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NPS Form 10-900a 0MBApVu4No1024 0018 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service • National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number _8_ Page _11_ also become places for active recreation in the early years of the 20th century as interests in sports and playgrounds evolved. Urban conditions of the industrial revolution and of an increasingly poor and immigrant population spawned reform movements such as that led by Jane Addams in Chicago. Community Centers, public recreation facilities, and other facilities aimed at improving the public health and welfare soon became integral to the urban park. The typical early 20th century urban park combined the concepts of a rural retreat, preservation or creation of natural scenery, opportunities for public gathering and discourse, provision of active recreation facilities and community centers, often within a network of parks and boulevards which provided ease of access to the parks and a framework for the well planned city. Stylistically and aesthetically, these parks combined formal elements such as public gardens and promenades with the pastoral and picturesque scenery associated with the earlier rural parks. Products of rapidly developing concepts, 19th and early 20th century parks were not static elements of the urban landscape; they were often overlays of sequential designs. Carefully planned additions or improvements to early rural parks added components of active recreation, field houses, community • centers and other public facilities as these social movements were more fully developed. Most importantly, parks and park and boulevard systems became elements around which planned residential and commercial development flourished. Seen as the structural framework for urban development, large and small cities alike embraced to concept of park planning and design to further the "City Beautiful" ideal. It is in this context that the contributions of George Kessler can be appreciated. Kessler was born in Germany in 1862, and immigrated to Texas with his parents. He returned to Weimar where he studied landscape gardening and civil engineering. He returned to New York in 1882, and upon an introduction by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. was hired by a Kansas City real estate firm to develop subdivision plans for the suburb of Hyde Park. Subsequent subdivision work included Roland Park in Baltimore (1891), Euclid Heights in Cleveland and a development in Ogden, Utah. These projects were soon followed by the commission to prepare a plan for a park and boulevard system for Kansas City, soon followed by a similar plan for Memphis. After completing the landscape design for the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, park system designs were also prepared for Indianapolis (1905); Cincinnati (1906); Denver (1907); and Oklahoma City (1910). The Kessler designed City Plan of Dallas was published in 1911. The notoriety of these park and city plans brought even more commissions to the Kessler firm, including plans for St. Joseph, Missouri, and a number of park plans for Indiana cities: Ft. Wayne, Terre Haute, and South Bend. At the time of his death in 1923, Kessler was continuing his work for the City of Indianapolis with the design of an outer ring of parks and boulevards and the campus plan Butler University.