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    Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam
    Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam
    Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam
    Ebook59 pages43 minutes

    Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam

    By Hubert Howe Bancroft

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam

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      Book preview

      Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam - Hubert Howe Bancroft

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam, by

      Hubert Howe Bancroft

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam

      Author: Hubert Howe Bancroft

      Release Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2504]

      Last Updated: January 25, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CITIES ***

      Produced by David A. Schwan, and David Widger

      SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO

      AND RESURGAM

      By Hubert Howe Bancroft

      Contents

      SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO

      There had been some discussion as to improving and beautifying the city of San Francisco prior to the catastrophe of April 18th. Landscape architects had been consulted, proposals considered, and preliminary plans drawn. Therefore when on that day the city was swept by fire, obviously it was the opportune moment for the requisite changes in the rebuilding. For a brief period enthusiasm waxed warm. It helped to mitigate the blow, this fencing with fate. Let the earth shake, and fires burn, we will have here our city, better and more beautiful than ever—and more valuable—an imperial city of steel it shall be, and thus will we get even with the misfortunes of this day.

      Reform in the rebuilding was needed, whatever should be the scale of beauty or utility decided upon. Fifty years ago the elevating influences of tasteful environment were not so highly appreciated as now, and all large cities are fifty years old or more. All large cities, as a rule, had their beginning with narrow, crooked streets and mean houses. In Europe and Asia there are aggregations of humanity whose domiciles have remained unchanged, one might almost say uncleansed, for hundreds or thousands of years, or ever since their mythical beginning, save only for the covering of the debris of dead centuries.

      These ancient towns, mostly offspring of feudalism, begun under castle walls and continued after walls and castle had crumbled, as their area enlarged, with some improvement, perhaps, in the suburban parts, still retained this patch of mediaevalism, until obliterated by war, or fire, or later by modern progress. Look at Edinburgh, for example. With all its Scotch thrift and neatness, there yet remains the ill-conditioned and once filthy quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten-story houses built into the hillside, while in the modern part of the city in sharp contrast are broad streets and open squares and fine buildings.

      In America the birth of towns is quite different. Here are no plantings of trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering, forecasting agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with Go to, let us build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati, but rather, Here for the present we will abide. If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism were absent in New World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or any appreciation of the beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities require reconstruction to make them what modern taste and intelligence demand; settlements in their incipiency are dominated by their sturdy founders, who usually have other things to think about than beauty and adornment.

      In this day of great wealth and wonderful inventions we realize more and more the value of the city to mankind, and the quality of the city as a means of culture. Cities are not merely marts of commerce; they stand for civility; they are civilization itself. No untried naked Adam in Eden might ever pass for a civilized man. The city street is the school of philosophy,

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