Elmdale’s central district gets a gleaming makeover as a throwback to much more genteel times. This was meant to recall the City Beautiful movement, which characterized a reformist approach to North American architecture that fought urban blight through beautification of urban areas and the construction of monumental public architecture. And all at the expense of actually providing sufficient employment, education, and better sanitation for the poor.
Contrast this to the modern “City Hideous” paradigm that began during the 1970s and endures today, focusing on incredibly ugly and ergonomically impractical concrete edifices and poor city planning in general.
In this case, the planners of Elmdale c. 1900 wanted a town that evoked the grandeur of Greece and Rome and recalled the artsy, intellectual atmosphere of their contemporaneous counterparts in Europe.
To this end, I added a fountain for Elgin Square and downloaded a recolor of the City hall to create a unified whitewashed theme for the entire square.