History of Playgrounds

     In the latter part of the 1800's a national reform movement began which was dedicated to women's suffrage. An offshoot of this crusade was the Mothers' and Children's Movement. This movement flourished until the end of the 1920's and was responsible for the passage, mostly at the state level, of a series of policies designed to protect children in the labor force and to support schools, playgrounds, and kindergartens. The backbone of the reform movement was the many social groups and voluntary organizations patronized largely by married women. By creating a moral imperative and a sense of common cause at the state and local level, the women's organizations set the agenda and pressed through a whole series of social policies for children and families in the early 20th century. This was an amazing feat considering that women did not even have the right to vote!
       Due to the reform movement, the urban landscape of the inner city became the focus of philanthropists and local governments. Supervised playgrounds were placed into slum areas for their value in reforming the young child. By 1905 some larger cities were making appropriations for the first time for the maintenance on these playgrounds. While the National Playground Association, whose mission was to spread the playground movement, deemed the appropriations "very inadequate" to cover actual operating costs, the Association did believe it was a "good beginning [from which] growth was sure to follow."
       During this same period states began to sponsor recreation legislation. In 1907, New Jersey enacted the first comprehensive piece of legislation creating a playground commission. The commission was to select, purchase and conduct the state's playground sites. Three years later, the Commonwealth of Virginia followed suit becoming one of only fifteen states to enact recreation legislation.

Design of playground equipment recommended by the  Department of Public Instruction of Virginia, circa 1916.

     Within a short period of time, some of the better known schools for teachers began to pay attention to the development of playgrounds and recreation. In 1912, the University of Virginia Summer School for teachers began educating "county school teachers in equipping their own yards with playground apparatus." The University designed and constructed a "fine playground" to illustrate and supplement the classroom instruction in playground methods. The equipment was used constantly during the six weeks of summer school session, and then was dismantled and stored away to be used again at subsequent sessions. The apparatus included: a sandbox or sand pile, a balancing tree, jump standards, a see-saw, a slide, a swing frame with sliding poles and ladder, a flying dutchman, and a giant stride. All of the equipment was home-made and inexpensive. According to state government records the boys and girls of Charlottesville duplicated some of this apparatus at their own homes and in vacant lots around town.

(Sources: Playground Proceedings I, National Recreation Association, 1907; Recreation Legislation, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911; Virginia Pamphlets Vol. 34, "Play and Athletics," Virginia Department of Public Instruction, 1913.)

last updated 2/20/01 by Stowe Keller
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