Public Parks: Being Two Papers Read Before the American Social Science Association in 1870 and 1880, Entitled, Respectively, Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns and A Consideration of the Justifying Value of a Public Park |
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Public Parks: Being Two Papers Read Before the American Social Science ... Frederick Law Olmsted No preview available - 2018 |
Public Parks: Being Two Papers Read Before the American Social Science ... Frederick Law Olmsted No preview available - 2018 |
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advantages amount applied arrangements Association attractive beauty better building called character circumstances closely common consideration considered construction convenient cost demand desirable determined difficulty direct effect especially experience fact families fully gain give given greater ground growing half hand hundred idea important improvement increasing influence interest labor laid land larger less living London matter means miles million mind natural nearly never objects observed opportunity original passing perhaps planted population possible practical present public opinion public park question reason recreation reference regard respect result roads rural seen simply space streets suggest supply suppose taken things thousand tion town trees walk women York
Popular passages
Page 26 - It is evident that if we go on in this way, the progress of civilized mankind in health, virtue, and happiness will be seriously endangered. It is practically certain that the Boston of today is the mere nucleus of the Boston that is to be. It is practically certain that it is to extend over many miles of country now thoroughly rural in character, in parts of which farmers are now laying out...
Page 10 - She had been brought up and lived the greater part of her life in one of the most convenient and agreeable farming countries in the United States. Is it astonishing? Compare advantages in respect simply to schools, libraries, music, and the fine arts. People of the greatest wealth can hardly command as much of these in the country as the poorest work-girl is offered here in Boston at the mere cost of a walk for a short distance over a good, firm, clean pathway, lighted at night and made interesting...
Page 34 - ... numerous small grounds so distributed through a large town that some one of them could be easily reached by a short walk from every house, would be more desirable than a single area of great extent, however rich in landscape attractions it might be. Especially would this be the case if the numerous local grounds were connected and supplemented by a series of trunk-roads or boulevards such as has already been suggested.
Page 26 - ... and a railway station, being governed in their courses by old property lines, which were first run simply with reference to the equitable division of heritages, and in other parts of which, perhaps, some wild speculators are having streets staked off from plans which they have formed with a rule and pencil in a broker's office, with a view chiefly to the impressions they would make when seen by other speculators on a lithographed map. And by this manner...
Page 32 - ... and the suburbs, a very great number of people might thus be placed every day under influences counteracting those with which we desire to contend. These, however, would be merely very simple improvements upon arrangements which are in common use in every considerable town. Their advantages would be incidental to the general uses of streets as they are.
Page 49 - ... walk from some one of them; and they should be made interesting by a process of planting and decoration, so that in necessarily passing through them, whether in going to or from the park, or to and from business, some substantial recreative advantage may be incidentally gained. It is a common error to regard a park as something to be produced complete in itself, as a picture to be painted on canvas. It should rather be planned as one to be done in fresco, with constant consideration of exterior...
Page 84 - Association,1 said: Twenty-five years ago we had no parks, park-like or otherwise, which might not better have been called something else. Since then a class of works so called has been undertaken which, to begin with, are at least spacious, and which hold possibilities of all park-like qualities. Upon twenty of these works in progress there has been thus far expended upwards of forty millions of dollars — well nigh if not fully fifty millions — and this figure does not tell the whole story of...
Page 46 - The park should, as far as possible, complement the town. Openness is the one thing you cannot get in buildings, Picturesqueness you can get. Let your buildings be as picturesque as your artists can make them. This is the beauty of a town. Consequently, the beauty of the park should be the other. It should be the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures, and the still waters. What we want to gain is tranquillity and rest to the mind.
Page 22 - It is upon our opportunities of relief from it, therefore, that not only our comfort in town life, but our ability to maintain a temperate, goodnatured, and healthy state of mind, depends. This is one of many ways in which it happens that men who have been brought up, as the saying is, in the streets, who have been most directly and completely affected by town influences, so generally show, along with a> remarkable quickness of apprehension, a peculiarly hard sort of selfishness. Every day of their...
Page 56 - It is folly to expect in this country to have parks like those in old aristocratic countries. When we open a public park Sam will air himself in it. He will take his friends whether from Church Street, or elsewhere. He will knock down any better dressed man who remonstrates with him. He will talk and sing, and fill his share of the bench, and flirt with the nursery maids in his own coarse way. Now we ask what chance have William B. Astor and Edward Everett against this fellow citizen of theirs? Can...
Bibliographic information
| Title | Public Parks: Being Two Papers Read Before the American Social Science Association in 1870 and 1880, Entitled, Respectively, Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns and A Consideration of the Justifying Value of a Public Park |
| Author | Frederick Law Olmsted |
| Published | 1902 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | Mar 13, 2007 |
| Length | 114 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |