City in a Park by James McClelland and Lynn Miller

Posted by on Sep 1, 2016 in | Comments Off on City in a Park by James McClelland and Lynn Miller City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park System by James McClelland and Lynn Miller Temple University Press, 392 pp., cloth $39.50 A substantial, richly illustrated book highlighting the significance of Fairmount Park and its place in the larger urban parks movement has been long overdue. City in a Park has finally arrived to fill that void. Augmented with 150...
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Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh’s Park of a Century Currently ranked first as the Most Livable City by the Rand-McNally annual survey, Pittsburgh is reveling in media exposure comparable to the boosterism of the town of Zenith which writer Sinclair Lewis satirized in his novel, Babbit. Accompanying the zealous, self-proclaimed promotion, however, has been a healthy dose of self­-examination, with the city’s less enviable qualities suddenly...
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The Fairmount Water Works: “One of the Very Prettiest Spots the Eye Can Look Upon”

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Fairmount Water Works: “One of the Very Prettiest Spots the Eye Can Look Upon” Error and the human condition, being bound tightly together, generally keep a sullen kind of company. Yet as unpromising as that pair might seem, their offspring sometimes attain startling beauty. Certainly the grace and charm of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Water Works, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, derive both from the human condition and the fitful attempts to improve it....
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