Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/155

Rh the growth of the country. At the same time the development of Potomac Park both provides for a connection between the parks on the west and those on the east, and also it may readily furnish sites for those memorials which history has shown to be worthy a place in vital relation to the great buildings and monuments erected under the personal supervision of the founders of the republic.

Now that the demand for new public buildings and memorials has reached an acute stage, there has been hesitation and embarrassment in locating them because of the uncertainty in securing appropriate sites. The commission was thus brought face to face with the problem of

devising such a plan as shall tend to restore that unity of design which was the fundamental conception of those who first laid out the city as a national capital, and of formulating definite principles for the placing of those future structures which, in order to become effective, demand both a landscape setting and a visible orderly relation one to another for their mutual support and enhancement.

To the unique problem of devising a way of return to the original plan of the city of Washington, was added the task of suggesting lines for the development of those large parks which have been obtained in recent years either by purchase or by reclamation; of advising the