OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN 1 V 0 Los Angeles City Hall, central unit of the Los Angeles Civic Center, with a sketch of the extent of the center when completed. broad expanse of the FROM the Gate to the undulation of I ) I i i I i f I i j the plains of Eastern Colorado, cities, towns and hamlets of every state compete one against the other to gain a foothold in the ever expanding empire of the West. It is a struggle in which civic enterprise and civic pride have held a foreceful hand, and a splendid competition in which some of the finest work of new America has been accomplished. What part in the drama has Salt Lake played? And how is it keeping abreast of the movements of its sister cities? Something of a difficult question to answer, but one in which comparison with the activities of those others may provide San Francisco and Los Angeles, the thriving cities of California, and Denver, metropolis of the Centennial state, represent three widely variant conditions o f habitation and of growth. Frisco, the town built from the s, has gold rush of the grown until it dominates the commerce for nearly a thousand miles up and down the Pacific. Los Angeles, play town, husky, thriving city of the southland, has forty-niner- r t Editor's Note: This is the first of a series of articles on civic development throughout the West, comparing Salt Lakes progress in civic centers parks and playgrounds, and in aviation with the other centers throughout the West. another voice ; and yet, its spirit still is much the same as that of its sister to the north. Denver, another boom town of gold, stopping off place for the thousands who started on the long trek out West, has set itself in an endeavor to capture the king-pi-n position of center of trade for the Intermountain district. In view of the dissimilarity of the three cities in origin and situation their attention to civic center work and development of pretentious civic units is significant. It means that all three have recognized the necessity of this work, have spent millions of dollars in that direction, and with no hope of financial profit are operating these centers for the edification of the inhabitants of these centers. Denver Center Famed Denver, Salt Lake's neighbor in ambition, has had perhaps the longest and most pretentious program considering its size. Its civic center is nationally famed, with 16.78 acres devoted to public use in the heart of the business district. The land for the center was obtained through condemnation proceedings instituted in 1909, and for which the district in which the center is erected stood the cost. The cost of land within the Civic Center was $1,814,539.41. Denver has since spent $845,237 in improvements on the property, including $447,833 in donations for special monuments, memorials, etc., which dot the layout. That center cost the city of Denver $19,663.30 to maintain in 1928 without a cent of income. Financially, it is one of Denver's boarders." But the financial consideration is slight. On one side of the center rises Colorado's capitol buildOn the other is the Public ing. library. In the center, Denver has erected a splendid amphitheatre for civic gatherings, for political discussions, for musical and dramatic presentations. . Denver's civic center is the center of official Denver. It is the gather-- |