The Washington times., 1903-08-13

basis of an appeal to a community
Ike Washington without danger of
straining the parallel "The beautiful
pays say the commissioners of the
Niagara Falls State Reservation, and
they prove it, too, in their last annual
report, as we pointed out the other
day. Landscape beauty Is capital; 1t
Is an asset, of a value as great as, and
greater perhaps, than, that possessed
by the maiden of the nursery rhyme,
of whom it is recorded that My face
Is my fortune, SIR she said"
Now, Washington possesses that
capital-possesses it in abundance
Few cities, indeed, Of its size can
boast of a setting more lovely or
varied. Wooded hill-sides greet the eye
in one direction, broad stretches of
open country in another. while wind
ing about the feet of the city a noble
river follows its course to the sea.
Within a few miles of Washington. in
fact, is scenery which in any other
part of the world would prove a
Mecca for tourists and lovers of
Iature.
Our officials, we presume, are not
without intelligence, whatever their
shortcomings may be IN other. direc-
tions. Nor is public sentiment, we be-
heve, dead to all considerations of the
city's real welfare, or Indifferent to
what interested persons may do to rob
II Of one of lis principal charms. Yet
here we are going through period of
feverish land specUlation-it began
IL the SOS with the sale of Red
Top" now part of Cleveland Park
which reminds one of the early stages
in the. life of a prairie boom town, or
that classic period in the evolution Of
a Colorado mining camp before Il
changed It's name from "Hell-to-Pay'
into Ethiopia" which threatens not
only to wipe off the slate, so to speak,
one of the city's principal assets, but
likewise to discourage healthy de-
velopment through aecessions from
abroad, by a conversion of the most
beautiful parts of the District from a
country of unsurpassed beauty into a
bowling wilderness Of mud cuts and
pumps
The land butchers we know, be
ing people possessed of as little sense
of the beautiful as they are of bust
ness sense, will smile a superior smile
az all this. Their sentiments, indeed,
are accurately reflected in the letter Of
correspondent, which we presented
IL Tuesdays issue. Says the letter:
The so-caIled land butchers only cater to
demand, and If such demand did not exist, the
"land butcher would find the laying out Of
new subdivisions very Improbable work.
We differ from this statement in
toto. In the first place, we deny that
! the demand exists. IN the second
place, we assert that, with few ex-
ceptions, subdivisions made within
the last fifteen years, from a financial
point of view, have been 3 failure.
The best proof that the demand
doesn't exist viii be furnished by a
look at that part Of Cleveland Park
facing Woodley Lane, which vas laid
out on the rectangular plan, aud on
which not a single house has been
erected as yet; by remembering that
the number of houses that have gone
| up in Chevy Chase within the last five
years can be counted on the ten
fingers Of your hands; by recalling
that Petworth looked for more than
fifteen years, and until very recently.
as if a hurricane had swept the face
| OF the country, leaving cracked side
walks and rotting street pavements in
It's wake; by inspecting the Hubbard
tract on Massachusetts Avenue, Just
east Of Rock Creek, where a dreary
waste took the place Of as fine a grove
of big, noble oak trees as ever "from
little acorns grew" more than
eighteen years ago; by passing, on
Connecticut Avenue extended. Fern
wood" that newest of suburbs, where
tc erect a single house, still looking
for a tenant, one of the loveliest
drives In the surrounding country
the Pierce Mil Road-was destroyed,
and sewers, water mains, asphaited
streets and "granolithic" sidewalks
were laid at the expense, in part, Of
the taxpayer in the city, who has not
! influence enough TO have the curJ III