This undated Forward photo -- probably taken in the early 20th century before the playground movement became widespread -- is captioned “grounds for play. East side kiddies playing checkers on a hot afternoon (children playing on the streets in the Jewish neighborhood in New York).” The 12 children, who all appear to be under 10 years old, are playing an unknown game with checkers game pieces placed inside a chalk circle. The modern playground movement officially started in the late 19th century as child labor began to lose favor. The movement aimed to provide public, safe, fun play environments particularly for poor and immigrant children. Before then typically city children played anywhere there was space, including public sidewalks and streets. A survey in New York City back in 1904 found that the 10 most popular street games were playing with fire, craps, marbles, hopscotch, leapfrog, jump rope, baseball, cat (hitting and catching a stick), picture-card flipping, and tops. With the advent of playgrounds, children were free to make the space theirs and to do so in safety.

The earliest playgrounds were located in tenements, schools and parks that already existed. The Hudsonbank Gymnasium in Hell’s kitchen, pictured here during a children’s footrace in 1898, a year after The Forward's founding, was New York’s first outdoor public playground, built to encourage physical activity among the city’s tenement youth. At the formation of the Playground Association of America in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “City Streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children, because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in the summer, and because in crowded sections of the city they are too apt to be schools of crime.” In 1910, early playground advocate, Lee Hamner took it a step further, saying “The playground of today is the republic of tomorrow.” He went on: “If you want 20 years hence a nation of strong, efficient men and women, a nation in which there shall be justice and square dealing, work it out today with the boys and girls on the playground.” In 1905, the Washington Post sang playgrounds’s praises, saying that they reclaimed children from evil influence, broke up gang fights, and paved a road to “good American citizenship”, working off their physical energy “properly and innocently” away from the misery and squalor of garbage cans and alleys.

It’s clear from their writing that early advocates understood play to be not just a way to pass time by that it was a means of socialization and even becoming American. Above, we see an image of toddlers enjoying Central Park, near the Reservoir. Of course Jewish immigrants played in their old countries and play was a part of Jewish tradition. According to historical documents, Jewish boys in 19th-century Eastern Europe played with dreidels. And traditional Jewish children’s songs such as Mordkhe Gebirtig’s "Hulyet, kinderlekh" (Revel, Little Ones) showed that Jewish culture valued play for their children before entering the structured life of adulthood: Revel, revel, little ones, Now, while you are still young, For from the springtime to the winter Is but an eye-blink long. (Translated in Vishniac, 1999) But after the move to America, intergenerational, cross-cultural debates raged in Jewish homes over what and how children should play. In 1903, The Forward's founding editor, Abraham Cahan himself waded into the argument with a prescient editorial about baseball. “Let’s not raise our children to be foreigners in their own country,” he said, urging Jewish parents to allow their sons to play this quintessentially American game. He continued “Let your boys play baseball and even become outstanding players as long as it doesn’t interfere with their studies and doesn’t put them in bad company.”

In 1914, the city started Play Streets, a program that continues today. Communities were able to open up their streets to pedestrians. The first play street was formed when a police commissioner closed a stretch of Eldridge Street between Rivington, the busy street highlighted in the image above, and Delancey. At the time, this was a largely Jewish Eastern-European immigrant neighborhood. The city put out pianos and the Eldridge Street Settlement held a folk dance festival.

By 1922, The Forward frequently noted various “entertainment” options for children. "There's a children's ballet at the Rand School," the article read, alongside news of a children's magazine being published there bi-annually. "Children's performances and ballet offer your children and yourself a chance for enjoyment." The photo above shows children in 1943 playing at Colony House, a childcare facility in Brooklyn. This was a theme they continued developing as a progressive socialist Jewish newspaper. The Forward recognized childhood as an international affair with its own political momentum and repercussions. With the ending of the Holocaust they shed light on the issue of child refugees, reporting about local programs for them. In a 1948 issue they spoke of the importance of joy for these children in particular. "True childhood happiness for the first time is being experienced by the sad children recently arriving from Displaced Persons camps in Europe. They'll take part in a recent program offered to new Americans by the United Service and well-meaning volunteers." Recent days of pandemic see a similar concern for the well being of the city's youngest residents. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that play streets would return in the summer of 2020 so kids could play during the COVID-19 pandemic. The car-free, open streets harken back to days of street craps, stoop ball and checkers played by local young residents. Today's modern offerings are basketball, frisbee, wiffle ball, kickball, giant board games, crafts, dance and a touchless obstacle course.