Stone Bandstand; New Idea

1916

Iowa Town Takes an Advance Step in Architecture.

CENTERVILLE, Iowa — A Bedford stone bandstand is something new in the world. And Centerville, which always leads, boasts its possession. The design, which was drawn by Miss Nell Reynolds, a milliner of Centerville, also leads off into an original type of bandstand architecture, it being built on the lines of a colonnade with a pergola top, its dimensions being 18x24 feet and the floor being 3 feet and 3 inches from the ground, which is reached by a flight of five steps at either end of the stand.

The side walls, which extend [*] inches above the floor, are surmounted by four stone columns on each wall, upon which rests the pergola top. Ten 16-inch electric globes are ranged along the sides above the columns and at the center over either of the entrances, while on the side of each column are the lights for musicians.

The stand, which cost $1,200, was built by popular subscription, thru the efforts of the Centerville Association of Commerce.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.
[*] Number missing, two-digit number.

Keep Time By The Sundial

1912

In Beautifying Its Forest Park This Kansas Town Has Added a Utility

Ottawa, Kan. — The big city has no corner on civic beauty. Nor are pretty parks and ingenious decorative schemes confined to estates of landed gentry. A country town can, and often does, furnish excellent examples of artistic treatment of bits of woodland.

Ottawa has no copyrighted system of boulevards other than its well paved streets, but the folks who make their homes here pride themselves upon their parks — there are two of them — City Park and Forest Park.

In Forest Park there are samples of the ordinary park embellishments, such as a fountain, cemented fish pond, lettered flower beds and sanitary drinking fountains. But the newest addition is a floral sundial. It is the town's latest civic pride.

J. H. Eason, park keeper for Ottawa, planned and constructed the natural timepiece this summer, it being an excellent summer for the use of sundials. He fashioned it according to he minutest directions of chronometer and sundial experts. As a result the dial is accurate to the minute when the sun's changes are figured — and Mr. Eason has provided a card with printed directions for each day of the year. The number of minutes the sun is "slow" or "fast," in comparison with the standard meridian, is placed in plain View Of park visitors. Anyone may read the card and set his watch the exact time.

The dial is fourteen feet in diameter and the indicator, a pointed post, is eight feet above the ground. Numerals of cement number the hours upon which the shadow of the indicator falls in turn from sunup to sundown. Lines of foliage mark the half-hours and the quarter-hours. Pigmy hedge forms a decorative design in front of the figures.

The Playground Movement

1914

Up to a few years ago, it never occurred to the older people that Young America needs a place to play in. It was commonly supposed that a live boy would find plenty of amusement in selling newspapers, running errands, or hoeing the back yard garden. If he must have his game of ball once in a while, there was the street or someone's vacant lot.

As a matter of fact it often happened, even in the country town, that there was no place where a set of boys could play a game of ball without being ordered to quit.

Most American towns were laid out with no provision for the children. There was ample foresight for anything in which money could be made. Railroads and factories never lacked opportunities. Land was often given to attract them. But the cases where land was given where young people could play their games freely, and work off superfluous and threatening energy, were rarely seen.

In the larger cities the modern playground, with a tangle of yelling kidlets, is a sight to do a wholesome-hearted person good. The boy who is chasing a baseball is not robbing fruit nor standing on the street corner smoking cigarettes.

A playground entertaining a large crowd of children does not fully serve its mission unless carefully supervised by some competent person. The average boy gets altogether too much fun from tormenting some one under his size. Also the average crowd of 12-year-olds is very far from ready for self-government.

But even if a neighborhood or a village can merely open up a vacant lot and turn the youngsters loose, the results are worthwhile. In that case the parents will occasionally have to intervene to make Young America "salute the flag."

New Yorkers Honor Edgar Allan Poe

1920

Cottage Where Edgar Allan Poe Lived and Dreamed Has Been Preserved for Posterity.

Edgar Allan Poe is America's best-beloved writer abroad, according to Vicente Blasco Ibanez, the famous Spanish novelist. The author's greatest afternoon in America was the one set aside for a quiet visit to the humble and tragic home of the author of "The Raven" and "The Cask of Amontillado."

Poe's cottage is a quaint little one-story frame house, painted white, on the Grand Concourse on the upper fringe of the city. The ground around it has been dedicated and is known as Poe park. The building is just the same as it was when Poe lived there in company with his fantastic satans and ethereal sweethearts.

A party of five went with Ibanez. It was just dark when they arrived at the Poe home. The air was chilly and dank, as Poe would have said. Six or seven candles spluttered feebly against the walls and threw fantastic shadows into the small bedroom where, so history hath it, the author of "The Raven" had spent so many nights of anguish and unearthly vision.

It is strange but there are very few New Yorkers who know where Poe lived and they have never seen the park or the little tragic cottage. The only indication that it was the home of the genius of the odd is the little black raven painted in the front.

There is a little porch, much like a modern doll-house porch. At night Poe used to sit out there alone with the stars, smoking and dreaming. Then he was in the wilderness, for New York was many miles away. Off to his right was the Hudson and the Jersey coast. Around about him were all sorts of night cries. He loved the mysterious wails, the ghostly shadows that creep about at night. Many ambitious writers go there at night now to drink in the mental pictures that came to Poe — but instead are howls of the Bronx kiddies, the honk of the auto, the grind of car wheels and all the complex noises of a congested center.

Arithmomania: Count to 100 Before Reading This

1920

A Peculiar Disease: Arithmomania

Arithmomania — the medical name for another disease — is full of interest. In this the patient has the irresistible impulse to count a certain number of times before doing anything. One case recorded is of a girl who had to tap on the edge of the bed nine times before getting into it; a hundred times before brushing her teeth; to knock three times on a window by the side of the door, and a similar number of times on the door itself before she would unlock it.


Private Park

If the rear yard is properly planted with a border of flowering shrubs and perennial flowers, has a velvety green lawn and a few shade or fruit trees, it will give the family a quiet, peaceful little private park, in which all can enjoy the moonlight during the hot summer evenings without making a long, tiresome trip to the parks. This is the height of pleasure afforded by a well-planted home yard.

—Bedford Gazette, Bedford, Pennsylvania, January 9, 1920, page 4.