 | City Beautiful |
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The obstacles overcome in Kansas City's long legal and philosophical struggle against park opponents cleared a path for the City Beautiful movement, not only in Kansas City, but in cities throughout the country. By the turn of the century, most urban areas in America were aware of a need for comprehensive planning that would give their cities unity and beauty. They knew they had to come to grips with their urban environments, with crowding, industrial pollution, and the increasingly ugly circumstances in which most city dwellers had to live.
The City Beautiful movement came to fruition in the spirit of other progressive reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recognizing that vast numbers of Americans were destined to live permanently without restorative powers of rural beauty, early urban planners and landscape architects directed their energies toward making life in the cities as convenient, safe and pleasant as possible.
The roots of the City Beautiful movement were in nineteenth century landscape architecture, particularly the work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Though Olmsted did not start the movement, his ideas, and those of others, particularly landscape architects trained in Europe, crystallized into a philosophy that provided natural beauty as an answer to the ills of city living.
The World's Columbia Exposition of 1893 in Chicago contributed to the movement with its comprehensive plan for buildings and grounds on a single scale. The success of the Chicago Exposition strongly influenced proponents of the City Beautiful movement to champion park-like settings for public building in the civic center of cities.
These planners believed urban environments must have well located parks coordinated in a park and boulevard system; children must be socialized through team play at attractive playgrounds; streets must be paved; trees must be planted; public buildings must be aesthetically designed; and urban sprawl must be controlled.
Kansas City emerged as the leader of this movement because of its bold plan for an interlocking system of parks and boulevards, but Meyer and Kessler had no way of knowing at the time they proposed the 1893 Plan that they were, in fact, helping lay a foundation for a nationwide beautification movement. They only know they shared a vision on how life should be lived in an urban environment.
Certainly Kessler and Meyer knew they were breaking new ground with the 1893 Report. When Meyer left the board in 1901, he wrote Kessler that he believed they had all been "gifted with a poetic vision to create a park system that would have a continuous and potent influence on the business importance and social character of our city". But it is doubtful that either man knew just how profoundly he was influencing future city planners. Cliff Drive in North Terrace Park best exemplified Kessler's vision of "green turf and waving trees", assuring residents a more natural and healthier life in the .city. Kansas City 's system of parks and boulevards was the paradigm for all communities seeking the City Beautiful ideal.
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