having hun
gered, feast upon such as is given, finding a banquet
in crumbs! And how much more than merely sense
tbc {tenements. 265
satisfaction they gain from it ! The assertion is made
(by Dr. L S. Rowe *) that
"
at the present time the
attractiveness of the saloon is greatly enhanced by
reason of the uninviting appearance of the streets in
certain of our large cities. . . . The distinction
between good and bad citizenship runs parallel with
the line of division between the wholesome and in
jurious use of leisure." The opportunities in cities
for the elevating and healthful use of leisure ought,
then, to be readily accessible and abundant.
The square that is given over to planting for
beauty's sake should have many seats in it, that its
enjoyment may be encouraged. It should be well
lighted, for light is the best policeman, as Emerson
said, and that depredations be not too easy perenni
als should here be used as freely as possible. But
in such planting in this quarter, brilliant effects are to
be sought and there must be a sequence of bloom, so
that from the first violet and earliest crocus to the
latest aster no week may lack its blossoms to gladden
drooping spirits and brighten dull surroundings.
From this point of view, the distribution of seeds and
bulbs among the poor, that they may have window
boxes, is of interest to civic art for other than merely
the decorative effect of the blooms when seen from
the street.
As to the band-stand, the Bethnal Green improve
ment in London offers a suggestion not merely for
the placing of the stand but for that convergence of
1
University of Pennsylvania.
266 flDofcent Civic art
streets to the open space as a focal centre, which
was to be a feature of the topography of the area.
Here the band-stand is in the centre of a space an
acre or more in extent. The area is encircled by
a street, and from this belting thoroughfare seven
streets radiate, connecting the area closely with the
general street system of the district.
1
These new
streets were made forty to sixty feet wide, taking
the place of old eighteen-foot streets. The band
stand is on a terraced mound, secured by dumping
the earth obtained from digging the foundations
of the neighbouring municipal tenements, with a
result not only artistically effective but much more
economical than if it had been carted away. Here,
when the band plays, there is a great outpouring of
people from all around; and it may be doubted
whether, even among the music-loving Italians who
throng the Piazza St. Marco on a music night and
make it "the gayest scene in Europe," there is more
of real enjoyment than among these poor East-enders
of London when, a stone's throw from their homes,
they sit among the flowers and listen to a band.
It has been a reproach hurled often against our
modern cities that they have a tenement problem;
that the conditions of modern industry bring to the
city far greater numbers than can be comfortably
handled there, so that men and women and children
are huddled together like animals, all the beauty
1
The Rethnal Green improvement, it should be remembered, was not on the
original plot; but was a late transformation of a badly congested district, requiring
an artificial connection with its surroundings.
Hmona tfoe tenements. 267
crushed out of their lives, and no sunshine left to
them save such as God had put into their hearts.
But this crowding of the poor is not a new evil of
urban life. In the multiplication of cities it is more
far-reaching than ever before; but there has never
been a city that did not have it. The civic art of
other times has closed its eyes to this condition.
Let us make the municipality fair and great, it has
said, stately in those showier parts by which men
judge of cities. Here let the poor take their ease
and, forgetful of the wretched homes they leave, re
joice in the prosperity they may see but cannot touch,
and be proud that they are citizens. Because that for
mer civic art was thus aristocratic, because it sought to
provide beauty for the few, to the neglect and disre
gard of the many, there was coincident with it much
of iniquity in the lower circles of urban life and of
corruption in the higher. To be enduring and effect
ive, in the best sense of those terms, civic art must
be democratic, and the desire to be that brings with
it the problem of the tenement district.
Modern civic art may not have solved the pro
blem, but it has a dream of doing so. It has dared
to acknowledge the existence of, and then has had
the courage to try to remedy, that evil which the
civic art of other times did not admit. Until the
municipality is beautiful in every portion; until there
is a complete adaptation to purposes and functions;
until its citizens, the lowly as well as the rich, are
rendered as comfortable as municipal science and
268 Civic Hrt
humanity can make them, modern civic art will scorn
to call its conquest complete. That is why a discus
sion of the tenement district is necessary now as
well as possible in considering civic art, and that it is
discussed is the highest glory of that art
THE CITY AT LARGE.
CHAPTER XIV.
COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING.
IN
the development of an artistically built city,
problems have appeared within problems. It
has been found necessary to divide the city
into parts, according to the purposes it serves; and
each of these parts has presented a question of de
velopment by itself, while the great, all-embracing
urban problem has proved to be the co-ordination
of these into a single scheme comprehensive and
harmonious. We come now, in the building and
placing of certain large institutions, to a series of
problems that are most attractive and interesting.
They stand by themselves, unhampered by require
ments of close conformity to conditions around them,
asking only for the city's beauty's sake that
they have the loveliest and stateliest solution that
may be found.
There is evidence of progress in the perception
that the problems are collective in a recognition that
their sum is far more than an architectural question.
271
272 fIDoDern Civic Ert
For merely to build with an eye to beauty, while
itself a forward step, is the first one to be taken;
but first to place well and then to build well
shows a yet further advance.
"
Man," says Bacon,
"comes to build stately sooner than garden finely,
as if gardening were the greater perfection"; and
John Addington Symonds, writing of the Renaiss
ance in Italy, remarks, "Architecture is always the
first of the fine arts to emerge from barbarism in
the service of religion and of civic life. A house, as
Hegel says, must be built for the god, before the
god, carved in stone or figured in mosaic, can be
placed there
"
;
and council chambers, he continues,
"
must be prepared for the senate of a state before the
national achievements can be painted on the walls."
With this suggestion before us of the evolution
in the art of building, we shall do well to observe in
what stage of progress various cities and parts of
cities are, and under what conditions there is real
ised that degree of advance involved in seeking to
supplement good architecture by a lovely and ap
propriate setting.
When the Pantheon in Paris, the Royal Exchange
in London, the Bulfinch State House in Boston, had
stood for many years with bare interior walls, there
were interesting and successful efforts to beautify
them with mural paintings. The structures, in
brief, having been completed,
"
achievements
"
were
painted on the walls. The later Criminal Courts
building in New York and the Court-House in Balti-
Compreben0ive planning. 273
more were hardly finished before the municipal art
societies took steps to adorn them with wall
paintings. The Boston Public Library, the National
Library in Washington, the little Appellate CourtHouse
in New York, each locally a later construc
tion still, had the decoration of their interior walls
planned with almost as much original certainty and
confidence as the adornment of their exteriors.
There was immediate co-operation between the
architects and the painters and sculptors.
"
From the
first step, then, of a demand for an outwardly beauti
ful as well as convenient structure, we can observe
in modern civic art an advance slow and tentative
at first, but finally confident to a demand for a
building beautiful within and without. The second
step is at last taken with assurance.
The buildings which stood for its taking, it may
be noted, were representative also of intellectual
endeavour. The persons responsible for their plan
ning were necessarily men of culture in that term's
broad sense of a taste naturally refined as well as
educated. But even the buildings erected at their
behest and with their recommendations covered each
its full lot. They had no architectural setting and
much less the advantage of gardening. Consider
ations of economy may have discouraged such a
demand, just as they once discouraged interior en
richment and, before that, exterior embellishment,
until these things came to be considered as essential
The third step still remained to be taken.
18
274 fTOobern Civic Brt
Here and there, on the outskirts of cities, villas
and palaces had been rising for hundreds of years,
set so consistently and harmoniously among their
gardens that house and estate made a single lovely
composition. But these, raised for the gratification
of individuals, were private, not public, art. Archi
tecture, "the first of the fine arts to emerge from
barbarism in the service of civic life," was accom
panied now in many public structures by decoration
within doors, but not yet by gardening. Even
the universities, rising building by building and
gaining steadily in resources and visible splendour,
scattered their new structures hit or miss about
their grounds.
There has been, until the last few years, no sys
tem, no orderliness, no idea of gaining an aggregate
effect that should be more impressive than any series
of individual results could be. Even now, the co
operation has appeared only spasmodically, and
almost wholly among the richer institutions as if the
creation of a general scheme for harmonious devel
opment were a luxury, and not a bit of economy far
more needed by the poorer college than by the rich
university. The latter will be imposing from the
very multiplicity of its buildings and the magni
ficence of some of them, however improvidently they
may be scattered ;
the former has need to foster its
every incidental opportunity and to gain all the
effectiveness it can by so economical a means as
merely making every structure a support to every
Compreben0ivc planning 275
other, and the tract in which they stand a favourable
staging.
The movement's first permanent conquest in the
United States was probably in the University of
California, but its beginnings as a factor in modern
civic art reached back at least to the Columbian Ex
position at Chicago. That (1893) was the great
popular object-lesson in the value of extensive co
operation, in the placing of buildings and their
landscape development as strictly as in their archi
tectural elevation. The lesson was international in
its effect, exerting an influence that has appeared
over and over in many lands, but nowhere more
dramatically than in the case of the University of
California. A rich woman who had done much for
the institution proposed to add to her benefactions a
mining building, in memory of her husband. The
question of site and style of architecture at once
arising, the lack of a definite scheme of development
that should be a guide and assistance in such mat
ters was realised. The woman who had proposed
to give a building made a much nobler gift as a first
step to the former, for she authorised an international
competition for a fixed and beautiful ideal toward
which the institution should advance with every
step that brought completeness nearer. She paid all
the expenses of the competition, including the prizes
of thirty thousand dollars. The first jury met in
Antwerp and the last meeting was in San Francisco,
where (in 1899) the award was made.
276 fIDobern Civic art
This showed a plan of which the full carrying out
will require many millions of dollars and perhaps,
even in the western part of the United States, gen
erations of time. It set a goal to be striven for. It
did not simply ameliorate the past; it projected
far into the future a scheme toward which each
improvement of the present might be a step. Its
tendency was to encourage improvements, for It
guaranteed the present at the same time that it
guaranteed the future, by giving an assurance that
every step taken now, in accordance with the ulti
mate vision, is wisely taken and will not have some
day to be undone. It substituted for a present-day
ideal, toward which the past was to be advanced by
the bettering of old conditions, an ideal of the fu
ture, as far beyond the present as is the present be
yond the past.
There was much to induce immediate apprecia
tion of such a plan, and on a less ambitious scale its
widespread adoption by institutions. In the develop
ment of their restricted acreage and the harmonious
placing therein of a few paths and buildings, the
problem would not be complex; there would be no
embarrassment by private interests to destroy a hope
of achieving results promptly and with complete
ness; and the advantages, both in economy and
in effectiveness, of such comprehensive designing
would appear at once to men and women of that
social and mental equipment to be expected among
the managers of educational and philanthropical insti-
Compreben0ipe panning 277
tutions. So, among the universities, we now find
in the United States many illustrations of its success.
At Harvard, beautiful memorial gates and a hand
some wall have shut in the scholastic "yard/' and a
landscape architect has planted the shrub borders
and chosen the sites for new buildings. At Yale,
when a great deal of new construction was to mark
the bi-centenhial, experts were called upon to draw a
plan toward the fulfilment of which each new build
ing would be a step. Columbia, rising on the heights
of upper New York, creates there, in conjunction with
her neighbours,
"
the Acropolis
"
of the city. Prince
ton ;
the University of Pennsylvania ;
and new Chi
cago, with her red roofs contrasting with the gray
stone of the Tudor architecture these, and many less
prominent institutions that are now undergoing a
similarly complete artistic development, have lessons
for the towns or cities in which they are. They test
the project of original comprehensive planning, and in
their conspicuous object-lessons prove its efficiency.
But even before they suggest a course for the
community to follow, they make addition, in so far
as their own considerable is concerned, and a
strong addition, to the present beauty of the town,
The tract which an institution occupies is one of
those problems within a problem that go to up
the great, enclosing, urban problem. It is, in fact,
not only one of them, but a type of many of them.
If the buildings that comprise the visible part of a
university be harmoniously grouped and artistically
278 flDofcern Civic art
placed in relation to their landscape, and thereby
make a lovely and fitting whole, why should not
similar care be exercised in placing the philanthropical,
penal, and religious institutions, and then such
individual buildings as schools, libraries, and churches
when the latter stand alone? In the aggregate,
these form an important portion of the town, well
deserving of separate thought in consideration of
how to obtain a greater urban beauty, and perhaps
having all the more influence because they are widely
scattered. The injunction, then, of civic art, as re
gards the building and placing of institutions, is that
the general urban plan should be supplemented by
a plan for each of these, equally systematic and com
plete within its own subject, and toward which the
institution may be developed by harmonious steps
just as the city as a whole will be developing the
faster because of these plans toward a larger scheme
of ultimate and beautiful completeness.
The striking examples of what the conscientiously
aesthetic development of its institutions may mean to
the aspect of a city are offered, of course, by Oxford
and Cambridge in England. The universities domin
ate the towns, and because they are so beautiful in
their many quadrangles and buildings as if each
"college" were a separate institution the cities
are beautiful. It may be objected that these univers
ities had no original comprehensive plan to work
by; but at the pace at which we build to-day we do
in years what would have then meant centuries.
Comprcbensive panning 279
We have not, or do not take in construction, that
leisure which is so favourable to refinement and
harmony. Building at slap-dash speed, unless we
have a plan to guide us we shall build awry. And
when Oxford rose, it has been said, "the point
ing of an arch was like an act of worship and the
fervour of religion found expression in an exuberance
of fair handiwork." We have not the patience now,
nor the same high consecration; but we have ambi
tion, great wealth, and the models of the past to
point the way. Oxford may not have needed a gen
eral plan of development; but to-day we do need it,
and if we have it and it is good, modern cities too
will find in their institutions adorning features.
The quadrangle of the English university has been
adopted, with such local modifications as may be
needed, as the elementary unit in the development
scheme of most of those later institutions that have
sought at the start a complete plan. The system has
the advantage of affording variety at the same time
that it gives an appearance of unity, and it fairly
invites harmony. It offers, too, a conveniently close
grouping of associated structures, and gives an air of
dignity and reserve, even of seclusion and peace, that
is at once desirable and fitting. The passenger on
the city street, gazing into the quadrangle, beholds
there the repose of an institution going quietly, and
with no friction or waste, about its work. There is
that clothing with beauty of adaptation to purpose
which is the strong desire of civic art.
280 flDofcern Civic art
The examples that are offered thus by institutions
of the successful and strikingly practical applica
tion of that poetic dream which had wrought the
briefglory of an exposition cannot fail to be broadly
instructive. The pertinence of the dream, it may be
said, was not even in the first place only for institu
tions. It was more obviously, indeed, for the sub
sequent expositions all of which it has affected.
Then its suggestion of permanent results was recog
nised most promptly and most cordially by institu
tions. Next, and with a long forward though
entirely natural step, comes the grouping of the
public buildings of town and city and the develop
ment of a civic centre. After that, and as a yet more
thrilling and magnificent application of the example,
came the appointment of an expert commission, re
presentative of those fine arts that must be combined
for the highest adornment of a city, to consider and
propose plans for the improvement of the city of
Washington.
1
At last there grows out of it a wide
spread demand for expert advice, by commissions or
by individuals of professional training, regarding the
artistic development of tracts and towns from the
great city of New York, with its multitude of pro
blems, down to the village, or a portion of a village I
1
In this commission, architecture was represented by Daniel H. Burnham and
Charles F. McKim; landscape architecture, by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.; and
sculpture by Augustus St. Gaudens. Mr. Burnham, it should be added, was
Director of Works at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the effective
co-operation of the architects and artists who then and there gave to American
art both a new direction and a tremendous impetus had been largely secured and
maintained by his executive ability.
<0mpreben0ive planning 281
So the interdependence of all the arts that go to
make up civic art is realised as it has not been before.
There is seen the possibility of their mutual helpful
ness in creating a comprehensive scheme that shall
be harmonious throughout, and the necessity of ob
taining such a plan in advance and from those upon
whose judgment there may be complete reliance.
It is realised, as possibly the highest and final step
of civic art, that the town or city, or tract in town
or city, of which it is hoped to make a beautiful
composition cannot be left to chance growth; that
corrections subsequently made are as much less satis
factory as they are more costly than would be faith
ful adherence to a good original plan.
It costs little to get a good design or map, and
acceptance of it involves no special outlay. It simply
gives assurance that all the money that would
normally be spent each year for improvements will
now be spent with far-sighted wisdom. It promises
that each public work will mean certain progress to
ward a final splendid goal, which will have become,
not a vague dream, but a concrete vision, a pictured
reality that all may see and comprehend and wish
and work for.
In the composition of such an expert commission
it would be well since city-building is a science as
well as an art to add to the representatives of the
fine arts an engineer, and one member who would
stand not for engineering alone, nor for architecture
alone, nor for landscape design alone, nor for sculpture
Wet
alone, but for all of these together and compre
hensively, as one who has made a special study of
the general science and art of city-building. And so
there would be created an expert commission of five,
to put before the community a vision of what its
own town might be and should be.
The thought is a great one; the programme is so
loftily conceived, so broadly and unselfishly worked
out, and looks for its results so completely to the
future, that it is surprising to find so wide and prompt
an acceptance of it. But the programme means much
for civic art, giving to it at once a firm basis, and
raising it in promise above the need of makeshift im
provements, its ideal, beyond the danger of destruc
tion by the death of any individual ;
its achievements,
beyond the menace of a disorganised confusion,
to a plane of system, reason, permanency, and calm
artistic judgment.
In devising such a comprehensive plan for a city's
development, it might be well to designate the style
of architecture that shall be employed in the strictly
public buildings. One hesitates to speak of this, for
the occasions when it will prove of thorough practi
calness must be so rare that the suggestion is liable
to have a visionary sound. It has been suggested,
however, that in Washington the government build
ings be "monumental and serious in type, and pre
ferably of the so-called Classic style," with the
understanding that the number of stories in a monu
mental building should never be more than four and
Comprcben0ive {planning. 283
should be limited to three if possible.
1
An advantage
in such designation would lie in the assurance of
harmony among the official buildings of the town,
and in the tendency to restrain eccentricity and a
violation of purity of design in that construction
which is fraught with most danger to the com
munity's aesthetic charm. Private dwellings exem
plify, indeed, all sorts of queer tastes, but they are
not as conspicuous, nor considered so justly repre
sentative, as are the public buildings.
In the construction of the latter, also, for their
various purposes, it is not unlikely that the demo
cracy of the twentieth century will find its chief archi
tectural expression. This will naturally tend at first,
as it already has, to a bourgeois type. But the
beautiful Gothic constructions of the citizens of
Flanders, when they too came to raise town halls in
free cities, show that the highest art need not be
despaired of. This example suggests, too, that it
would not be wise to limit the choice of architecture
to a style that is alien in period and clime. To do so
might be relatively "safe," but the safety would be
that of a timidity that took no chances of great suc
cess. The lesson, rather, to be taught, is the old,
earnest one of fitness.
It has been estimated that during a few particu
lar but recent months in the United States, the gifts
for public libraries exceeded twelve and a quarter
1 "
Grouping of Public Buildings and Development of Washington," by Cass
Gilbert, F. A. I. A., in
"
Papers Relating to the Improvement of the City of Wash
ington," Senate Document No. 94, Fifty-sixth Congress, second session.
284 fIDobcrn Civic Hrt
millions of dollars. During the same period there
were great sums given, and officially appropriated,
for the construction of hospitals, art museums, town
halls, and school-houses. All of these structures, be
cause they were designed to serve the public, had a
purpose that, since the fall of Rome, has become al
most new in architecture. They contained, in the
aggregate, not only great possibilities for improving
the aspect of cities, but they offered to architects a
superb opportunity for doing really original creative
work, in adapting the buildings to this new purpose
and so giving to them the beauty of fitness of expres
sion. Libraries, for instance, should now stand not
for "elegant storehouses of books" on the old
traditional lines, but for working institutions or for
home-like reading-rooms, as the need may be.
There is to-day, then, an opportunity that is
immense, both from the architectural and civic stand
point, in the construction of public buildings and
institutions, but where the comprehensive plan for the
city touches their architecture with dictation it should
touch very lightly. It might find, from the examples
already existing in any given place, expediency in
recommending adherence to a general fixed style,
if that be not too alien; but it would grant all the
freedom possible within those limits, once there had
been insistence on sincerity and chastity on a calm
and careful draughting that makes no straining for
bizarre effect.
Among the school-houses in particular, scattered
Comprebcnaive planning 285
through all parts of the city in visible expression of
the dominating system of public instruction, and
serving the like purpose in the like way, there would
better be uniformity than attempt at variety of aspect.
Each school should have a playground, and each
should have a garden, as they now so generally have
in Northern Europe and are rapidly coming to have
in the United States. Nor does modern civic art
have need of apology for including in its scrutiny
details that are as educational and sociological as
these. It observes that by the school garden will be
most widely disseminated that popular love of nature
and practical experience in her ways that can do so
much to vest with beauty the streets and homes of a
city. In themselves, also, these school gardens,
many times repeated and each with its structure
forming a complete and harmonious composition,
may be important factors in adding to the pleasant
ness of the town. Throughout it all no private
houses and no other such numerous public structures
can more appropriately be models, both in their own
development and in their adjustment to the street.
They should be little centres of wholesome influence
regarding civic duty.
So, to sum up the chapter, three conclusions ap
pear in considering a comprehensive general planning
of the city. They are, as most important: the great
need the need too little realised of obtaining one
underlying plan, which may touch lightly on the
public architecture, but which shall weld together in a
286 fIDobern Civic Hrt
harmonious system the street plotting of the different
districts, shall mark the course of present and future
improvements with entire assurance, and shall put
before the people a tangible goal to work toward
the picture of what their own city may be, and should
be, made; as of next importance, the advantage of
comprehensive plans for the future development of
all the public or semi-public institutions, that these
problems within a problem may have no haphazard
growth but may go forward by sure steps to that
ideal of fitness and of dignity that will make them
ornaments of the city; and, finally, the propriety of
giving a degree of recognisable uniformity to those
structures of the town that have a like public char
acter and perform a like public function and are built
from the public means the advantage, in short, of
considering any public structure not by itself, when
adopting its plan, but in its relation to the community
as a whole and to the other structures of its type.
That is the secret at the root not only of comprehen
sive planning, but of civic art.
CHAPTER XV.
OPEN SPACES.
THE
open spaces of a city are, or should be, its
ornaments. This is a new rule in city-build
ing, a requirement that was not made in the
old days of civic art when the creation of an open
space meant the establishment of an outdoor market.
In those times, when the sun got high and the little
booths, their morning's work done, were folded
away silently as the white umbrellas that had pro
bably covered them, the square became a bare and
lonely place unless as was likely to be the case
a fountain bubbled garrulously in its centre. Then
the fresh running water established a social rendez
vous, and about it there was gossip enough to ex
plain the laughter and muttering of the fountain long
after the town had gone to sleep. On rainy days a
new value appeared in the open space, for people
scurried across it like leaves before the wind.
Usually they hugged the sides of the square, where
there were arcades or awnings to keep off the sun,
shop windows to look into, and plenty of friends to
287
288 flDobern Civic art
talk to; but when the rain came and there was
reason to hurry, the square offered short cuts that
were eagerly availed of.
There were some who thought that the open
spaces of a city ceased to be a necessity when the
markets were driven indoors or to especially desig
nated areas, when fresh water was carried into every
house by underground pipes, and the square seemed
to have no value save that of occasionally offering a
means to shorten one's journey, if one were in a
hurry. It did look forlorn and dreary. Then there
were planned new cities and parts of cities without
open spaces.
But vast areas of regularly plotted streets became
dreadfully monotonous. It was seen that even a
deserted square served many a useful purpose: it
brought variety into urban topography; it trans
formed building lots on the boundary streets into
valuable sites, for now they had an assurance of
light, the conspicuousness that belongs to a vantage
point, and they offered a chance for perspective to
aid appreciation of good fa9ades. And the square
afforded an excellent location for civic sculpture. It
shortened distances, too, and when the citizens
wanted to gather out-of-doors it made a place for
them to come to. Then arose the wish to beautify
cities, to bring stateliness into the business district
and the soft touch of nature into the regions where
the homes were. The opportunities of the square
for this were perceived and seized.
pen Spacea, 289
Noble buildings were gathered around it where
they could be seen. Sculpture adorned it. Brilliant
lights made it gay at night, and if the fountain had
lost the power to establish a social rendezvous, a
band might play here on a summer evening and it
would collect a crowd. Pageantry found here its
opportunity; turf was sometimes planted in the
spaces between diagonal paths, that had been left,
in order that the square might still be useful in the
shortening of distance, and when the space was
ample there were flowers and seats and trees and
bushes. The square entered again into the life of
the people and they loved to gather in it. But it
did something else, for now it added to the visi
ble attractiveness of the town. Here a bit of public
garden, there a sculptured vestibule to architectural
masses, there again a playground (for adults or child
ren), and here a broadened thoroughfare crowded
with the criss-cross travel that must have congested
a street, the open space served many ends of which
the sum was this: the, better adaptation of a city to
its countless purposes. Then it became a problem
for civic art.
In the mere running over of its various develop
ments, many types of open space appear. There
are those in the crowded business district, most fre
quently before a public building, which are arranged
to set off the abutting architecture, making with
sculpture and brilliant lights a dignified approach
to it and for the city a stately ornament. There are
19
2 9o flfeobern Civic art
those most naturally before a focal point such as
one of the entrances to the town of which the
special purpose is provision for converging traffic.
There are those in the tenement district, serving
various ends; and there are those, finally, in the
general residential quarters, established deliberately
to be areas of beauty or children's playgrounds, or
spaces which, though formed by the seeming accid
ent of an irregular angle where streets converge,
have been turned to good account aesthetically.
One would think that so useful a feature of the
urban structure must have been made long since a
part of the science of city-building, with the distrib
ution of the spaces and the principles underlying
their development reduced to general rules. But. so
distinctly is recognition of their value an achieve
ment of modern civic art that, be it observed, they
have not as yet even a generic name, unless it be
that cumbrous 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 miscalculations or irregularities in urban
topography. And then they are developed as the
whim of the moment dictates perhaps to be
changed after a decade in cases of some success,
perhaps to make us wish other treatment before the
work is done. For we fill in our open space as if it
were a blank area on a wall that we were attempt-
pen Spaces. 291
ing to
"
decorate
"
or "treat" without a thought of
the wall around it, without regard for its possible
harmony, for its purpose, for its connection with the
building. If that were actually done, there would
be danger of clapping a poster where there ought to
be a mural painting, of painting delicately where a
passage is to be, or of leaving bare a space in the
middle of a thickly figured wall. The like of all
these things is done in the treatment of the open
spaces of cities. They are sprinkled over the street
plan without system or due proportion; and they are
developed, each by itself, with little thought of
relation to the boundary streets and none perhaps
of their relation to the city as a whole.
If the problem were the original plotting of a
city, the position of the open spaces would clearly
demand an attention coincident with that given to
the street plan. Neither the one nor the other could
be arranged with entire satisfaction by itself. It is
essential for the best results that in the location of
each such open area there be a certain obvious ap
propriateness and naturalness that is, since their
boundaries are streets, they should seem, whether
circles, triangles, or squares, to grow out of the
street lines, rather than appear to be placed upon
them. In the distribution, also, there should be
comprehensive planning that their many purposes
may be fully served, and that each section, in pro
portion to its needs, may be equally provided. But
because appreciation of open spaces at their full
292 flDofcern Civic Hrt
value is a late chapter in urban science, though
Penn placed them generously on his gridiron plan
for Philadelphia, and Sir Christopher Wren made
the provision of geometrical open areas a feature of
his plan for the remodelling of London, there is
very little such advantageous planning at the start.
We have to make the best we can of the spaces
that happen to exist upon the plan ;
and when,
at great expense, we put in new ones, we have to
choose the neighbourhoods that need them most
and locate them at the nearest practicable point to
that situation which would be ideal. In the placing
of modern urban squares, therefore, there is much
of makeshift, though in their treatment a freer rein is
given.
1
Of the development of those squares that are in
the tenement district, there has already been a dis
cussion. To those (mainly in the business district)
adorned with sculpture and ornate fountains and
made gay with brilliant lighting, there has been a
reference in the chapter on city adornment with
fountains and sculpture. It was there pointed out
that the opportunity offered by such spaces for the
1
In many cities most strikingly in London where land values have become
so high as almost to discourage municipal purchases for the creation of open spaces,
and where the crowding is so severe that there is excuse for fear that an arbitrary
reduction of the habitable area in a given section may increase rather than diminish
suffering, but where, on the other hand, that very crowding and the pushing of
the urban boundaries into a distance that the poor cannot traverse make pitiful
appeal for public open areas, there has been a utilisation of ancient graveyards.
They are transformed, with excellent sanitary effect, to serve as breathing places,
garden spots, and playgrounds. But their location as regards the street plan is
obviously without system.
pen Space0. 293
increase of urban amenity consisted not in surprising
with a sudden splendour, that had been hidden un
til unexpectedly come upon, but in casting their
radiance as far as possible on adjacent streets. In
the treatment of such a space, then, there is to
be regard not merely for the space itself, but for the
effect as seen from the streets that lead to it. This
consideration may even determine the scale to be
adopted in the monumental construction that perhaps
dominates the area.
But in planning these, as all, open spaces, the re
quirements imposed by the vistas from the streets
that approach them are little more than hints very
helpful in particulars, but leaving much of detail
and even of general plan for local decision. Three
things, with respect to this, are to be considered:
the accommodation and convenience of the travel,
civic art having its base in civic utility, for this may
determine even the location of the sculpture and the
amount of ground it occupies; the character of the
surrounding neighbourhood, which will determine
the whole nature of the treatment of the space, that
monotony may be relieved and charm increased by
the break; and finally what is required for the har
monious setting of such of the abutting architecture
as may be deemed fairly permanent.
Such architecture quite probably includes some
public or semi-public building, for in the Old World
at least the open space is likely to have been first
a market's site, and the latter would have been
294 flDo&ern Civic art
selected with reference to the strong and permanent
popular attraction offered by a structure of Church or
State. In the setting of the architecture something
more than harmony may be sought. Often the area
will give an opportunity for terracing or for balus
trades, that will make an imposing approach with
out trespassing too severely on precious space.
While this is a result that especially affects the build
ing, it should be recalled that in the embellishment
of cities architecture and its setting are factors upon
which much dependence must be put.
Nor should the enhancement by the square of
surrounding architectural effects be allowed to cease
with approaching darkness. It is a boast of modern
cities that in their business sections they have no
night. We have seen that a community's first
efforts toward decorative and brilliant lighting are
almost sure to be at such show points as its open
spaces, and that these at evening, even more than in
the day, may be centres of light and gaiety. The
ff
ville lumiere" offers proof enough of that. But
there is still something more to be accomplished, for
the square would lose much of its glory if night's
dark mantle were suffered to hide the beautiful pub
lic buildings that front upon it, they being as much
a part of it as the statue in its centre. Should
no architectural provision be made for decorative
lamps as parts of the structures, surely hidden lights
might throw upon the fa9ades a glow sufficient to
bring out mouldings, carvings, and proportions, and
pen Space0. 295
so secure to the square at night its architectural
setting of the day. Where it is surrounded by priv
ate houses, with which such liberty may not be taken,
the open space is more likely to be planted; and then
what witchery may be given by a wise arrangement
of the lights!
Now if the application of these principles to a
few famous
"
squares
"
be considered, their signific
ance is more easily perceived.
1
Trafalgar Square in
London, which was described by Peel as "the finest
site in Europe," is one of the most travelled squares
in the world. Yet there are two huge fountains and
something like half a dozen statues besides the great
Nelson column. But the fountains stand back from
the maelstrom of converging traffic, and against the
terrace, so that they take no space that is needed for
travel; the Nelson shaft, which occupies the centre
of the square, is tall enough to dominate the whole
busy scene and be visible as a landmark from afar,
and yet its base is not so large as to trespass the
natural convergence of traffic being before, not
around, it. Finally, the smaller statues are placed
so as to be decorative adjuncts in purpose, at
least which are constructively incidental as far as
the topography goes. Here, then, is a great space
singularly well utilised. It may be considered as
having three divisions: the first, a vestibule crowded
with criss-cross traffic and therefore left clear ;
the
second, a richly ornamented setting for the enthroned
1
See articles by the author in Nos. 5, 6, 7, vol. ii. of House and Garden.
296 flDobern Civic art
architecture; the third, the terrace upon the top of
which the public building stands. There is illustra
tion here of how important an accessory to its archi
tecture a square may be made without loss of its
own independence. And in the midst of a vast city,
walled by great buildings that are pierced only by
busy streets, the roar of traffic pulsing over its every
inch, there is no attempt in Trafalgar Square at in
congruous "naturalness." The whole treatment is
richly urban, frankly artificial, and yet unique in
its superb decorativeness. The very fountains are
sculptured, their basins enclosed in geometrical cop
ings. Their streams are thrown high into the air
with a music that is very grateful, and on their broad
calm bosom many little Britons sail craft that are
make-believe frigates, beneath the shadow of the
Nelson monument !
The Piazza San Marco in Venice is almost bare,
only the Campanile and the ornate flagstaffs before
the cathedral having trespassed upon it. In its way
it exemplifies that neglect of vegetation which is
the typical original sin in the cities of garden-like
Italy. But in the Piazza San Marco the sin is par
donable. Space is too precious, there is too little
room for careless walking to have justified the trans
formation of this one broad square into a gardencourt.
It is the chief focus of the city, and "keep
off the grass
"
signs would here have robbed the
people, water would have mocked them, while the
merely decorative pavement sets off the architecture
pen Spaces. 297
and is stranger in its breadth, in Venice, than a
garden would have been.
In the handsome Piazza del Popolo in Rome there
is one of the most interesting examples of the square
deliberately planned for city embellishment. The
whole view from the top of the Pincian Hill, which
overlooks the piazza, the bridge beyond, and the
background of modern buildings, is a lesson in the
science of modern civic construction. The piazza is
old, and the obelisk that stands in its centre has been
there for more than three hundred years, but the
treatment of the space is essentially modem, forming
the fitting vestibule to new Rome. Into the square
comes the broadened Corso; from it diverge great
radial thoroughfares. With the ancient "Hill of
Gardens
"
rising on one side, and tall trees leaving on
the other only the vista of the bridge, there is verd
ure enough in the surroundings to justify a purely
formal and architectural arrangement. This includes
a geometrical placing of single lamp-posts and can
delabra, and curved bounding walls adorned with
sculpture. The whole space is something larger,
perhaps, than is needed to-day; but the fast growth
of that section of the city across the Tiber, of whose
traffic this piazza is the natural distributing point,
makes its size appear a wise provision for the future.
The lesson of the square is not so much in its hint
for other communities the situation being peculiar
as in its illustration of how perfectly, with what results
in nobility of aspect, in harmony to surroundings,
298 flDobern (Civic Hrt
and in convenience to the neighbourhood, an open
space may be treated if only the problem be given
sufficient thought. Potentially, its spaces are the
city's jewels.
There is a strong temptation to continue the dis
cussion, by examining many squares in many cities.
There is the fine Place de la Concorde in Paris, for
example, of which there has been purposely no men
tion, because, even as Trafalgar Square, it is far more
a state than a municipal creation, and because its
position with relation to its surroundings is so excep
tionally favourable as to render it fairly discouraging
as a model. And then in New York there is Union
Square, which, with some good features, as its use
of vegetation in Manhattan Island's dreariness of
stone and iron, is on the whole an example not
merely of ineffective but of positively wrong planning.
Putting aside such sins against civic art as the in
congruous "cottage," there is not even adaptation to
civic utility, for the paths wind circuitously, to the
destruction of the square's value for short cuts, and
the portion that is paved as a plaza is the wrong
portion. It has the bareness of an island where
streams have parted, while at the other end of the
square their confluence in relatively narrow quarters
creates serious congestion. But enough has been
said to show that the open space to which an archi
tectural treatment has been allotted is a problem full
of complexity and one requiring strictly individual
decision. When it is ably solved it has a magni-
pen Spacee* 299
ficent power for the embellishment of the city and
for the increase of urban stateliness.
Among the open areas in the business district of
the city, there are some of which the primary pur
pose must be the facilitation of congested travel, or
at all events the added convenience of travel Such
are those spaces likely to be provided at the formal
entrances to the city. But of these there has been
discussion.
1
Passing, then, from the crowded business district,
where the demands of traffic are insistent, we come
to the residential sections of the town. Here, except
as rarely when the area is set apart for a playground,
the first duty of the open space is to increase the
attractiveness of its neighbourhood. Here, then, we
shall welcome trees; here there may be flowers and
grass; here there may be invitation to idleness and
loitering; and here, among the homes and gardens
of the citizens, there may be the public garden, pro
vided by the municipality for the common pleasure
of all.
In the landscape designing of such a space it will
be wise to adopt the formal style. The space will
almost certainly be geometrical in outline; it will be
crossed by paths that serve to some extent as high
ways; and if it be not large enough properly to be
called a park, it is too small to shut out the city.
Even if no architectural or monumental construction
gives the keynote to the square's arrangement, the
1
See pages 66 to 75.
300 flDofcern Civic art
city's buildings will peer over all its boundaries and
the noise of traffic will be heard in its quietest
corners. To attempt, then, to imitate the country
here, with naturalness of effect, were absurd. It is
best to accept frankly the urban conditions and to
make the square a decorative adjunct of the street,
since here we have opportunity to bring to the aid of
the street such powerful factors for city beauty as
flowers and trees and running water. These must,
however, be used with due respect for the architect
ure, for we must take care neither to conceal that
nor to violate good taste by lack of harmony in the
setting provided. We have to remember that the
beauty of the space itself is not the goal we seek,
but rather the addition, by its support, of the beauty
of the city.
To gain this end, not the spaces alone but the
spaces and their surroundings are to be considered as
the pictures, and are to be developed however
ornately or simply with consistency and complete
ness. That is to say, it will not suffice if as to-day
in Copley Square in Boston the architecture be
safeguarded by legislation that prohibits the erection
of dwarfing "sky-scrapers/
3
and a protecting coping
be put around the precious space devoted to flowers
and turf, while hideous trolley poles are permitted on
the boundary sidewalks. There then results only a
pathetic failure. Nor will it do, again, to suffer an
ugly telegraph pole to rise incongruously from a bed
of flowers; nor to arrange the reserved space, upon
pen Space0. 301
which beautiful and dignified architecture looks with
placidity, in beds of bright-hued flowers laid out in
fantastic contortions. Where this has been done, in
a certain notable case, we have the effect of a civic
skirt dance between a lovely library and church, all
the reposefulness of an architectural base destroyed.
Elsewhere, there may be an area beautifully developed
in itself; but above its charming surface treatment
wires cross and recross, the sun throws the shadow
of a graceless lamp-post athwart the turf, and beyond
a border of blossoming shrubs a trolley pole rises in
black barbarity.
In the better residential parts of London one comes
frequently upon a square surrounded by an iron fence.
There are great trees within, and pretty natural gar
dening; but on the four sides there are closed gates
that separate it hopelessly from the barren highways.
Yet the garden makes an attractive outlook from the
surrounding houses, that rent the higher because of
it; and there is illustration of the lines,
Around it is the street, a restless arm
That clasps the country to the city's heart.
The square owes its existence to the landed proprie
tor to whom the region belongs. He has plotted it
and maintains it because of the better rent he gets
for his houses, and only the occupants of these
houses have keys to the gates. This, then, is not
civic art. It offers a convenient example of what the
municipally created square ought not to be. It is not
302 fIDobern CMc Ert
a beautiful bit of London, but a piece of
"
created
ornament
"
superimposed.
The ideal for the spaces here, as for those in the
business district, would be to make them glorified
parts of the street parts which have a special
adornment because the street has suddenly widened
sufficiently to admit of such adorning. In practice,
however, it is less easy where vegetation is used,
than where the treatment is architectural, to avoid a
line of distinction between street and square, for
unless the street have parking the difference is de
cided. To conceal it by bringing the street into so
complete a harmony that the two seem to merge,
should be the endeavour; when this is not possible,
we should accept frankly the distinction and attempt
to create, within boundaries as little forbidding as
practicable, a bit of formal gardening that is suited
perfectly to its surroundings.
A number of the ''circles" in Washington illus
trate so well the adornment of the street that their
provision is regarded as a conspicuous merit of the
Washington street plan. Nearly every one of these
circles possesses a central architectural motif in a bit
of sculpture. This is on the axes of the streets that
meet at the circle, and for long distances is a factor
in their decoration the open space not shutting the
sculpture away within itself. In Baltimore's Wash
ington Place, and in the Wilhelm's Platz, Berlin, to
cite a European instance, the like excellent result is
shown. In these cases, too, it is to be noted, the
pen Spaces. 303
open space gives an opportunity to furnish the
sculpture with a background of verdure, without
concealing it. The Baltimore square is formed by
the street's widening so that the roadway, dividing,
encloses the reserved and formally ornamented space.
The statue is in the centre. A line of trees, planted
along each side of the middle area, prolongs the
street's vista, which is further preserved by the ab
sence of conspicuous screens at the ends of the
square. Another interesting detail is that, while the
walks curve in apparently luxurious indolence, their
curves are so adjusted to one another that the hurried
pedestrian, leaving the street walk and traversing the
square, need barely deviate from a straight line in so
doing. He can loiter if he wishes, but he is not
obliged to do so.
When, for one reason or another, it is not practic
able thus to make the open space seem part of the
very structure of the street, we have to make the
boundaries as inconspicuous as possible while creat
ing within them a bit of formal gardening. The sec
tion of the town in which the space is, together with
the size of the space, must be largely determinate of
the exact treatment adopted. Often bright flowers,
that will flood an otherwise gloomy bit of city with
the country's sunshine, will be advisable, and almost
always running water will give pleasure. The fount
ain is probably the most satisfactory device for the
latter; but the playground's shallow pool, where child
ren may wade and sail their boats, gives pleasure
304 flDofcern Civic Hrt
in its way. The playground is not an aesthetic fac
tor, as a rule, but the pool's grateful contrast to hot
and dusty streets contains a suggestion for orna
mental open spaces. Indeed, a round pond, flowerbordered,
was adopted as the feature of Bowling
Green, New York. In this unexpected placidity
rushing Broadway terminated. There was enough
formalism to retain the urban character of the spot
and enough tranquillity to recall the Dutch origin of
the space. When tall office buildings crowd around
it the contrast may become too violent, so that even
history will not excuse such incongruity; but gener
ally in a quiet residential section, far from any natural
body of water, this treatment should prove very
charming. It should be said, too, of the playground,
that the privacy which this ought to have, as re
gards the street, may be secured with screening
shrubs. These by their beauty may make it a strong,
though incidental, aesthetic factor.
The opportunity of the open space should be
utilised to add to turf and flowers and idling or
dancing water one other potent factor, none too
easy otherwise to obtain in the development of city
beauty. This is true especially of that larger area
which the less crowded portions of the city can usu
ally spare for purposes so good and pleasant. The
factor in mind is the clustering of great trees that
beautiful effect which is absent from even the treelined
thoroughfare. The trees are not only lovely in
themselves and gratifying for the shade which they
pen Spaces, 305
afford, but most acceptably do they close the vista
of a street or make a beautiful screen to separate dis
tinct sections of a town. For the best effect, the
space should be large enough to include without
crowding a goodly number. Boston Common is solarge
that a more encouraging example is found in
the equally well-known Madison Square, New York.
Here, as on the Common, the trees are the principal
feature, and after that the directness and con
venience of the paths (especially in the Common)
which make the spaces really useful.
Yet both of these areas illustrate, also, the invita
tion to outdoor living to loitering in the open air
and finding pleasure and the possibility of rest when
out-of-doors that the open spaces of a city may so
well extend. By most of its chute-like streets the
city summons us out-of-doors only that through
their means we may pass from one interior to an
other. We may have poor rooms to sit in, with
foul air and little sunshine, but if no business calls us
forth we remain indoors rather than dally in the busy
street. The parks, with their songs of birds, their
waving boughs, their long, peaceful vistas, are far
away; if the city does not furnish oases of beauty
in the desert of its streets, and with numerous wellplaced
chairs or benches make practical and urgent
its invitation to a leisurely enjoyment of the beauty
thus provided, civic art will waste its fragrance and
prove untrue to its social impulse. To-day, this im
pulse must be earnestly reckoned with. Modern
306 flDofcern Civic Hrt
civic art desires the beauty of towns and cities not
for beauty's sake, but for the greater happiness,
health, and comfort of the citizens. It finds in the
open space an opportunity to call them out-of-doors
for other than business purposes, to keep them in
fresh air and sunshine, and in their most receptive
mood to woo them by sheer force of beauty to that
love and that contentment on which are founded
individual and civic virtue.
It is a higher purpose than had the square of
other times. Not to gossip with one's neighbours,
but to commune with nature; to draw inspiration,
instead of water, from a common source; in the
midst of the busy city to find an isle of peace, where
the scent of flowers, that are yours as much as any
one's, is in your nostrils and the music of childish
laughter is in the air; where the sunshine has to
filter through the trees to find you; or where the
darkness and the moonlight weave a spell of mystery
and romance, as if prosaic streets were far away
this is the call of the planted open space in the city
ofto-day, so far as it is right to think of it apart from
the street that it adorns.
CHAPTER XVI.
PARKWAYS.
THE
necessity, when we would consider park
ways by themselves, of removing them from
the group of city thoroughfares into which
they had naturally fallen, is an evidence that even in
theory they have much in common with the boule
vards and avenues of a city. In practice the line of
demarcation is still more uncertain. A street pre
cisely similar will be called in one city an avenue, in
another a boulevard, and in a third a parkway.
Originally the boulevard was a street or walk occupy
ing the site of demolished fortifications. Most pro
perly, therefore, it tends to encircle the town. But
even the Century Dictionary has already bestowed
on it a broader application, by defining it as "also"
a "street which is of especial width and given a
park-like appearance by reserving spaces at the side
or. centre for shade trees; flowers, seats, and the like,
and not used for heavy teaming." An avenue
usually, but not necessarily, understood as built up
307
308 flDobern Civic Hrt
with pretentious houses may in its turn have the
same peculiarities. Both are quite likely to lead to a
park; and while that circumstance maybe incidental
with them, it is not easy, the attribute being pro
vided, to tell whether it is essential, as in the case
of a parkway, or fortuitous, as with an avenue or
boulevard.
1
Considered closely, however, the parkway may
have a development that belongs to neither boulevard
nor avenue and that justifies its separate discussion.
In speaking of the former thoroughfares, it was noted
that the first requirement was that they should af
ford ease of communication and that the second was
that they should have a certain "dignified and
stately
"
beauty. When we come to the parkways,
there is no restriction as to the kind of beauty that
may be given. It may be as picturesque, gentle, and
softly winning as we please. And while it is neces
sary that a parkway should have connection with a
park, either leading to it from the city or joining
park to park, if it be not acting in itself as a park,
yet there may fairly be reversal of the old order of
requirements. Now the beauty of the way is the
first essential. There may be a hundred means of
approach to a given park, and from necessity the
parkway cannot be the shortest from all portions of
the town. There may even be electric cars on other
1 "
The Philadelphia Parkway Project," for instance, might be accurately de
fined as a scheme to build a magnificent avenue, or even boulevard, from the centre
of the city to Fairmount Park. Because, however, suitable approach to the park is
its raison d'etre, the proposed thoroughfare is
properly called a parkway.
309
routes, so that it may not be possible to say that the
bulk of the travel is by this thoroughfare. But it can
be said, if the parkways fill their mission, that no
other approach will be as pleasant as by them. En
tirely accurate, therefore, is the suggestion in their
name: they are related more closely to the parks of
the town than to its street system; and ever in the
parks sheer directness mere facility of communica
tion between distant points is of less account than
is pleasantness in the way of going.
The relation that the parkways have to the street
plan is based on their duty to transform separate
parks into a park system, and to unite this to the
street system. Repeatedly the latter task is relin
quished to existing avenues, and often these are so
well fitted to perform it that there would have been
no justification for assuming the vast expense of
thrusting a parkway through a closely built-up area.
But in such case, the care of the avenue thus utilised
may well be transferred to the park authorities, that
its development may be rendered consistent with its
new function and that it may be appropriately main
tained. An excellent example is found in Boston's
Commonwealth Avenue, the success of which in
carrying in conjunction with the Public Garden
and the Common an entrance to the park system
into the very heart of the city has been already
noted. When this function of the avenue was appre
ciated, its care was turned over to the park com
missioners; there was no need of building a special
3io flDofcern Civic Hrt
parkway leading westward, and Boston's example of
a parkway becomes a lovely, winding, almost sylvan
road that follows the Fens and joins park to park
rather than park to city.
A parkway's relation to the street plan is, then,
about that modified aesthetically by the strong
influence of the parks which is borne by the
arterial thoroughfares that lead to, or unite, the
urban foci. When these focal points are centres of
business, the highways that lead to them, or connect
them, are business streets; in the plotting of the
parkways, when public pleasure grounds or reserva
tions of beautiful scenery are substituted as the focal
points, it is natural that the character of the arterial
approach should also change, and that, while it
serves relatively the same purpose as the arterial
street in the business district, a first essential now
should be the requirement that it have a beauty con
sistent with its terminal.
From that higher and juster thought of a city as
an aggregation of homes, instead of merely as a
mart or exchange, it is as important that there
be reservations for public enjoyment and that they
be made easy and pleasant of access as that there
should be facilities for doing business. The one is
as indispensable as the other to a well-rounded city.
But because appreciation of the value of parks is
a very late product of city development, and the
necessity of relieving the park from that appearance
of
"
added ornamentation
"
which is the abhorrence
311
of art is of yet later perception, the parks usually
are in fact added to the city plan, and the parkways
are completely omitted from it until close building
has supplemented street plotting. For that reason,
a discussion of the genuine parkway (as distin
guished from a utilised avenue or "boulevard"), in
its function of an approach-road from the city to the
parks, appears more academic than practical. But
when we remember the splendid parkway project of
Philadelphia, and the frequency with which there are
now demands for a suitable connection of outlying
parks with the city, the theory of the parkway ap
pears still pertinent. It gives an ideal to work
toward even when avenues have to be utilised.
There should at once be recognition that there
may properly be two kinds of parkway that which
unites park and city, and that which joins separated
parks. A third may be developed from these, to
serve the ends of beauty and attractiveness alone;
but even for the former there must be distinct con
sideration if they would have appropriate adjustment
to their purpose.
It may be noticed that the proposed Philadelphia
Parkway, which is of the first group, is a straight line,
making the shortest possible distance from the City
Hall to the park and cutting the city's gridiron street
plan with a diagonal. Several local considerations
entered into the selection of such a route, but the
value of directness in a parkway which is the ap
proach to the park from the heart of the city may as
312 HDofcern Civic Hrt
well be recognised. The advantage is akin to that
of directness in the arterial thoroughfare that leads
to any other focal point, enabling persons to reach it
in the shortest possible time. But when the purpose
of the parkway is simply to furnish a pleasant ap
proach for those who drive, this necessity will not
be so obvious. Whenever car tracks are not pro
vided, the way is practically such a drive, for it will be
little used by pedestrians; and then detours, undula
tions, and natural curves, if they add distinctly to its
beauty and attractiveness, need not be feared. In
Minneapolis, for example, there is a very lovely park
approach, in Kenwood Parkway, which, with the
pleasing and natural irregularity of a winding brook,
carries the charm of the parks close to the homes of
many of those who can be independent of the cars.
This is why sheer directness cannot be said to be a
first essential in all the parkways even of this group,
though obviously it may very often be desirable.
Where there are cars, the approach may well be
made direct; and it is worth while to note that a
provision for car tracks is an entirely appropriate
development on this thoroughfare. Indeed, from the
standpoint of the city as a whole, it is difficult to see
that the parkway has any higher or more urgent
duty than that of affording swift, cheap, easy, and
pleasant access to the parks for "the masses
"
of the
city. This can be done only by giving to it sufficient
breadth to accommodate in addition to roadways
and walks separated car tracks. That they may
313
be added without injuring seriously the beauty or
safety of the way has already appeared in the dis
position of the tracks on the great avenues. There
is in thus facilitating the rapid transportation of city
crowds to and from the parks a further advantage.
Not only does the parkway do real service to the
crowds by this means, but in removing the heavy
travel from the ordinary city streets, which other
wise must be used as the main approaches, and
transferring it to a highway that has been especially
designed and set apart for the purpose, it relieves
residential streets of the noise, confusion, and danger
consequent on the handling of extra traffic/
Thus, even for the parkway which serves as an ap
proach from the city to the park there may suitably be
two types of development. It may be broad, straight,
direct, with car tracks on it, and so be like one of
those arterial avenues that unite the broad residential
belt with the business centre of the city. Or it may
be luxuriously and indolently roundabout, sacrificing
everything breadth of roadway, directness, and a
provision for moving large multitudes to the one
end of beauty, so that it carries the restful peace and
loveliness of the park far into the city.
1
A suggested breadth and its apportionment for such an approach road is one
hundred and twenty-five feet, this allowing thirty-five feet for the electric railway,
which is to be on a shaded strip of turf, and on each side of it a roadway thirty feet
wide, a planting strip seven feet wide, and a sidewalk eight feet in breadth. This,
or five feet less, is pretty nearly the minimum for this kind of parkway. The width
can be increased to two hundred or even three hundred feet, and be wholly utilized
with good effect by screening the cars with belts of shrubbery, adding bridle
paths, etc.
flDctoern <TMc art
For the parkway of which the function is to trans
form isolated areas of park land into a coherent
system, by uniting one to another, the latter develop
ment alone is suitable. The parkway that joins them
must be in the seeming, however narrow, a strip of
park. In driving, walking, riding, or bicycling from
one portion of the system to another, there must
be no need of recourse to city streets. There is to
be desired no break of unwelcome contrast, but
by continuing park roads and park-like scenery a
persistency of beauty throughout the system. This,
clearly, is the ideal; and if, repeatedly, the cities
induced by the economy of large recoupments
in the high value of building lots on these linking
roads transform them into avenues or boulevards,
they are not wholly true to the civic-art ideal. If
they still call them "parkways," they only make
confession of the knowledge of their guilt. The
true way were to lose in a mystery of planting the
narrow borders of the tract.
1
It is fitting that the parkway which unites out
lying parks should partake of the character of its
termini. And we have observed that civic art would
1
Those roads that follow, under the titles Fenway, Riverway, Jamaicaway,
etc., the Fens of Boston illustrate a compromise that is
interesting because unusually
successful. Here a meandering stream, with a broad shallow channel and charm
ingly planted banks, sets the winding course for a park road on either side, with
walk and bridle path. On the far border of each road, often at varying level from
it, and separated very widely from their counterpart across the stream, perhaps
even
"
planted out " as respects the other shore, there are building sites. Now and
then a structure rises so prominently as to mar the prospect and to awaken dread
of the time when the buildings will be more numerous, but on the whole the sacri
fice has as yet involved small loss.
315
permit much latitude in the development of the road,
approving of picturesqueness, of natural or formal
beauty, or of architectural pretentiousness, according
to the conditions under which it is laid out and the
nature of the termini. Because outlying parks, how
ever, are generally large parks developed in the
natural style, it were usually better to have in mind
as the ideal a country lane with its tangled
flower-decked border, or a wood road with its dark
vistas and twinkling sunlight, than the city avenue's
stately elegance and precision. Then there will be
no discordant jar in the progress from park to park,
but even the addition of a new, harmonious, charm.
As fittingly, however, the formal park will be ap
proached or left by a formally developed parkway, in
which the architectural and purely artificial character
will have emphasis. Or it may be that in its linking
of reservation to reservation the parkway will have
to pass over a portion of the city on a viaduct for
the parks are likely to include high ground. It
would not be practical to give a semblance of natural
ness to such a road, nor would there be art in the
insincerity. The outlook would be over the house
tops of the city, than which no prospect could be
more urban, and we should now develop our park
way on frankly architectural lines, finding the key
note in the huge structure of the viaduct itself
1
The thought of the fascination of the outlook
1
A convenient example is found in the northern extensions of Riverside Drive,
New York.
316 fiDobern CMc art
from a bridge whether we look on idling streams,
into dark ravines, upon freighted ships, or over house
tops is. a reminder of the apt assertion that a bridge
is the most attractive of parks or promenades, in
proportion to its area. Witness, the temptation to
linger there, exhilarated by the broad view and the
free air. If the function of the parkway were, like
that of the park, only to give pleasure, there would
often be justification for such construction when the
necessities, and even the convenience, of travel did
not require it. And the parkway is coming to have
this third function, is being constructed now and
then not to lead to anything in particular, not to
join park to park or park to city, but solely because
of its own possible beauty and the pleasure it may
give.
The development was not surprising, for a road
of which the first requirement was beauty and only
the second communication; and no discussion of
parkways can approach completeness if it do not take
into consideration the existence of a group tending
to serve this purpose. It will not be easy to define
the group with accuracy. Again and again, park
ways that belong in it will merge into the boulevard
or stately avenue. Riverside Drive, New York, is a
fair example, with its terraced bluffs and its miles of
noble views across the Hudson. But one side of the
Drive is built up with houses, so that the thorough
fare has already invited discussion as a splendid
residential street. Summit Avenue in St. Paul
pathway 317
occupies a similar position, on a bluff overlooking
the Mississippi; but it is built up on both sides, and
cannot be thought of save as a magnificently situated
avenue.
As a rule, however, the appellations are used too
loosely to serve as guides, and in seeking to dis
tinguish this type of parkway from boulevard or
avenue, we shall have to look narrowly for the pur
pose of the construction in each separate case. If
Riverside Drive, for example, was created primarily
to secure for public enjoyment the beauty of its view;
if this was the object (as it surely was) of Duluth's
splendid
"
Boulevard" Drive, skirting Lake Superior
at a height of four or five hundred feet above the
water; or of the eight-mile shell road along the sea
shore at Mobile, to note an example separated by
the length of the United States, or of the Ocean
Boulevard in San Francisco, then we shall do well to
call them "parkways." For the parkways of this
group may be described as elongated and greatly
narrowed strips of park which will mean that they
were constructed for the same general purpose as that
for which parks are established used also as means
of communication. With this definition, the drive
may lie through a ravine shut in by walls of natural
beauty that give no hint of adjacent boundaries, it
may traverse fields, may include brook or river
between its divided ways, or it may be reduced to
barely a road's width with a view beyond.
Recognition of this third type of parkway invites
flDobern Civic art
the inclusion in it of that luxury of urban develop
ment the speedway. This too is a road designed
for no other purpose than to give pleasure, and it
may be claimed for the speedway that the pleasure it
gives is by no means confined to the drivers of fast
horses. The great numbers to whom, as onlookers,
its free exhibitions afford keen delight suggest that as
a pleasure-giving drive the speedway which is cer
tainly not to be classed among the thoroughfares
that are integral parts of the street plan may rightly
be grouped only with the parkways. And yet there
is this distinction to be noted: the special object of
the parkway is beauty, and it belongs by inherent
right to municipal aesthetics. To the speedway
there may be given the beauty of clear-cut lines, of
long straight reaches, of engineering exactness; and
the stateliness that comes from mere breadth of firm,
clean roadway; of long perspective marred by no
breaks in its continuity; of formal rows of regular
and stunning light fixtures and perhaps of trees.
But such handsome treatment will be, quite as on the
business street, secondary to the first function of
the speedway. The road would seem then, in the
building of the city, to stand almost by itself a
luxury (in that its one purpose is to give pleasure)
which civic art will not require, as it may require
the parkway, for complete topographical develop
ment; but which, given, civic art will turn to the
best advantage that it can levying upon it contri
bution to the stateliness and dignity of the city, as
319
it makes levy of the great avenues and even of the
tenements.
In this chapter it will be observed that in so far
as the discussion has been concrete, rather than of
parkways in the abstract, cited examples have been
from the United States to the exclusion of European
instances. This is not that Europe has no beautiful
drives as municipal possessions; but it may be
doubted whether it has any better than those of the
United States, or whether it has as many of them
to offer. In parks and park development America
has little to learn from across the sea. Perhaps
this is because it has had to begin at the beginning
and in a few years do everything, while in the coun
tries of ancient cities many a park is a growth of
centuries, and many a lovely urban pleasure ground
is crown property that owes most of its charm merely
to having been left alone for generations. The re
sult may be fully as attractive to the eye of the citizen
of to-day, but the process cannot be as favourable
to the development of a science or formula of city
beauty.
There is, also, this difference: in America where
the cities are newer the parks tend more than in
Europe to be, in semblance at least, indivisible parts
of the cities themselves to enter into the urban
structure as elements of beauty that are inseparable,
not accidental or added, ornaments. To emphasise
this character is one of the first functions of the park
way, in its transformation of isolated pleasure grounds
320 flDo&ern Civic Hrt
into a system and the union of this system with the
street plan of the city. From the broad standpoint
of civic art, which would find scant satisfaction in
the development of a beautiful park to the neglect
of the remaining urban territory, this function is
of extreme importance. There must be not con
junction, but combination; not addition, but change.
If the park, in its skilfully emphasised natural beauty,
be the aesthetic treasure of the city, the parkway
must be the proper approach to it, the setting of that
jewel worn with entire propriety on the fair the
richly adorned city's breast
CHAPTER XVII.
DISTRIBUTION AND LOCATION OF PARKS.
A
YOUNG landscape architect, who subsequently
became in the achievements of his short life
one of the leaders of his profession in the
United States, has expressed conveniently the dif
ference in purpose of the city park and "square."
1
He said:
Smaller spaces can satisfy many of the desires of the crowded
city people can supply fresh air and ample play room, and
shade of trees, and brightness of grass and flowers but the oc
casionally so pressing-want of that quiet and peculiar refresh
ment which comes from contemplation of scenery the want
which the rich satisfy by fleeing from town at certain seasons,
but which the poor (who are trespassers in the country) can sel
dom fill is only to be met by the country-park.
The refreshment that the
"
park
"
as distinguished
1
The man was Charles Eliot, and from the long story of his life and work that
has been given to the public by his father, Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect,
by Charles W. Eliot, many suggestions for this and the succeeding chapter have
been drawn, as henceforth every writer upon city parks must draw from it. The
article to which reference is here made was published in Garden and Forest, Octo
ber, 1888.
321
flDofcern Civic Hrt
from the "square" is designed to give may be de
fined, then, as that of relief from the excessive arti
ficiality of city life, and from its strain and striving.
A large public park may serve, of course, a variety
of purposes; but this one of them will be more pro
minent, more necessary, than the others. If there be
ever a conflict in the requirements of the several pur
poses, the others must be sacrificed to this, or none
will be successfully realised and the result will be
scrappy and confused. The dominant motif must be
that of change from the normal conditions of town
life from some of its unnatural pleasures as well as
from its cares and its artificiality of outlook.
So the modern city in its large public park has as
distinct and definite a function to perform as in any
other portion of its structure. How modern this is;
how entirely it is due to the pressure at which we
live and work to-day; how it serves an ethical, a
sociological, even a hygienic end, as well as the
aesthetic purpose; and so how naturally attempt to
satisfy it becomes a phase of modern civic art, will
appear on very slight reflection. There is no need
of explanation; but we should note that civic art will
be playing its old role gaining its own, peculiar
end, of urban beauty, by merely the fitting of the
park to serve best the purpose for which parks are
wanted. Indeed, this form of civic art is almost the
first to be recognised popularly, and approved. And
this is because it is so unmistakably clear that only
by assthetic development, by the greatest possible
Distribution anfc !JLocation of parks* 323
increase of charm and beauty, can the parks best
serve their end.
The park becomes, then, for the purposes of urban
study that public reservation which has been set
aside to soothe tired brains and hearts and wearied
nerves by the quiet restfulness of its beauty. Be
cause this is so definitely the modern conception of
its duty, there has come to be a curious notion that
it may be possible to determine the proper park
acreage for a given community by a mathematical
calculation that need be no more intricate than that
by which a physician estimates the amount of seda
tive he would administer. Given the number of
people, how many acres of parks shall we provide?
It is a common question, as if the science of modern
city-building could reduce to a fixed ratio the proper
relation of park area to population. To discover this
ratio there has been a great deal of figuring and com
piling of reports, for it would be a convenient thing
to have. But consideration of the park's purpose
should show the futility of even hoping to discover
a law.
On the one hand, the community's need of the
park will vary according to the pace at which it lives,
the density with which the town is built, that is,
the frequency of private gardens, the number of open
spaces, and of streets with trees and parking,
and finally upon the parks' distribution and acces
sibility. Thus some communities have much more
need of parks than have others of equal population,
324 flDobern Civic Hrt
just as different patients need different doses. The
"average man" is familiarly recognised physiologi
cally as a myth. It is idle also to seek suggestion in
the statistics of cities. In the United States, among
cities of one hundred thousand or more population,
the number of people per acre of park has been found
to vary from twenty-seven and five-tenths to eleven
thousand four hundred and sixty-six. And in the
single city of Chicago there is an acre of park in one
portion of the town to every two hundred and thirtyfour
persons; while for another section of the popula
tion the city affords only an acre to four thousand seven
hundred and twenty. The latter proportion affects a
vast number and is very much worse than the show
ing of the average allotment for the entire city.
1
But
it proves, for the difference in some cities would be
more striking than in Chicago, how poor a basis of
judgment the
"
average
"
record is, because ofthe fac
tor of distribution.
Observe, also, that the success with which a park
will serve its purpose depends more on the topo
graphy and the natural character of the scenery than
upon the number of acres comprised within its
boundaries. A long, peaceful view is a powerful
element in giving that sense of repose which is desir
able in a country-park. Where the land is flat, it
may be necessary to include many acres in order to
secure such a prospect without break or jar; where
there is a hill, a little area on its crest may give the
1
American Municipal Progress, by Charles Zueblin,
Distribution ant> location of jparfea. 325
result in an outlook over peaceful, private farmsteads;
or a few acres spread in a thin line around the margin
of a lake may enclose so complete a picture as to
produce with ever so little land the desired impres
sion.
So there is properly no law to be enunciated re
garding the ratio of area to population, although it
has been suggested that a minimum should be estab
lished of one acre of park (and city square) to two
hundred people.
1
This has been figured out not
only with reference to a possibility of crowding,
which obviously would defeat the purpose of the
park, but with regard to an appropriate per capita
charge for construction and maintenance. Doubt
less its chief value from the standpoint of civic art
would lie, not in proportioning original park acreage
to a city, but in suggesting the increases in the ex
isting provision supposing that to be precisely
adequate to-day which would be fairly commen
surate with a continued growth in population.
It is to be predicated, if park requirements seem
to have been considered with some exactness, that
civic art feels in the development of the parks the
thrill and inspiration of a great opportunity and the
incentive to make the very most at whatever cost
of painstaking of this powerful element in the
aggregate of city beauty. As a municipal possession
the parks are peculiar to modern times and are
1
Park Census Report for 19011
of the American Park and Outdoor Art
Association.
326 fIDo&crn Civic art
therefore the special problem and special chance of
modern civic art. It is because of this fact, how
ever unconscious its apprehension, that the park
problem is generally grappled more intelligently, and
with more thoroughness, at the awakening of civicart
ambition, than any other of the problems of
municipal aesthetics. There is almost uniformly re
cognition of the necessity of expert guidance, not
merely in the engineering features of the park, but,
with increasing frequency, in its original location,
and almost completely in its artistic development
Any politician will be allowed to pass upon the
beauty of a lamp-post long after the community has
decreed that all the politicians together shall not
have power to designate the location of a single
shrub in the park. This dependence upon expert
taste is a very happy condition, representing the at
tainment in one phase of urban development of that
popular attitude which is to be the ideal for all and
so long the vain ideal
The location and distribution of the parks must
seem, of course, a much more humdrum and prosaic
affair than the development of their beauty. The
preparation of the canvas and the selection of the
block of marble are never as interesting to the ob
server as the painting of the picture and the freeing
of the marble-imprisoned figure. But these acts are
elementary. They are so fundamental that upon the
excellence with which they are done is dependent
any ultimate success. From that point of view they
Distribution ant) location of parfia, 327
are more thrilling even, in the sense which they
should give of responsibility and of opportunity,
than is that subsequent development which might,
if proved a failure, be undone.
Consideration, then, of the requirements of the
parks, from the side of the parks and of the com
munity, brings us to these common-sense and simple
conclusions: the country- or rural-park as it is
called to distinguish it from the city square
should contain sufficient acreage to include a com
plete natural landscape, where the boundaries will
not be obtrusive. The multiplication of such parks
or landscapes should continue until the community
is sufficiently served, both as to numbers, so that
it may be possible to find secluded spots however
popular the parks, and as to distribution, so that all
portions of the community may be served with an
equality based, in the ideal, upon their needs. Thus
will be created if not by the municipality alone, by
the co-operation with it of the surrounding towns
or by the united action of a whole county a park
system, parkways uniting the separate parks. For
it is not to be supposed that one plot would have,
or could have, such geographical position and extent
as to be equally satisfactory to every part of the
community.
But into the question of location there enter other
than sociological considerations. The relative cost
of various plots must always be a factor locally; and
because the park is to be, pre-eminently, a tract of
328 flDobern Civic Hrt
movingly beautiful scenery, developed on natural
lines that it may present the greatest contrast to the
town's artificiality, the landscape possibilities of the
area have to be carefully regarded. And in this we
come to principles that may be of general service.
Charles Eliot, in addressing the Metropolitan Park
Commission of Boston, criticised the tendency of
many towns to select their park lands with reference
to
"
a certain inherited pre-conception
"
of what parks
ought to be borrowing their notion from the
"
deer
park, "the grassy land dotted with great trees, that
is the common English concept of the word
"
park,"
He then laid down three principles of selection. The
first was that the land should possess, or afford
opportunity for the creation of, interesting or beauti
ful scenery, of one type or another. The second
was that the land should generally be a tract that
was ill
adapted to streets and buildings. The third
was that it should be related with as much sym
metry as possible to the district that it was desired
to serve. The second principle is important as
affecting the probable cost of the land. It has been
elaborated by the secretary of the Essex County
(New Jersey) Park Commission to include land
"
difficult to use for any other purpose and danger
ous to the public health," which shall, in its con
version into a pleasure ground, have its unsightly
and menacing character eliminated. In this, clearly,
there would be a great gain. Not only would cheap
land be secured, but an unsanitary area would be
Distribution anb location of parks. 329
made to contribute to the health of the community
and an eyesore to its beauty. To these principles
one other may be added or it may be conceived as
an elaboration of the first: preserve to public enjoy
ment the most striking natural feature, be it the
finest view or the best scenery, of the region in and
about the town.
Out of the principles there comes a rule that
applies so often that it may be laid down almost
as a principle: reserve for park development the
stream banks of the community. This acquirement
is nearly sure to be picturesque, potentially if not in
fact, and has certainly the relief of variety; it is quite
likely to be distinctive; and it is frequently, until
thus taken charge of, a menace to the health of the
community, for it is low, often swampy, and pro
bably made a dumping-ground if not an open sewer
for the neighbourhood. On this account also, while
possessing perhaps the district's greatest chance of
beauty, it is a source of ugliness until redeemed.
But the ridges of its rising banks are likely to furnish
a convenient natural boundary to frame a landscape
picture to be here created, while the trans-water
view, which is always charming, adds the width of
the stream to the apparent park area without re
moving an equal tract from the slender tax-lists of
the town or from the habitable area of the crowded
city. The reservation affords, too, public access to
a sure current of fresh air, and possibly to a place
for water sports. In short, no inland space equally
330 fIDobern Civic Brt
contracted is likely to serve well so many ends. The
one serious obstacle to such location is the possible
commercial productiveness of the banks. On this
account it often proves impracticable to obtain more
than isolated areas, of mere "open space" extent,
and the community has still to go for its countrypark
into the environs, unable even to approach it
by a stream-bank parkway. Fortunately, however,
if also unhappily, more towns and cities might estab
lish parks upon the banks of their streams than
dream of doing so.
This is especially true among the smaller towns;
and with them, it should be noted, the park require
ments are not quite the same as with the larger
cities. There is, for example, very little real need of
providing carriage-drives, for it will be easy to reach
innumerable pleasant country roads, which spread
from the town in all directions and for distances that
would be the despair of a park commission. The
tendency of the town to follow the example of the
city has caused this condition to be widely ignored,
although it is so plain that it should be recognised at
once. And the park of the quiet country town may
often cater more frankly to the entertainment of the
people than it is proper for the rural-park of a city to
do. The stream or lake, in the opportunities it
offers for boating, skating, etc., may thus give here
the keynote to the attractiveness of the whole pleas
ure ground.
Having determined the general location of the
Distribution and location of parft0. 331
park and its approximate acreage, there rises a nice
question as to the precise location of the boundary
line. A shifting of this a few feet to one side or the
other may make more difference in the park's ap
pearance than is commonly realised; and ciyic art,
as we have seen, must be at least as scrupulous in
its efforts to secure the maximum of beauty for the
park as for the smaller open space, for the lighting
apparatus, or for any other detail in the furnishing
and adorning of the city.
A leading firm of landscape architects, writing
some years ago to a park commission which employed
them, thus aptly summarised the commoner treat
ment of the boundary problem:
It is generally easier to acquire the whole of a given parcel
of real estate, though half of it is not really wanted, and then to
omit the purchase of any of the next parcel, though half of that
is sadly needed, than it is to acquire a part from this and a part
from that for the sake of obtaining what is essential, and omitting
what is of less importance, to the landscape of the domain to be
preserved. There are few public grounds which are not grossly
deformed by the imperfections of their boundaries. Almost
everywhere the immediate saving in time and trouble for the
surveyor, the conveyancer, and the commission concerned has
worked permanent injury to public interests in public scenery.
It is only too true that those who should be the
champions of civic art are thus often careless. They
do not insist upon a strict adherence to the ideal in
a matter that seems a small detail, but that actually
may affect seriously the beauty of the park and the
relation of the park to the town.
33* (IDobern Civic flrt
The suggestion that the acreage of a given park
would best include a complete natural landscape sets
down the general position of the boundaries. They
should enclose a topographical unit. Half a hillslope,
half a pond, half a glen will not suffice, nor
will the whole do unless this include the unit's
natural frame. If an arbitrary frame be apparent, the
charm of the scene is lost, for to the city dweller no
small element in the park's attractiveness is the im
pression of spaciousness, the feeling that here there
is plenty of room. An obvious circumscribing of the
area, as by securing, for example, land that reaches
exactly to the top of the hill, where private
construction then defines park limits, immensely
reduces the pleasure that might have been given by
pushing the boundaries over the crest of the hill, so
that the wilderness should seem of indefinite extent.
Those sides of the park, which in time may be
come all sides of it, that touch the town can best
be bounded by streets not necessarily by straight
streets; indeed, preferably by those of waving lines.
The park gains by having as its boundary a publicly
controlled highway instead of individuals' back yards
that may be neglected. The community gains,
because the park, instead of being shut away behind
private lands and to a large extent concealed, is
brought into visibly close proximity; because it makes
a positive and great addition to the beauty of the
street it touches; and because by its relation to the
street it creates attractive, and therefore valuable,
Distribution anb ^Location of parft0. 333
building sites. Finally, the arrangement is better for
the individuals of the community. On the one hand,
gardens that adjoined the public domain would be
much more subject to trespass than if there were a
street between; on the other, there might well be a
sense of injustice in the maintenance at public ex
pense of a beautiful natural park separated by no
visible line from an individual's private garden, so as
virtually to be added to his estate.
To carry the boundary over the ridges of enclos
ing hills; not to be hampered by private boundaries,
but, rather, to deviate from straight lines if so a great
boulder, a clump of noble trees, a face of rock, or a
lovely watercourse can be included to complete the
landscape picture; and, where town and park adjoin,
to make a public way the boundary these are rules
that will serve for guidance when, the general loca
tion and approximate acreage of the park determined,
its exact limits are to be laid down.
In the development of the boundary street, the
community is under certain obligations to the park.
As the park enhances the beauty of the street by
securing for one side of the highway a beautiful and
undespoiled landscape, so the street should make
sure that park views are, at least, not ruined by
hideous structures on the thoroughfare or at its edge.
It should guarantee that the bill-board will not scream
its message across the quiet scene, and that the
harsh though necessary contrast of urban construc
tion will be softened and made to blend as far a
334 fIDobern dMc art
possible with the park's scenery by the half-conceal
ing foliage of trees. If it be well to put a street
popularly used as a park approach into the hands of
the park commissioners, that it may be ,
suitably
maintained, there would seem to be equally good
reason for making the like disposition of the bound
ary streets. The action possibly has yet to be taken
for the first time, but the defence of park boundaries
from bill-board attack has already become fairly
common in American cities.
It ought now to be clear, from considering park
requirements, that mere space alone will by no means
satisfy the need. Something more than acres are
wanted for the public reservations of town or city
for the requirements, so many in number and so
various in kind, become explicit in their aggregate.
Because this is true, it is very important, for the
securing of good results, that the location of the
parks should be fixed at the earliest possible time.
They ought to be planned, indeed, at the start, with
the streets and the squares; but unhappily very few
cities have been built up from an original ground plan
since people's parks came to be recognised as urban
necessities rather than as luxuries.
In the old world it has been possible to make
good use of many a royal pleasure ground or noble
man's estate, originally chosen because of the natural
beauty of the site; made easily accessible by its long
years of use, and now perhaps surrounded by the
town; and showing internally that beauty of de-
Mstribution anb location of parfc& 335
velopment which comes with centuries of loving
co-operation between man and nature. In the
moats that surrounded old city walls many of these
towns have had, too, the chance since walls have
been torn down of joining park to park, and of
belting the city, or its more congested inner portions,
with a circle of park that is at least impartial in the
distribution of pleasure-ground space. Except oc
casionally, therefore, the park problems of the cities
of Europe especially on the Continent have been
less pressing and less difficult than those in America.
Nor should they ever in the future be anywhere as
hard as in the past.
Now that the necessity for parks is recognised,
and their distribution, location, and boundaries are
perceived to be questions really concerned with the
science of city-building, not merely a matter of
finding room and utilising any tract, the position of
the parks should be plotted and their sites secured as
speedily as possible. There should not be delay
until money is available to develop them. A public
reservation will serve the purpose that gives to it
a name before it has any "development." And
promptness in such action will usually mean eco
nomy, both in the price of the land, and in the need
subsequently of having to undo much less when re
storing it to a condition that is natural in suggestion
if not in fact.
Secure at once the most striking scenery of the
district, preserve as much as possible of the shore
336 Civic art
line or watercourse for public enjoyment, and then
supplement these holdings with areas so distributed,
so apportioned, so extended, as best to serve in the
total of the system the various park requirements of
the community. This, in a nutshell, is the course to
be approved.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PARK DEVELOPMENT.
THE
distinction between the location of a park
and the park's development is not as that
between a street's plotting and its surface
treatment, its planting, etc. The street is laid
down that it may serve a special purpose, and we
have to do the best we can under circumstances
that are possibly very unfavourable. The site of the
park is chosen and its limits determined in a
measure at least by the natural picture already ex
istent. The task is not to transform that, but to
preserve it and even to emphasise it. We have the
lovely problem of making a grand or beautiful scene
more unmistakably grand or beautiful, so that no one,
however dull or untrained, can fail to be conscious of
its possession of the qualities of beauty or grandeur,
or to enjoy them. As compared with the embarrass
ment in other parts of the town, asstheticism is here
almost unhampered. Modern civic art, in its most
charming development, here has a full opportunity.
337
338 flDofcern Civic art
The larger opportunity involves a greater obliga
tion and a larger responsibility. There is need that
he who directs the work have at once naturally re
fined taste and professional training. Nor must he
be an artist only, who would preserve and dare to
emphasise the beauty of nature; he must be the
lover, content to lose in his work his own identity,
to serve Nature without assertion of himself, but
with that love and understanding which takes the
loved one's point of view, apprehending the un
formed wish, and reading in the suggestion a com
mand. Though this involve a long course of action,
he will obey it joyfully, bearing criticism with pa
tience, and he will be undiscouraged by the slow
process of the years. His mind must be on the dis
tant picture that Nature has sketched and that he,
with her aid, shall finish not to-day, or to-morrow,
but in the years to come, when at last his lifework,
in the completeness of beauty, shall stand for genera
tions. Far more than student, more than artist, more
than blundering lover, he must be student, artist,
lover, all in one united by high consecration. For
his is "the most interesting of the arts; to poetry
and painting what reality is to a description, what
the original is to a copy"
1
;
and its purpose is of the
purest and sweetest.
The park superintendent and commissioners
should have had a voice in the location of the
park, that the district may be adequately served
1
Girardin, 1
777.
Iparfc development. 339
and its most distinctive scenery secured. So the
canvas is stretched, the marble selected, and we
come in the park's development to that fascina
ting task, the making of the picture.
It may be well to note at once the restrictions.
There are certain things that must be done to make
.possible the enjoyment of the park by large numbers
of people and its necessary connection with the
city, that are handicaps to an ideal development
of scenery. They are essential, however, and
may as well be planned for at the start. These
hampering necessities include most strikingly the
roads and paths and definite boundaries, for the
few needed structures may often be "planted out"
or may be made even to contribute picturesqueness
to the scene.
As to the boundaries, it has been already sug
gested that, by putting them just beyond the land
scape's natural frame and concealing them with heavy
planting, any appearance from the park of a hard line
will be lost; indeed, that there may be obtained that
seeming indefmiteness of extent which will prove an
additional charm of the park to city dwellers. Where
there are entrances, however, it will be advisable for
various reasons to mark distinctly the breaks in the
boundary line. In planning these, the greatest care
should be taken to make their location convenient,
for just because each entrance adds a difficulty to
idyllic treatment, by the formality which it may
require and the convergence there of roads and paths,
340 flDofcern Civic art
it will not do to multiply them indefinitely. And
even in the theory of country-park development, as
well as in convenience, there is excuse for the conspicuousness
of an entrance. The entrance to the
park from the city is also the exit to the city from the
park, the exit from the natural into the artificial and
formal. It is not improper that this should be in
dicated to those who are in the park. On the side
of the town, a stately and formal entrance is much
more harmonious even consistent and appropriate
than would be a seemingly casual break in a nat
ural border of undergrowth and trees. On the
country side, the like requirement is not as pressing,
but there is reason enough. Though the park will
turn to the best use it can any peaceful or romantic
views over country not included in the park area, the
point of egress from park to real "country" should
still be definitely known, since there one passes out
of the area that is reserved for public enjoyment and
where the beauty of every detail may be rightfully
demanded.
In some cases, very notably in Hyde Park, London,
and in Prospect Park, in the borough of Brooklyn,
New York, so striking an architectural entrance as
an arch of commemoration or triumph is provided.
Hyde Park is not really a country-park. There are
large trees and meadow-like stretches of turf, but
there is very little effort to make the visitor forget
that a great city is beating against the perfectly evidfence,
and in its broad and conspicuous roads
parft development 341
there is much of formalism. Prospect Park is countrylike
and yet a massive arch surmounted by a glorious
quadriga marks the entrance. On its street side there
is a broad, paved plaza to which various streets and
surface transit lines converge. A plaza here, thus
treated topographically as a focus, is an excellent ar
rangement. It emphasises the importance of the
park entrance and tends by increasing the park's
accessibility through the ease, convenience, and
rapidity of its own distributing power to bring the
park nearer to the people.
In regard to park roads and paths, it is clear that
these are necessary for the enjoyment of the park by
many persons. There are a few who with delight
and profit might enter a pathless wilderness, and
climbing, wandering, guideless there, would find for
themselves the vantage points, the half-hidden beau
ties, and who at their wish could return with ease.
But there are many who will drive, and many who
will ride on horse or bicycle, and many who, though
walking, would be lost without the path, or unable
to discover or to reach the view-points and secluded
pictures without such aid physical and mental.
For all of these, and even for the preservation of the
quiet beauty of the scene, in which contemplating
thousands are to be scattered inconspicuously and
harmlessly, it is necessary that there be drives and
paths. For park development is the most liberal of
arts and, as Wordsworth says, no servant of such an
art aims to gratify merely an individual or class;
342 flDofcern Civic art
"the true servants of the arts pay homage to the
human kind."
Not merely, then, to lead from point to point
is the duty of these park paths and roads; but
to lead by the most attractive way, to reveal as
many as possible of the landscape beauties, and at
the same time so to lead that while every view from
the way itself is lovely the way shall be as slightly
noticeable a feature of the park as possible almost
unobserved until required, and a non-intruding guide
to those who use it in solitary commune with na
ture. Here directness is not a factor. No one is to
be in a hurry here. To soothe the spirit and calm
tired nerves with peaceful outlooks and beautiful
views, the roads and paths may wind and turn.
They must be built well, so that there will be pleas
ure in the mere act of travelling, but more import
ant than their construction is their location. If at
the beginning there be no money with which to
build elaborate roads, yet their position should at
once be plotted they should be placed where they
ought to be, and improved subsequently, as occasion
comes.
Finally, even the trolley can be brought into the
park. There has been a great deal of hesitation as
to this point, and on the whole it is creditable that
there should have been, for what more natural than
to fear that admission of the means of rapid-transit
would destroy tranquillity and conventionalise the
park, and what more commendable than to defend
Development 343
the tract, though at the cost of public convenience,
from an intrusion of such effect ? But the narrow
line of rapid-transit need do no injury. It may be
fully screened, by grading and by planting, and even
made by such bordering a way of beauty in itself.
This once granted, the thought of the duty of the
park to the community to woo to its beautiful
serenity the city's workers in the greatest numbers
possible should carry a conviction that urban
transit facilities need not be halted at the gates.
They may well be brought close to park vantage
points.
With the borders arranged, the entrances chosen
and marked, and the drives and paths laid down,
those probable drawbacks which are truly essential
are known, and there remains the task of extracting
from the scene the maximum of beauty, in com
pleteness and consistency, that potentially may
linger there. And this should amount to much,
especially if the plot has been chosen because of its
natural beauty.
The unity will be already existent to a consider
able extent in the natural picture of the selected
tract; the harmony will be brought out by the
breadth of the composition and the naturalness of
the treatment; the variety, in the picturesqueness of
the details. Over all will be thrown that evident
fitness to its purpose here of refreshment to the
city-wearied that is the final, all-enveloping qual
ity of beauty and of art. There will be frequent
344 HDobern Civic art
necessity for regrading. In the treatment of the water
surfaces and their margins, that they may not give
an air of formality to a scene which is meant to be
natural, both the taste and training of the landscape
artist will be required. In the planting there must
be often clever exaggeration of the suggestions of
Nature, lest the inexperienced overlook the niceness
and fineness of her distinctions and lose a charm of
the park. But all these are professional questions.
They are the local problems of each separate countrypark,
and are general only in their universal repeti
tion in an infinite variety.
The great things to be remembered, the thoughts
that are to solve these problems when they arise and
that are to determine each detail in the work to be
done, are two: first, that purpose of the park which
may be called psychological, in its proffer of refresh
ment by means of peace and beauty, that,
"
under
the spreading branches of the trees, we may take
the benediction of the air." From this point of
view the park, it is suggested, serves to the modern
crowded industrial city such a spiritual purpose as
the architectural grandeur and loveliness of a cathe
dral served to the comparatively rural population of
the Middle Ages. The park is the cathedral of the
modern city. The second, the park's purpose to pre
serve to the people, and even to enhance for their
enjoyment, types of the existing natural beauty of
their neighbourhood.
From the latter standpoint, park commissioners
parfc Development 345
should be considered as trustees of scenery. For
some of the parks of cities, indeed whenever a tract
has been selected especially on account of its strik
ing beauty, grandeur, or picturesqueness, they are
primarily this. And so there enters into civic art,
into the art even of city beauty, the preservation of
distinctive natural scenery. This is not incongruous.
The purpose of municipal aesthetics is simply to
bring into the lives of the city-bound the greatest
possible amount of beauty, to secure for them the
beauty that should rightfully be theirs, to defend
from wretchedness their homes and daily outlook,
and to make sure that where there are brought to
gether the greatest number of persons with what
powers of enjoyment and aggregate of sensibility !
their higher cravings shall not be starved; but that,
rather, it shall be possible for them to draw from
their surroundings the inspiration on which is
founded the progress of the race. With this
thought, can civic art afford to neglect whatever
is most noble or most beautiful in the natural
scenery of the region in which' the town is situated ?
If it has dared to neglect it in other times, the rea
son is the essential difference between modern civic
art and any that has gone before the difference
between an ethical and a purely sensual stand
ard, between an art to make men and an art
man-made.
Unless there be public reservations for park pur
poses, we have to consider to what an increasingly
346 flDofcern Civic Hrt.
narrow and artificial life the population of cities
would be condemned. The larger the community,
the more completely, and for the greater distances,
will the naturally beautiful points of the surrounding
region be turned into private grounds, and the more
impossible will it become for the people who are
ever "trespassers in the country" to get close to
nature. But through its means they come to the
knowledge and so to the love of God; while with
out it there is lost the true sense of proportionate
values, and the temporary and human are vaingloriously
magnified.
When the popular function of the park is exam
ined thus from various standpoints, there is reached
an attitude of mind which makes it easy to judge
regarding certain more or less incidental questions in
park development which yet recur so frequently as
to be well-nigh universal perplexities. Such for ex
ample are the buildings that are put in parks; the
sculpture that is thrust into them; the efforts to
transform them, or parts of their area, into zoologi
cal or botanical gardens; and finally, and rather on
the other side of the matter, the tendency to use
the cemetery as a public park, if no distinct pleasure
ground has been set aside.
Consideration that the park is developed in the
natural style in order that it may present the sharp
est contrast to the artificiality of the city, should
make it clear that buildings are to be admitted to its
area in only the chariest way. The fact that' the
Development 347
design is to accommodate comfortably, and for peri
ods of many hours, large numbers of people, will
necessitate some buildings. These may properly
include not only shelters from the sudden storm, but
restaurants where light and inexpensive refreshments
can be obtained. We have, then, antithetical re
quirements which can be harmonised only by mak
ing the buildings as few as possible, as inconspicuous
as may be, and in form picturesque additions to the
scene. All public institutions museums and gal
leries should be barred out. They have no busi
ness in a rural-park; and if they are put there because
the land costs nothing, the people pay more for the
site in the loss of the ground occupied by the
structure and its approaches, in the marring of
the landscape vista by the intrusion of formalism
upon its naturalness, and in the defeat of the park's
purpose in at least the portion thus occupied than
they would have paid for a site on the grandest
avenue. It is a payment, too, that must be made
every day and every year in an increasing sum. If
the structures are placed here that they may have a
beautiful and advantageous setting, their gain is the
park's loss. We must believe that in a wiser plan
ning of cities there would be furnished enough sites
of inherent dignity, stateliness, and beauty to make
it possible to accommodate such buildings without
trespassing on the park.
As to statuary, of which the purpose must be
decorative, educational, or commemorative, it is
348 HDobern Civic art
difficult to understand how so much was ever admit
ted to natural parks. The statue itself will probably
look well with a green background of soft foliage,
but it is so incongruous in a "natural" scene that
only the narrowest artistic view could have excused
its admission. With regard to the other functions
of sculpture, people do not go to the park to
think. Statuary has properly, then, no place in
rural-parks.
The use of some of the park area for zoological
or botanical gardens is more easily understood.
These require large tracts of land ;
and if the bo
tanical garden does not necessarily destroy the
beauty of the park, even replacing with some addi
tion of interest the naturalness that it may endanger,
the zoological garden which is incompatible with
the maintenance of a calm and perfect landscape
picture is certainly very attractive to the people.
It will undoubtedly draw to the park many who
otherwise would seldom visit it, and it will effectu
ally refresh them with scenes unlike those of the
city. It is even true, probably, that a majority of
the visitors to a large park on a holiday would pre
fer some artificial attraction, some positive amuse
ment, to the soothing contemplation of lovely
scenery and here is an amusement that at least
will do them no harm. So the gardens open a large
question a question of circular railroad tracks, of
whirling horses, of a thousand artificial forms of
amusement. There is only one answer to make
park Development 349
the answer to another question, "Is this what the
country-park was made for; is it for this the striking
scenery was reserved ?
"
There is so little beauty in
the zoological garden, and beauty is so incidental a
factor in the botanical garden, that civic art need no
longer concern itself with them. But in leaving the
subject, it may say that from a sociological, not a
civic-art, standpoint there might fittingly be pro
vided among the "parks" one that should be
frankly a public pleasure ground, with zoological,
and botanical gardens and all the recreative gew
gaws of the hour.
Finally, the community's use of the cemetery as
a park is simply a pathetic confession of the public
need of park reservations. Speaking artistically, the
cemeteries have lately shown vast improvement.
From a type originally comparable to stoneyards,
they tend to become more and more park-like. As
the beauty of grading and planting increases and
monuments become less prominent features, the
effect is less depressing. It is restful and like that
of the park. We should note, too, that in selecting
the site of the
"
God's acre," there is likely to have
been that reservation of particularly lovely natural
scenery which is one of the factors in the park's
success. But the great significance of a communi
ty's park-use of the cemetery is the proof of the
need of parks. It is a use to be encouraged and
approved, until the park is provided, for all the
reasons for which parks are approved.
350 fIDobern <CMc Hrt
A word should be said as to those reservations
that may be state or national in origin, but which
are municipal in the use that an adjacent community
makes of them. It is a word of explanation. From
the standpoint of civic art, the relation of such parks
to the nearest community is the same as the relation
of state and national buildings, squares, and bridges
to the city in which these happen to be the
relation of the Capitol to Washington, of the Place
de la Concorde and Alexander III. Bridge to Paris, or
of the Sieges Allee to Berlin. Civic art asks no
question as to origin. It is satisfied if the city be
adorned, be rendered more fitted to its purpose,
fairer, more worthy of itself. In studying the sub
ject, these state-created ornaments may be valuable
for illustrations, while of little use as examples to
other cities whose citizens must generally depend
upon their own resources. But in studying the
completed picture, instead of the process of its crea
tion, they are not to be distinguished as factors in its
beauty from those that are municipally established.
All act together to make the city beautiful.
There remains one point to speak of in regard
to park development. It is the encouragement that
should be given to the people to visit the parks.
''Democracy/' says Walt Whitman,
1
"most of all
affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy and
sane only with nature." And then, speaking of
American democracy in particular, he notes that this,
1
Autobiographia*
Iparfc Development 351
in its myriad personalities, in factories, workshops, stores,
offices, through the dense streets and houses of cities, and all
the manifold sophisticated life, must either be fibred, vitalised,
by regular contact with outdoor light and air and growths, farm
scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth, and free skies,
or it will morbidly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand
races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty (the only
specific purpose of America) on any less terms. I conceive of
no flourishing and heroic ^elements of democracy In the United
States, or of democracy maintaining itself at all, without the
nature-element forming a main part to be its health-element
and beauty-element
And not merely should there be encouragement to
go to the park, but to linger in it for considerable
periods at a time, that its full beauty and influence
may be leisurely absorbed. There is no other way
to appreciate the park to the full except in leisurely
fashion. Its contrast to the city in bestowing a
sense of repose is dependent on a willingness to take
time, on a feeling that haste and urgency do not
enter here. In fact, much of the enjoyment of the
park is forbidden to those who drive through it,
and the speeding bicyclist has only a blurred, vague
sense of beauty.
So in developing the park there should be
frequent invitation to loitering. There should be
facilities for hitching horses; attractive footpaths
should lead enticingly into mysteries of planting that
appeal resistlessly to the instinct for discovery.
There should be secluded nooks and recesses; it
should be possible to walk everywhere, to lie upon
the grass; to drift all day if one wishes, without
352 flDofcern Civic Hrt
additional expense, upon the sheet of water, or to
paddle beneath the mirrored trees, and in sequestered
nooks to anchor for a morning or afternoon. There
should be seats for those who fear to use the ground,
and everywhere the invitation to those idle day
dreams that may be the most profitable dreams we
have. In the ground cover there should hide the
sweet surprise of unexpected flowers, to woo the
careless to a more thoughtful study of their surround
ings. There should be many places where the music
of rippling water, of singing birds, and of the far
away laughter of little children shall be so secure
from interruption by grosser sounds as to attract the
listener and hold him with its lovely charm.
For all of this there will be need of many little
shelters from the storm; of many waste receptacles,
that no untidiness may result from the eating of
luncheons out-of-doors; of ample and convenient
facilities for getting drinking water; and of, finally,
efficient police protection. But these things can be
provided quite inconspicuously, so that they shall
not be apparent but shall, in almost subconscious
recognition of their presence, substantiate the allur
ing invitation of the park.
And its invitation should be not that of the sum
mer only, but of the year. The beauty of the snowy
meadows, the broadening of the vistas when the
leaves have fallen, the hide-and-Seek of the water in
the half-frozen brook, the dark tree-trunks silhouetted
against the snow and throwing blue shadows on the
iparft Development 353
white fields, the etching of bare branches against
the sky these are winter beauties of the park that
should be understood. Then comes in spring the
never tiring miracle of the awakening to life of every
plant the peeping of the flowers above the snow,
the bursting of the buds, the unfolding of little
leaves, the uncurling ferns, the tender green that
spreads over hill and dale; and when at last the
glory of the summer wanes, there yet is gorgeous
autumn, with the lingering, wailing death of the
year, just when it has flaunted most proudly its
splendour and the rich ripeness of its success. This
is the annual story even drama, of the park, to
which the people are to be summoned from the city
streets.
For the park has not a passive, but an active,
function. It is not to stand aloof, a treasure of
the city, beautiful, still, reserved. There is nothing
among all the achievements of modern civic art that
is created merely to be looked at, and the park is no
exception. It is, to be sure, beautiful. From the
standpoint of sheer beauty there is no other urban
possession comparable to this; but life must pulse
through all of civic art. If in any city belonging
there be not intense human purpose, if it have not
a duty to perform, civic art disclaims it. So the
park, with the warmth and strength of love, of
love of all the working world, of tender pity for its
weariness and long restraint, should hold out its
arms to city dwellers, should invite them to itself,
354 CMc art
until its naturalness and beauty enter into their lives
and become as distinct a part ofthe city's relation to
its citizens as are the streets and squares. Only
then has the park fulfilled its mission as a phase of
modern civic art.
CHAPTER XIX.
TEMPORARY AND OCCASIONAL DECORATION.
TO
enter into the life of the people this was to
be the duty of the park as a component of
that modern civic art which exists for the
people's sake. To be itself a product of their life, to
owe its very existence to their emotion, its strength
to their fervour, that is the condition, even the
privilege, of temporary and occasional decoration in
the city. In the intimacy of this connection, there is
proved the right of brief and fleeting decoration to be
included, for other reasons than its spectacular effect
iveness, in the discussion of civic art. It is born of
the people's emotion. It is the outward manifesta
tion of their sentiment. As the song in the music
ian's heart leaps forth upon the keys, as the vision in
the painter's soul is transcribed upon the canvas, so
the impulse of the people displays itself upon street
and square. They are the artist, and the decoration
refined or crude is their handiwork. The ropes of
laurel, the rows of snowy columns, the flower-twined
355
356 flDobern Civic art
masts, the fluttering banners, the myriad lights, the
procession marching to the heart-beats of a nation
these will be indeed, if rendered beautiful, a phase of
civic art. They will be the freest, most spontaneous,
of all civic-art expressions*
To be sure the decoration is transitory. It is as
short-lived as the beauty of the rose, as the festival
of the stars in the pageant of a night. But when we
read of the urban glories of the past, do we forget the
colour-crowded streets of those old towns of Burg
undy, where the fountains tossed red wine and white,
and where musicians played from within a pastry;
do we forget the solemn ecclesiastical functions that
were wont to transform for a season the warring
cities of Italy; has the stately Roman triumph passed
out of mind; and has the grace of the Athenian pro
cession been forgotten? All these were fleeting; but
so much were they a part of the life of their com
munities that they are now as inseparable from the
memory of the cities as are the marble palaces that
would then have seemed the more permanent phase
of civic art. It is not the duration of a beautiful thing,
but its essentialness, its intimate connection with the
thought and feeling with the life of the people,
and hence its urban utility, that counts in giving to
it a place in civic art.
The temporary and occasional decoration, how
ever temporary and however .occasional, is thus one
of the opportunities to be availed of in the building
of the city beautiful There should, certainly, be no
anb Occasional decoration. 357
self-consciousness about the impulse. The wish to
decorate must come from a full heart, spontaneously;
but just as the artist, without prejudice to a later
inspiration, will study rules of art, so may we, in the
tranquil hours between the great waves of emotion,
contemplate those simple rules that underlie expres
sion and give to it effectiveness. For the one pur
pose of expression is to produce effect. When a
popular emotion sweeps over a community and so
stirs it that the very house-fronts bear its emblems
and the business streets lose their matter-of-factness
in passionate portrayal of feeling, then, with no sense
of self-consciousness or restraint, there will be ob
servance of such rules as may be known to increase
the effectiveness of the expression. So there will be
a fitting to purpose, and the requirements of civic
art will have as usual utilitarian as well as aesthetic
value.
It will be well to examine first the conditions
that make possible and even give rise to temporary
and occasional decoration. They are: (i) an emo
tion; (2) an emotion so general as to be well-nigh
unanimous.
The latter factor invites co-operation. When all
the residents on a block feel so strongly on a certain
subject that they all wish on the same day to deck
their houses with flags, or to drape them with the
emblems of sorrow, why should each one act by him
self alone ? They choose the same time for expressing
their sentiment; they make use of like materials and
358 fIDobern Civic Hrt
methods, for the feeling is common; what, then,
could be more awkward, more constrained, and act
ually unnatural, when unanimity of emotion tends
to draw men together, than for each household to
act by itself? And co-operation, with its induce
ment to harmony and unity in results, is one of the
steps to a popular realisation of civic art.
Yet this has proved a most difficult thing to secure
in temporary decoration. Until as lately as Queen
Victoria's "diamond jubilee/
7
there appeared to be
in recent times no general effort toward it or even for
artistic direction, as far as the householders were
concerned. It has been said that on that occasion
there was literally not a street and hardly a house in
all of vast London that had not some attempt at
decoration. Gilded lions and unicorns, crowns of
imitation jewels, the entwined letters V. R. and the
numerals of the dates, intricate illuminations in gas
jets and coloured glass, rows of little fairy-lamps, the
flags of the empire, were the materials, rich in artistic
possibilities, that a prosaic and unimaginative people,
without direction or co-operation, transformed into a
confused and jumbled splurge of loyalty. A witness
of the celebration, who could be perhaps as little
suspected of thoughts of civic art as any describer of
the event, wrote of it:
The decorations were not beautiful, and with the exception
of those in St. James's Street there was no harmony of design nor
scheme of colour, and a great opportunity was lost. There was
probably no other time when so much money was spent in
anb Occasional decoration. 359
display with results so inadequate. Had the government put the
matter in the hands of a committee of artists, much might have
been done that would have made the route of the procession
a valley full of beauty and significance; but, as it was, every
householder followed his own ideas and so, while the loyalty
displayed was quite evident, the taste was most primitive. It was
the same sort of decoration that one sees on a Christmas tree.
At the time of the reception to Admiral Dewey in
New York, which was only two years later, the
National Society of Mural Painters devised a beauti
ful scheme of house-front decoration. The society's
own efforts were confined to eight important blocks;
but it made public its house-front suggestions, urg
ing that on separate blocks of the line of march the
householders should co-operate so that results might
be harmonious. The requirements were simple: a
restriction of the mass of decoration to the thirdstory
windows; a use of leaves, flowers, rugs or
tapestries, and of the colours of the navy (which
were blue and white) with accents of gold, in addi
tion to the national colours. An appeal was directed
to the public spirit of the people; it was suggested
that if there were harmony within single blocks and
the third-story accent were adhered to generally,
the blocks might differ as much as desired; and it
was perfectly clear to every one that the suggestions
were sensible and would produce if carried out effects
much lovelier and much stronger than the usual
straggling, irregular display made up of unrelated
splotches of colour. But there was little response to
the appeal. Either the public was incredulous as to
360 flDobern Civic Hrt
the possibility of co-operation, or each household,
wishing to greet the hero with a triumphant song
of welcome, preferred to sing its own particular tune
in its own key instead of uniting in a mighty chorus.
This at least was very much the effect, and it meas
ures somewhat more strikingly than did the event
in London, since here there had been given a chance
for better things, the loss of power through failure to
act together.
A few weeks afterward, at the Dewey reception in
Boston, certain streets were assigned to different
artists and it is said that "a variety of colour
schemes were carried out with considerable success."
At New Haven, two years later still, on the occasion
of Yale University's bi-centennial celebration, a
scheme that had been designed by a prominent
decorative artist
1
was quite widely adhered to. So,
as the ideals of civic art reach farther and are better
understood, co-operation is, in fact, secured with in
creasing frequency. The conditions in New Haven,
it may be explained, were of a type very different
from those in New York. The streets were full of
verdure with many and large trees, and the houses,
seldom exceeding two stories in height, had gardens
or lawns before them. There was thus require
ment of an entirely new plan. The dominant feat
ures of this were a band of green, to extend across
the front of each dwelling just above the first row of
windows. The entrance or other conspicuous point
1
Louis C. Tiffany.
ant) Occasional Decoration. 361
on the house-front was emphasised by a massing
of evergreens, and over these fluttered the flags of
the university.
Now, if the co-operation which should give ideal
results is still secured with sad infrequency, there
should be recollection that modern civic art has
made progress in an occasional taking of that long
step which is marked when artists are asked to
devise plans for popular decoration that shall be
suitable and beautiful. There is a bridging even of
centuries in this, to times when the procession was
considered, as it should never have ceased to be con
sidered, a work of art; a looking back to such glorious
days for municipal aesthetics as those when Cecca,
the gifted engineer and architect, arranged the page
ants of Florence, and brought saints and angels into
narrow streets whence all of sombre grayness and
austerity had fled before a flood of banners, of roof
ing drapery, and gay carpets.
The first step is, obviously, to get the good,
artistic, and reasonable plan. The next will be
general adherence to it and that is co-operation, if
not by a pleasanter name at least by a probably
easier route. The swift advance that the last few
years have witnessed in the control of decoration for
popular festivals which is only a return, after a
period of extravagant laxity, to the saner methods
of earlier times is thus one of the impressive
evidences of a Renaissance in civic art.
In considering a plan of decoration, the first
362 HDobern Civic Hrt
question to ask is the nature of the emotion. The
whole meaning of the decoration is to express a
sentiment, and that sentiment may be one of joy,
pride, reverence, or grief. This the decoration as
well as the pageant must unmistakably indicate.
The open-air dancing in the squares of Paris on the
night of July i4th, the fireworks in American cities
on the night of July 4th, the tossed confetti and
frolic of the masqueraders in the carnival cities
could anything be more joyous, or more typical in
its expression of joyousness, than those popular
celebrations ? The exuberance should be expressed
with equal clearness by the decoration; and when
the bands play funeral marches, and flags are furled,
and a slow and solemn tread takes the place of
gaiety, the change must appear as surely in the
dressing of the streets and house-fronts. Thus is
the first question the nature of the sentiment. Its
framing is another way of asking the impression
which is to be conveyed. The latter query, how
ever, is broader, for sometimes there will be a desire
to make a show of might or power for reasons that
appeal to the intellect rather than to the heart. A
very long procession of voters, for instance, may be
designed to affect the onlookers by sheer numbers,
and householders, by evincing their sympathies in
decorations, will emphasise or lessen the procession's
effect. The decorations would be here traceable,
indeed, to sentiment, but they would spring not so
much from excess of that as from a wish to impress
anb cca0iottai Decoration. 363
which has been formulated by reason. So we may
change the form of the first question and make it,
"
What is the impression to be conveyed ?
"
The second question concerns the conditions un
der which the display is made. Will it be seen
mainly at night or in the daytime, on land or on
water, in a region of sunshine and abundant flowers,
or where storms are so frequent that stands must be
designed with roofs and where it is not safe to plan
the exposure of rich stuffs ? This question, if not as
unescapable as the first, may affect the result as
keenly, and it shows the utter futility of attempting
to frame rules for occasional decoration that will
apply generally.
Yet, out of even the few examples already noted,
there are lessons to be drawn for the householders.
The importance of co-operation has been observed,
to the end that in the decoration of a city there shall
be adopted a civic unit which is to say, a street
or block and not the false or irrelevant unit of the
individual. There has appeared the artistic neces
sity of harmony and even of evidence of a sub
stantial unanimity philosophically justified by the
thought that the display is one united people's ex
pression of a common feeling. This has been the
motive, indeed, for the co-operation. To give this
appearance of an underlying connecting unity, there
has been seen the value of establishing a definite
accent. This, by sameness of colour and position,
will join all parts of the display, however much
364 flDo&ern Civic art
these differ in harmonious detail. The householder
has thus secured, after all, a good deal of helpful
suggestion from the examples, for he necessarily
started with the two main questions answered: the
impression to be conveyed, and the conditions under
which the display is made.
The conditions will be a very important factor.
Examples may be noted. When Cecca planned
the street decorations and pageants of Florence, he
had little need to fear storm; but he had to consider
the pitiless heat of the sun that would beat upon
spectators and actors, once the narrow streets were
left and the broad, shadeless plaza had been entered.
We read, then, that the whole Piazza del Duomo was
roofed with a cool blue drapery on which were
stitched coats of arms and golden lilies. Its fitness
and utility formed one of the beauties of the decora
tion. For the inaugural celebration in Washington
in 1901, probably, and significantly, the first at
which there was a serious attempt to obtain a gen
eral effect in the street decorations that should be
harmonious and beautiful, it was necessary to pro
vide many stands and to roof them, lest the weather
be inclement. Their designing was given to archi
tects instead of to carpenters, and the very pillars
that supported their roofs and the roofs themselves
became decorative features. A group of these stands
or pavilions, symmetrically arranged, uniform in size,
attractively finished in front, painted white and decor
ated with vines, transformed a bit of street as effect-
ant> ccaetonal Decoration. 365
ively as had the Florentine's cloth sky, and for very
much the same reason its beauty gave an intel
lectual pleasure.
In Venice any strictly popular festival must take
place on water, and the wedding of the city to the
Adriatic, in the republic's proudest days, became
probably the most well-known of all her fetes; but
in modern times, when the^picturesqueness and ro
mance of the city show best at night as kindly shad
ows aid the imagination, [Venice,
still making use of
the water, decks herself\for strangers after the sun
has set. Then from the tetwers and domes of her
countless churches, from the" balconies of her pal
aces whence their number is doubled by the mirror
ing canals, glow the lights that transform her from a
city of memories to one of dreams. This illumination
is possibly the briefest of all modern civic decora
tions, but while it lasts a song comes over the water
to lull you to sleep, that you may not know when it
disappears. There is reason back of this, and to
the abundant loveliness of the scene there is cleverly
added that element of attractiveness which is in the
unattainable and the pathetic.
The Van Dyck celebration in Antwerp, in 1899,
was organised by the artists of the city. It took
place before the Hotel de Ville, in that Grande Place
that scarcely needed extra decorations to frame
worthily a Mediaeval pageant. For, in a late year of
the nineteenth century, the festival was Mediaeval, be
cause its subject was of that time. In the procession
366 flDobern Civic art
marched the nations and the arts the Gothic a
joyous group singing a hymn. Then there were
floats showing the Dutch artists and the subjects of
Van Dyck's paintings, and finally the representation
of Van Dyck himself, with the cities London, Genoa,
Venice, Rome, Paris, Vienna, Munich, Dresden, The
Hague, and Antwerp grouped around him in admira
tion. There was an address by a cardinal in scarlet,
and just after him came his monseigneurs in blue
silk, while the burgomaster might himself have
stepped from a Van Dyck portrait. There was his
torical appropriateness in this celebration.
The carnivals, be they in Rome or New Orleans,
are rather great urban frolics than examples of civic
decoration; and the beautiful festivals of flowers, be
they in sunny California or on the shores of the
Mediterranean, are the festivals of little towns
the floriculturists' harvest home rather than the
pageants of cities. But they have, with the carni
vals, this significance: they are natural and there
fore distinctive, as distinctive as the old Venetian
celebration of the wedding of the sea. And the
factors that go to make them a success, human lightheartedness
and abundant flowers, are found at hand.
In their way they are thus as significant in their ex
pression as the stately Roman triumph of a Caesar, or
the Labour Day procession of a modern industrial
town. Thus the influencing conditions are not
climatic alone, nor merely natural ;
but tempera
mental, economic, and perhaps historical
attfc ccaeional Decoration. 367
When there is to be a civic pageant of such im
portance as to suggest a general dressing of houses,
there is nearly always a demand that the occasion be
made a holiday, to the end that the almost ceaseless
labour of the town shall be for the time suspended.
As a matter of theory, there is much to recommend
the fixing of urban celebrations for the night. There
will then be little disturbance of work, the streets
are clear, and, as in Venice, that only need be illumin
ated which will add to the beauty and appropriate
effectiveness of the scene, while there is much of
picturesqueness and decoration in the very lights
themselves. But taking the city as a whole, the end
of a day means weariness and rest appeals more than
even play. The recent appearance of illuminated
"
courts-of-honour," that are simply business streets
transformed in the evening, does not probably indi
cate, therefore, that because of our better control of
lights and increased lighting facilities we are to turn
our urban pageants into evening festivals. No civic
celebration can be a really splendid and popular suc
cess for which the occasion has not been made a
holiday.
To the consideration, then, of the householders'
part in the city festivals, even regarding these in an
abstraction which is discouraging to definite conclu
sion, where the cases to be treated are so many and
varie^ there have now appeared from the selected
typical examples some further suggestions of value.
Not only should there be co-operation, in the
368 fIDobern Civic Brt
common expression at one time of a common senti
ment; not only must that expression precisely fit the
sentiment; and not only may the co-operation be
tween the householders manifest itself with best ar
tistic results in the establishment of a uniform accent
in the decorations, and the maintenance of civic
units, but the manner of the celebration should be:
distinctive; suited to time and to various local con
ditions; in its larger aspects not decorative merely
but reasonable, and it may even be with an underlying
utility i.e., the selection for decoration of that
which is necessary or convenient for the pageant.
In addition, it should set before the people an ideal of
beauty or picturesqueness that is locally pertinent,
however unattainable; and the occasion should be
made a holiday.
Do these conclusions seem trite? They tend
to the following suggestions that certainly are not
familiar in the observance: they suggest that in the
decoration of the structures of a town the national
colours are not always pertinent The adoption of
a city flag, a city colour, or a city emblem, not
necessarily more elaborate than the Venetian lion of
St. Mark's or the lily of Florence, that can be used
on many strictly local occasions would be far better.
Patriotism is good, but in hardly one festival in a
year does the show of it express accurately the
festival's sentiment. They suggest that for towns
so situated as to have a body of water as the leading
highway, there should be no conventional cramping
ttemporat? anb ccaeional Decoration. 369
of the pageant into city streets. It should be put
upon the water. This will nearly always mean a
gain in picturesqueness and in the provision for
spectators. It will mean, besides, adaptation to
local natural conditions and thus distinctiveness.
The conclusions suggest, further, that there should
not be the incongruity of elaborately decorated
buildings, with rude and undressed stands before
them. The stands, as a necessary adjunct to the
pageant, should be made a dominant motif in the
decoration. And they suggest that the household
ers instead of acting individually, each trying to
make the greatest splurge, should relinquish the
advertisement point of view and should adopt the
really decorative, to the end that on a block or
street they should act in harmony to give to that
space the beauty which perhaps they may not hope
to see in permanent results, but of which they
happily may dream.
As to the pageant itself, there are not many
kinds of play. Play is real life in counterfeit, with
a veiling of the serious. We march in procession to
play at war in a light-heartedness that restores to
the race its boyhood; we dance, and so return
to the old "leap
"
of earliest Latium and Hellas; we
masquerade, and feel the kinship of the earliest peo
ples when in the skins of goats and sheep they
also "played "; we make music, and in our melody
there is an echo of the pipe of the herdsman on
mountain side or starlit plain before any cities were.
370 flDofcern Civic Hrt
From these universal, simple, time-worn elements,
to devise the distinctive, expressive, beautiful, may
well demand the genius of the artist. The picture
that he evolves the visible song or poem perhaps
more properly, so definitely and yet so briefly does
it speak is with accuracy to be considered only as
a work of art. He will do much by combination.
We march or dance as we masquerade; and we
would do well to sing as we march.
Inevitably, as there is grasped this higher con
ception of the possibilities of the civic festival, there
will be felt the need of making decoration and
pageant complementary, that each may supplement
the other. The municipality, festooning laurel or
flowers from upright to upright, or setting Venetian
masts, flower-garlanded, banner-tipped, or martial
with arms and shields, along the way, has an op
portunity as conspicuous as that of the individual
householders greatly to emphasise the expression of
the formal spectacle. When in New York, for in
stance, the artists combined to erect the Dewey arch
of triumph, with its victory-crowned and laurel-hung
approaches, they gave to the parade at that particular
point an added expression such that the ovation
seemed to culminate in the arch.
It is noteworthy that there was a co-operation of
artists in this work. There are times when a work
of art is to be born of the dream of a single artist,
lest a composite product show self-consciousness.
But in devising an expression of popular sentiment,
emporan> anb Occasional decoration. 371
as we must do in occasional decorations, it were well
for artists to combine that they may represent more
accurately the various shades of emotion of which
the aggregate alone constitutes popular sentiment.
This is an idea almost as new to-day as is modern
civic art itself. But we may observe its growing
power in that artistic progress which marks the
greater public festivals of America, for it has been
recently applied with increasing confidence and com
pleteness: first, the Centennial in Philadelphia; sec
ond, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago; third,
the Congressional, or National, Library in Washing
tonnot, indeed a "festival,
"
but as strictly public
art and to almost a like extent an expression of popu
lar sentiment; fourth, the Dewey Arch in New York.
1
This idea, though it seem new to-day, had its test
ing centuries ago, in the co-operation which made the
artistic guilds of the Middle Ages so notably success
ful, and in the cathedrals that were building through
generations. The test has served again in modern
times. Almost the only feature now remembered
of the Dewey celebration is this work which the
artists did together; and of the Columbian Exposi
tion, the exhibits drop out of mind while there
lingers, as strong as ever, the vision of the harmo
niously grouped and proportioned buildings. A
"
dream city
"
men called it then; but the dream has
outlived all else.
1
These "steps of progress" are borrowed from an article in The International
Monthly, January, 1900, by Charles DeKay, in a discussion of
"
Organization among
American Artists."
372 flDofcern Civic Hrt
When the Dewey Arch had served its purpose,
there arose a demand that it be made permanent.
There was recognition that in its hasty sculpture
much might be improved; but the demand for a
naval arch of generally similar character became
insistent and clamorous. It was not quite strong
enough, however, to raise the vast sum of money
that was required, and the project failed. A few
years earlier a like demand, for the perpetuation in
marble of a temporary arch that had been erected as
a feature of the decoration for the Washington cen
tennial in New York, succeeded. This stands to-day
as one of the public art treasures of the city; and
there is shown the practical advantage of having
the decoration, though it be ever so temporary and
occasional, set an ideal before the people.
But in the planning of the city's festivals these
ulterior and very conscientious purposes are not to
hide the real object, which is pre-eminently and
necessarily temporary. The festival's whole excuse
for being is in the occasion which it expresses.
And further than that it tends to become, in a world
that is ever working harder, the one really public
recreation. In England and America, without free
theatres, and where people do not play without
excuse, this is now virtually the case. The park,
in offering quiet and rest, invites to a negative
method of recreation; there is only the festival, the
celebration of one kind or another, to urge to
positive, active recreation. What this may mean
{Temporary anb ccasional Decoration. 373
with its sudden relative freedom, its exceptional
colour and gaiety, to lonely foreigners and especially
to those who come from the south of Europe, can
not be readily imagined. These are not always
fitted to gain from the quiet beauty of the park that
tranquil pleasure which the park is designed to give,
or if gaining this to find in it complete satisfaction.
Thus the recreative element in the temporary enter
tainments is never to be lost sight of. Furthermore
these, as the only really civic, in the sense of public,
occasions, and as events that have also a larger and
deeper pertinence than the pleasure of an idle hour,
may well demand that the municipality throw itself
with enthusiasm into their planning. The city
should regard them with a seriousness that they
seldom have in these days that are so fearful of
frivolity. It should resolve to make of them the
utmost possible, to secure in pageant and decoration
the most beautiful effects, and so to impart by their
means popular lessons in art lessons that will be
the better learned because loved.
Incidentally, it is no secret that a beautiful cele^bration
is good "business." The best economy is
to add to the appropriation that will create an
ordinary spectacle a sum that will make it extra
ordinary in its beauty and attractiveness. There are
too many examples of this, and the principle is too
well understood, to need elaboration or explaining.
It is known, too, that decoration "pays" in a
modest way, even when it is not very artistic or
374 flDofcem Civic art
very pretentious. On the several occasions when
there has been, for some special reason, a brilliant
illumination of a few blocks of business street or
their transformation into a
"
Court of Honour/' there
has followed with perhaps not a single exception a
request by the merchants that the decoration or
lighting be continued beyond its appropriate time,
so beneficial has proved its effect on business. A
few weeks before this was written, a street-improve
ment club of San Francisco decorated the thorough
fare which they had made their special charge with
greens for the holidays. The ugly trolley poles
were hidden with evergreen; festoons of it were
draped from pole to pole, and an arch of boughs
spanned the sidewalk where a rubbish chute de
scended from a building that was being remodelled.
It was not a very impressive effort; little money
was expended; there was simply a co-operative and
harmonious utilisation of the means at hand. But
the Christmas spirit so entered into this street that
the shoppers thronged it and the enterprise "paid"
abundantly.
In another, and somewhat smaller, city a resid-^
ential street about a half-dozen blocks in length
has a middle strip of turf on which are planted
magnolias at regular intervals. The trees have at
tained large size and are healthy, so that when they
are in bloom the street is one of "the sights
"
of the
town. It is now proposed by the residents to cele
brate annually among themselves magnolia-blossom-
anb Occasional Decoration. 375
ing day. In this suggestion civic art finds strong
appeal; in pertinence, distinctiveness, and picturesqueness,
it is worthy of the best traditions of civic
art's concern with the temporary and occasional.
And how near this is, how eagerly it embraces
the opportunity for including the frankly artistic and
decorative in a city's aspect and for bringing into
the city's life the playfulness, gaiety, joy, of art,
is so obvious as to appear without the need of
reflection. We have only to learn that we should
embrace this opportunity with a seriousness and
earnestness that would see in it not the temporary
only, but the abiding; not alone the briefly smiling
faces, the clapping hands, the idle jesting of a
crowd, but also the satisfaction of the primal yearn
ings of humanity, the brightening of many lives, the
most effective mode of popular education. We should
consider the temporary and occasional decoration an
art opportunity and an art problem, and as such
should study it and apply to it art principles.
Into this, the most transitory phase of civic art,
there should, then, go the high-minded earnestness
that properly belongs to the whole great effort. The
total of that may be now defined : it is the adjust
ment of the city to its city needs so fittingly that life
will be made easier for a vast and growing portion of
mankind, and the bringing into it of that beauty
which is the continual need and rightful heritage of
men and which has been their persistent dream.
INDEX.
Administration, 21-23
Advertisements, an evil, 42, 156; neces
sary, 151; night, 146, 158; on side
walks, 154-J56,
l6 3; possibility,
of
beauty in, 152, i57- l6cS projecting,
153; see also Advertisement pillars,
Banners, Bill-boards, Signs
Advertisement pillars, 150, 155, 163
Alameda?
217, 220
Alexandria, 212
Algiers, 49, 23 2
Amsterdam, 50
Anatomy or physiology of cities, 29, 85
Antioch, 233
Antwerp, 49, 98> *59> 35 , _. .
Arch, 226; Dewey, 371, 372 ;
of Tri
umph, 112, 115, 226, 340; Washing
ton, 226
Architects, 273; inspiration to, 36, 134-
137; opportunities of, 48, 61, 63,
284; quoted, 83, 92, 133, 283; see
also Landscape architects
Architecture, a first step, 18, 20, 272;
characteristics of modern, 124, 127,
132: historical, 130; increasing effect
iveness, 55, 83, 92, 9^, II3 > 128-130,
131-134, 171, 293-295; lessening ef
fectiveness, 87, 96, 128; opportunities
of, 61, 63, 134-W; restrictions on
96, 113, 123, 125-128, 282, 283, 286
Arms of city, see Crest m
Art, 25, 31, 39, !
92 ;
see also V1C art
Art commission, 22, 175, 175
Athens, 13, 27, 98, 179, 212, 356
B
Babylon, 13, 27
Backyard, 238, 240, 241, 262
Bacon, 272
Baltimore, 272, 302, 303
Balustrades, 76, 92
Band-stand, 263, 265, 266
Banners across the street, 156
Baxter, Sylvester, 213
Bayet, 1 1
. .
Berlin, 105, 116, 232, 302; advertising
in, 162; bridges, 56; Sieges Alice,
179, 181 ;
Unter den Linden, 179, 226
Bern, 62 note
Bethnal Green, 265
Bill-boards, 161, 221, 333, 334
Bill
posting
on trees, 219
Birmingham, 84, 201
Bordeaux, 49
Boston, 41, 51, 70, 7*, i7*i 199, ?9i
272, 273, 305, 3&>; building regula
tions, 96, 127, 128; Commonwealth
Avenue, 199, 201, 309; Copley
Square, 96, 127, 300; Fens, 3 1O>3H
note; suburbs of, 41 > 66, 74, 201
Botanical gardens, 348
Boulevards, 199, 200, 207, 217, 220, 307
Bourneville Village Trust, 253 note
Bridge over stream, 52~55 U4. !1 7
176, 177; over street, 78-80, 114;
see also Viaduct
British Garden City Association, 251
Brooklyn, 235, 340, 34 1
Bruges, 212
Brussels, 112, 113, 1421 59 2O
Budapest, 50, 56, 98
Building height, 87, 96, n3> 124-129,
282
Building regulations, 96, 113, 123^ 126,
127, 333
Buildings, 117, 132-137. 2I 5 34i 3475
see also Public buildings
Burgundy, 356
Cambridge, 278
Carthage, 13, 212
377
378 Infcei.
Cecca, 361, 364
Cemetery, 292 note, 349
Centennial, 371
Chicago, 95, 98, 115, 146, 201, 264,
275, 277, 324
Churches, 278
Circulation, 29, 30, 32, 85
City beautiful, 27
City of Mexico, 225
Civic art, 166, 173, 192, 226, 228, 264,
375; aims of, 28,30, 58, 152,246,
247, 251, 265, 267, 305, 345, 3535
defining, 24-28, 375; former, 27, 32,
173, 226, 267, 345; obligations, 80,
165, 192, 205, 229, 230; opportuni
ties, ^7, !
52, 157, 1
79, 267 325;
test of, 31, 39, 356; triumphs of, 27,
98, 356, 361
Cleveland, 98, 146, 199
Clock on street, 148, 154 note
Cologne, 66, 74-76
" Colonies
"
of foreigners in cities, 260-
262
Colour, use of, in decorations, 359-361,
3<53, 368
Columbian Exposition, 95, 179, 275,
280, 371
Comprehensive planning, 31-36, 114,
174, 271-286 291,334,335^
Co-operation, 16, 357-361, 363, 369,
371
" Court of Honour," 95, 146, 3^7, 374
Crest of city, 164, 261
Curved street, see Street plan
Dalny, 115, 116
Decoration, see Street decoration
De Kay, Charles, 371 note
Detroit, 253 note
Diagonal streets, see Street plan
Dresden, 56
Drives, 45, 51, see also Parkway and
Speedway
Duluth, 3 1
7
Edgbaston, 201
Eliot, Charles, 321, 328
Emerson, 265
Engineer, 177, 204
Engineering, 12, 50
Essen, 253 note
Exedra, 225
Expert advice, 16, 21, 31-36, 172, 174,
175, 280-282, 326, 361, 370
Extension of boundaries, 60
Fences, 161, 236, 238
Flag, city, 368
FlagstarTs, 214
Florence, 40, 50, 98, 139, 171, 200,212,
221,361, 364, 368
Flowers, in house-grounds, 235; see also
House-grounds; in open spaces, 69,
70, 74, 263, 265, 299, 303; in streets,
219, 243
Forester, 219, 233
Fountains, 167, 169-171, 225, 287, 296,
33, 356
Gardens, see House-grounds and School
gardens
Genoa, 49, 66, 67-69
German municipal government, 22
Ghent, 212
Giraidin, 338 note
Grade, advantages of, 76, 92, 195
Grade crossings, 77, 78
Grass, see Turf
Graveyard, 292 note
Growth of cities, 14, 17-21, 60
H
Hamburg, 49, 66, 70
Harrison, Frederic, 91
Hedge, 238
Historic interest, preservation of, 130
House-grounds, 222, 223, 230, 231, 234-
240, 244, 274; see also Back yard
Housing the poor, 247, 257-259
Hygiene, 29, 30, 32, 50
I
Improvement societies, 20, 237
Institutions, placing and development of,
271,274-280,284,286,347
Iowa, law of, 51
" Iron age," 20
Isle of safety, 147, 148
Landscape architect, 36, 48, 81, 204,
338
Landscape gardening, 338; on housegrounds,
237-240; on open spaces,
56, 290-301; in parks, 56, 322, 324,
327, 328, 3?o, 343-344; by railroads,
66, 74, 78; see also Parking
Libraries, 278, 283, 284
Inter. 379
Lighting, 367; of squares, 141-143* l67>
172, 265, 294; of streets, i39~ I
47,
148, 150, 154 note, 257; rendering
apparatus beautiful, 141-144, 162,
172,214,215
Lights of city, 39, 40, 144-146
L'QEuvre Nationale Beige, 113, 142, 159
London, 41, 54, 66, 91, 103, 157, 218,
235, 260, 272, 292 note, 358; County
Council, 109, 119, 120, 127, 130;
Embankment, 50, 56; Hyde Park,
340; street plan, 94, 107, 108-111,
117, 119, 120, 127, 129, 130, 133
note, 225, 266, 301 ; Trafalgar Square,
179, 295
M
Mayence, 53
Minneapolis, 312
Mobile, 317
Morris, William, 36
Moscow, 98
Munich, 56
Municipal Art Society, 273; of New
York, 35, 97, 143, 147, 5*
N
National Cash Register Co., 253 note
New Haven, 360
New Orleans, holidays, 367
New York, 40, 128, 131, 135, 147,
151, 156, 163, 172, 263, 272, 273,
277; Brooklyn, q. -0.; City Hall, 96,
97; Dewey celebration, 359, 370,
371; Fifth Avenue, 200, 218, 220;
Municipal Art Society, 35, 97, 143,
147, 151; Riverside Drive, 179, 181,
221, 315 note, 316; squares, 298,
304, 305 ; stations, 66, 70, 71; street
plan, 105, 106, 107, 117, 118, 133
note, 200, 263 ; water-front, 48, 49
Nice, 50
Night beauty, 39
O
Occasional decoration, see Temporary
and occasional decoration
Olmsted, F. L., 66, 107, 209
Open space, 106, 167, 168, 172, 176,
179, 1
80, 198, 200, 220, 287-306;
before station, 63, 64, 66-75, IOI *n
business quarter, 168, 171, 292, 293;
in residential section, 95, ^
193- 195,
299-306; in tenement section, 250,
262-267; on water-front, 43, 45, 90,
lot, 330
Outdoor art societies, 273, 325 note
Oxford, 278-280
Pageants^ 57, 146, 147, 369, see also
Processions, 370
Paris, 50, 56, 98, 105, 146, 171, 217,
220, 232, 272, 362; art administra
tion, 21, 131, 172, 1
73; bridges, 114-
115, 177; Place de la Concorde, 141-
142, 179, 181, 298; stations, 62, 66,
71; street furnishings, 141-142, 148,
150, i55 '57, 159, 2 '5J street plan,
85, 94, 107, in, 112, 115, 116, 119,
155, 200, 208, 225
Park commissioners, 219, 233, 328, 334,
338, 344
Parking, 219, 241-244, 255-257
Parks, 310, 319, 325, 350; boundary of,
198, 221, 331-334, 339; distribution
of, 324, 326, 327; entrances, 329-
341; function of, 220, 321, 322, 323,
342, 344, 35 1, 353, 355, 37^5 location
of, 326, 3 2 7~33> 338; need of, 323,
346; roads and paths, 341-343; sys
tem, 73, 309, 327; the landscape
development, 337~354, 35 I
,.35
3 ;
and
see under Landscape gardening
Parkway, 193, 201, 206, 221, 307-320
Pavement, 212, 231, 255
Perm, William, 105
Philadelphia, 131, 146; parkway project,
200, 224, 308 note, 311; stations, 66;
street plan, 105, 106, 107
Picture of the city, 39-42, 43, 46
Pisa, 50
Pittsburg, 1 1
7
Playgiound, 250, 256, 262, 263, 264,
285, 304
Plaza, see Square
Politics, n , 12, 15, 16
Port Sunlight, 253 note
Posters, 156, 157, 219; see also Adver
tisement pillars
Prague, 53, 56
Processions, 356, 361, 369
Projecting signs, 1
53
Promenades, 45, 49, 50, 51
Public buildings, architecture of, 89, 92,
95-97, 132, 136, 171, 223, 282, 285;
general location of, 8 1
, 86-98, 1
75, 191,
224; grouping of, 82-91, 95~98,
l8oi
280 ;
see also, forparticular buildings,
New York, Paris, etc.
CL
Quays, 45, 46, 50 5 1
, 5*
380
Radials, see Street plan
Railroad, 47, 53, 60, 61, 76-80
Rapid-transit, provision for, 102, 207,
208-211,312, 313, 342; value of, 6-9,
188,248, 254, 3^,343
Renaissance (Flemish), n note, 13, 32,
98, 212, 283
Renaissance (Italian), n, 13, 14? 32J 9#j
139, 171, 182, 356
Restaurants, out-of-doors, 217
Riis, Jacob A., 263, 264
Rome, 366; ancient, 13, 179, 2I2 35,
366; modern, 40, 56, 105, 107, 116,
297
Rouen, 62 note, 171
Rowe, Dr. L. S., 265
Ruskin, 230
Saloon, 245, 265
San Francisco, 117, 146, 3 !
7, 3745
Merchants' Association of, 154, *56
Scenery, preservation of natural, 329,
945
School gardens, 285
Schools, 84, 223, 278, 285
Sculptor, 36, 121, 177
Sculpture, 175;
architectural use^ of, 95,
171; on bridges, 176, 178; in open
spaces, 69, 167, 293; in parks, 347;
in street, 169, 170, 176, 225, 226
Seats, in street, 214, 215, 217, 219, 220,
225, 256; in square, 263, 265; in
park, 352
Shrubs, 69, 70, 74, 210, 219, 243
Sidewalks, 152, 156, 212-214, 231, 255
Sienna, 171
Sign, 158, 159, 161; see also Advertise
ments, Projecting, Street-name
Slum district, I2p,
121
Smith, Ernest Gilliat, 1 1 note
Spain, 217
Speedway, 318
Springfield, Mass., 98
Square, 325; development of, 67-75,
142, 167, 170, 171, 179, 180, 215;
functions of, 67, 71, 321, 341 ; stations,
67-75 ;
&e also Open space
St. Louis, 126 note
St. Paul, 316
Station, 47, 61-63, 64-66, 67, 75, 76,
n 7; grounds, 64, 73
Street decoration, 357-365; examples of,
358-361, 364-367; see also Tem
porary and occasional decoration;
purpose of, 362, 370
Street name sign, 1
48- 1
5 1
Street plan, 132, 139, 1
66, 347; in busi
ness district, 101-122; in residential
district, 187-205, 220, 231; in tene
ment district, 248-251, 255, 266;
curved streets, 196-198,200-202,232,
332; location of open spaces, 106, 1
10,
114-116, 168, I93~i95, 200 266,
290-292; use of radials, 107, 1 10-1 12,
114-116, 1
18, 133, 189-193, 199,
249-251
Sturgis, Russell, 133 note
Suburbs, 188, 221, 231-233, 236; in
dustrial, 251-253; of Boston, 41, 66,
?4>
2C
?^
Sunset, influence of, 229
Symonds, John Addington, 272
Temporary and occasional decoration,
conditions of, 362-367, 368; con
nection with Civic art, 355, 372, 373,
375; origin of, 555, 357, 36s ; Purpose
of, 357, 302, 372, 3735 val"
of, 373~374,.375
Tenement distnct, 52, 245-268
Terraces, 76, 92, 179
Tiffany, Louis C, 360 note
Toronto, 1 1
7
Trees, in open spaces, 71, 171, 263, 264,
299, 304; in streets, 196, 217, 218,
231-234, 242, 256, 374; value of, 71,
95, 169, 230, 234, 334
Trolley, 209, 210, 342; poles, 161, 210
Turf, 209, 215, 217, 219, 242, 256, 263,
299
Universities, 274-280
University of California, 275, 276
Vacant lots, 1 6 1, 221, 222
Venice, 40, 98, 171, 266, 296, 365, 368
Viaduct, 170, 315
Vienna, 86, 88, 103-105, in, 120, 199,
200
Vines, 210, 235, 239
W
Walls, city, 9, 59, 188, 335
Waring, Col., 190
Washington, 364; bridges, 177; Capitol,
91; improvement off 72, 73, 92, 116,
118, 181, 280; public buildings, 91,
Un&ey. 38*
Washington Continued.
129, 27?, 282, 371; street plan, 85,
94, ni, U2, 200, 302
Waste receptacles, 161, 163, 219, 352
Water, 43, 169, 170
Water-front, 95; development of, 43-
46, 48-52, 88-90, 98; reserved for
parks, 43, 44, 56, 9, 3 29> 33<>; site
for pageants, 57, 368, 369; view
from, 42, 46, 47, 55, 57, 89
Wealth, influence of, 10, n, 134-136
Weber, Adna Ferrin, 253
note
Westinghouse community, 253 note
Width of streets, 113, 117, 126, 198,
266; appropriate widths, 202, 208,
313 note; injury of narrow streets, 86,
87, 88, 1
02, 205 ;
value of wide streets,
118-120, 125, 200, 248
Window boxes, 235, 265
Wordsworth, 341, 342
Wren, Christopher, 108, no, HI, 112,
115
Yale University, 277, 360
Z
Zeublin, Charles, 324 note
Zoological gardens, 348
The Improvement of
Towns and Cities: or, the
Practical Basis of Civic
^Esthetics :::::::::
By CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON
Member of the Architectural League of America's Com
mittee on Municipal Improvements.
J2 ,
(By mail, $1.35^} Net, #7.25.
44 "^ v* ew ^ *ke indubitable advance in material comfort and
well-being which has taken place, a disposition to think re
gretfully of what has been lost savors of sentimentality and
undue pessimism, and seems like the world-old habit of viewing
through a golden laaze the times that are past. To-day, more than
ever before, the civilized world believes in itself, and has no patience
with those who look back, instead of forward. They who hold that
humanity is made better by knowing and loving the beautiful must
start from present conditions." N. Y. Evening Post.
"If only New York had had a 1'Enfant ! It would have had some
spacious tree-lined parkways for avenues, instead of narrow canyons
of brick and stone. It would have had an adequate park system
from the beginning, instead of having to create parks as an after
thought by razing whole blocks of buildings. Its stately edifices
would have been placed where their fine proportions could properly
be seen, instead of being hidden away in narrow streets and scattered
at random in out of the way places. The Brooklyn Bridge, the most
splendid structure of its kind in the world, would not have run from
a maze of narrow streets and trolley tangles at one end to a like maze
and tangle at the other, but would have had architectural terminals
and spacious approaches worthy of so noble a work. The only im
portant railroad station in the city would not be cramped into half
the space it needs until its accommodations are a travesty upon
enterprise." N. F. Tribune.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York London
Old Paths and Legends
of New England : : : ;
With many Illustrations of Massachu
setts Bay, Qld Colony, Rhode Island,
and the Providence Plantations, and the
Fresh .River- of the Connecticut Valley
By KATHERINE M. ABBOTT
'
<?, wryfully illustrated, net, $
THE
idea for this book grew out of the fact that
Miss Abbott's little paper-bound Trolley Trips^
describing the old New England neighborhoods
that may now be reached by the trolley, have met with
an astonishingly wide demand. In this more pretentious
work Miss Abbott has utilized her fund of material to
draw a delightful picture of the quaint byways of NewEngland.
But in this case her wanderings are not lim
ited by gaps in the trolley circuit, or by daylight or car
fares. Historic spots of national interest, curious or
charming out-of-the-way places, Indian legends and
Yankee folk-lore find full justice in Miss Abbott's enter
taining pages. Fiction could never interpret New
England so honestly as does this volume.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York J\ '"% London
104939