Landscape Architecture: Government Documents

Seven essays on various aspects of the Park Commission Plan (popularly known as the McMillan Plan), by authors well-known in their fields. Many illustrations, some taken from the Park Commission's Report (1902) and color illustrations of the remaining water color renderings owned by the Commission. These essays have been compiled to serve the people of Washington and all who find the creation of cities a subject of fascination.

This comprehensive history explores the evolving role of the Commission of Fine Arts in the context of the artistic, social, and political circumstances that fostered the commission's creation and the subsequent trends that have informed its decisions. As design philosophies and styles changed over the century, the commission also shifted its emphasis --from Beaux-Arts architecture and planning principles to the modernist pragmatism of midcentury, the urban redevelopment and historicist trends of the late twentieth century, to contemporary issues of security, sustainability, and information technology.