Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/69

 THE FIRST GERMAN MUNICIPAL EXPOSITION $7

presented where there are hills or rising ground. Aachen, Elberfeld, Gera, Stuttgart, and Wiesbaden exhibited plans and models of the solutions of special problems, which are artistic as well as technical successes. When the streets are curved, especial care must be taken that the shape and size of the build- ing lots are not sacrificed to the street lines. More than one municipality exhibited plans that show lots which will prove to be absolutely unavailable for building purposes. In the plans of many a city the principal thoroughfares twist and turn like ser- pents. This means extravagance, for the curving of pavements, of sewers, of street-car rails, of facades is very expensive. More- over, there is an aesthetic fitness in having streets devoted to trade and traffic broad and straight ; and, none of the advantages claimed for the tortuous street have any bearing here. The bends and curves of a country road are. indeed, beautiful; and a city street may be patterned after a country road, with a view to presenting a new picture at every turn, when variety of archi- tecture is further enhanced by such natural accessories as trees, vines, and gardens. Where, however, as in a business district, there is a sameness of architecture, with none of these natural embellishments, a bending of the streets produces a labyrinthine effect which utterly lacks the aesthetic advantages sought. The co-ordination of the street units, the arrangement of the city into districts differentiated according to use for trade, manufacture, or residence, the preservation and beautification of the water front and of the parks, the placing of monuments, the location of public buildings in Strassburg, for example, arranged along an axis between the royal palace and the university all aid in the beautification of the city.

Public architecture. A public building should have char- acter; that is, the use to which it is to be put should suggest and define its exterior. If the architecture be good the building serves its purpose rather than dominates it. To demand, however, in the case of a museum that the wings of the building be as numerous as the main departments embraced, and that the architecture of the several wings shall express the purpose of their respective sections, is to carry the theory too far. Such a building loses