The morning journal-courier., 1908-01-22
WALTER COOK TALKS
Trustee of Architects Institute Lectures in Trowbridge
 Series.
LARGE CROWD HEARS HIM
Considerations of Civic Improvement
 Makes Most Timely Topic.

At the Yale Art school last night
 Walter Cook, trustee of the American
 Institute of Architects, made an ad-
 dress on Some Considerations in
 Civic Improvement" The lecture was
 one of the Thomas R. Trowbridge
 series, and, as in the previous cases,
 was largely attended In part, MT
 Cook said:
 About the time that I was honored
 by the invitation to give one of these
 talks on Civic Improvement in the
 Trowbridge lecture course, I came
 across the very entertaining book of
 MT. H. G Wells, the English Socialist
 and writer of romances, on the Future
 In America. The author tells of his
 landing in New York, of what he saw
 and how it impressed him, and then of
 how he went to Boston; and am go-
 ing to let him tell what he found there
 in his own words. T sailed he says
 "on the Fall River boat, through a
 night of unmitigated fog-horn to Bos-
 ton, which I had been given to under
 stand was cultured and uneventful
 city, offering great opportunities for
 reflection and intellectual digestion.
 And indeed the large quiet of Beacon
 street in the early morning sunshine,
 seemed to more than justify that ex-
 pectation. But Boston did not pro-
 pose that it's less assertive key should
 be misunderstood, and in, a singularly short space of time I found myself
 climbing into a tremulous impatient
 motor car in company with three en-
 thusiastic opponents of the work of
 the Metropolitan park commission,
 and provided with neatly tinted
 map, large and framed and glazed to
 explain fresh and more deliberate
 phase in this great American sym
 phony, this symphony of Growth"
 If possible 1t is more impressive
 even than the crowded largeness of New York to trace the serene prepara- tion Boston has made through this commission to be widely and easily vast. New York's humanity has a curious air of being carried alonE upon
 a wave of irresistible prosperity, but Boston confesses design suppose no city in all the world (unless 1t be Washington has ever produced so complete and ample forecast of its own future as this commissions plan of Boston. An area with a radius of between fifteen and twenty miles from the State house has been planned and N prepared for Growth
 Great reservations of woodland and hill have been made, the banks of Enearly all the streams and rivers and meres have been secured for public ypark and garden. for boating and oth- E CT water sports; big avenues of vigor- l ous and riding ways and a central | lgrassy band for electric tramways hhave been prepared, and indeed the Flair and ample and shady new Boston, 4the Boston of 1850, grows visibly be- Fibre ones eyes. found myself com Eparing the disciplined confidence of Eshese proposals to the blind enlarge Enent of London--Lcndon that like a l3oowyl of viscid human fluid, boils sul- Afenly over the rim of its encircling F1ills and slops messily and uglily into Khe home counties. I could not but Contrast their large intelligence with 6 he confused hesitations and waste End muddle of our English suburban Developments.
 X T find myself comparing this huge &,rowth progress of America with the Y fhinNgs In my own land. After all this Erotwth is no distinctive American Ahiiag; it is the same process any 'Ahere--only in America there are no N isguises, no complications. Nowhere |low is growth still so certainly and E E,onfidently going on as here. Nowhere sNs it upon so great scale as here. and 'kvith so confident an outlook towards sNhe things to come. And nowhere is it sR,assing more certainly from the first phase of moblike rush of individu- s*listic undertakings into a planned %nd ordered progress"
 sH If MT. Wells saw. as he doubtless D id the report of the committee on sR1unicipal improvements of the Boston H.ociety of Architects with its sugges- 3siCns for the improvement of the port, Us newly constructed island in the K'harles river. and its various other safchemes. he must have been still fur
 her impressed by that confidence in ssHhe future which apparently all of our