Mechanicsburg's Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Park: A Local Response to the National Playground Movement

Americans have a love-hate relationship with the city. Thomas Jefferson wanted to create a country of gentlemen farmers because cities were a haven for men with radical ideas and dangerous to the "morals, the health, and the liberties of men.”¹ The image of the city did not improve during the nineteenth century. The city was seen as a modern Babylon, the breeding ground of sin and evil, and a trap for the good Christian.² At the end of the last century leaders in urban areas such as New York tried to reform the city by adding services that would upgrade and enhance the life of the citizens. Tax dollars were spent to build art museums and public libraries.³ The period also saw the development of the city-owned park system.

Why a park in the city? Historian Charles Glaab explains, "It was in the urban park that man could attempt to regain the virtues of life in nature lost within the city."⁴ If the city was evil, the movement preached, perhaps a piece of the country with open land, fresh air, and sunshine would improve the life of the people who were forced to live there. ⁵

Very early in its history New York City developed to support the needs of commerce and industry. The island of Manhattan was laid out in city lots as early as 1811 to support a population that grew from 124,000 to 310,000 in 1840.⁶ If any area felt the pressures of urban living and needed a park, it was Manhattan.

 In 1853 a total of 524 acres were purchased from 59th to 106th Streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as "the culmination of England's picturesque landscape tradition molded to the American vision.”⁷ Totally man-made, Central Park was built as a giant public park.⁸The movement moved to other cities. An ordinance of the Philadelphia City Council in 1867 created the boundaries of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.⁹

The early twentieth century saw the organization of the Playground Association of American for the purpose of organizing activities and sports for America's youth. The philosophy of the movement was explained by Henry Smith Williams writing in Harper's Weekly. "Sports represent a positive good amidst the complexity and evils which have accompanied the rise of the city and the growth of an industrial society." ¹⁰ The President of the United States concurred. Concerned by the threat of over-civilization inherent in the nation's new urban industrial society, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

A healthy state exists only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives, when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shrink difficulties, bur to overcome them; not to seek ease, bur to know how to wrestle triumph from roil and risk. ¹¹

Would the same movement come to central Pennsylvania, a land of farms and open spaces? Was the Playground Movement needed in the towns of that area? Though late in coming, the movement did arrive. The town of Mechanicsburg in Cumberland County is an example.

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