You can learn a lot about a society from the way they raise children. That includes not only what children learn, but how, when, and where they play.
Our modern concept of childhood emerged during the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century. Influential figures like philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau promoted the idea that children need special opportunities to explore and express themselves through playtime.
Before then, children were treated essentially as small adults. Of course, kids in ancient or medieval times liked to run around and play as much as kids today, and they did so wherever they could. But only after childhood became thought of as a distinct stage of life with unique needs did adults start to design spaces like playgrounds.
When we look at the history of playgrounds, we can see how ideas about children’s play have changed over time.
The first playgrounds weren’t for children
The term “playground” predates the modern definition and was first used “to describe a general place of recreation,” Jon Winder, a historian of urban environments at the University of Liverpool in the UK, tells Popular Science. Winder explains that the modern children’s playground originated in 1840s England, when parks in the cities of Manchester and Salford set aside areas for children’s activities.
The first playgrounds were just areas set aside for recreation. This circa 1914 photograph shows boys playing baseball on a so-called “playground.” Image: HUM Images / Contributor / Getty Images .
The park designers were influenced by earlier German education reformers like Friedrich Fröbel, who outfitted his schools with sandboxes for young students. Best-known for coining the term “Kindergarten,” Fröbel believed that cooperative outdoor play was essential to children’s development.
In the 19th century, “there was quite a lot of sharing of ideas between the UK and Europe” regarding social issues like education and public health, says Winder. The massive changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, including an ever-growing urban population, brought with them concerns about how these changes were affecting adults and children alike.
Early children’s playgrounds were meant to get kids off city streets
While rural children could still play in fields and forests, working-class urban children often played in the street, exposed to a variety of dangers. Adding children’s playgrounds to cities “was partly about removing [children] from the street” for their safety, says Winder. However, “that idea merged with these ideas about recreation, that there was something inherent about city life that led to physical degeneration of people.”
The perceived negative effect of city living was considered a potential threat to the British Empire, which needed strong, healthy citizens. Gymnastic exercise regimens like Pilates became the health craze of the time. What people thought was best for adults extended to children, and “the spaces that were set aside for children to play in invariably also had gymnastic equipment,” says Winder.
The first playgrounds were not for fun
Some of the equipment in those first 19th century playgrounds resembles what we might see in an Olympic gymnast’s routine today, such as vaulting horses and climbing rings. Winder points out the absurdity of children being expected to know how to safely and effectively use such things. However, he explains, “It wasn’t about play as we would understand it. It was about physical exercise and strength.” Playgrounds were less about imagination and more about “wholesome strengthening exercises.”
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Winder notes that these early athletic playgrounds were also used to enforce Victorian gender norms. Not only were the first playgrounds separated by gender, he explains, “They had different equipment in them, because social reformers thought that girls and boys were capable of different types of physical exercise.” While a girls’ playground might have space for hopscotch and shuttlecock, boys would get more physically challenging equipment like ladders and climbing ropes.
Furthermore, the design of the first playgrounds seemed intended to keep children themselves conveniently out of sight. Winder noted in 2022 that the first English playgrounds in Manchester “were hidden in the shrubbery on the boundary of the park, to prevent them from spoiling the view of the picturesque landscape.”
Playgrounds spread around the world
As playgrounds spread to other cities in the UK and continental Europe, British companies began to mass-manufacture playground equipment. The reach of the British Empire meant that such equipment could be exported as far afield as South Africa and New Zealand, bringing with it contemporary ideas about what playgrounds were for.
American social reformers and urban planners soon joined the international conversation. “There were playground campaigners in the UK who were in correspondence with some of the organizations in the U.S.,” says Winder. “They swapped letters and did site visits.”
American educator Henry Barnard drew up plans for a playground as early as 1848. It featured rotary swings, blocks, toy carts, and a shaded area for teachers to keep watch from. However, the first public playgrounds in the United States weren’t built until the late 1880s, with both Boston and San Francisco claiming the record.
Following the earlier British model of the playground as a place to work out more than to play, Boston’s children’s playgrounds were part of a larger “open-air gymnasium” for all ages, and were separated by gender.
Early playgrounds mostly consisted of gym equipment. Boys and girls were also divided for play time. This circa 1905 photograph shows girls playing on an early playground on Harriet Island in St. Paul, Minnesota. Image: Getty Images / Universal History Archive / Contributor / Circa Images / Glasshouse Images
However, there were some differences between American and European playgrounds. Early American playgrounds often featured adult facilitators who led athletic activities, something like modern gym teachers, as well as indoor activity spaces for bad weather. And as public playgrounds spread throughout the United States, racial segregation (both legal and de facto) was enforced in many such spaces until the 1950s.
Putting the “play” back in playground
In 1921, industrialist Charles Wicksteed opened Wicksteed Park in Kettering, England, which Winder calls “a big, significant shift in the development of these children’s spaces.” Unlike earlier public playgrounds, Wicksteed Park emphasized amusement over exercise. Decked out with an ever-evolving range of equipment, as well as a theater, fountains, and refreshment areas, the space was designed to be enjoyed equally by boys, girls, and adults.
Rather than having gymnastics equipment, Wicksteed debuted some new kinds of playground equipment at his park based on fairground rides, such as the first playground slides, which were inspired by early roller coasters.
Wicksteed is also credited with designing the modern playground swing, after the homemade swings that children had previously hung from trees (or even street lamps). Wicksteed sold his equipment to other parks, and the influence of Wicksteed Park spread far and wide.
By the 1930s, says Winder, many designers had begun to accept the idea that “playgrounds perhaps needed to be fun to attract children and get them off the street.” While the playground was still seen as a place for children to get physical exercise in the 20th century, it increasingly became a site of entertainment.
In 1921, industrialist Charles Wicksteed opened Wicksteed Park in Kettering, England, which was one of the first playgrounds actually designed for amusement. Later playgrounds like this one followed Wicksteed’s approach. Image: Getty Images / Edoardo Frola
The playground’s present and future
Both playground equipment and our perception of playgrounds have become more focused on fun over time. However, this also means that specific manufactured equipment has become increasingly viewed as essential to the playground. Today, park and school administrators may feel pressured to buy the right products to make a playground feel complete. Is it really a playground if there’s no slide or swing set?
Winder identifies a tension between equipment that stimulates creativity, and the constraints of budget and practicality. Kids can do a lot more with sand than with a set of swings, but it’s also a lot more work to keep clean and tidy.
But as ideas about education and the role of play in children’s lives have continued to evolve, the 20th century has also seen an increase in playgrounds that integrate more thoughtfully with the space around them.
Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck transformed hundreds of abandoned urban spaces into unique playgrounds designed to inspire children’s natural creativity, without dividing them from the rest of the environment, like the first Victorian playgrounds.
Designing playgrounds “was never about making city streets better places to play,” says Winder. “It was about removing kids from the street and segregating them into one place.”
Winder advocates for urban design that “creates a more balanced relationship between people and vehicles on streets.” With more pedestrian-friendly spaces meshed into urban environments, children can be safe to let their imaginations run wild, whether that’s in a playground, in a park, or in other places set up for foot traffic.
“Kids are inherently playful,” says Winder, and they’ll find ways to play wherever they are. The challenge for adults has always been to try and get them to play the way we want them to.
In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind everyday things.
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