Page:Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam.djvu/30

Rh edifices came into view,—which shows that, however material the beginning of American towns may be, if prosperity comes the æsthetical is sure to come with it. A contrast to Chicago may be found in St. Louis, for a long time trading-post town and city, which would be of more importance now were her people of a different quality. Even her chronic calamities, tornadoes, floods, and epidemics, fail to rouse her energies, so that Chicago, starting later and under more adverse circumstances, outstripped her in every particular. Cleveland was laid out for a fine city, so that as she grew little alteration was found necessary. The streets are wide, 80 to 120 feet—Superior Street 132 feet—and so abundant is the foliage, largely maple, that it is called the Forest city.

As an instance of modern aesthetic town construction one might cite Denver, a western Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men and women from down Boston way, breath-