In the late 19th century, a new revolution in play was born in Boston. In an era when urban children had few spaces to play except in the alleys and courtyards around their tenements, and child labor meant that many kids had no opportunities to play at all, an immigrant doctor inspired a Boston women’s group to take up the topic of play. From its humble beginnings in a single sandpile in the North End, the playground movement grew to a quasi-scientific pursuit, until it was finally adopted as a national goal. By the early 20th century, safe playgrounds with structured, supervised play were seen as vital to children’s moral and educational development.
When Boston Invented Playgrounds
This week’s episode was inspired by a Tweet from listener Joany:
@HUBhistory have you ever heard about the 1886 playground/sand pit mentioned in the discussion below? Any idea where it may have been? https://t.co/HkIWiE3eV2
— Horseless Age (@HorselessAge) November 26, 2018
We didn’t know anything about the sandpit referenced in the linked discussion, but we dug in and learned a lot about the history of the American playground movement.
- Dr. Marie Zakrzewska comes to Boston (and inspires sand gardens)
- Our episode on Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, a graduate of the New England Female Medical College.
- The reports of the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association’s Executive Committee of 1886 and the Playground Committee of 1888 and 1890.
- Our episode on teenaged serial killer Jesse Pomeroy, who preyed on unsupervised children in Boston in the 1870s.
- Clarence Rainwater’s history of the US playground movement.
- “Father of the Playground” Joseph Lee’s 1903 article in New England Magazine about Boston’s playgrounds
- Some historical perspective in a 1915 issue of Playground Magazine
- Kate Gannettt Wells, MEHA member and originator of Boston’s sand gardens and playgrounds, reminisces in a 1909 issue of the Journal of Education.
- An overview of the state of affairs in a 1948 Boston Planning Department document on playgrounds.
- An overview of the Boston 1915 Movement from the State Library.
- The bizarre 1909 “Pageant of the Perfect City,” performed as part of Boston 1915.
(Photos above from the Rainwater book and Lee article)
Boston Book Club
As we get into the details of Boston’s playground movement in this week’s episode, one public playground we’ll talk about was built as part of Boston’s late 19th century transformation of the Charles River basin. This transformation is the main focus of Inventing the Charles River, written by Karl Haglund and published by MIT Press in 2002.
Over the course of the 19th century, the sleepy, tidal marsh of the Back Bay and Charles River basin was reinvented as an industrial waterway, then reinvented again as a gem in Boston’s Emerald Necklace. Haglund’s book is copiously illustrated with historic maps, photos, and illustrations showing each of these transformations. Watch as bridges begin to criss-cross the river in its final miles, then dams create the industrial Back Bay. Finally, follow in the footsteps of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead as he designs the Charlesbank and the Charles River Esplanade that we know today.
Throughout the book, the author highlights the tension between progress (industrial uses, railroads, highways) and preservation (recreational uses and open spaces). When the book was published in 2002, encroachment by highways on the recreational spaces along the Charles was a real and raw concern. The Big Dig was still underway, and the I-93 crossing over the Charles was still up for debate. A plan called scheme Z called for multiple tiers of ramps soaring over 100 feet above the river. This scheme was eventually replaced by today’s iconic Zakim Bridge, but the debate is reflected in Haglund’s narrative.
Here’s how the MIT Press describes the book:
The Charles River Basin, extending nine miles upstream from the harbor, has been called Boston’s “Central Park.” Yet few realize that this apparently natural landscape is a totally fabricated public space. Two hundred years ago the Charles was a tidal river, edged by hundreds of acres of salt marshes and mudflats. Inventing the Charles River describes how, before the creation of the basin could begin, the river first had to be imagined as a single public space. The new esplanades along the river changed the way Bostonians perceived their city; and the basin, with its expansive views of Boston and Cambridge, became an iconic image of the metropolis.
The book focuses on the precarious balance between transportation planning and stewardship of the public realm. Long before the esplanades were realized, great swaths of the river were given over to industrial enterprises and transportation—millponds, bridges, landfills, and a complex network of road and railway bridges. In 1929, Boston’s first major highway controversy erupted when a four-lane road was proposed as part of a new esplanade. At twenty-year intervals, three riverfront road disputes followed, successively more complex and disputatious, culminating in the lawsuits over “Scheme Z,” the Big Dig’s plan for eighteen lanes of highway ramps and bridges over the river. More than four hundred photographs, maps, and drawings illustrate past and future visions for the Charles and document the river’s place in Boston’s history.
The current Amazon price for a new copy is still almost $50, but hat’s a nice discount over the original list price of $63 (and we get a small cut of the profit if you decide to buy through the Amazon link above).
Upcoming Event
And for our upcoming event this week, we have a talk at the JP branch of the Boston Public Library cosponsored by both the Roxbury Historical Society and the Jamaica Plain Historical Society, and it has a connection to Joseph Warren, our favorite Patriot. If you need to brush up on who Joseph Warren was, you can check out our interview with Warren Biographer Christian DiSpigna. In a nutshell, he was a prominent physician, but also a raving patriot, who ran a spy network, dispatched Paul Revere on his famous ride, and died a martyr’s death at the battle of Bunker Hill.
Joseph Warren and his pioneering physician brother John were both born in Roxbury, on a farm and orchard. A generation later, John’s son John Collins Warren, also a pioneering physician and founder of Harvard Medical School and Mass General, inherited the land. The ancestral home was in rough shape, so he leveled it and built a new estate of native Roxbury puddingstone in 1846. In modern times, the elegant house has been used as office space, and it has change hands several times in later years. Most recently in 2016, I believe.
The house itself will be the topic of the talk at the JP BPL, which will be led by PhD student Maddie Webster, who is studying Boston history. According to the JP Historical Society website, it…
is the culmination of a 2018 research fellowship at the Nichols House Museum. It will focus on the historical significance of the 1846 Warren House in its own right and detail some of the accomplishments of generations of Warrens. The lecture will also highlight the Warren House’s connection to the Nichols family. For sixteen years, Arthur and Elizabeth Nichols called the Warren House home, raising their children and building Arthur’s medical practice there before relocating to Beacon Hill in 1885. This talk will bring attention to the family’s stewardship of the Warren House and also discuss the deliberate and unintentional ways in which they celebrated the significance of their historic home.
The talk will be held at 2pm on Saturday, January 5th at the BPL branch at 30 South Street in Jamaica Plain. It’s free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served. Walk from the orange line at Green Street, or take the 39 bus.