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THE ARCHITECTURAL ANNUAL

It would include a system of docks at the mouth of the Chicago River of such size and detail as to permit the rapid loading and unloading of the largest marine freighters and their connection with the railroads through subways. It would include similar docks at South Chicago, where the steel, coal, lumber and manufacturing interests are bound to grow.

PURIFY THE RIVERS.

It would include the transformation of our rivers into clean streams, lined with clean and attractive factories, industrial centers, or beautiful residences. It would include the substitution of bascule bridges or permanent ones for all of the present draw bridges.

For the better maintenance of cleanliness and beauty, it would transmit by electricity the power now being wasted in the drainage canal so that boilers and smoke might be eliminated from the factory district.

There is no reason why Chicago River should not be as attractive as the Seine, and there is also no reason why Chicago should not even at this late date have the advantages of plans which are so great and so evident in the case of Paris. The beautiful plan upon which all of the streets and boulevards are there laid out contributes much more than the architectural façades to the beauty of Paris. Indeed, it quite nullifies the bad effect of some of the poor architecture there.

NEW PARK SYSTEM.

The plan would further include a park system, extended to embrace the natural park of the Des Plaines Valley, lying west of the city and extending north and south thirteen or fourteen miles. It would include the Wildwood district, the Calumet River and Stony Island. It would include much of the natural park land at Blue Island. It would include the Skokie marshes, which form the present source of the north branch of the river, and the extension and branching of Sheridan drive. It would include a radical and definite study of our lake-front problem, making use of the land lying east of Illinois Central tracts out to the recent breakwater. It would include the proper disposition of such buildings as should be put in the park at the north and south ends, such as the Art Institute and its extensions, the Crerar Library, the Permanent Exposition Building, the Field Museum and possibly the City Hall, leaving open space in the centre.

Our plan would also include small parks and playgrounds in the crowded districts where our densest population lives and where the governing element of our city resides. If we would have

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our city governed better we must realize that the present and the future governing majority lives in the crowded districts under conditions where normal growth is impossible, and if that physical growth is impossible we cannot expect wisdom and ethics from our governors. The remedy is to let in the sunlight.

This plan would also include such recreation piers as would restore the lake front to the active bath-craving youth. It would include boulevards on the south shore east of the Illinois Central tracks, connecting Grant Park and Jackson Park. It would also include reclaiming the Hyde Park reef, which stands now as a menace to all kinds of boating. It would put upon it the spoil from our drainage canal, and turn it into an island park of inestimable value.

SUBJECT FOR STUDY.

These and many other things would be included in the plan, which should receive the active thought and devoted work of all our citizens for a period of years. It is all general, and it is legitimate to ask if it is really practical or whether or not it is all a dream. Each person must answer that question for himself. Let him study the history of such movements in other cities or of all great movements, and he may be trusted to conclude that all great things have small beginnings, and that they start with a welldefined conception and a determination to realize it. This determination is quite indifferent to obstacles, and is willing to depend upon the natural value of its ideas to carry the scheme through.

It is encouraging to us when we are appalled by the immensity of the problem before us to think of one small thing which has been done here in Chicago. The idea that we needed small parks and play-grounds existed three years ago, so far as all practical results are concerned, in the mind of one man. By the aid of a committee of five from an organization of only twenty members he conceived a plan, the object of which was to obtain small parks and play-grounds in the crowded districts.

STRIKING RESULTS.

The result was a set of resolutions, which were afterward adopted by the Common Council of Chicago, calling for the appointment of a special park commission, which has now been at work less than two years, and which has already opened to the public five play-grounds, which has directed the expenditure of $20,000 in money, the turning over to play-ground purposes of land belonging to the city worth $70,000 or $80,000, and the obtaining rent free of two other valuable tracts.

NO BETTER ARGUMENT WAS EVER MADE FAVORING MUNICIPAL ART

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THE ELECTRICAL TOWER AT THE PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION JOHN GAYLEN HOWARD, ARCHITECT

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THE BEAUTIFYING OF CITIES

CHARLES H. CAFFIN IN "THE WORLD'S WORK"

LARGE number of people, the majority in fact, have no consciousness of the desirability of beauty in a city. With them the highest consideration is the convenience or comfort of the city life; and in these respects such enormous improvements have been made within recent years that the city seems to represent everything that could be desired. "What is this beauty, anyway?" they exclaim. Perhaps they were in Paris during the Exposition, when the omnibus system proved itself entirely inadequate to accommodate the crowds who wished to be carried. They come home and rail against the miseries of it and extol the superiority of their own system of rapid transit, though the latter is not without its drawbacks. Then they did not have a decent steak all the time they were in Paris, and the oysters-but the foreigners don't know what oysters are! Every time it is the con

veniences and comforts or the lack of them upon which they harp. The dignity or beauty of Paris, while it cannot have escaped their notice at the time, has not been brought home in their hearts as a thing that it would be desirable to emulate in New York. Yet, if they had learned from the foreigner any wrinkle that would improve their own business they would be quick to adopt it.

Yet may not this same beauty be just such a wrinkle? I think it is worth to the Parisians about $200,000,000 a year. Paris caters for the world, and its main store in trade is its beauty, which it keeps on increasing, and the treasures of its works of art. Poor impoverished Italy, where would she be to-day were it not for the beauty of her cities, much of it created four and five hundred years ago, on which now she is gathering a dividend of $90,000,000 annually?

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GRAND PRIX DESIGN, 1899-ÉCOLE DES BEAUX ARTS

The subject of the competition was to design new headquarters in Paris for the Bank of France, including official residences for the leading bank officials, etc.

BY TONY GARNIER

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