City Beautiful movement
It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper-middle class, which was concerned with poor living conditions in all major cities.
[1] The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations.
"[3] The movement began in the United States in response to crowding in tenement districts, a consequence of high birth rates, increased immigration and internal migration of rural populations into cities.
The movement flourished for several decades, and in addition to the construction of monuments, it also achieved great influence in urban planning that endured throughout the 20th century, particularly in regard to United States public housing projects.
[4] Shortly after the fair opened in 1904, Masqueray resigned, having accepted an invitation from Archbishop John Ireland in St. Paul, Minnesota to design a cathedral there in the Beaux-Arts style.
They hoped to make Washington, D.C., monumental and green like the European capitals of the era; they believed that state-organized beautification could lend legitimacy to government during a time of social disturbance in the United States.
The success of the City Beautiful philosophy in Washington, D.C., is credited with influencing subsequent plans for beautification of many other cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland (The Mall), Columbus[5] (with the axis along State Street from the Ohio State Capitol building east to the Metropolitan Library and west to the Scioto River), Des Moines, Denver, Detroit (the Cultural Center, Belle Isle and Outer Drive),[6][7] Madison (with the axis from the capitol building through State Street and to the University of Wisconsin campus), Montreal, New York City (notably the Manhattan Municipal Building), Philadelphia (the Benjamin Franklin Parkway museum district between Philadelphia City Hall and the Philadelphia Museum of Art), Pittsburgh (the Schenley Farms district in the Oakland neighborhood of parks, museums, and universities), San Antonio (San Antonio River development), San Francisco (manifested by its Civic Center), and the Washington State Capitol Campus in Olympia, and the University of Washington's Rainier Vista in Seattle.
In New Haven, Connecticut, John Russell Pope developed a plan for Yale University that eliminated substandard housing and relocated the urban poor to the peripheries.
The plan featured a dynamic new civic center, axial streets, and a lush strip of parkland for recreation alongside the city's lakefront.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the association’s attorney Sidney Adler of Loeb & Adler said, "As I saw the beautiful picture of the city beautiful we will have fountains in West Madison Street, with poets and poetesses walking along Clinton, and the simple minded residents of the west side, after work is done, will take their gondolas and row on the limpid bosom of the Chicago River idlely strumming guitars.
The plan was partly realized, on a reduced scale, with the Greek amphitheater, Voorhies Memorial and the Colonnade of Civic Benefactors, completed in 1919.
The Andrew Carnegie Foundation funded the Denver Public Library (1910), which was designed as a three-story Greek Revival temple with a colossal Ionic colonnade across its front; inside it featured open shelves, an art gallery and a children's room.
Residents of Harrisburg suffered disease and illnesses caused by the lack of good filtration systems that could filter the sewage dumped by populations further up the Susquehanna River.
[14] With McFarland and Dock working together, they were able to push the process of municipal improvement in Harrisburg by convincing prominent community leaders to donate money, and by gathering the support of the majority of citizens.
Costing nearly $1,000,000 (largely WPA funds) the City Beautiful Commission landscaped the bluffs with crape myrtle, redbuds, magnolias, dogwoods and Paul Scarlet roses.
According to the author Even Bacon in his book “Orlando: A Centennial History,” Orange County sent a group of agricultural exhibitors to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
[20] With the arrival of the middle-aged couple William S. and Jessie Branch from Parker, South Dakota, in 1903, led to the creation of brochures extolling the virtues of Florida and its climate, highlighting from the Orlando area.
In the 1920s, Palos Verdes Estates, California, was established as a master planned community by noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
"[22] Among its early structures were the buildings comprising Malaga Cove Plaza, designed in a Mediterranean Revival style popular with the City Beautiful movement.
[23] There were no formal city beautiful organisations that led this movement in Australia; rather it was influenced by communications among professionals and bureaucrats, in particular architect-planners and local government reformers.
[27] Melbourne’s grid plan was considered dull and monotonous by some people, and so the architect William Campbell designed a blueprint for the city.
