Charles Mulford Robinson (1869–1917) was a journalist and a writer who became famous as a pioneering

urban planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

theorist. He has the greatest influence as a missionary for urban beautification. He was the first Professor for Civic Design at

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

, which was only one of two universities offering courses in urban planning at the time, the other being

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Robinson wrote "The Fair as a Spectacle" in 1893, an illustrated description of Chicago's World Columbian Exposition, a watershed event for the

City Beautiful The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the ...

Movement, and went on to write the first guide to city planning in 1901, titled ''The Improvement of Towns and Cities''. In 1909, he developed the original plans for the Fort Wayne Park and Boulevard System in

Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...

. ''Note:'' This includes and and Accompanying photographs. He was hired in 1910 to review the city design and planning of

St. Joseph, Missouri St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includ ...

. Fully half of his report dealt with the need for park space in the city, leading to the design of the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

–listed St. Joseph Park and Parkway System.

Works

* * (fulltext via OpenLibrary) *
1: Philanthropic Progress
*
2: Educational Progress
*
3: Aesthetic Progress
* ''Rochester Ways''. Scrantom Wetmore & Company, Rochester, New York, 1900. * ''The Improvement of Towns and Cities. Or the Practical Basic of Civic Aesthetics''. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1901. * ''Modern Civic Art, or the City Made Beautiful''. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1903. * ''The Call of the City''. Paul Elder & Company, San Francisco/New York, 1908. * ''City Planning''. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1916.

References

* ttp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=175811116959737 Jon A. Peterson. The Birth of City Planning in the United States (Review), Daphne Spain

External links

* * Finding aid to th
Charles Mulford Robinson papers
at th
University of Pennsylvania Libraries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Charles Mulford Urban theorists Burials at Mount Hope Cemetery (Rochester) American architecture writers American male non-fiction writers University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty 1869 births 1917 deaths American urban planners