Early Days – The Playground
Love that slide
1940s. Stanley Pitcher, the first Central Park superintendent, was responsible for the first version of the Central Park playground.
1962. Pitcher and his assistant Allen Hammer designed ‘Enchantment Lands’ to modernize the playground. It was really an amusement park with a play area with storybook characters. The entrance would have a moat spanned by a drawbridge. It remained a fantasy land … it never came to fruition.
The playground is one of the most popular areas in the park. A major renovation is coming soon.
Here are some of the play apparatus from the past. Is that a new type of seesaw or swing … and aren’t those men too old for it?
The slide was so much fun – and fast, as long as one didn’t put one’s hands down on the slide to slow down.
Slide in Central Park, undated�Attributed to San Mateo County Historical Association
Happy birthday castle in the proposed Enchantment Land, 1963�The Times