The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

1 HE HtiALTH Bulletin August. 1927
Photograph Shows Greexfielb Lake, a Fine Recreational Center Owned by the City
OF Wilmington. Thousands of Wilmington Citizens Find Rest and Relaxation Here the
Year Round.
consolidated school buildings, for the
most part of brick veneer construction,
housing something- like four or
five hundx-ed pupils. For the most
part these new schools are located on
plats of about five acres out in the
country districts where land for the
most part is cheap and available without
inconveniencing anybody. These
plats, none of them, should be less
than fifty to one hundred acres, in
order to provide for expansion of
buildings and playgrounds in the
distant future. When the State fills
up with population and all its land
is cultivated, when factories and
stores and residences and highlycultivated
farms are spread all over
the State, it will be too late to acquire
easily such property. There is
no one thing more necessary to preserve
the health and happiness of a
people than to have available parks
and playgrounds for the recreation
of both adult and child.
Right now the city of Raleigh, to
mention only one town, has the finest
opportunity ever afforded any town
or city in the State of North Carolina
to acquire for park purposes a
tract of land that in beauty of location
and availability to the people
not only of the city but of the whole
State of North Carolina could not be
surpassed anywhere. So far as we
know there has been no move made
and no thought contemplated of acquiring
this tract of land.
If it is proper to bond our childi-en.
our grandchildren, and our greatgrandchildren
for two or three generations
in order to pay for such
things as roads, courthouses, and
schools, all of which we ourselves are
receiving as much benefit from as
will the descendants who will have to
pay for all these things for the most
part, it is a thousand times more desirable
for us to establish such things
as parks and playgrounds through
the issuance of bonds, because these
things will be permanent. Fire cannot
destroy, floods cannot wash
away, nor can any other destruction
prevail against such enterprises as
parks and playgrounds. On the
other hand, as population increases,
as our State grows in wealth and
importance, just so much will these
parks and playgrounds increase in
value and importance from every
standpoint imaginable.
We hope by the time these lines
are published that Greensboro will
have secured its one hundred and
thirty acres, and that many other
cities and towns of the State will be
following suit, and also that somebody
of vision and courage in the city of
Raleigh and elsewhere will be making
a move toward the acquisition of the
aforementioned property for a permanent
park.
As a forceful example of what
some of our cities are doing along
this line we are publishing elsewhere
in this issue a fine photograph of
Greenfield Lake, Wilmington's municipal
recreational center. This fine
property was purchased about two