The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1910-06-20
A City's Dream Of a City
What Engineer with Ideals Predicts to the Future Of
Our American Municipalities and Utility
~ ERNEST POOLE in "Everybody's"

~ ERNEST POOLE in "Everybody's"
From our airy pinnacle, high above.
We are looking down into the city.
I'm less than hundred years from
now" said the engineer beside me,
"such cities a. the one down there
will have vanished from the civilized
world, remembered as monstrosities.
replaced by other cities, which will be
Ito Paris as Paris is to this"
He belonged to that new profession
Of rude gigantic surgery which in re-
cent years has suddenly come into
prominence in scores OF our crowded
cities and towns. For the past twelve
months he had been employed to d.
agnose q city. to find where and how
TO operate, and to draught plan for
the city's future growth. His offices
were perched at the top OF twenty
two story building. And we stepped
out on the roof to have a look down
at his patient.
l The patient seemed in great distress.
Heavy columns and pillows OF smoke
rose up from every direction, rose up
and whirled and eddied, and settled in
islug4ish. sprawling clouds that veiled
and befouled the light of the sun.
Noises rose. The very air was alive
with a muffled, quivering roar. And.
looking down through the scurrying
smoke-at the streets that were long,
tumultuous tides of people and things:
at the buildings of all shapes and ages
squeezed and wedged together into a
grimmy. mammoth hive, some of them
suddenly towering as though for a
mass below was that Of congestion and
fever.
Cities fit to live in," the engineer
began, don't grow up themselves.
They have to be made, nodded, plan
ned to suit humanity's needs. They
are being so made in Europe. Paris
didn't just grow by itself. 1t has al
ready been nodded several times. Ma.
poleon Third in two short years spent
fourteen hundred million francs in
opening boulevards, radical avenues,
and streets-and the work in Paris is
by no means ended yet. 1t has been
the same in Vienna; the German cities
have taken it up even old London has
become fearfully busy of late. And
now over here, in at least score of
cities. the work has already begun
the work of molding our cities instead
OF allowing our cities to mold us.
THE health of a city" he went on,
"like the health of your body or mine.
depends on it's circulation-that is, its
veins and arteries-its streets. In this
city the circulation is clogged.
Look down again, and you will see
that all its streets run due north and
south or east and west, with rectangu-
lar blocks between them. We call it
q 'Gridiron City, The first and chief
promoter of the Gridiron was no less
q man than William Penn. Having
seen the torturous, winding streets OF
the ancient cities abroad, he decided
that crookedness was a word OF the
devil, and that in decorous Philadel.
phia blocks should all be squares. 1t
seemed a sensible idea. The newer
American towns began copying Phila'
thing And now at least nine out OF
ten Of our cities and towns are OF the
Gridiron type.
The dreary ugliness Of the scheme
the monotony of hundreds of blocks
all shaped exactly alike-is only a part
OF the trouble. The most serious part
Is this: Down there in the heart ol
the city today are nearly a million
people. workers and shoppers. who
will soon be going home. Half OF
them. at most, those whose homes lie
due east or west or north or south
will have direct routes home. But the
homes of the other half are northeast
northwest, southeast. southwest-ano
TO picture the homeward route OF this
luckless half million, you need only
amagine an immense field two or three
miles square, over which You wish tc
60 from the northwest to the south
east corner You are not allowed te
cut straight across. You are forced
TO take . zigzag path or else to go al
the way around.
so much for William Penn's idea
about a century later. another Ameri
can planned a city. His name was
George Washington-and he was an en-
gineer. So far-sighted builder hi
was that his conception for the capital
worked out by the Major L'Enfant
was an object of amusement to short
sighted men for generations-and i:
row a model for all Of us to follow.
"To follow-not to copy. For w
are beginning to learn, these days, tha
every city has its own topography, 1t!