The improvement of towns and cities; or, The practical basis of civic œsthetics;

Front matter

ANNEX LIBRARY

ID 'ROBINSON

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE

Contents

A Foundations of Civic Beauty.

I. THE SITE of the CITY I

Its Influence — Treatment of Irregularities of Surface, of Water-front — Artificiality and Naturalness.

Foreword

A WHOLE volume might be written on the subject of any one of the chapters here given. In several of the cases there is a shelfful of books on the matter of a single chapter — as on the paving of streets, or a large volume on a single thought or phase of a chapter, as on Trees in Paris. The purpose of this book, then, is not exhaustive discussion. It does not pretend to say all that can be said of the work for beauty in cities and villages ; but reviewing the whole broad field of the modern effort, it tries to pick out the salient points, to declare the best that has been done along every line, and how and when and where it was done — encouraging by showing the progress attainable because somewhere attained. So it would supplement with constructive criticism that which heretofore has been so largely destructive.

But it has other practical purpose even than this. It would be not only a handbook for ready reference, for suggestion, and for incentive along each special line of the work for beauty. It would show the co-ordination of the efforts, the dependence of each upon all the others, in order to secure a logiffovcworO cal, harmonious result; the place and duty of each regiment of fighters in the battle for urban beauty, and would be a reminder that none fights alone. There is no one panacea for the ugliness, dreariness, or monotony of towns and cities; there is no one road to victory. There must be parallel conquests by highway and by footpath, by field and wood, by hill and dale. There is work enough for all and a place for each.

The specialist, seeing much in little, does not see far. In zeal for pavements one forgets the trees; in zeal for parks the thoroughfare is forgotten. It has seemed well, then, in the great new awakening of enthusiasm and concern for city beauty in a score of directions, at last to grasp them all, to group them logically in a single volume and show the relative positions. This wish determined the underlying syllabus on which, as indicated in the Table of Contents, the book has been built up.

It would have been impossible to indite such a volume in the seclusion of one's study. There must have been far and studious travel. And the author acknowledges his obligation for suggestions, for encouragement, and for cordial aid to many active workers, men and women, in East and West. Of many nations, several languages, and many specialties, all proved themselves one brotherhood in the joyous and earnest new crusade for beauty of town and city. Theirs is a mighty army, "marching as to war," in crusade against the ugly and debased. They make Aristotle's jforcworO definition of the city their own — a place " where men live a common life for a noble end."

In citing by name the many societies which have done some definite thing to improve a community's appearance, the design has been to enable any worker or student to write, if he desires, to the original source for the complete details. Usually these will be given readily, both as to operations and results, and so no experience need go for naught. How widespread the examples are, how mighty is the present movement for civic renaissance, is indicated by the following partial list of organizations whose work, in one way or another, has here a mention : American Institute of Architects, American Park and Outdoor Art Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, American Society of Municipal Improvements, Architectural Club of Chicago, Architectural Club of Milwaukee, Architectural Club of Pittsburg, Architectural League of America, Architectural League of New York, Art Association of San Francisco, Art Federation of Philadelphia, Art for Schools Association of London, Association for the Protection of Fifth Avenue, New York; Associated Improvement Association of Oakland, Cal. ; Boston Common Society, Boston Society of Architects, Brooklyn Woman's Club, Business Men's Club of Cincinnati, Camera Club of Albany; N. Y. ; Charity Organization Society of New York, Chicago Woman's Club, Children's Playground Association of Baltimore, Citizens' Association of Chicago, City and Suburban Homes Company of

3forcwoi&

New York, City Branch of Fairmont Park Art Association of Philadelphia, City Improvement Society of Denver, City Improvement Society of New York, City of Hamilton (Canada) Improvement Society, Cockburn Association of Edinburgh, Coal Smoke Abatement Society of London, Commercial Club of Indianapolis, Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society of London, Civic Center of Washington, Civic Club of Hartford, Civic Club of Philadelphia, Civic Federation of Chicago, Culture Extension League of Philadelphia, Fairmount Park Art Association of Philadelphia, Fine Arts Federation of New York, Fine Arts Union of Washington, Forestry Association of Buffalo, General Federation of Women's Clubs, Genesee Valley Forestry Association of Rochester, Guild of Civic Art of Toronto, Hill Improvement League of Brooklyn, Judson Avenue Improvement Association of Evanston, 111. ; Juvenile Street Cleaning Leagues (general), Kyrle Society of London, Laurel Hill Association of Stockbridge, Mass. ; League of American Municipalities, Logan Avenue Improvement Association of Denver, Maryland Historical Society, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Merchants' Association of San Francisco, Metropolitan Public Gardens Association of London, Minneapolis Improvement League, Municipal Art League of Chicago, Municipal Art Society of Baltimore, Municipal Art Society of Cincinnati, Municipal Art Society of Cleveland, Municipal Art Society of New York, Municipal Improvement Association of New Orleans, National Arts Club of New York,

JForeworO

National Sculpture Society, National Society of Mural Painters, National Society for the Protection of Sites and Monuments, Belgium; New York County Medical Society, (Euvre Nationale Beige, Outdoor Recreation League of New York, Oak Park Improvement Society of Chicago, Park Memorial Tree Association of Indianapolis, Public Art League, Public Green Association of New Haven, Reform Club of New York, Royal Institute of British Architects, London ; Smoke Abatement Society of New York, Social Settlements (general). Society for Checking Abuses of Public Advertising, England; Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, New York; Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, London; State Federations of Women's Clubs (general), State Leagues of Municipalities in California, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; Thames Preservation League, London ; Tree Planters' Society of Kansas City, Tree Planting and Fountain Society of Brooklyn, Tree Planting Society of New York, Twentieth Avenue Improvement Association of Denver, Twentieth Century Club of Boston, United Women of Maryland, Universities of California, Columbia, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale, and American School of Architecture at Rome; Village Improvement Societies (various). Vine Planting Society of New York, West End Improvement Association of Rochester, Woman's Club of Denver, Woman's Industrial and Educational Union of Rochester. Among the official bodies which also are men-

3Forewoc& tioned are: Art Institute, Chicago; City Loan Exhibition, London; City Music Commission, Boston; City Park Commissions (various), City Tree Commissions (various), Committee for the Survey and Registration of the Old Memorials of Greater London, Commission du Vieux Paris, Commission de Decoration de 1' Hotel de Ville, Paris; Corporation Art Gallery of Glasgow, London County Council, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Park Commission, Boston; Municipal Art Galleries (various English cities), Municipal Schools of Art (Birmingham and Manchester, England), Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, National Art Commission (proposed for United States), New York Street Commission, Royal Commission of Monuments, Belgium ; and Municipal Art Commissions.

THE IMPROVEMENT OF TOWNS AND CITIES

THE IMPROVEMENT OF TOWNS AND CITIES

Chapter I The Site Of The City

THE site is a primary consideration in the construction of a beautiful city or village. There is, however, this to be noted about it. Of itself, it can neither secure nor prohibit city beauty. A dozen cities make some pretence of splendor without the slightest regard to the natural features of their site, and a hundred are plain or ugly when, on such a site, they might have been rendered splendid. Vienna lies in a vast plain, its stateliness independent of any natural advantages ; Brussels owes almost none of its attractiveness to the conditions of the site it occupies; Washington has grown in the opposite direction from that which was designed, and has made scant use of the broad sweep of the Potomac in reaching for city beauty. London, on the other hand, is notoriously lacking as a

IFmprovement of ITowns an& Gtties whole in beauty, though the position of a large part of the city is not without potential magnificence on the slowly rising eminence to the north of the river; and lower New York, with rare beauty of site, has let years pass without worthily availing itself of the aesthetic possibilities of its water-front. Only now and then, as in the picturesqueness of Edinburgh, the impractical poetry of Venice, the panorama of the Golden Horn, or the regal possibilities of Riverside Heights, New York, does topography stamp its character on a neighborhood so insistently that the city must have beauty in spite of itself.

If the task that lies before men to-day were only the construction of a beautiful city from the very beginning; if we could plot it first on paper, and its problems were only those of engineering, it were easy to assure for it magnificence by the choice of site. But a dozen considerations, of which beauty is the last — when admitted at all — determine a city's position, and to-day, even in the United States, the problem is not to choose a site but to make the most of that now occupied. So it is something to know that the site, primary consideration as it must always be in a study of city beauty, may or may not have in itself a fair degree of beauty without prejudicing the appearance of the city; that a well-planned city may attain to prettiness and even to splendor without its aid; and that, again, a good position can be so ignored in the urban plan that the appearance of the city may be entirely unbenefited by it. Obviously, the examples should give many suggestions, and from ttbe Site ot tbc (Htg 3

their illustration villages as well as towns may profit.

In a review of the world's principal cities, far the greater number will be observed to be situated on uneven ground and at the side of water. In a consideration of site, the possession of a water-front may be taken for granted almost with the confidence of an inequality in surface. Indeed, the economic demands of traffic are of such insistence that unevenness tends to obliteration so far as the surface irregularities are small, while the water-frontage is exaggerated.

The castle-fortress on the rock of greatest elevation in old Edinburgh is fairly typical of the plan of those mediaeval cities which were born of feudalism. It often happens that a church shared the height and sometimes it alone remains, or, as in the case of Notre Dame de la Garde of Marseilles, and in many another city — back to the temples that were on the Acropolis at Athens — these heights are singly dedicated to religious worship. In Rome the Pincian Hill is crowned by a public garden; in New Haven, Conn., the great East Rock is a park ; in Montreal the mountain is thus made use of; and in the old city of Avignon one finds, to-day, church and castle on the dominating hill and then, a few steps higher, on the very summit, a park. The attitude thus widely illustrated, that the highest point of a city should be used for public purpose, for defence, or worship, or recreation, seems well assumed.

irmprovemcnt of O^owns anD Cities

It is not often that buildings for the public business of a modern city can be placed on the dominating height without disadvantage, except from the aesthetic point of view — though the capitol in Washington and many State capitols are so placed with us, and Brussels has planted the new Palais de Justice on a height. But we may reaffirm the original principle, practical in the park at least, that to the eminence whence the city may be mastered at a glance, and where its noise and turmoil may be left behind, all the people should have access. And no more certainly for the view thence than for the view thither, as the height commands and lords the town, should it, in the perfect city, be held by the community rather than by individuals. This is the great lesson in the treatment of inequalities of surface.

In the course of years the sheet of water, which has ceased to be a necessity to the commercial or industrial prosperity of a community, like the height which is no more needed for defence, may become a community's luxury. It will then be treated as such, as in the case of " the Lake-front " at Chicago, or the Victoria Embankment on the Thames; but it must be long before this common feature of urban topography will become simply an aesthetic problem. With the seaports some, at least, of the water-front must be the mart of commerce, and industry must yet find cheap power in city streams. Therefore the treatment of the water-front, that a city may derive the greatest artistic advantage from this element in the natural features ttbc Sttc of tbe CftB 5

of its site, is a complicated question. It is to be determined with reference to the use of the water by the community, whether it be mainly for (i) power; (2) navigation; or (3) picturesqueness. In different parts of the same city a stream of water may be put to each of these uses. The aesthetic problem then becomes, practically, that of three communities.

In the first case, where the city has been located upon a stream for the sake of the water-power, we have to look for very little in the way of artistic development along the water-front. The best that can be said is that the industrial structures will tend to screen from view the polluted stream, and that the town, if it draws most of its energy from this source, is likely to be of no great size. Heretofore the usual treatment has consisted in the construction of a race on one or both sides of the river, and parallel to it, with the factories located between the race and the natural stream, and shutting the latter out from view except as bridges disclose it. The factories, turning a blind side to the river, naturally make no pretence to beauty or adornment on that fagade, and the view up or down the stream as it tumbles and tosses through the brick canon is dismal in the extreme. In such a case it cannot be said that the water-front, as far as it lies in the industrial portion of the town, adds anything to the beauty of the site; and perhaps the plan adopted in Rochester, N. Y., where the main street is carried over the river on a bridge built up

IFmptovenient of ttowna and aitfes on either side with business structures (like old London Bridge, with never a hint that it spans the river), is as good as another. Certainly it has the negative virtue of preventing an intrusive interruption by the purely industrial and hideous. Now and then, to be sure, even an industrial water-front can afford a certain weird picturesqueness of view on a dark afternoon, when the myriad lights twinkle from the factory windows, the buildings silhouette themselves in irregular masses against the sky, and the dark water is only a sound below. But any such charm, purely urban as it is, is accidental and fleeting.

It is possible that the dawn of an electrical age may relieve the city builder from the unhappy sacrifice of the water view in an industrial community. The stream that, by rapid current or fall, offers such power as to invite the location of a city must in its natural condition have considerable beauty. It were well indeed for a town if, in the very midst of artificiality and restraint, such a picture could be preserved of the freedom and wildness of nature. The most conspicuous and promising example of what this new mode of " harnessing " a river for the use of its power at a distance may mean is afforded in the case of Niagara Falls. A mile above the falls, and well in from the river bank, a great manufacturing community is now arising, while — through the intervention of the State government, as it happens in that particular instance — the scenery above and near the cataract is preserved in the grandeur of primitive

Zbe Site ot tbc CttB 7

conditions. The transmission of electrical power is already so successful that Niagara could, if desired, drive profitably a thousand manufactories, of which not one would be in sight from the river. For practical discussion, the problem of treating the water-front would then pass into the class in which beauty is the sole end, and its water-front would become a leading, instead of an ignored, element in the picturesqueness of a city's site.

When commerce has located a city upon a body of water whose navigable quality determines its use as a highway, the ideal treatment of the water-front is extended into a whole group of problems. From the extremes of a palace on a Venetian canal to the floating piers of a tidal seaport there is too long a way to make one rule applicable, and the painted posts that hold light gondolas so easily would break off short with the strain of an ocean liner in the current. One broad distinction may well be drawn at the start. We may ask ourselves whether the sheet of water is the proper approach and entrance to the city, as in the case of a harbor; or whether it is merely a public highway. If it be the first, it may suitably demand a dignity, grandeur, and largeness of treatment which were out of place in the second. Perhaps there is no cause for the failure in the treatment of water-fronts so common as a disregard of this first distinction.

The lower and upper bays of New York, treated properly, make the sail up the harbor exceptionally fine. The colossal Statue of Liberty, with its

IFmpcovcment of Clowns an& Cities welcome at the very gates of the hospitable city, is so excellent in spirit that not until the stranger has actually landed, and stepped into the meanness and squalor of West Street, does disappointed surprise come upon him. If it were possible for the entrance to be made at the Battery, how different the impression would be ! Picture the progress out of the limitless ocean into the hill-circled lower bay, through the fort-crowned narrows, into the upper bay with its dominating goddess of classic stamp, and on, slowly, through the swarm of shipping, toward the sun-swept towers and spires, rising high, and almost grandly as set off by the greensward at their feet. Picture landing there, the tall buildings, sentinel portals of the city, standing just across the green, while between them the great artery of the city pierces, lined with wealth and choked with traffic, to lead straight on, mile after mile, through the city's maze. That were a worthy and impressive approach, to which the slums of West Street offer sad contrast.

The actual problem is complicated, because West Street is not merely portal but border to a long waterway. The clothing of convenience with dignity which Genoa has secured in the treatment of its water-front is not easy here, nor is the unity which comes from concentration at Marseilles. Liverpool, in its docks along the Mersey, wrestles with the same problem just as unsuccessfully as New York, while Antwerp, also dealing with it, has been bolder and slightly more fortunate in result. New York is conscious, at any rate, that it c:be site ot tbe CUb 9

has failed. It encouragingly perceives that the North and East rivers ought not to be treated by the municipality as mere country streams, but as arms of the harbor.

In the season of 1898-99, the Architectural League made " New York's Water-Front and Its Future Embellishment " the subject of discussion at one of its monthly dinners, and various schemes of more or less practicability and interest were unfolded. The point of the matter was that better things can be done and should be done. On the map. West Street is two hundred and fifty feet wide from the west front of the houses on the east side of the street to the established bulkhead line, and beyond that the piers stretch out five hundred to nine hundred feet further. There is opportunity here for one of the most beautiful water-fronts in the world, but the realization is a marginal street worthy of a frontier town and so incumbered with storehouses, ferry-houses, sheds, piles of merchandise, etc., as in places to be less than seventy feet wide and unsightly beyond description. In the fall of 1899 Mr. Coler, the comptroller of New York, came out with a plea for the abolition of the provisions of the municipal debt limit so far as they apply to bonds issued for public works, such as docks, that yield a revenue and in time pay for themselves. There are reasons that may justify dread of such removal in the case of New York ; but it is clear that, should a municipality do this, the city would be in a position to treat its water-front far more worthily than most American seaports

IFmprovcmcnt ot ttowns anD Cities ever have. With New York, for instance, adream of restoring to the marginal street its theoretical width by the removal of all obstructions, and then the erection of perhaps continuous, and certainly harmonious, buildings for the needs of commerce, with a possible use of the second story by freight tracks and an esplanade atop of all whence to view the ever animated scene and get the summer breezes, would cease to be as visionary as at present. The plan can be made to look as interestingly feasible financially as from an engineering point of view, and obviously the aesthetic advance would be very great.' Its example would be the more valuable, also, because in principle so widely applicable, the problem rising in many places. Thus Philadelphia has faced an ideal treatment of the Delaware River front. This would carry the traffic from the docks and warehouses to Market Street by an underground system, while Water Street could extend to the bulkheads at its own level. It may, in fact, be said in general that railroad tracks are better depressed than raised — aesthetically, since they detract from beauty or splendor; practically, since the water-front street is usually at a lower level than others.

With the water-frontage of bisecting streams,

' Addresses at the November dinner of the Architectural League, New York, 1898. It may be added that for commercial purposes the city is now undertaking improved treatment of the water-front. For more than half a mile below Twenty-third Street it is building a granite sea-wall, with a marginal street two hundred and fifty feet wide.

Cbe Site of tbc Cltg n

cities — when making any pretence of adequate treatment — usually do much better. The commercial element in the problem is less exactingly exclusive, long as Boston has discussed the improvement of the Charles, and there is needed rather a sincere resolve to improve than a discovery of means. Examples are many and interesting. Perhaps the most brilliant of the better known is found in the splendid quays and marble bridges of the Seine, at Paris. On either side, throughout its city course, the river is lined with imposing walls of masonry. Large stone platforms, connected with the street at intervals by steps and inclined roadways, serve the needs of commerce ; and above, the quays, bordered on the river side by a handsome coping, afford a favorite promenade. The lead of Paris has been followed in the last few years by similar treatment of the Danube at Budapest, and of the Tiber in the reconstructed Rome; but long ago a like treatment of river-fronts had been illustrated by Pisa and Florence, for instance, on the Arno. The well-known Victoria Embankment of the Thames, in London, is a modification of the plan, considerably more elaborate, and costlier in space and money. The Embankment's generous width, the conversion of some of the reclaimed land into gardens, and the planting of rows of trees along its sides give to it a park-like appearance that bestows an almost holiday character on the skirting river, while here again the demands of navigation are satisfied by openings in the wall where stairs lead to floating piers. On the

Ifmprovcment of ttowns an5 Ctties

Embankment itself there are two sidewalks and a broad carriage-way.

But even this scheme can be hardly called complete until, beyond the splendid esplanade, there rise palatial structures worthily to frame, to close with dignity, the artificial scene. The Victoria Embankment is at its best where Somerset House defines its limit; new government buildings are adding stateliness to Rome's embankment of the Tiber; and the Seine has nowhere such urban majesty as where the Bourbon palace of the Chamber of Deputies rises on one side, on the Quai d'Orsay, while directly opposite, across the broad Place de la Concorde, stands the Ministry of Marine.

The latter structure's considerable remoteness from the river is a suggestion of the value of vista in water-front treatment. Where, as usual, the land rises slowly from the shore, an excellent opportunity is afforded for such views by the plotting, at intervals, of a broad street, or square, at right angles to the river, and terminating at the summit in a monumental structure which, in its turn, thus secures an imposing setting. Of this no better conception can be given than is afforded by a proposal that the broad new street which is to extend from Holborn to the Strand, in London, be extended at the one end to the Victoria Embankment and at the other cut through to the British Museum, which should crown the height.

It is to be understood, of course, that such clearly artificial treatment of a river-front, however ttbe Site of tbc Gltg 13 imposing the result of such plans as these may be,' must ever lack the charm of nature's gentler lines and fringing vegetation and is pardonable only as an urban necessity. The whole of the area now comprising the Victoria Embankment, for example, was formerly covered twice a day by the tide.

If it is possible, as it sometimes is, to skirt part of the river on either bank with a park, so that even in the city there may be preserved, in sem-

' Their union is well illustrated in the immense work recently undertaken in Budapest, where, by the energy of a mixed committee representing the national and city governments, the river was constituted the centre of activity, the municipality's prime thoroughfare, chief open space, and place of resort. A description of the work is concisely given by Dr. Albert Shaw in his Municipal Government in Continental Europe. He says: "Magnificent stone quays and retaining-walls were built, extending for nearly three miles on the Pest side and also for a long distance on the opposite shore. These were thrown well out, the broad channel being thus compressed somewhat to secure a clean, sweeping current. Up and down along the broad promenades facing the water have been erected palatial buildings. The quays are high, and stairs, built continuously for a long distance, lead down to the lower level of the landings, upon which the heavy traffic is confined. The rows of buildings are broken at intervals by open park spaces, in which are effectively placed the statues of various Hungarian notabilities. A number of handsome public buildings are included in the row upon the quays on the left bank, and toward the upper end of the row has been built the magnificent new Parliament house. Farther down are the National Academy, the city's so-called ' Redoute bviilding,' the old Rathhaus (city hall), the vast new custom-house, and various other establishments." Here a more distant part of the quay is made a shady promenade where driving is prohibited.

14 llmproipement ot ttowns anO Citte^ blance at least, nature's softer treatment, the solution is happier.' But most commonly the necessity that determines a city's location on the sides of a navigable stream causes it to be built up closely to the water's edge; and the dreamer of fairer cities has to choose between huddled huts, sheds, and crowded warehouses, or the clear-cut lines of solid masonry. Picture, for example, the strides in civic dignity and beauty which any city on the majestic Hudson would take with nobler treatment of its river-front. Imagine State Street, in Albany, with the State capitol at its head, if it were cut through to the river with a suitable termination ; or viewing the panorama from the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, imagine the piazza of that church when extended to the Tiber, and the new glory that will come to the edifice.

In some of the Dutch cities, most conspicuously in Amsterdam, there is a repose and quiet stateliness in the handling of the canal problem which should have a suggestion for the small city traversed

' In the Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission of Boston, in igoo, the board declared that its acquirements, when added to the holdings of the local boards of Cambridge, Waltham, Newton, etc., were sufficient to reserve to the public the control of nearly all the river bank of the Charles, Neponset, and Mystic rivers within the district. "It has been the policy of the board," the Report added, "to omit from these takings important manufacturing establishments and lands likely to be required for wharves or other purposes essential to the business convenience of the community." The policy which has there been so successful should convey a practical hint.