An organized propaganda for outdoor gymnasia and playgrounds crystallized in 1898 in the formation of the Outdoor Recreation League, in which the settlement participated. The tireless president of the League eventually succeeded in obtaining the use of a large space in our neighborhood, originally purchased by the city, during a brief reform administration, for a park. Some very undesirable tenement houses had been destroyed, and when a Tammany administration returned to power a hot summer was allowed to pass with nothing done to accomplish the original purpose. Unsightly holes, once cellars, remained to fill with stagnant water, amputated sewer- and gas-pipes were exposed, and among these the children played mimic battles of the Spanish-American War, then in progress.
The accident that the Commissioner of Health, a semi-invalid, felt gratitude to a trained nurse who had cared for him, gave me an opportunity to approach him on the subject. He promised (and he kept his promise) to use his influence to get an appropriation on the score of the menace to the health of the city. The appropriation was sufficient to fill in the space and surround it with a fence, and the Outdoor Recreation League was able to demonstrate the value of playgrounds. In 1902 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of Mayor Seth Low’s reform administration, at its first meeting, appropriated money for the equipment and maintenance of Seward Park, as it was named,—the first municipal playground in New York City. So much interest had been aroused in this phase of city government that two city officials left the board meeting while it was in progress to telephone to the settlement that the appropriation had been passed.
Many friends of the children combined to urge the use of the public schools as recreation centers, and in the summer of 1898 the first schools were opened for that purpose. Those of us who had practical experience helped to start these by acting as volunteer inspectors. The settlement then felt justified in devoting less effort to its own playground, and deflected some of the energies it required to meet other pressing needs.
It is a delight to give the children stories from the Bible and the old mythologies, fairy tales, and lives of heroes, and we mark as epochal Maude Adams’s inspiration to invite our children and others not likely to have the opportunity to see Peter Pan. She has given joy to thousands, but it is doubtful if she can measure, as we do, the influence of “the everlasting boy.” Through him romance has touched these children, and not a few of the letters spontaneously written to Peter Pan from tenement homes have seemed to us not unworthy of Barrie himself. Protest against leaving the big, familiar farmhouse at one of our country places, when an overflow of visitors necessitated a division of the little ones at night, was immediately withdrawn when the children were told that the annex, perched on high ground, was a “Wendy House.”
The need of care for convalescents was early recognized, and the settlement’s first country house was for them. It was opened in 1899, and its maintenance is the generous gift of a young woman, a member of the early group that gathered in the Henry Street house. We soon felt, however, that it was essential that children and young people as well as invalids should have knowledge of life other than that of the crowded tenement and factory; and from the time of the establishment of our first kindergarten we longed to have the children know the reality of the things they sang about, the birds and animals which so often formed the subject of their games. A little girl in one of the parties taken to see Peter Pan turned to her beloved club leader when the crocodile appeared and asked timidly if it was a field-mouse! A recent lesson had been about that “animal.” It seems almost incredible that the description, probably supplemented by a picture, should not have made a more definite impression upon the child’s mind; but I am inclined to think that little children can form no accurate conception of unknown objects from pictures or description. A neighborhood teacher took her class to the menagerie in Central Park just after a lesson on the cow and its “gifts”—milk, cream, butter. She hoped that the young buffalo’s resemblance to the cow might suggest itself to the children who, of course, had never seen a cow. In answer to her question an eager little boy gave testimony to the impression the lesson had made on his mind when he answered, “Yes, ma’am. I know it. It’s a butterfly.”
We value the “day parties” for incidental education as well as for the pleasure they afford. Each year as spring approaches a census is taken of the surrounding blocks, that the new arrivals may be included in the excursions. The most treasured invitations for these parties come from friends whose country estates are near enough to offer hospitality, and to whose gardens and stables the children are taken. The larger parties, composed of women and children, usually go to the seashore in chartered cars, and these excursions, purely recreative, compete, and not unsuccessfully, with the clam-bakes and outings of the old-time political leaders.
