Ohio History Journal

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SHIRLEY LECKIE

SHIRLEY LECKIE

 

Brand Whitlock and the

City Beautiful Movement

in Toledo, Ohio

 

 

"We are hearing much of the city beautiful in these days," wrote

Brand Whitlock in 1912. "Hardly a city or a town that has not its

commission and its plans for a unified treatment of its parks, for a

civic center of some sort-in a word, its dream." To Whitlock, who

had recently appointed a second Toledo City Hall and Civic Center

Commission, these were "the expression of that divine craving in

mankind for harmony, for beauty, for order, which is the democratic

spirit."1

The Toledo mayor was an enthusiastic supporter of the beautifica-

tion movement which swept the United States at the turn of the

century. Originating in the earlier park movement, it was, accord-

ing to Charles Robinson, one of its leading practitioners, "immense-

ly strengthened, quickened and encouraged" by the Columbian Ex-

position of 1893.2 The reconstruction of Washington, D.C., in 1902,

based on the rediscovery of L'Enfant's original plan, inspired simi-

lar projects elsewhere.3 While none matched the success of the capi-

tol city, before the movement ran its course, it led to the construc-

tion of civic centers, broad thoroughfares and parks throughout the

United States. The cities that drew up comprehensive plans in-

cluded San Francisco (1905), Los Angeles (1907), New Haven (1910)

and Rochester (1911).4 By 1909, however, the movement had

reached its high point, culminating in the publication of Daniel

Burnham's Plan of Chicago, a work that in both concept and scope

 

 

Shirley Leckie is Associate Dean of Continuing Education at Millsaps College.

 

1. Brand Whitlock, "The City and Civilization," Scribners, 52 (November, 1912,),

623.

2. Charles Robinson, "Improvement in City Life: Aesthetic Progressive," Atlantic

Monthly, 83 (June, 1899), 771.

3. John Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 514.

4. Harvey Perloff, Education for Planning: City, State and Regional (Baltimore,

1957), 55.