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 mental and moral growth of a neighborhocd, 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.

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?

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.