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PAPER NO. I. Action of the Washington Board of Trade in Relation to the
Park System of the District of Columbia. By W. V. Cox..........

II. Action Toward the Establishment of an Arboretum. Corre-
spondence between Mr. Albert M. Read, member of the com-
mittee on parks and reservations, Washington Board of Trade,
and Frederick V. Coville, botanist, Department of Agricul-
ture..

III. The Need of Additional Playgrounds, Parks, and Reservations.

Statement of Columbia Heights Citizens' Association; state-

ment of Washington Civic Center; statement of the Associated

Charities and the Citizens' Relief Association; statement of

the North Capitol and Eckington Citizens' Association; state-

ment of the Takoma Park Citizens' Association

IV. Fort Stevens, Where Lincoln was under Fire. By William V.

Cox, chairman of the historical committee, Brightwood Citi-

zens' Association

V. Informal Hearing Before the Subcommittee of the Committee

on the District of Columbia, United States Senate, Relative to

the Appointment of the Park Commission....

VI. Notes on the Parks and their Connections. By Charles Moore.

VII. Notes on the Establishment of a National Park in the District

of Columbia, and the Acquirement and Improvement of the

Valley of Rock Creek for Park Purposes. By William V.

Cox......

VIII. Men on Horseback. A paper on the equestrian statuary in

Washington, read before the Columbia Historical Society, by

Mr. S. H. Kauffmann

IX. Essay on the City of Washington. Reprinted from the Wash-

ington Gazette for November 19, 23, 26, and December 7, 1796.

X. Informal Conference of the Park Improvement Commission of

the District of Columbia, Held in the Room of the Senate

Committee on the District of Columbia on October 21, 1901.

Remarks of Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland, president, Board
of Commissioners of the District of Columbia; remarks of
Dr. S. P. Langley, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution ..........

XI. Extract from a paper on the Commercial Value of Beauty.

By Daniel H. Burnham

XII. Centennial Avenue. Editorials reprinted from the Evening

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SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

PARK IMPROVEMENT PAPERS, NO. 1.

ACTION OF THE WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE IN RELATION TO THE PARK SYSTEM OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

MARCH 28, 1901.-Printed for the use of the committee.

WASHINGTON CITY, March 20, 1901.

SIR: In compliance with the suggestion of Mr. Charles Moore, clerk of your committee, I send herewith abstracts from the ninth and tenth annual reports of the Washington Board of Trade on the development of the park system in the District of Columbia.

In his annual report of 1899, President Theodore W. Noyes said:

Next year's campaign of the board of trade will deal with matters of surpassing importance. Especial attention should and doubtless will be given to a determined effort to develop on broad, artistic, and practical lines the park system of the city and District. * *

*

The parking system of the future Washington will clearly be of wonderful attractiveness. The attention to be given to the reservations within the present city limits will make them health-giving breathing places for the benefit of that portion of the people who must rely for fresh air and natural scenery upon parks close at hand. The thousands of trees connecting these reservations with bands of shade and making Washington a forest city will be multiplied. The reservations themselves will be adorned with all the resources of the landscape gardener's art, with flowering shrubs and plants, also with statuary and with fountains, including the exceedingly effective electric fountains for which Colonel Bingham pleads. The system of parklets of the original city will be extended to the suburbs, so that the aspirations in this direction of Eckington, Columbia Heights, and Anacostia Heights may be gratified, and no enterprising outlying tributary of the capital may have cause to complain.

The mall of the original city will be connected with the new Potomac Park and form an integral and important part of an extensive park area. The blemishes upon the appearance of the mall through disfiguring railroad tracks will not, however, be permitted by the public to be duplicated in the case of the new reservation. The latter will, in pursuance of the declaration of the law, be forever held and used as a public park, for the recreation and pleasure of the people. Both Colonel Bingham and Colonel Allen have taken a lively and intelligent interest in the subject of the development and adornment of Potomac Park. If a fraction of the proposed uses of this area is realized the public welfare will be wonderfully promoted. The park

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PARK SYSTEM OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

will be transformed into a thing of beauty by the landscape gardener's art; an improved and enlarged bathing beach and bathing pool will contribute to the public health; for the recreation of the people there will be provided baseball diamonds, polo grounds, tennis courts, golf links, and special areas, including piles of sand for the little ones; upon water basins will be rowboats and naphtha launches; here will be laid out in ellipse shape a sidewalk, a carriage drive, a bridle path, a bicycle path and a speedway, and inclosed within the ellipse will be an area suitable for races and field sports. Tree-lined roads and bridle paths will afford attractive vistas of land and water.

Continuing this system will be the future boulevard along urban Rock Creek, connecting the river reservations with the Zoological and Rock Creek parks. Thence the proposed Fort drive, or some other great avenue across the northern part of the District, will lead to Soldiers' Home and the Anacostia Park that is to be.

Anacostia Park is capable of developing and doubtless will develop along the lines laid down for Potomac Park.

As a natural result of the recent Supreme Court decision, the river front, not only of the Potomac Park, but of the city itself, will be developed in usefulness and attractiveness. In place of the unsightly and discreditable conditions which now offend the eye along the Potomac front, the natural results of the uncertainty concerning title which has prevailed, will be substituted a handsome river wall of granite, broad embankments, stone piers, asphalted streets, bits of parking, fountains, shade trees, and suitable flower beds.

Water street must conform in attractive appearance to Potomac Park on the opposite side of the channel, with its shade trees picturesquely overhanging the water. The capital's water front lends itself as readily to and is as worthy of adornment as those of London, Paris, and Berlin.

With the completion of the full project of the reclamation of the Potomac Flats the railroad will cross the deepened Potomac on an elevated structure, clearing the new park from railroad obstruction, as well as relieving the city from the menace of Long Bridge dam, and both by the reconstructed Long Bridge and by the Memorial Bridge that is to be the park system on the Maryland side of the Potomac will be connected with the great Government reservation at Arlington, rounded out by a boulevard to Mount Vernon, the survey for which was authorized by Congress in 1889, and which would assume a distinctly national and patriotic character as the roadway from the capital of the nation to the tomb of its great founder.

No other labor of the centennial year is more inspiring or more promising of notable results in increasing the attractiveness of the capital than that of developing Washington as the city of parks and the forest city by a vigorous campaign for the series of connected reservations above outlined, utilizing at every step Washington's diversified natural advantages, the urban circles and triangles, the larger reservations which furnish an emerald setting for public buildings, the heights to the north and west, and the beautiful rivers to the south and east, whose banks are changing, and should be quickly and thoroughly transformed from marshes and malarious wastes into beautiful landscapes with shaded driveways and with lawn surfaces, diversified by attractive lakes.

There would not be, in Vienna or Budapest, or anywhere in the world, a grander ring street or boulevard than that which should take its start on the westward grassy slopes of the Capitol grounds, sweep through the Mall and Potomac Park and up Rock Creek to the Zoo and Rock Creek National Park; thence by boulevard to the Soldiers' Home, and finally by boulevards and Anacostia Park back to the eastern sward and shade trees and impressive Dome of the Capitol. Its only rival would be the boulevard drive which should sweep from the Capitol through the Mall and Potomac Park, across a magnificent memorial bridge to Arlington, and by a national boulevard along the Potomac to Mount Vernon and the tomb of Washington.

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