CITY PLANNING IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES: COMMERCE A LEADING MOTIVE
IN CITY BUILDING: BABYLON, EGYPT, ATHENS, AND ROME: MEDIÆVAL CITIES:
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARIS: CITY PLANNING IN GERMANY: OVERCOMING
CONGESTION IN LONDON: WASHINGTON A CITY BUILT ON A PLAN: OTHER
AMERICAN CITIES
From earliest times, two motives have governed the location of cities:
either the site was selected because it offered natural means of
defense, or else commerce gathered men at a particular point, about
which they built fortifications. In either case, the necessity of
protection against enemies from without conditioned the form and
arrangement of the city. Even in this western hemisphere the question
of defense has been of moment. Louisburg and Quebec; Boston, New York,
and Yorktown; Mackinac and New Orleans; Charleston, Mobile, Vicksburg,
and New Orleans again,—are names which recall sieges and battles of
three wars; while the walled towns of Europe find their counterparts
in the palisaded settlements which sprang up in the Indian country of
North America, Chicago itself being a typical example. It is only
within recent times that the city has been able to extend its borders
free from the restraints imposed by the necessity of warding off a foe.
[Illustration: X. THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS.
From a water-color by E. H. Bennett.]
The first city-builder whose exploits are recorded was Semiramis, queen
of Babylon; and although the history of that country, as recorded on
its monuments, fails to mention even the name of this war-like ruler,
we may not disregard the circumstantial accounts given by classical
writers of the greatest commercial city of ancient times. Diodorus
tells us that Semiramis, being of an aspiring spirit and anxious to
excel all her predecessors in glorious actions, set about building a
great city in the province of Babylon. First she had complete plans
prepared by her architects and artists, then she assembled from all
parts of her empire the men necessary for the work of construction.
For the promotion of commerce, she located the city on the banks of
the river Euphrates; and round about it she built a wall, very high,
fortified with many turrets, and so broad at the top that thereon
chariots might be driven abreast. Across the river she threw a bridge
five furlongs in length, with arches having a span of twelve feet.
Along either shore of the river she raised a bank as broad as the wall;
and temporarily turning aside the course of the stream, she made in
the bed of the river a passage in the form of a tunnel to serve as a
connection between her two palaces, which were also lookouts whence she
could command every portion of the city. Other cities on the banks of
the Tigris and the Euphrates Semiramis built, and there she established
traffic centers for the vending of merchandise brought from Media,
Persia, India, Egypt, and other countries reached by the two great
rivers, which in those ancient times vied with the Nile and the Ganges.
So by her able policy she greatly enriched the merchants who trafficked
in those parts, and advanced the glory and majesty of Babylon.
[Illustration: XI. THE GREEK THEATRE AT SYRACUSE, SICILY.
From a water-color by E. H. Bennett.]
The ancient Egyptians, hemmed in by deserts, relied less on walls than
on the defenses provided by nature. Thus relieved from the necessity
of building fortifications, they expended their energies in such
monumental works as the Great Pyramids and temples that embody a
civilization which for at least nine thousand years has been the wonder
and the admiration of the world.
[Illustration: XII. PLAN SHOWING NERO’S CIRCUS AT ROME (FIRST CENTURY),
BASILICA OF ST. PETER (FOURTH CENTURY), AND THE PRESENT CATHEDRAL OF
ST. PETER (SIXTEENTH CENTURY).
These structures were built at successive epochs, on the same site.]
Means of defense having been provided, the desire of mankind for order
and magnificence found expression in works of adornment, which were
measured only by the love of the citizens for their city, the artistic
sense developed among the people, and the means at their disposal for
carrying out their conceptions. Nowhere else have these conditions
been combined as they were in Athens during the days of Pericles. Year
by year the patient excavator is bringing to the light the massive
walls by which the early Athenians protected their citadel against the
invader; and when security had been obtained and the tribute of the
allies had accumulated in the treasury, the Greek passion for beauty
found expression in public buildings which through the ages have placed
the Acropolis at Athens among the world’s famous places. Plutarch lays
emphasis on the fact that undertakings, any one of which singly might
have required for its completion several successions and ages of men,
were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime of one
man’s political service. “Pericles’ works,” this same writer asserts,
“were especially admired because they were made quickly to last long.
For every particular piece of his work was immediately, even at that
time, for its beauty and elegance, antique; and yet in its vigor and
freshness looks to this day as if it were just executed. There is a
sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his, preserving them from
the touch of time, as if they had some perennial spirit and undying
vitality mingled in the composition of them.”
[Illustration: XIII. AN ANCIENT ROMAN CIRCUS, NEAR THE APPIAN WAY.
From an etching by Piranesi.]
As Athens represents the highest expression of civic beauty which
mankind has witnessed, so Rome stands for power and the magnificence
thereof. Mistress of the world she styled herself; and to-day she
can still lay claim to her other proud title of the “Eternal City.”
It is not until we come to Roman times that we begin to obtain the
combination of elements which are the chief characteristics of the
modern city; namely, opportunities for the healthful life of the great
body of the citizens. “Parks, gardens, commons, and public squares,”
says Lanciani, “have been happily compared to the lungs of a city; and
if the health and general welfare of a city depend upon the normal
and sound function of its respiratory organs, ancient Rome, in this
respect, must be considered as the healthiest city which has ever
existed on earth.”[2] This writer enumerates, as existing at the end
of the third century after Christ, eight commons, or green spaces, set
apart mostly for foot-races and gymnastic exercises; eighteen public
squares, and about thirty parks and gardens, at first laid out by
private citizens for their personal comfort, but afterwards absorbed
into the imperial domain by purchase, bequest, or confiscation. Besides
these were the cemeteries, marble cities of the dead, shadowed by
stately cypresses and weeping-willows; the sacred enclosures of the
temples, with their colonnades and fountains; the porticoes, expressly
built for the sake of allowing citizens to move about pleasantly in hot
or rainy weather; and lastly, the great baths, establishments provided
with every possible comfort and accommodation to insure the health of
the body and the education of the mind.
[Illustration: XIV. THE PONTE MOLLE, ROME.
From an etching by Piranesi.]
Out of the original market-place occupying the marshy ground between
the Palatine and the Capitol, the Roman Forum was gradually evolved,
with temples, treasure-houses, places for foreign ambassadors,
the senate-house, the court-house, triumphal arches, and historic
monuments. Here was indeed the civic center of Rome, the place of
religion, business, and politics. Adjoining the Forum proper were other
forums, gifts to the state, purchased at a cost, in the case of Cæsar’s
Forum, of $44.45 a square foot, or over four million dollars. Trajan’s
gift of land alone amounted to four times that sum, and the completed
work was reckoned the masterpiece of Roman architecture of the golden
age.
The baths of Rome, both public and private, had accommodations for
62,800 citizens at a single time, and also every Roman house was
provided with bathing facilities. Beautiful porticoes enabled one to
cross under shelter the whole plain of the Campus Martius, a space
of between two and three miles; and similar structures connected all
the great buildings of the city, serving for markets and exchanges
and picture-galleries, and ministering to a thousand different wants.
Lovely gardens, with thickets of box, laurel, and myrtle, with lakes
and fountains, were enclosed by these porticoes, which were in
themselves architectural creations of rare marbles, the floors often
being inlaid with jasper and porphyry. The surrounding hills and the
valleys between, once the dumping-place of the city’s refuse, were
converted into magnificent gardens, forming stretches of verdure in
length sometimes exceeding two miles in a single composition.
To-day, after centuries of destruction and decay, Rome is taking on new
life. Her population is fast increasing; since 1870 scores of millions
of dollars have been spent on works of public utility and general
improvement; great thoroughfares have been created, the monuments
of the past have been opened to the light and air, the pestilential
conditions that during the centuries of her decadence hung over the
city like a pall have been removed by wise sanitation; the great
estates of noble families have been given over to the public; and again
the compelling power of Rome is being felt throughout the civilized
world.
During the slow centuries which followed upon the destruction and
decay of ancient civilization, no great works of civic utility or
adornment were undertaken, and the old were no longer maintained. As
the consciousness of national life again began to assert itself in
Europe, and the unifying forces of Christianity and Roman law began to
bind humanity together, the cities of Italy, of Germany, of France, and
of England grew strong and rich by industry and traffic; and throughout
western Europe the sense of permanence and power found expression in
the rearing and beautification of cities. Everywhere the same spirit
actuated the people, although in each land the mode of expression took
on characteristic form; and since the vital principle was religion, the
cathedral became the embodiment of the highest expression in civic art.
No city in the world, says Charles Eliot Norton, appeals more strongly
to the poetic imagination than Venice. Rising in the dawn of modern
Europe, she linked the tradition of the old civilization to the fresh
conditions of the new. The destiny that ruled her beginnings seemed, as
she grew, to have had no element of chance, but to have been determined
by foresight and wise counsel. Her statesmen were the ablest, her
merchants the most adventurous and most successful, her seamen the
boldest, her craftsmen the most skillful, of their time. The affection
in which she was held by her people had the depth and intensity of a
passion.[3] As it was with Venice, so in a scarcely less degree it
fared with Florence and Siena, and other independent cities of Italy,
which vied with one another not only in power, but much more in beauty
and in the love borne them by their citizens. And to-day their charm
makes them the resort of people of taste and refinement, long after
their power has waned and only their beauty remains.
[Illustration: 1780.]
[Illustration: 1830.]
[Illustration: 1880.
XV. TRANSFORMATION OF THE BANKS OF THE SEINE IN PARIS.
Chronological views of the Petit Pont and Petit Chatelet, showing the
evolution of the boulevards.]
City planning, in the sense of regarding the city as an organic whole
and of developing its various units with reference to their relations
one to another, had its origin in Paris during the Bourbon period.
Among great cities, Paris has reached the highest stage of development;
and the method of this attainment affords lessons for all other
cities. Paris owes its origin and its growth to the convenience of its
location in view of increasing commercial conditions. Its beginnings
go back to the century before the Christian era, when it was but a
straggling village called Lutetia, occupying one of the islands in
the Seine. On the vast level plain adjoining the town, houses could
be erected indefinitely, while the numerous watercourses extending
into the surrounding regions gave easy access to the trader. Fertile
lands furnished an abundance of provisions; and brick-clay, lime, and
sand, with timber from the neighboring forests, provided materials for
building. The surroundings of Paris, so rich in all the requisites for
the creation of a great city, are similar to those of London and Berlin
and Chicago; and in each instance there is the same breadth in the
landscape.
The architects to whom Louis XIV. entrusted his planning went far
beyond the compact walled city of their day. In the open fields which
the growth of Paris must sooner or later transform into streets and
avenues they drew the central axis of the city. Straight, vast in
width, and without limit of length, this avenue passed entirely through
open country, with scarcely a dozen buildings throughout its great
extent. To the noted city-builders of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries—Louis XIV., Colbert, Le Nôtre, Blondel, and the Academy of
Architects,—Paris owes those vast reaches of avenue and boulevard which
to-day are the crowning features of the most beautiful of cities. The
Paris of their day was indeed a crowded, congested city; but the Paris
which they conceived and laid out in the deserts and waste places was
the widespreading, well-adorned, and convenient city in which to-day
all the world takes delight. The Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde,
the Invalides, and the great axial avenue from the garden of the
Tuileries to the Place de l’Etoile,—all existed on paper decades before
they were finally realized in the progress of city building. The point
of interest to us is, that as Paris increased in population, the city
grew according to a well-devised, symmetrical, highly developed plan;
and that the greater portion of the beauty and convenience recognized
to-day was attained at no money cost whatever. Artistic sense and
foresight were the only price paid. It is unnecessary to do more than
point out the fact that a similar opportunity is open to Chicago.
[Illustration: 1740]
[Illustration: 1841]
[Illustration: 1878.
XVI. CHRONOLOGICAL VIEWS OF THE PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, PARIS.
The evolution of the castle and moat to its present form of plaza and
boulevard is shown]
Old Paris remained, with its dirty, crowded, ill-smelling, narrow,
winding streets, the hotbeds of vice and crime. Napoleon Bonaparte was
quick to see that while the Paris of the future might indeed grow in
attractiveness and convenience, the Paris of the present demanded his
attention. Napoleon was disturbed over the condition of his capital.
He realized that the city, then numbering some seven hundred thousand
people, was destined to become the home of two, three, or even four
millions; and he proposed to give it a splendor never before realized
by any city in the world. He began to open the Rue de Rivoli, north of
the Tuileries gardens; he created the Rue Napoleon (now the Rue de la
Paix) in the axis of the Place Vendôme; from the mediæval bridges he
swept the superstructures, adding three superb new crossings of the
Seine; he built the first sidewalks in Paris, and lighted the streets
at night; and he transformed the banks of the river by the construction
of three thousand meters of new quays. He also gave to Paris her
great commemorative monuments, the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, which
was finished by Louis Philippe, the Arc du Carrousel, and the Column
Vendôme, all of which were foreshadowed in the designs of Louis XIV.
[Illustration: XVII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS UNDER HAUSSMANN: PLAN
SHOWING THE PORTION EXECUTED FROM 1854 TO 1889.
The new boulevards and streets are shown in yellow outlined with red.]
[Illustration: XVIII. PARIS. PLAN PROPOSED BY M. EUGENE HÉNARD FOR
ADDITIONAL RADIAL ARTERIES AND AN INNER CIRCUIT BOULEVARD ON WHICH
WOULD FRONT THE PRINCIPAL EXISTING ADMINISTRATIVE BUILDINGS AND MANY
PUBLIC MONUMENTS.
The system, involving radical cuts through the blocks and widening of
existing arteries, is shown by hatched lines.]
It remained for the third Napoleon, however, to accomplish the
great work of breaking through the old city, of opening it to light
and air, and of making it fit to sustain the army of merchants and
manufacturers which makes Paris to-day the center of a commerce
as wide as civilization itself. In 1853, Georges Eugène Haussmann
became prefect of the Seine, the appointment being in the nature of a
promotion due to the successful administration of the office of prefect
in other French cities. Immediately Haussmann began a career which has
established for all time his place among the city-builders of the
world. As if by intuition he grasped the entire problem. Taking counsel
neither of expediency nor of compromise, he ever sought the true and
proper solution. To him Paris appeared as a highly organized unit, and
he strove to create ideal conditions throughout the entire city. The
world gives him credit for the highest success. The people of Paris
have always supported those who aimed to make their city grand and
beautiful. Proud, ambitious, endowed with good taste and an artistic
sense, the Parisians have ever been zealous to make their city the
capital not only of the state, but also of civilization.
Haussmann never overlooked the great and broad lines laid down by his
predecessors; so that to a considerable extent his work was but the
continuation of the plans prepared by Louis XIV. in the later years of
the seventeenth century. His peculiar task, however, was to provide
adequate means of circulation within the old city, by cutting new
streets and widening old ones, by sweeping away unwholesome rookeries,
and by opening up great spaces in order to disengage monuments of
beauty and historic interest. He placed the great railway stations
of Paris in a circle about the old center of the city, and opened up
fine avenues of approach to them. At times he found it less expensive,
and also less disturbing, to build a new street through the blocks,
rather than to widen old streets; and it was his special care to
create diagonal thoroughfares in order to shorten distances, and also
to give picturesqueness to the street system by the creation of those
corner lots which the architects of Paris have learned so well how to
improve.[4]
The task which Haussmann accomplished for Paris corresponds with
the work which must be done for Chicago, in order to overcome the
intolerable conditions which invariably arise from a rapid growth
of population. At the time he began, the population of Paris was
half a million less than the population of Chicago to-day. The work
was accomplished at a cost of $265,000,000. That portion of the
improvements relating to the palaces was borne entirely by the nation,
the remainder being divided between the nation and the city, the former
paying one-third and the latter two-thirds of the expense. It was
Haussmann’s theory that the money thus spent made a better city, and
that a better city was a greater producer of wealth. Experience has
amply justified his contention. The convenience and beauty of Paris
bring large returns in money as well as in æsthetic satisfaction.[5]
In Europe, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a
widespread impulse towards city planning found expression in all the
great towns. This movement was made possible by the fact that since the
termination of the Franco-Prussian war, in 1870, there has been peace
throughout Europe, and the money which theretofore had been wasted on
swords and spears now found productive employment in plowshares and
pruning-hooks. From out the turmoil and strife which marked the first
two-thirds of the century, Germany arose united, alert, vigorous,
ambitious, like a lusty youth, realizing both the opportunities before
him and his own strength of body, mind, and will to take advantage
of every opening. Austria, unwillingly freed from the incubus of
Italy, found in union with Hungary a strength never before possessed;
and Vienna and Budapest became centers of intense activity, which
developed along lines of commercial progress, and also took on forms
of convenience and orderliness which have served as examples the world
over. Italy, once again shaking off the foreign yoke, became united
under the rule of her own people. France, putting aside for the moment
ideas of foreign domination, set herself to the task of leading all
nations in the world of art and taste. England, drawing her princely
revenues from every hemisphere, watched her commerce develop as her
industries grew and her wealth increased.
[Illustration: XIX. CITY CENTER. VIENNA. IN 1857, SHOWING THE
FORTIFICATIONS.]
Moreover, the past thirty-eight years of peace throughout Europe
coincides with the period in which the greatest discoveries in the
realm of natural forces, as applied to industry, have been made
and utilized. So that the capital saved as the result of peace has
yielded returns that have been increased in geometrical ratio, until
we have reached the days not only of unparalleled wealth, but also
of unparalleled opportunities for increasing wealth. Moreover, peace
has widened the field of traffic, so that no nation now relies merely
on its own people for its commerce, but out of every nation come the
finest fruits of its industry to satisfy the world’s demands. And
inasmuch as there are no bounds to human wants and satisfactions, the
triumphs and the rewards of commerce find no limits.
[Illustration: XX. CITY CENTER, VIENNA, AFTER TRANSFORMATIONS MADE BY
ORDER OF FRANCIS JOSEPH IN 1857.
The Ringstrasse and public buildings replace the fortifications.]
All this commercial activity, suddenly developed by turning the capital
of the world into productive channels, found the cities of Europe
ill adapted to meet the changed conditions. The great towns, Paris
excepted, were still in the swaddling-clothes of the Middle Ages; they
were walled towns with narrow, tortuous streets, picturesque indeed,
but absolutely unfitted for commerce or manufactures according to
the modern scale. All the conditions, therefore, made imperative the
transformation of the old portions of cities to meet modern demands
for circulation, and the extension of their borders to provide for
the constant increase in population. Everywhere throughout Europe the
design of the cosmopolitan city as planned by the architects of Louis
XIV. became the model; everywhere the work of Haussmann in opening
congested regions of old cities by means of straight thoroughfares
found imitators. Vienna with its Ringstrasse followed the example of
Paris as expressed in the boulevards of Colbert; in each case the old
fortifications were cleared away to make park-like thoroughfares. The
heart of old London was transformed by cutting new streets; Brussels
was divided by boulevards. In Italy, Rome, Florence, and Milan, each
carried out extensive schemes of improvement based on French models.
[Illustration: XXI. LONDON. PLAN OF ALDWYCH AND KINGSWAY CONNECTING
HOLBORN AND THE STRAND]
With the Germans the cutting through of new streets was undertaken
for the twofold reason of facilitating traffic and of admitting
light and air into a too congested and unwholesome city quarter. In
Frankfort-on-the-Main, in Hamburg, in Berlin, and in Dresden it became
necessary to abolish with firm hand evil conditions that had become
intolerable, no matter at what sacrifice of buildings enveloped with
historical associations. But the Germans have come to modify the
French theory of the unconditional superiority of the rectilinear
avenue; and now they seek to maintain the essential character of the
city, as in the case of Darmstadt, by admitting strong curves, and,
wherever desirable, by narrowing or widening the thoroughfare, making
compensations by creating open spaces. They have found, also, that a
too extensive clearing away of the old buildings which cluster about a
great minster or cathedral results in an enhancement of effectiveness
only at a sacrifice of scale and a loss of picturesqueness. As a
consequence, the Germans have sought a golden mean by creating about a
monumental structure free room for the beholder to see the essential
parts of the building from a sufficiently remote point of view, while
leaving undisturbed single structures small in scale, in order that the
main building may appear to have grown out of its surroundings.[6]
[Illustration: XXII. LONDON TRAFFIC COMMISSION’S PLAN FOR NEW
THOROUGHFARES TO OVERCOME CONGESTION, 1907.
Revised by Paul Waterhouse, F. R. I. B. A.]
In general, then, it may be said that while the French or classical
theory results in monumental effects for a city and establishes unity,
the German or individualistic treatment preserves for an old city a
homelike feeling and a pleasing variety. It is worthy of note, however,
that where city planning has been undertaken by masters, whether in
France or Germany, the two theories have been used as circumstances
warranted. It is only where designers are not able to handle their
subject in its entirety, but have become slaves to a system, that
results have been attained at great money cost and with a loss of charm
and picturesqueness that by intelligent study might have been saved.[7]
Napoleon Bonaparte, in exile on St. Helena, one day amused himself
by planning improvements for London. He would make, he said, a grand
thoroughfare from St. Paul’s to the Thames; and two wide streets along
the Thames, one on either side of the river. He would build more
bridges, and would remove from the vicinity of public buildings the
mean old structures which disfigure the fine monuments. It would be
easy to do this, he thought, in a city so rich as London.[8] Albert
Shaw, in his work on _Municipal Government in Great Britain_, says:
“If London within the lifetime of men still in their prime had taken
due precautions, what errors might have been avoided! London is now
creating a park system, and acquiring land that has quadrupled in value
within thirty years. London is widening and straightening streets, and
increasing thereby the expense of appropriating frontage that costs
twice as much now as it would have cost a few years ago. The people
of London suffer an inestimable loss in convenience and actual money
through the haphazard nature of passenger transportation facilities.”
After the great fire of September, 1666, London had the opportunity, so
frequently offered in America, of rectifying those unfortunate results
which occur in all cities that have grown up; and the sin of omission
in the case of the British metropolis was the more unpardonable,
inasmuch as plans for improvement were prepared by one of the great
architects of the world, Sir Christopher Wren, only to be set aside by
the perverse self-interest of the then citizens of London. Wren’s plans
contemplated a city with streets radiating from central points, and the
locations for public buildings were arranged so as to give pleasing
objects of sight at the end of long vistas,—principles of civic
arrangement which the English architect fixed on paper years before the
French city-builders adopted the same principles for the development
of Paris.[9] The failure of Wren’s scheme of 1666 has cost London
millions upon millions of money to repair in part the errors which
might have been avoided so easily, besides years of inconvenience and
loss due to congestion of traffic. From 1855 to 1900 one project after
another for bettering the conditions in London has been carried out,
at a cost equal to nearly one hundred million dollars; and now the new
Traffic Commission has reported a tentative plan for diminishing the
congestion in street traffic by cutting two great thoroughfares: one
traversing the town from north to south, the other linking Bayswater
with Whitechapel, the estimated cost of the combined work being in the
neighborhood of $125,000,000 for land damages alone.[10]
Recently England has taken up in comprehensive manner the whole subject
of housing the working classes and of town planning. In 1890 a limited
act was passed for the housing of the working classes; and in 1907 this
act was supplemented by “the small holdings and allottments act.” It
is now proposed to extend the provisions of these acts to every urban
and rural district. The powers conferred center in the Local Government
Board, to which local authorities apply for approval of the plans
proposed; and in case these local authorities fail to make application,
the Board may order schemes to be prepared and carried out. There is
also a Public Works Loan Commission which authorizes loans for the
purpose of carrying out the approved plans.[11]
[Illustration: XXIII. ORIGINAL PLAN OF WASHINGTON DESIGNED BY PETER
CHARLES L’ENFANT, 1791.]
We have found that those cities which retain their domination over the
imaginations of mankind achieve that result through the harmony and
beauty of their civic works; that these artistic creations were made
possible largely by the gains of commerce promoted by years of peace;
and that intense loyalty on the part of the great body of the citizens
was the chief impulse which led them to strive to enhance the prestige
and dignity of their city. We have found, also, that in modern times
the cities of Europe are everywhere making those changes which a rapid
increase in trade and population requires, and which the awakened
artistic sense of the people demands. We turn now to our own country,
to note the conditions which have controlled the development of the
American city, and to recount briefly some of the more noteworthy
attempts that are being made in the United States to give form and
comeliness to our great towns.
[Illustration: XXIV. THE L’ENFANT PLAN OF WASHINGTON AS DEVELOPED BY
THE SENATE PARK COMMISSION OF 1901.]
Washington was planned and founded as the capital of a nation. The
architects of Louis XIV. drew the lines of the new Paris beyond the
walls of the existing town, and mapped avenues converging at central
points where only gardens and farms then existed; and their plans
were a wise provision for a not distant future. Under the direction
of President Washington, and with the aid and encouragement of
Secretary Jefferson, Peter Charles L’Enfant, a young French engineer,
deliberately drew the map of an entirely new capital city designed to
accommodate a population one-third greater than was comprised in Paris
at that date. In that plan no element of civic convenience, beauty,
or adornment was lacking. The entire city was regarded as a unit, and
that unit was to be developed in a form not surpassed by any existing
city. Upon a rectilinear system of streets L’Enfant imposed diagonal
avenues of stately width, converging upon focal points designed to
be the location of important public buildings, statues, or monuments
commemorating historic events. The Capitol and the President’s House
were connected by a spacious park, and axial relations between the two
structures were developed; every other building necessary for national
uses was provided for; and canals, cascades, and fountains were located
with reference to existing springs and watercourses. This comprehensive
and magnificent plan, designed for an area which then consisted of wide
swamps and wooded hills, became the laughing-stock alike of foreign
traveler and American citizen. But fortunately the foundations were
laid broad and deep by means of the donation of the lands necessary
for streets, avenues, and parks. Fortunately the plan was adopted and
the streets, avenues, public squares, and circles were fixed; and
although the development of the city during three-quarters of a century
was slow, yet the rapid increase in wealth and power that followed
the ending of the Civil War found Washington ready and waiting for the
improvements which have lifted it from a straggling, ill-kept town,
into one of the beautiful and stately capitals of the world.
[Illustration: XXV. THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT, GARDEN AND MALL, LOOKING
TOWARDS THE CAPITOL; SENATE PARK COMMISSION PLAN.]
[Illustration: XXVI. THE PLAZA AND UNION STATION, WASHINGTON, BEGUN IN
1902.]
[Illustration: XXVII. Cleveland Group-Plan.
Proposed civic center, railway station and gardens, now being executed.]
Before the opening of the twentieth century, Washington had begun
to expand over the surrounding country; and there unfortunately the
L’Enfant plan stopped short. Moreover, within the city there had been
perversions of the plan; and there had also been additions to the park
area awaiting development. Congress dealt in part with the difficulties
by extending the L’Enfant plan of streets and avenues over the entire
District of Columbia; and in 1901 the task of preparing a report on
the development of the park system of the Federal territory and the
placing of public buildings was committed to an expert commission.
As Haussmann aimed in large part to carry out the work that had been
planned by the architects of Louis XIV., so the Senate Park Commission
sought to re-establish and reanimate the plans of L’Enfant, which had
the sanction of Washington and Jefferson. In spite of much opposition
on the part of those who regard only the present, and take no thought
for future advancement, the new plans have been carried to such a point
that their general lines are well established, and already works to
cost nearly $50,000,000 are in progress, each one of which strengthens
the hold of the general scheme.[12]
[Illustration: XXVIII. CLEVELAND GROUP PLAN.
View looking towards the Lake from the proposed civic center.]
The plans for the improvement of Washington were prepared by the same
hands that guided the artistic development of the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. The dream city on Lake Michigan, people said,
should take on enduring form in the capital of the nation. Then as the
Washington plans fired the imagination of the American people, the
cities throughout the country began to ask why they too should not
achieve whatever of beauty and convenience their situation and their
civic pride would allow. Among the first to feel the new impulse was
Cleveland, a commercial city where at the time the forces of democracy
were having fullest play. Taking advantage of the fact that a Federal
building, a city hall, and a public library must be constructed in
the near future, and that a railway station on the Lake front could
not long be delayed, a commission of experts was appointed to prepare
a group-plan for the location of those structures, with appropriate
landscape settings; and high-minded, public-spirited citizens who
were behind the movement labored until they brought harmony of action
among the political agencies, and so placed the plans beyond the risk
of failure. The expense involved approximates $14,000,000 for public
purposes, and from three to five millions additional for railway
terminals, museums, and the like.
[Illustration: XXIX. PLAN FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENTIRE CITY OF SAN
FRANCISCO.
Report of D. H. Burnham to the Association of Improvement and Adornment
of San Francisco, 1904-1906.]
[Illustration: XXX. BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE PLAN OF DEVELOPMENT FOR SAN
FRANCISCO.
This view shows municipal center, boulevard system, and treatment of
surrounding hills as parks.]
[Illustration: XXXI. PLANS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF MANILA, SUBMITTED TO
THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION BY D. H. BURNHAM, 1905.
The essential elements of this plan are the government center and
system of proposed arteries radiating from it, the railway station, and
the shore road.]
Boston has developed the most extensive park system in America, at
a cost of $33,000,000, and is creating on the Charles River a tidal
basin which bids fair to rival any similar work in Europe. A state
commission is now studying means to relieve congestion in the city,
and to extend its commercial facilities. New York is struggling with
many isolated works of improvement spread over the broad domain of
that city’s activities; Baltimore is seeking to use the opportunity
presented by a great fire to introduce order and symmetry in her street
system, and also to create a connected park system; and the citizens
of St. Louis have prepared and presented a city plan for the grouping
of municipal buildings, for an inner and an outer park system, for
civic centers comprising small parks and playgrounds, museums, branch
libraries, and like public buildings.[13] San Francisco, even before
the great earthquake and fire of April, 1906, was already working on a
comprehensive plan to promote, in every practical way, the beautifying
of the streets, parks, squares, and public places of the city; to
bring to the attention of public officials and the citizens the best
methods of instituting artistic municipal betterments; to stimulate
the sentiment of civic pride in the improvement and care of private
property; and, in short, to make San Francisco a more agreeable city in
which to live. This latter movement resulted in a comprehensive city
plan which has been adopted by the general committee of citizens and by
the Board of Supervisors.[14]
[Illustration: XXXII. PLAN FOR A SUMMER CAPITAL OF THE PHILIPPINE
ISLANDS, AT BAGUIO.
Submitted to the Philippine Commission by D. H. Burnham, 1905.]
Philadelphia is cutting a great parkway from Logan Square to Fairmount
Park, with the expectation of extending the thoroughfare to the City
Hall; is acquiring extensive additions to its large parks; and is
planning for the grouping of its present buildings. Minneapolis and
St. Paul have made common cause in the creation of parkways, and the
last-named city is bent on securing adequate approaches for the newly
completed state capitol.[15] From Providence and Hartford in the East,
to Kansas City and on to Seattle in the West, the city planning is in
full progress. The South also has felt the new impulse. Annapolis, the
capital of Maryland, was laid out on lines strikingly similar to those
embodied in Sir Christopher Wren’s scheme for London; and the plan of
Williamsburg, the colonial capital of Virginia, suggests the locations
adopted for the Capitol and White House at Washington; so that the new
plans for Roanoke, Virginia, seem like the discovery of a lost art.
No sooner had the United States come into the possession of the
Philippine Islands than the War Department set about adapting the
capital city of Manila to the changed conditions brought about by
the influx of Americans, who are used to better conditions of living
than had prevailed in those islands. While fully recognizing the
value of the historic public buildings, the Department undertook
to have prepared a plan for connecting thoroughfares, open spaces,
driveways and promenades which should provide adequate facilities
for transportation, improved sanitation, and opportunities for those
particular kinds of recreation which the climate invites. As a result
the expansion which is coming as the result of American occupation,
will proceed on comprehensive lines. Moreover, the necessity of
providing a summer capital for the rulers of our new possessions has
led to the creation on the hills of Baguio of a city laid out on a
plan similar to the plan made by L’Enfant for the city of Washington,
in that it provides for such public buildings as may be needed for
government offices, for the service of the city itself, and for the
healthfulness, convenience, and recreation of the people; and all
these functions are so arranged as to make a unified and orderly city.
Thus without additional expense, but merely by taking thought for the
future, the two capitals of the Philippines, even in their physical
characteristics, will represent the power and dignity of this nation.
It has been seen that as peace permits the expansion of cities
regardless of means of defense against outside foes, and as commerce
enriches the people, population increases with such rapidity as to
create demands for enlarged facilities for circulation throughout the
city; and that these demands are so insistent that they must be met,
no matter at what cost. Also, that those cities which have made ample
provision for future growth have saved largely in money while at the
same time they have accomplished much in the way of convenience and
orderliness. Thus it has been well said that Paris is a unified city;
whereas London is a collection of towns. Moreover, it is to be noted
that throughout the civilized world there is a great forward movement
in the direction of transforming cities to adapt them to the improved
conditions of living which the people everywhere are demanding, and
which, moreover, they feel that they have the power to enforce. As a
part of this movement arises the impulse to express in concrete form
the feeling of loyalty to and pride in the city; and this feeling finds
expression in parks and pleasure grounds, in monuments and fine public
buildings, in institutions of art and learning, and in hospitals and
other means of alleviating the ills of mankind. Furthermore, there has
arisen the conception of the city as an organic whole, each part having
well-defined relations with every other part; and the expression of
this idea is now seen to be the highest aim of the city-builder.
Each city differs from every other city in its physical characteristics
and in the nature of its opportunities, so that the development of
every city must be along individual lines. This very fact allows full
scope for the development of that peculiar charm which, wherever
discovered and developed irresistibly draws to that city people of
discrimination and taste, and at the same time begets a spirit of
loyalty and satisfaction on the part of the citizens.
It is not to be expected that the people of Chicago will stand still
while the movement for better civic conditions is sweeping over the
whole civilized world; or that the stirrings of the new impulse that
have begun among this people will be suffered to die out, without
accomplishing the possibilities so abundantly offered to make this city
pre-eminent among commercial cities.
The experience of other cities both ancient and modern, both abroad and
at home, teaches Chicago that the way to true greatness and continued
prosperity lies in making the city convenient and healthful for the
ever-increasing numbers of its citizens; that civic beauty satisfies
a craving of human nature so deep and so compelling that people will
travel far to find and enjoy it; that the orderly arrangement of fine
buildings and monuments brings fame and wealth to the city; and that
the cities which truly exercise dominion rule by reason of their appeal
to the higher emotions of the human mind. The problem for Chicago,
therefore, resolves itself into making the best use of a situation, the
central location and resources of which have already drawn together
millions of people, and are clearly destined to assemble many times
that number; and planning for that civic development which promotes
present content and insures permanence.
[Illustration: XXXIII. FLORENCE, ITALY.
This silhouette of towers is characteristic of Italian towns in the
Middle Ages. From La Toscane.]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Ancient Rome, Chap. IV.
[3] Church Building in the Middle Ages.
[4] Baron Haussmann and the Topographical Transformation of Paris; by
Edward R. Smith, Reference Librarian, Avery Architectural Library,
Columbia University. The Architectural Record, 1907.
[5] A reasonable estimate, for the single year 1907, of the
gold imported into France by travelers, to be spent in hotels,
transportation, amusements, and purchases, is $600,000,000, a sum equal
to the highest gold reserve of the Bank of France. Americans commonly
exaggerate both their numbers and their expenditures in France; but
one-fifth of this sum ($120,000,000) may safely be set down as their
share.—_French Finance, by Stoddard Dewey, Atlantic Monthly, August,
1908._
[6] German City Planning; by Cornelius Gurlitt. Translated for the
Metropolitan Improvements Commission of Boston, by Sylvester Baxter.
[7] The magnitude of the movement for city planning in Germany is so
great that literally hundreds of cities are now prosecuting schemes of
systematic extension and development; and a school of city planners
has grown up within the past twenty-five years, with such men as
Gurlitt, Stübben, Theodor Fischer, and Baumeister among its masters. A
well-edited magazine, “Der Städtebau” (City Planning) is published; and
in 1903 the first German Municipal Exposition was held in Dresden.
[8] Talks with Napoleon; by Dr. Barry E. O’Meara. The Century Magazine,
February, 1890.
[9] History of London Street Improvements, 1855-1897; by Percy J.
Edwards. The Making of a Plan for Washington; by Glenn Brown; Park
Improvement Papers; Washington, 1903. It is interesting to note,
however, that the Thames Embankment improvement was a portion of Wren’s
scheme.
[10] Some observations on the report of the Royal Commission on London
Traffic; by Paul Waterhouse. Read before the Royal Institute of British
Architects. Journal of the R. I. A., May 26 and June 16, 1906.
[11] Mr. John Burns now advocates the proposition that town planning
schemes may be made as respects any land which appears likely to be
used for building purposes; the general object being to secure proper
sanitary conditions, amenity, and convenience, in connection with the
laying out and use of land. To this end the Local Government Board may
authorize a local authority to prepare such a town planning scheme,
with reference to any land within or in the neighborhood of their
area, which scheme, when approved by the Board, shall immediately take
effect. The use of land for building purposes shall include provision
for open spaces, parks, pleasure, or recreation grounds; and where
in any town planning scheme the area extends beyond a single local
authority, a joint body is provided for. Also the Board may take the
initiative in preparing a plan, in case the local authorities fail or
neglect to act. See Housing, Town Planning, etc., Bill, 8 Edw., 7.
[12] The Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia;
LVII. Congress, First Session; Senate Report No. 166.
[13] A City Plan for St. Louis; reports of the several committees
appointed by the Executive Board of the Civic League to draft a City
Plan, 1907.
[14] Report on a Plan for San Francisco; by D. H. Burnham, assisted by
Edward H. Bennett; presented to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors by
the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco;
edited by Edward F. O’Day, 1905.
[15] A comprehensive summary of the progress of municipal improvement
in the United States is to be found in _Charities and The Commons_ for
February, 1908.
[Illustration: XXXIV. CHICAGO. DIAGRAM OF LOCATION WITH REGARD TO THE
SEVEN CENTRAL STATES.
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY COMMERCIAL CLUB OF CHICAGO ]