Geddes, Patrick
City development. A study of parks, gardens, and culture-institutes. A report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust.
Edinburgh, “Geddes and Company, Outlook Tower, Edinburgh and 5 Old Queen Street, Westminster” (and Bournville, Birmingham, The Saint George Press) 1904.
Full Description
Folio. (4) + 231 + (1)pp, 136 text ills including frontispiece, also 2 folding plans. Publisher’s cloth, spine darkened, slight mark towards foot of upper cover. A few reading marks in text.
While he was still Professor of Biology at Dundee College, Geddes was commissioned by the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to look into the necessary alterations for converting the previously private Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline to public use. His exhaustive report considers numerous factors in the park’s development, such as improvements to housing bordering the park, the demolition or conservation of the various existing structures in the park, purification of the streams in the park, and a lengthy and interesting section on education opportunities with ideas for an open-air ‘primitive museum’, a craft village, an art gallery and so on. The book was issued in two near-contemporary states, the first under the title A Study in City Development, and the second under the title City Development, as here. The copies of the earlier state seem mostly to have been distributed by Geddes to Dunfermline notables and to friends (for a copy see our Cat 51, item 46), while copies of the later state were sold by him through his own publishing enterprise, Geddes and Company, based in his Outlook Tower premises in the centre of Edinburgh.