Plan of Evanston
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IV
THE greatest physical asset of Evanston is the lake, and in any plan for a park system the lake must be a prime factor. The lake forms our longest boundary, eighty per cent of our population lives within a mile of it, and a mile is easy walking distance for almost everybody.
Park space along the lake shore is cooler, more beautiful, and in . every way more inviting than park space anywhere else would be. It also can be acquired by the simple expedient of filling in the shallows along the shore.
Of late years the advantages of the lake shore have been neglected, for two reasons, first, because of the sewage pollution of the lake water and the beach. Now the sewage is to be diverted to the drainage canal, an undertaking which is under way, and it should be noted also that the excavation necessary for carrying on this work of sewage diversion will furnish a great amount of material for the projected fill. The question of fill brings up the second reason for the neglect of the lake shore development, which is mainly the lack of any well defined and established plan. The park land on the lake front was gained not by taxes but by operating a free city dump. This phase of park development is ended. A United States law has stopped the kind of dumping which made our lake front park land. Evanston has to face a progressive program and to plan adequately to keep abreast of the times. The law now provides that all fill must be done behind bulkheads. The city should now come forward with a well-established plan. We concur in Mr. Cone's landscape plan for developing the park situated between University Place and Greenwood Boulevard, and joining this by a park strip along the lake shore to the second park which extends from Hamilton Street to the present Yacht Club. This plan when completed will make one continuous lake shore park.
We urge that the riparian rights which do not already
