International studio (49.1913)

A Study in Civic Planning and Municipal Architecture

A STUDY IN CIVIC PLANNING
AND MUNICIPAL ARCHITEC-
TURE
L BY C. MATLACK PRICE
The idea of a “Civic Center” is not a new
one, and is, perhaps, too familiar to require very
lengthy exposition. It is, broadly speaking, a
a plan to beautify any given city by the arrange-
ment of a monumental approach or by the parking
of land immediately adjacent to the group of
municipal buildings, and has varied ramifications
in such matters as boulevards, vistas, planting
and the like. In Washington, the entire city was
originally laid out with such ideas in view. To-
day, with practically every other large city hope-
lessly confused with impractical plans for such
development, we have a city which has actually
shown what may be done, and which is actually
doing it. While other cities are planning projects
too vast for realization short of the millennium,
Cleveland has successfully carried out a splendid
“Civic Center” development which is not only of
vital interest to the nation from the point of view
of its intrinsic excellence, but from the fact that it
is not entirely on paper, or buried in masses of
municipal reports, but is actually being done.
In 1903, the city of Cleveland appointed the
late Mr. John M. Carrere and the late Daniel H.
Burnham and Mr. Arnold W. Brunner to suggest a
group-arrangement for the proposed municipal
buildings of the city, to be combined with such a
scheme of parking and planting as should form an
adequate setting for these buildings, as well as a
dignified and pleasing approach to the city as a
whole.
The plan submitted called for the acquisition
of a large T-shaped piece of land, and the lay-out
was designed to take the form shown in the two
bird’s-eye view perspectives, which were accu-
rately drawn up to meet actual conditions, and to
conform with possible developments.
Of these two views, the first is taken looking
south to show the aspect of the “Civic Center”
from the railroad station, while the second is taken
to show the view to be had in the opposite direc-
tion. In the simplicity and practicality of the
lay-out lies its success, for it has been possible to
realize more than half of the scheme to date.
In the first view, looking south, the right-hand
building at the far end is completed, and repre-
sents a splendid conception of its importance and
uses, designed as it is to house the Post-Office,
Customs House and Court House. Of its design

in detail more will be said later. Balancing it on
the left will be a library. Flanking the broad mall
will be office buildings, of which the height and
general architectural character will be restricted
by the city, and in the arms of the T, the building
on the right, designed for the County Court
House, is completed and the building on the left,
designed for the City Hall, is in course of construc-
tion. The railroad station has not yet been com-
menced, but the fact remains that, as far as the
city is concerned, two out of four of its proposed
municipal buildings are completed, and the third
is in process of building, while four-fifths of the
entire property required for the complete develop-
ment has already been acquired by the city of
Cleveland, and actual steps are now being taken
to speedily acquire the remainder and bring to a
triumphant conclusion the entire project.
It is a comparatively easy matter to take a city
map and obliterate entire blocks for parks, to cut
wide boulevards through congested quarters and
then to fancifully sketch monumental buildings,
impossible viaducts and ranks of century-old
trees. It is another matter to do it.
It is only through an appreciation of this differ-
ence that a significant understanding may be had
as to just how much the city of Cleveland, as well
as the consulting architects, must be congratu-
lated in the matter, for the splendid projet is
actually being done. Through association with
the too-often fantastic though magnificent plans
turned out by Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the
word projet has become synonymous with “impos-
sible.” Here, however, is a projet which is becom-
ing, past the shadow of a doubt, fait—a fact.
To properly realize the difficulties besetting the
civic planner, it must be remembered that his
work concerns itself not only with ambitious parks,
boulevards, statues and fountains, but with
schools, prisons, fire stations, elevated structures,
power plants, viaducts, lamp-posts and hundreds
of similar questions—-with the height of buildings,
the width of streets, the disposition and segrega-
tion of foreign quarters and with the future en-
largement of the city’s confines.
Here, surely, is a task which must call for the
keenest study by the best architectural brains in
the country, for it involves problem within prob-
lem, and touches the city at every point—in real
estate, in commerce, in transit and, unfortunately,
in politics.
In considering the design of the first building to
be erected in Cleveland’s Civic Center (the right-
hand building at the south end of the proposed

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