The record-union., 1897-10-27
AN EXAMPLE OF MUNICIPAL
SHORTSIGHTEDNESS.

Years and years ago San Francisco
resolved to build City Hall. 1t was TO
cost $2.O00Oe0 but it has cost so much
more that no man has dared to I'M
dertal1e the task of computing closely
the vast sum of money that has been
expended upon a structure erected in
sunny and almost cloudless California,
that has to be lighted IN broad day by
artificial illuminants.
No stranger who has ever visited that
imposing pile has failed to- express
astonishment that architectural skill IN
San francisco was so far incapable,
that it could not devise a building for
municipal purposes into which the suns
rays might stream so literally as to
reach the remotest corners Daylight
is very cheap; nature has been beunti-
ful in supplying man with it, and she
has never manifested a disposition to
cut short the supply. Yet the archi-
tects of the San Francisco City Hall
appear to have labored, strained and
toiled to produce a building in which
there is less daylight than in any SINH
lar structure on the face of Gods foot
stool.
But that was not all the foolishness
in which San Francisco engaged. Had
the projectors of the municipal palace
had ordinary taste, they would have
realized the absurdity and folly and
the bad form of placing such a great
building in grounds so confined that
the proverbial cat cannot be swung
without colliding with private possess
sions All such buildings should, as
matter of course, be placed in the midst
of ample. well-kept grounds. The ar
chitectural beauty and the symmetry
of its lines cannot be gathered from
close View, and assuredly not in a per-
specrive in which the foreground is so
encumbered that a large part of the
front is cut off by intervening buildings
and walls.
What good taste and ordinary far
seeing dictated was pushed aside, and
the spacious grounds originally intend
ed to encompass at least two sides of
the City Hall of our metropolis. were
sold off under the plea-we remember
1T well-that the city could not afford
to maintain such grounds, and that she
needed the money to apply upon the
cost of the building. Sensible people
ihen said, and were laughed at for their
sense that 80 f1o al
decent approaches and sufficient sur
rounding open for the structure con-
templated, the right thing to do was
TO build less pretentiously, or to not
build, until ability and available ground
space presented in combination.
But San Francisco had a fairly good
stretch Of land along the frontage of
her hall site. This she sold out. re-
ceiving therefor. we are informed by
our contemporary, the San Francisco
Call the sum of 1858, 700. The prop
erty thus recklessly and unwisely dis
posed of, it is now clamored-by a por-
ton of the press of the city. a good
many Of the officials and a large pro-
portion of the people-ought to be re-
covered by purchase, in order to give
the municipal building decent surround
1ngs and release it from the prison in
which tits being rapidly entombed bv
surrounding structures that are neither
graceful nor contributive to the view
of the hall. which, as to its exterior. is
a very handsome and imposing pile.
The assessed valuation of the property
that shuts off the view. and which the
city disposed of for less than a million
dollars is now 50. .521, $50 The real
value is probably in excess of $4,000
coo.
Here then We have glaring example
of city acknowledgement The question
is, shall San Francisco, by buying back
the property she threw away. confess
herself the fool she has been, or stom-
ach her discomfort and chagrin. and
let her great municipal building remain
cramped. cribbed and confined in a
spot scarcely large enough to hold its
footwalls?
OF course we would not have the
temerity to hint that in the original
sale there was grand rake down for