Kansas City daily journal., 1897-01-04
Fairgrounds in Cities.

From the Philadelphia Press.
The development of John Dickinson
square as a children's playground Iags for
lack of funds. The city's share of the
work is completed, but the Culture Ex-
tension League which has undertaken to
supply the finishing touches so as to make
the square beautiful and model play
ground, has made an appeal for funds to
enable it to carry out its undertaking.
There ought not to be- and we presume
will not be, n failure or even considerable
delay in carrying out the plans projected
by the league for the square
The plan for the square as finally ac-
cepted. contemplates large open play
ground, with an encircling track for run
ming, and with shade trees on the bor-
der. This IS an improvement on the
first design, which proposed Il fountain
in the center and other distractions TO
the free use of the limited space by the
children in their play. Fairgrounds
should be made attractive, and should be
always available when needed, but trees.
flowers, fountains, and even grass, if its
preservation is insisted upon, are incompat
ible with the free use of playground De
signers OF Fairgrounds who forget their
youth are always in danger of making n
mistake and of seeking landscape effects
pleasing to the eye of the slow moving
adult rather than a suitable vent for the
movements of children.
A mistake of this character has been
made recently in New York city. Two
open spaces have been laid out on the
East side at Mulberry Bend and Corlears
Hook The neIghborhood swarms with
children, who have no playground except
the narrow streets and courts. These new
open spaces in the midst of squalor and
confinement have been so beautifed and
they will not add much TO the liberty of
the children nor multiply greatly their op-
portunities for sport. They are laid out
with grass and trees and flowers and
shrubs. They are not Fairgrounds but
small parks, pleasing TO the eye but en-
tirely too nice for children to trespass upon
except under the restraining eve of a po-
liceman. Garden and Forest" always n
stiCkler for studied landscape effects in
the treatment of evSn q half-acre lot, has
this to say in depreciation of the overdone
East side open space improvements:
Green grass is always beautiful and In
the midst of a tenement house district it
is doubly refreshing; hut children cannot
play on turf without destroying 1t, and If
these parks are to be kept fresh and green
the edict to keep Off the grass must be
sternly enforced; and it is q question wor-
thy the attention, perhaps, of municipal re-
formers whether open spaces in such dis
tricts would not better supply the public
needs If large part of their surface were
covered with gravel or asphalt on which
children could play, the grass and trees
being confined to u narrow marginal bor-
| der"
American cities have in recent years
| Weakened up to the necessity Of parks large
| and small. but they are still behind the
| times in the matter of public Fairgrounds.
Mr.. Albert Shaw, in his Municipal Govern
| ment in Great Britain points out how
| thew make provision in London for the
physical culture of their youth. He says:
| Cricket grounds and football grounds, lit
orally by the thousands, have been laid
| out, besides many hundred tennis courts
and various golf and hockey grounds" We
have not yet reached that stage of deyel-