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Plan of Evanston
III
ONE of the gravest defects in the present arrangement of Evanston is the lack of a proper development of the central part of the city.
This portion is bounded by Davis Street on the south, the Chicago and Northwestern right of way on the west, Church Street on the north and Orrington Avenue on the east. In addition to important business blocks and banks it contains the City Hall, the Public Library, the Post Office, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Station, the Northwestern Elevated Station, the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee station, and the Sherman Avenue surface line. It contains also three parks; the little park between the Northwestern and the Elevated right of way, Commercial Park, and Fountain Square Park.
An inspection of the plans will show that the Public buildings in this area, beautiful as some of them are, are entirely unrelated to each other, and that the parks, also beautiful, are inadequate in size and are but imprisoned bits of greensward, incapable of being seen or enjoyed except as units. Thus Commercial Park, blocked to the south by buildings, is used almost exclusively as a short cut from street to street. Railroad Park, hemmed in by two railroads, does not appeal either as a breathing or resting place. The little park in Fountain Square affords no resting place, and is rendered inaccessible both by its iron fence and by the street car tracks that closely skirt its eastern edge. Naturally people prefer the sidewalks to the parks, and we find the former crowded and the latter deserted.
We have attempted to show in our plan for the City Center an extension and correlation of the parks, and the reservation of certain areas for new buildings of a public nature which the future needs of Evanston will demand. It is proposed to acquire and remove the buildings in the triangular
