But most of the dwellings in the village come
between these extremes. They are plain neat wooden houses, in
capaciousness more like villas than cottages. A New England village
street, laid out in this way, is usually very picturesque and beautiful,
and it is highly characteristic. In comparing it with things in Europe,
where one rarely finds anything at all like it, one must go to something
very different from a village. As you stand in the Court of Heroes at
Versailles and look down the broad and noble avenue that leads to
Paris, the effect of the vista is much like that of a New England
village street. As American villages grow into cities, the increase in
the value of land usually tends to crowd the houses together into blocks
as in a European city. But in some of our western cities founded and
settled by people from New England, this spacious fashion of building
has been retained for streets occupied by dwelling-houses. In
Cleveland--a city on the southern shore of Lake Erie, with a population
about equal to that of Edinburgh--there is a street some five or six
miles in length and five hundred feet in width, bordered on each side
with a double row of arching trees, and with handsome stone houses, of
sufficient variety and freedom in architectural design, standing at
intervals of from one to two hundred feet along the entire length of the
street.
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