PUBLIC GYMNASIUM, HAMILTON FISH PARK, NEW YORK CITY

CARRÉRE & HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS
Well-equipped small parks, especially those providing for physical culture and out-of-door
recreation in crowded residential districts, are one of the blessings of urban life. That New York
is providing them and appropriating money enough to have some permanently developed is a
matter for congratulation. Such units of centralization have a profound influence upon the men-
tal and moral growth of neightorhocd, and it is surprising that the above-the kind of thing
that is reeled off for government barracks in France-should not have been given a local note of
interest; the effect might have been brightened by a happy allusion to the old New York family
after which the park is named, if it had been designed with the felicity we are accustomed to
expect from the accomplished firm from whose office it emanated.

CARRÉRE & HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS Something elemental is wanting in the design which might easily have been incorporated if it had been studied with sympathetic insight by a designer who had come into actual contact with the life of the neighborhood. A " keep-off-the-grass park," which, notwithstanding its inappropriateness, teaches a great lesson; for a mud-hole has been converted into a work of art at an expenditure only equivalent to what it would have cost to have filled it up. But why was not the work of art based upon the bed-rock of social conditions?

FRONT ELEVATION, FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, DECATUR, ILL.

BY ANDREW J. SAUER The alley traffic is entirely separated and concealed behind a high brick-wall which helps to support an arbor, beneath which are shaded sand-courts and benches overlooking a large sunken playground. The latter is shortened at both ends in order not to be traversed by diagonal traffic, and thus an air of formality is obtained, and space is provided for isolated underground toilet-rooms.