The conclusion of the editing committee is that the call is for none of these things. It is firmly of the opinion that the aim should be toward a comprehensive presentation of structures and appurtenances in which principles held in esteem by park planners, landscape designers, engineers, and architects, have been happily combined in adequate provision for man’s needs with minimum sacrifice of a natural setting.
By avoiding any tendency to be a primer, an encyclopedia, or a handbook of the subject, it has been hoped to focus more directly on the current trend in park structures and facilities. It is believed that by making the subjects herein widely available for comparative study, the influence engendered by each in itself will be widened to merge into a forceful composite, to the advancement of park technique.
The structures and facilities shown are usually existent in, or suited to, natural parks, as distinguished from naturalistic or formalized city parks. These latter are considered to be a field in themselves, very different in major concept. and better treated independently of the natural park areas as exemplified by our National and many of our State Parks. Examples, however, from Metropolitan and County Parks, which in their expression would be equally at home in a completely natural environment, are in some instances included for the completeness of the collection.
The subject matter has suggested three varieties of presentation. There are minor facilities, developed to a pleasing and thoroughly satisfying expression within certain utilitarian or technical limitations, which might with propriety be duplicated in many localities. In such instances, it has been the endeavor to provide information in such complete detail that close adaptation is made possible. This is by no means so much an invitation to indiscriminate copying, as a suggestion that little objects once well done are often a more satisfactory solution to a recurring problem than a new creation claiming the sole and debatable distinction of originality.
Another group embraces subjects eminently suited to particular locations, but promising little success with outright transplanting into another environment. Detail of such subjects is purposely limited, and they are included simply in the hope that they may exert an influence by conveying the charm and fitness of the subjects in their specific settings and expressions, while flying a warning against too literal translation where some other dialect, or an entirely different language, might better be used. It is intended to offer the spirit but not the letter of such examples. Only reliance on the best professional advice can reasonably insure against structures appropriate in one locality be coming hideous caricatures elsewhere. Only consummate skill and rare good judgment in adaptation can limit the spread of half-caste offspring, the very counterfeit exactness of which is pathetic testimony of the bar sinister relationship.
The third presentation is of successful accomplishments of highly individual problems, the factors fixing which are unlikely ever to be approximated in another problem. These are included in recognition of worthy attainment, to inspire in those to whom the more complex park structures may be entrusted in the future, a high purpose to approach their specific problems with equally refreshing individuality, ingenuity, and forthrightness. Plagiarism, subtle or obvious, in structures within this category would be a crowning stupidity.
It is felt that inclusion of examples of extraordinarily complex structures in parks would bring little to the practical usefulness of this collection. The more involved and extensive the structure, the more evident that it is the result of an altogether unique interplay of needs, topography, traditions, materials and many other factors. Beyond the borders of utter simplicity lie innumerable possible patterns, complex in varying g degree. The duplication of any one such pattern is without rime, the approximation of it without reason. Readers will note the absence of many well-known and admired large-scale buildings of incontestable park character. These are held to be sanctified in a sense by their very success. They are omitted to avoid possible inference that they are imitable material.
