THE SOUTH BRANCH OF THE CHICAGO RIVER Showing proposed arrangement of streets and ways for teaming and reception of freight by boat, at different levels years produce all the lake front land recommended in the report for the region between Grant and Jackson Parks. The amount of refuse to be disposed of should increase rapidly. By the utilization of this waste as suggested, the whole lake front can gradually be improved in accordance with the plan at comparatively little expense. The The creation of a system of encircling and radiating highways outside the city can be brought about at little additional expense if the local authorities can be induced to co-operate, fill up the missing gaps, and make their road-building activities harmonize with the larger plan. acquisition of park areas, the rearrangement of streets, and the cutting of new thoroughfares is merely a matter of money. It is not expected that public buildings will be transferred to the new civic center at once. In fact, Chicago is now rebuilding its City Hall on the old site. But the structure will be outgrown in twenty-five years. The recommendation of the report is that the city now secure the land comprising the site of the pro posed new civic center, and hold it as park area until needed for public building purposes. The feature likely to present the most serious obstacles to realization is that of the rearrangement of railway terminals. Chicago has a maze of conflicting railway interests. Most of the passenger stations call for early rebuilding, and the freight terminals are in need of improvement. Each line or group of lines desires to proceed in its own way, without regard to what the others may do. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad was granted permission not long ago to build a new station for its own exclusive use, and unrelated to other terminal projects. In the absence of any general plan for railway terminal improvement at that time, the protests of citizens against this procedure were unavailing. Other railways are getting ready to do what the Northwestern road did, and to erect stations for themselves that shall take no account of the general terminal situation and the need of coordination. Presumably the first great battle of the city planners will come over the question of requiring the railways to conform to the recommendations with regard to terminals when they come to build new stations. The pictures which Jules Guérin has drawn to portray the Chicago of the future show blocks upon blocks of buildings of uniform height and style of architecture. This view is in marked contrast to the spectacle of jagged sky-lines and architectural incongruity with which the observer in the ordinary American city of to-day is familiar. A beautiful city is out of the question so long as each owner may build as he pleases, without regard to the character of his neighbor's structure and the harmony of view of the thoroughfare as a whole. Parkways and boulevards 'cannot afford a spectacle of beauty unless the buildings that line them also produce an effect pleasing to the eye. In Europe governments possess the power to require owners to conform to building regulations designed solely to promote beauty. In this land of written constitutions, the property-owner must be permitted to do as he will with his property, so long as he does not interfere with his neighbors, and violations of æsthetic canons are not regarded by the courts as such interference. This phase of the problem was considered so serious that Walter L. Fisher was engaged by the Commercial Club to give a legal opinion as to possible ways of accomplishing the desired end, for uniformity of height and style of architecture of building along boulevards and parkways is essential to a plan for beautification. The solution of the problem, according to Mr. Fisher, is for the city, in laying out parkways and boulevards, to take by condemnation the land on each side of the thoroughfare and sell it again, subject to building restrictions that shall insure the desired harmony of view. In foreign countries this policy is pursued sometimes for the sake of securing for the public values created by the improvement. Mr. Fisher believes the power of condemnation could not be constitutionally used in this country to take land for the purpose of reselling it at a profit. But where the main object is to get control of the land in order to introduce building restrictions required in the fulfillment of schemes of beauty, he holds that the procedure would be legal, and that it might incidentally prove profitable. POETA POETARUM BY KATHARINE LEE BATES What news, Beloved, from thy native hills, The waves and billows have gone over thee; Thine altar-glow invincibly divine. The meads and valleys ring with viol and lute, 8:6 By CHARLES S. OLCOTT With Photographs by the Author In HY does any one stay in England who can make the trip to Paradise?' said the Duchess, as she leaned lazily back in the corner of the boat and trailed her fingers in the waters of Como." These words from "Lady Rose's Daughter" came to mind as we glided swiftly in the little motor-boat, late in the afternoon of a perfect April day, over the smooth waters of Como and into the arm of the lake known as Lecco, where we were to enjoy our cup of tea in a little latteria high up on a rocky crag. the stern sat Mrs. Ward, looking the picture of contentment, a light summer hat with simple trimmings giving an almost girlish aspect to a face in which strong intellectuality and depth of moral purpose were clearly the predominating features. A day's work done-for Mrs. Ward goes to Como for work, not play-this little trip across the lake was one of her favorite recreations, in which, for the time, we were hospitably permitted to share. About us were the scenes "enchanted, incomparable," which are best described in the words of Mrs. Ward herself: "When Spring descends upon the shores of the Lago di Como, she brings with her all the graces, all the beauties, all the fine, delicate, and temperate delights of which earth and sky are capable, and she pours them forth upon a land of perfect loveliness. Around the shores of other lakes-Maggiore, Lugano, Garda-blue mountains rise and the vineyards spread their green and dazzling terraces to the sun. Only Como can show in unmatched union a main composition, incomparably grand and harmonious, combined with every jeweled or glowing or exquisite detail. Nowhere do the mountains lean toward each other in such an ordered splendor as that which bends around the northern shores of Como. Nowhere do buttressed masses rise behind each other, to right and left of a blue waterway, in lines statelier or more noble than those kept by the mountains of Lecco Lake as they marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to Lombardy and Venetia. ". . . And within this divine framework, between the glistening snows which still, in April, crown and glorify the heights, and those reflections of them which lie encalmed in the deep bosom of the lake, there's not a foot of pasture, not a shelf of vineyard, not a slope of forest, where the spring is not at work, dyeing the turf with gentians, starring it with narcissuses, or drawing across it the first golden network of the chestnut |