How Children’s Play Has Shaped New York City, Part 2: Children Made Playgrounds

One of Progressive Era playground reformers’ first major victories in New York City came when Seward Park Playground opened in the Lower East Side in 1903, making it the first permanent municipal playground in the city and marking the city’s entry into providing places of recreation for young New Yorkers after years of philanthropic endeavors. Available in The New York Public Library’s Manuscript and Archive Division, a 1903 letter by the prominent settlement house founder and nurse Lillian D. Wald praises its opening: “...for the first time in the history of the municipality the rights of the children have been paramount.” Wald’s remark highlights that children’s right to play—which might seem natural or inalienable to us now—was hard-won and took decades to build into the city. Implicit in Wald’s letter is the belief that children should not work, which might seem obvious to contemporary readers, but at the time, was a contested stance that was part of a fairly new movement to enact child labor laws.

Historic newspaper coverage of the Seward Park playground—accessible via the Library’s databases—emphasized the importance of children in establishing the playground. The Sun reported that the reformer Charles B. Stover spoke at the opening ceremony and commented, “‘It was the children of the East Side who first contributed for this playground, and not the city. The children of the East Side contributed $400 of their own pennies and, therefore, I say, it is appropriate that this should be children’s day.’” Though historical accounts often focus on the role of reformers, Stover’s speech highlights how children staked out spaces for play and financially contributed to early playgrounds through penny drives. Children even organized playground strikes to exert control over their recreation, as a previous blog post has explored.

One of the motivations for reformers, however, was to bring children into playgrounds as a gambit to more closely control them and their forms of play. Playground supervisors banned street games in playgrounds and often separated boys and girls into separate areas. Photographs of play in the early 20th century in New York City in the Library’s Digital Collections highlight the differences between street play (left) and play in Seward Park (below). While the boys playing kick the can are shown alone in an alleyway playing an improvised game, the boys in the photographs in Seward Park have visible adult supervisors and are gathered in a location expressly made for youth recreation that separates them from the surrounding streets.

Nonetheless, newspaper coverage shows that children routinely resisted attempts to regulate their activities in playgrounds and played as they had done previously, frequently provoking the ire of attendants employed to enforce the new rules. In August 1904, several months after the public playground opened, the New-York Tribune reported that “the great problem has been the maintenance of order… it has taken a year of ceaseless effort for the young men and women in charge to gain a semblance of control over the youngsters.” The journalist observed a play supervisor rebuking a group of boys engaging in the street game “cat”—which involved batting around and trying to catch a short sharpened stick—in the public playground and making regular attempts to divide boys and girls into their separate areas. Though reformers hoped that children would comply with playground rules, articles show that children resisted discipline and continued to pursue unauthorized activities that expressed their agency in the new environment. Early playgrounds were contested places where children and adults clashed over how young people should behave in these new public spaces.

In this activity, students will read a seemingly benign article about how children are using the new playground. In it, they will find evidence of the children’s struggle for autonomy over their play.

First, have students use the NYPL Database Collection to access a historic newspaper article about Seward Park: “A City Playground: How Youth on the East Side Enjoy William H. Seward Park,” New-York Tribune, 28 August 1904.

To access the New-York Tribune article, go to Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers via the NYPL and search “New York” in States, “1904 to 1904” in the date range, and “A City Playground” in keywords on the Chronicling America page. It is the first result. (Alternatively, use this direct link to the article.)

Before reading the article, alert students to the following content warning and vocabulary note.

Content warning: antisemitism

In the article, the reporter makes an antisemitic joke that the Jewish children know how to line up because they line up to save their pennies at savings banks. It is worth noting this instance of antisemitism prior to reading and explaining that there was a large Jewish population living in the Lower East Side in the period who were frequently caricatured and stereotyped as avaricious in the press.

Vocabulary note: Students should be familiar with most of the terms in the article, but the reporter refers to a nine-year-old girl caring for her baby brother as a “little mother.” It is worth explaining that the term “little mother” was used to refer to working-class girls who helped out at home by taking care of young siblings.

Next, have students read the article and ask them to find instances when playground supervisors disciplined young people and when children exerted their own agency. For further guidance, see these examples. 

Then, have students pair up and share their findings, using quotations from the article to substantiate their responses. They should explore: What are their impressions of this playground after reading the article? How did supervisors try to control children? How did children rebel against adult control, and why might they have done so? What do the answers to these questions show us about life on the playground that the author of this article did not necessarily mean for us to learn? 

Finally, have students give feedback to the class about their discussions in pairs.

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