My opinion on the subject of your inquiry may be stated as follows:-

Park Commissioners may have various departments of duty. Among them, for example, may be the preparation of parade grounds, market places, gardens, and grounds suitable to encompass court houses, school houses, museums and other public buildings and monuments. But the chief characteristic, and all important, business of the Park Commission of any large town is to secure a retreat to which the towns people can resort as an escape from the artificial structures of the town. Within this retreat all outside structures, however beautiful in themselves, should be put out of sight by the planting of screens or otherwise. It is much more desirable that there should be no constructions within the retreat except such as are required for the comfort of those resorting to it, and that these should be made no more conspicuous than the suitability to their special purpose requires. This rule applies to roads, walks, bridges, resting places, houses of refreshment and all others. Nothing should be built in such a retreat that unnecessarily obscures or lessens the value of its natural scenery; nothing the use of which does not in some essential way add to the ease and comfort with which the towns people may enjoy the natural scenery.

This is the conclusion to which I have come after more than thirty years experience in the management of public parks, and if I were now asked to draw up a public park act I would incorporate in it a provision making it a criminal offense for a park commission to proceed inconsistently with this conclusion. To take property because of the beauty of its natural scenery; to take measures to develop and improve that natural scenery and to make it available for use by great numbers of people, and then to set up buildings or other structures in it for the purpose of making a display of beauty in architecture, sculpture or gardening is to build up with one hand and tear down with the other.

Sincerely Yours