RECREATION CENTRES. It is only in recent years that serious consideration has been given to the subject of recreation as a fixed phase of municipal life. The awakening of civic spirit, however, has shown that in order to receive the best from its citizens, the city is under obligation to endow them with both brain and brawn. As an economic and political entity, the strong, clean-minded and healthy person is the solution of many of the abusive shortcomings of city life,. and to secure such, the idea of public recreation centres has taken firm hold. At first, the centre was a develop ment of the gymnasium of the public schools, or of a place where young children might find amusements. But the idea has grown, so that to-day facilities are offered for persons of all ages or tastes.
In the United States, recreation has taken a firm hold. The parks of the upper part of the City of New York have been laid out with the idea of giving recreation facilities to the public. Central Park, with its tennis court, zoological park, art and natural history museums, mall and public concerts, rowing and skating, is the great city playground for those unable to go to the country. The athlete, golf player, tennis player and others interested in outdoor sports and civic meets finds every facility in Van Cortlandt Park, while Bronx Park, with its zoological and botanical attractions, is the sort of thousands.
For purely athletic purposes, however, there recently has been planned and instituted a series of parks throughout the older down town sections of the city, particularly in the tenement districts. The region known as ((Five Pointe—once the centre of poverty and crime —has been opened up, and a large recreation centre established in the centre of the Italian colony, known now as Mulberry Bend Park. Hamilton Fish Park is another that has been created among the tenements, while De Witt Clinton Park is noted for its 'farm school,* showing children the possibilities of rural life. The most interesting, perhaps, is Battery Park, at the extreme southern point of Manhattan IOand, a place of interest to every visitor in the city for its notable aquarium, the immigrant landing, the view of the harbor and its shipping, and its nearby trip to the Statue of Liberty.
Numerous steamboats leave from Battery Park to the many bathing and resort beaches, picnic grounds and recreation centres, such as Coney Island.
Perhaps the greatest advances in the subject of recreation have been made in Chicago, a city that a generation ago ranked very low in per capita park space. Being of a level con tour in general, there were but few points that offered special park features: Recently, with the quickening of civic spirit, the city govern ment has taken steps to improve and extend its Park system, particularly with the idea of serv ing the public in its recreations, and to-day Chicago has not less than 60 playgrounds, which, together with the parks, cover an area of about 35,000 acres. Of chief interest, however, is the fact that recreation centres in Chicago have been developed on a plan which, for completeness, ranks with the best. The neighborhood park is a reality, a civic centre where persons of all ages may find recreation. Ball grounds, golf courses, tennis grounds, bathing beaches, swim ming pools, bath houses, sand piles, lakes, read ing rooms —most frequently in connection with branches of the Public Library — halls for public meetings, debate, and neighborhood theatricals, restaurants and lunch rooms, and even savings banks, are to be found in these parks. Grant Park, on the Lake Shore con tiguous to the or business district, is one of the more recent additions. It is built in great part on made ground extending into Lake Michigan. Its chief point of interest is the Chicago Art Institute, the leading art museum of the city. Jackson Park, the former site of the Columbian Exposition, is likewise a place of interest to the lover of outdoors, on account of its golf courses and other grounds for games, but principally for its boating facilities, the many miles of lagoons for which the Exposi tion was noted being left in almost their original state, and the islands formed by them 'ate• now wooded with apparently their primeval foliage.