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the plunging prospects from hilltops into the river valleys -- and a similar quality of forcefulness, activity, and bold, irregular adaptation of means to ends, is to be felt in all the more dominant and impressive works of man in the city -- the steel works, the bridges and viaducts, the jagged sky-line of office buildings. To build a City Hall and Civic Center of scholastic formality, appropriate in the placid surroundings of Paris, would be to lose a great esthetic opportunity.

Diamond Street Widening

It would be difficult to overestimate the value, to the future convenience prosperity and business efficiency of the city, of carrying the Forbes Street improvement straight through to a junction with Liberty Avenue on the line of Diamond Street; and it is deemed a peculiarly fortunate thing that this is the only east and west line in the midst of the business district where a wide street can still be put through without destroying any considerable number of costly modern buildings.

When Diamond Alley was widened, in part, from 20 feet to 50 feet, not long ago, the improvement was of much importance because it added one more street large enough for general business in a locality where there was a great demand for business frontage, and where the original lots were of very excessive depth. But the improvement was a distinctly local one and contributed little or nothing to the solution of the general traffic problem. But the peculiar relation of Diamond Street to the general system of main traffic lines demands a much more courageous action for the benefit of the whole city. In connection with the widening of Forbes Street, it should be converted into a thoroughfare at least equal in width to Liberty Avenue. A glance at the map shows the convenient and equitable location of Diamond Street, and its importance as a thoroughfare to supplement Liberty Avenue in handling the traffic of the Point District.

Market Street Widening

Coming, as it does, directly opposite the Sixth Street bridge, Market Street ought to be a very important cross-town connection; and because the buildings are generally small and old, and most of the lots are so deep as not to be seriously injured by curtailment, a widening is suggested throughout its length.

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910