The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-05-14
GROUNDS FOR CHILDREN.
New York's Two Gifts to It's Poor
Teaching the Children
TO Be Children.


improved especially for the sports of
children, and superintended in their
interest. One measures so by 100 feet,
and was opened a year ago through
the exertions OF two philanthropic
women, in West Fiftieth street, near
the North river. The other extends
from N~inety-frst to Ninety-second
street on Second avenue, covers an
area 200 feet square, and was given to
the children on the 6th of last jan
nary by the New York Society for
Parks and Play Grounds for Children.
Each is furnished with swings. @
saw stands. small wagons, wheelbar-
rows, shovels, footballs. flags, BAN
ners, drums, and a heap of sand.
Both are crowded with children from
morning to night.
When the Ninety-second street play
ground was opened last winter the
muscular activity OF children in that
neighborhood was devoted principally
to smashing windows, fighting, and
abusing smaller children. Games and
recognized sports seemed to be I'M
known, and the ground at first simply
served as o larger field for the rough
and unorganized pastimes OF the
larger boys. The promoters of the
scheme soon saw that space alone was
not sufficient to reform the recrea-
tions OF the children. but hat super
vision was necessary. The children did
not know how to play; and if they had
known, the larger boys would have
monopolized all the appliances for
games with which the society fitted up
the grounds. A fence ten feet highsur-
rounding the plot, several hand-to-
hand encounters between the rough
est boys and the persons in charge OF
the grounds, and the arrest of four
r~ingIeaders among the invaders,
served the cause OF peace so well that
the playground is now the undis-
turbed possession of the children, as
many as five hundred OF whom pat
ronize it in a day. The system OF adj
mission tickets, which has been
adopted as the fairest to all con-
cerned, shows that a thousand boys
and girls enjoy the privileges OF the
grounds.
Amusing and pathetic incidents
alternated in early attempts to
teach the children how to play
the ordinary games of little
W. yOAA& AA0A OlAO AAACA
ing gave some of the boys at the
playground an object-lesson at leap
frog, which they had never seen be-
fore. In trying to initiate their in
structors, the lads acted as clumsily
as If they had been young Hottentots
taking their first lessons in the waltz;
and one of them, who could have
swan across the North River, or run
from Central Park TO the Battery, fell
fiat upon his nose, bruising his face
so badly that the services of a ply
stefan had to be secured.
As a result Of three months train
ing in this outdoor gymnasium, the
power of endurance for all sports has
increased perceptibly in the children.
The improvement in the physical con
dition of the girls is " nor marked
than in the case Of the boys. Their
cheeks are ruddier, their step stronger
and their appetites are better than
before enjoying this course of exer-
else. The last result is not always
acceptable to parents, one father pro-
hibiting his three daughters from
visiting the playground any longer,
saying that the family grocer's bills
had materially increased since his
children began to take so much exer-
else in the open air.
The moral improvement observable
In the children is the most hopeful re-
suit of the training at the play
ground. Persons with old fashioned
notions regarding the innocence OF
childhood would have had their ideas
rudely upset could they have heard a
few sample sentences from the mouths
OF some of the boys and girls who
thronged the play ground at its open
ing. Nothing was too b~lasphemous
nor too foul for them to utter in their
ordinary conversation, and the most
vivid imagination can hardly dupli-
cate the vocabulary of one of these
stockings when angry. By adhering
strictly to the rule OF instantly eject
ing every boy and girl guilty of i'm
proper language, the character of
these children's conversation has
been radically changed. Not
only has their language been
reformed. but a n of justice
has been developed which seemed en-
tirely wanting at first. Large boys
and girls, who two months ago would
monopolize all the toys as soon as the
superintendent back was turned,
now understand the power and the
benefit of organization, and cheerful
ly accept their share in the amuse-
ments provided.
1t is the purpose of the Society for
Parks and Play Grounds for Children
to establish recreation grounds in
every Ward of New York, and to in
terest in the movement public-spirited
residents of other cities. Blocks OF
tenenents have been selected for de-
molition in the most thickly crowded