The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds.
Such sentiments did not necessarily stem from compassion so much as fear. It may be no coincidence that the country’s first urban playgrounds—piles of sand deposited at strategic locations by the city of Boston—were placed in 1886, a few months after Chicago’s Haymarket affair excited public hysteria about foreign anarchists.
Conservatives of the day saw the conditions Holland described and called for laws to shut down the saloons on Sundays and more police to knock the boys’ heads. Progressives believed that repression (or at least repression alone) was futile; better were parks and playgrounds (among other reforms) to divert energy. . . .
Parks have never been far from politics. Not only did they in part grow out of prosperous people’s fear of the urban masses, they also appealed to developers who wanted to raise the value of adjoining lots.
Looking at Henderson’s story now, nearly 30 years after it was written, it’s interesting to think about how Americans once dealt with their fear of immigrants by building parks in their neighborhoods instead of threatening deportation.
