City Beautiful movement - Definition

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The City Beautiful movement was a Progressive reform movement in North American architecture and urban planning that flourished in the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities to counteract the perceived moral decay of poverty-stricken urban environments. The movement, which was originally most closely associated with Chicago and Washington, D.C., did not seek beauty for its own sake, but rather as a social control device for creating moral and civic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the movement believed that such beautification could thus provide a harmonious social order that would improve the lives of the inner-city poor. 

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Civic Center: Surrogate’s Court in New York City, an example of City Beautiful architecture, by wallyg

Civic Center: Surrogate’s Court in New York City, an example of City Beautiful architecture, by wallyg

more about City Beautiful Movement:

The City Beautiful Movement by William H. Wilson

Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City

The Roots and Origins of New Urbanism

City Beautiful movement