PARK STRUCTURES AND FACILITIES

One of the most important accomplishments of the Civilian Conservation Corps was the contribution and recording of good park architecture. At the beginning of the CCC, Dorothy Waugh prepared several small publications on suggested facilities, with special reference to design and the kinds of materials to be used. Dorothy is a daughter of Frank A. Waugh, my landscape architecture professor back in Massachusetts, and she had done illustrations for several books her father published. Her work was very good, but as work programs developed we had to get out more complete information of this kind for distribution to the camps and to state and metropolitan park offices.

We were very fortunate in having on our Washington office staff a very fine architect, Albert H. Good, who came to us highly recommended by an outstanding landscape architect and park manager, Harold S. Wagner of the Akron, Ohio, metropolitan park system. Ab, as he became familiarly known, produced a compilation of successful park and recreation structures. This extremely valuable work was published in 1938 through the Government Printing Office under the main title Park and Recreation Structures. It was printed in three parts, "Administrative and Basic Service Facilities," "Recreational and Cultural Facilities," and "Overnight and Organized Camp Facilities." Each part was a separate paperback volume of large dimensions, and its sewn binding allowed the book to be opened flat and used on a drafting table. Each volume was generously illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings.

Contact Station, Bronx Parkway, Westchester County, New York. From Park and Recreation Structures, by Albert H. Good, 1938.

Shelter, Swan Lake State Park, Iowa. From Park and Recreation Structures, by Albert H. Good, 1938.

Perhaps the best way to explain Ab Good's professional approach to preparing Park and Recreation Structures is to quote from his Apologia:

A cherished dictum of the many friends of the natural park concept through its formative years has been that structures must be regarded as intrusions in areas set aside to be conserved in their natural state. This unequivocal pronouncement indeed nourished the budding park idea, and has been a favorable and protective influence in its flowering. General acceptance of the principle has so held in check structural desecration of parks that few persons have been moved to brand the statement a half truth, standing very much in need of qualifying amendment to suit today's many-sided park concept. To do so will doubtless be received as a minority report, if not as shameless heresy; nevertheless, the case will be here argued.

Time was when only areas of superb scenery, outstanding scientific interest, or major historical importance held interest for the sponsors of natural parks. There was proper concentration on saving the outstanding natural wonders first, and it was probably along with the acquisition of the first superlative areas that structures in parks came to be frowned on as alien and intrusive....Now and forever, the degree of [man's] success within such areas will be measurable by the yardstick of his self-restraint....

The fact that superlative Nature was beyond gunshot of concentrations of five or ten million people happily did not result in these populations being denied the recreational and inspirational benefits that subsuperlative Nature can provide. It was wisely reasoned that there is more nourishment in half a loaf in the larder than a full loaf beyond the horizon—or no loaf at all....

Tracts, admittedly limited or even lacking in natural interest, but highly desirable by virtue of location, need, and every other influencing factor, bloom attractively on every side to the benefit of millions. It is inexact to term these, in the accepted denotation of the word, parks—they are reserves for recreation. More often than not their natural background is only that contrast-affording Nature which makes other areas superlative. Does such a background warrant the "no dogs allowed" attitude toward structures so fully justified where Nature plays the principal role? Does it not rather invite structures to trespass to a fulfillment of recreational potentialities and needs, and to bolster up a commonplace or ravaged Nature? It seems reasonable to assert that in just the degree natural beauty is lacking structures may legitimately seek to bring beauty to purpose.

Those who have been called on to plan the areas where structural trespass is not a justifiable taboo have sought to do so with a certain grace. We realize that the undertaking is legitimatized or not by harmony or the lack of it. We are learning that harmony is more likely to result from a use of native materials. We show signs of doubting the propriety of introducing boulders into settings where Nature failed to provide them, or of incorporating heavy alien timbers into structures in treeless areas....

As we have vaguely sensed these things, we...become aware of the unvoiced claims of those long-gone races and earlier generations that tracked the wilderness, plains, or desert before us. In fitting tribute we seek to grace our park structures by adaptation of their traditions and practices as we come to understand them.

Thus we are influenced by the early settlers, English and Dutch, along the Atlantic seaboard; something of Old France lingers along the trail of Pere Marquette and the fur traders. Reaching up from New Orleans, Florida, and Old Mexico, Spanish traditions and customs rightfully flourish....The habits and primitive ingenuity of the American Indian persist and find varied expression over wide areas. Interpreted with intelligence, these influences promise an eventual park and recreation architecture, which, outside certain sacrosanct areas, need not cringe before a blanket indictment for "unlawful entry."