The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-03-23
OUR PUBLIC PARKS.
A Scheme to Connect Them With
BOulevards La Grande.
GLORIOUS GAPS OF GOOD HEALTH.
Cities are Made Beautiful by Wide Streets and
Large Parks Rather Than by Piles Of
Brick and Mortar.
The public parks are the glory of great

The public parks are the glory of great
cities.
There is home, leisure, languor and
liberty in these bits of landscape, where the
weary slaves of business can pass hurried
hour in the arid months of summer.
They are the children's play grounds,
where spraying fountains moistea their
curls and chirping birds intoxicate their
young ears with the sylvan sounds of ami
mated nature
They are the poor mans grounds where
he can sit and invite his soul without fear
of am landlord setting his dog on him.
They are the breathing spots at which
confagrations halt, and even epidemics
falter in the presence of such glorious
gaps of good health.
But the despoilers are here.
The ruthless, reckless cormorant that
would hew every acre into town lots, and
turn the sacred temples into market places
that he might pilfer the gains into his
mammon swelled pockets is swirling and
staggering about the few acres set aside
for The peoples parks.
Even the wisdom of the wide streets is
disputed, and the ''shylocks'' would take
slice off these and hew them down to alley
ways II they could get the city fathers to
help them in the carving.
The cunning and cupidity of the hour are
full OF insolence, and invitations to join the
schemers in preying on the heritage of the
people are thick as sparrows and quite as
clipper
No city in the east has yet repented of
setting aside too much ground for public
parks, while it is the nearly universal eX-
perience that too little has been devoted to
this purpose.
! Salt Lake was founded on broad and
generous plan, and its magnificent
thoroughfares and boulevards la grande,
if carried out and improved on the
scale that they were dedicated, will make
this one of the most beautiful cities of
| America.
As one of its leading features of import
ance is that of a summer resort, it stands to
reason that it should, of all cities in this
country, be made attractive and beautiful
Every acreit possesses should be heldsa-
cred for the purposes they were dedicated
as heritage to tn epeople forever.
The spirit that would give away any
more of the public parks for puOlic build
ings is wrong, and as long as there is land
to be had should be combatted. There are
still few vacant spaces in this city yet
unoccupied by seven-story buildings.
If this city can be improved on the lib
eral basis it was laid out on, it will attract
hither thousands of people every summer.
Brick walls and piled up boulders do not
make city beautiful. A brick wall plas-
tered on the inside with the outside bare
and whether the bricks are sun dried OF
fire baked-iS not much more sublime and
beautiful than the oldeadobe house, and tc
Ruskin and his school would be set down
as the gingerbread fashions of the moderns.
While we are building grand modern
buildings, let us keep in mind that we can
not excel those of the east, but that if we
lay out parks and improve them on granC
scale, Salt Lake can be something on its
own account, walled on three sides by these
majestic mountains and on the fourth, By
the beautiful valley reaching out to the
great salt sea.
While we are raising our hats and clap
ping our hands and shouting a jubilee u
the electric street car companies for theil
enterprise in accepting as free gift the
franchises that are worth millions, we ar,
blocking the way to the possibility of con
vertiug these wide thoroughfares int,
esplanades and in that way connecting tn,
, different parks.
New York city has not ceased to lamen
the fact that its down town parks are no
connected by boulevards, and Chicago ha
improved on New 1ork's failure. Tn
wide streets in this city make it practica
bic for all the public parks to be connects
in this way if the street railways are KEEP
off the streets that are needed for boule
, ward purposes.
, The city council should at once appoint
: park commission, whose duty it shall be t
submit plan for connecting the differen
parks by boulevards. In this way cor
e tinuous drive can be had from one park t
another and the entire circuit improve
with landscape gardening.
The Fort I)ouplaS marking cchoma iC II
? the right direction and will transform tina
t bench into something more than bulge
the ground. 1t means a magnificent par
with grand outlook.
Z The Capitol hill grounds will also make
d grand resort and with even finer outlool
{ But the most important park to this cit
q is the one that great many good poop
are very anxious to throw away for go-
eminent building site. Washington squai
|; it should be 'park'), though small, is s
II near the business centre that it is access
bic to the men who are penned up in til
;. lodging houses and will be grand place
" stroll to before breakfast and a bette
"constltootlonaP' than any concoction
cocktails that can be slung out by tt
slickest Jackdandy Singer of the town.
Lincoln park is well located and will c
s the city grand service.
|, Before leaving this subject it might
= remarked that the people laying out add
tions should be compelled to either plat tt
y streets to conform to those of the city
3 dedicate this deficiency in width for publ
d park purposes.
While some additions are being laid OF
, on a liberal scale, there is a parsimony al
l. shabbiness in the cramped streets and ma
row lots of many OF the additions ought
be rebuked by the press and rejected /
|, the council
Small parks well distributed are mo
Is accessible and better patronized than OIL
st large park set off to one side of the cit
t. and in considering plan for the futu
parks of this city that other fact, that
(; city has yet found its park acreage +
great burden, while hundreds of citi
have had to buy for park purposes,
enormous expense, land that could ha
been secured for a song by slight e
penditure of foresight should be remel
bered.
The wide streets and magnificent sha
have gained for this city more fame abro
than all the big buildings that will be p
up for fifty years will bring. The peor
who come here are not building hungr
and have left the sky scraping piles
brick. marble and granite for the sylv:
shades of Salt Lake.
While there must be buildings, and /
ones to do business, the fame of Salt La
will depend on carrying out aud improvir
the grand scheme Of its founder.
Lest any one should discredit the
views as the "vaporings of
old Mormon it may, to that preiudic
class, be well to know that the writer b
spent most of the last half dozen years
= GO NJ W. ~