Recreation center

“ There is to be a series of neighborhood recreation centers from 10 to 20 acres in size for each residential community, with playgrounds for small children interspersed at intervals of about half a mile. The recreation system is to comprise fields for major sports and swimming pools and constitutes a reasonable effort to meet the policy that “every child shall have a place to play.”
The regional park system contemplates the acquisition of the shores of the Potomac from Mount Vernon to and including Great Falls as a memorial park in memory of George Washington. ”

“ The WPA recreation program embraces a large number of activities, such as sports and athletics, play-center activities, dancing, crafts and
visual arts, recreational music, and recreational drama. Recent reports show a total participation of 235,457 in the entire State for one month. The recreation project is sponsored by the department of physical education of the University of Washington, and various city and county school districts and park departments act as co-sponsors. ”

“ Normally it requires two distinct kinds of recreation grounds to supply the needs of these people,—the local or neighborhood park for frequent and regular use, and the rural park for occasional holiday enjoyment. ”

“ Of perhaps first importance in the planning of local parks is the problem of distribution—accessibility to the people served. Practically there are few women or small children who will take the trouble habitually to walk much more than a quarter of a mile to a playground or local park for exercise or rest, and for most a carfare is out of the question. This means that, ideally, there should be neighborhood recreation centers not more than a quarter or at most a half mile from every home in the city. ”

“ The two recreation parks within a five-cent fare of the town, owned by the street railway, are the scenes of many school and church picnics and lodge gatherings. Here the young people find the skating rinks and dancing pavilions and the shrill music of the merry-go-rounds, while tired mothers seek quiet grass plots where they may sit and watch the children play, and where they may have the rare chance to gossip with their neighbors. ”

“ In Chicago some of the older immigrant groups have made provisions for their recreational needs by building national halls, auditoriums, and theaters; and in groups representing later immigration, funds are being raised for the same purpose. In many instances it is admitted that the public [275] recreation centers in the immediate vicinity of the settlement afford adequate space and facilities for the requirements of the group. The reasons given for failure to take advantage of such opportunities or for duplicating such splendid community resources are varied. ”

“ For recreation the foreign-born are limited to virtually the same resources as the natives of the working class. The dance hall, the moving picture show, the cheap theater, and the recreation park hold the prominent 300places. For the men of some races the saloon, and for others the imported coffeehouse, furnish a place for meeting and social relaxation. The need of recreational facilities for the working classes, so long neglected in this country, is beginning to be recognized and met in every up-to-date American city. ”

“ It must be noted, however, that their value for recreation is distinctly limited. They cannot adequately or economically supply the local needs for playfields, outdoor gymnasiums and the like; and as isolated fragments they cannot, of course, fulfill the functions of large rural parks. ”

“ FACILITIES FOR RECREATION The most effective preventive of dissipation is ample provision for wholesome recreation. Various agencies in urban communities seek to supply this need, both for their own residents and for visitors from outside. Men's clubs, such as chambers of commerce, afford social and amusement advantages for the business men of the town, and for visiting farmers who formerly met only at the store or courthouse, in the saloon or on the street corner. ”

“ Community Buildings.—The larger appreciation of the importance of play and recreation in rural life has brought attention to the lack of physical equipment. Every rural community needs a playground large enough to include a good baseball diamond and a basketball court, and a building where indoor sports, gymnasium work and basketball games can be held. ”

“ To such a class, the benefits of a Park, possessing such facilities for recreation and improvement as the Sea-side Park will present, will be incalculable, in fostering the health, promoting the happiness, and elevating the taste of all who can avail themselves of its beneficial influences. ”

“ And not only to meet today's needs but to anticipate those of tomorrow, I will put forward the most extensive program ever proposed by a President of the United States to expand the Nation's parks, recreation areas, open spaces, in a way that truly brings parks to the people where the people are. For only if we leave a legacy of parks will the next generation have parks to enjoy. ”

“ The Governor of New York, campaigning for re-election in the fall of this year (1914) , advocated that public schools should be surrounded by playgrounds at “no matter what cost.”
Tremendous impetus has been given to the playground movement throughout the entire country by individuals and societies organized for the purpose. Wise men and women have expounded the social philosophy of play and recreation, pointing out that these may afford wholesome expression for energies which might otherwise be diverted into channels disastrous to peace and happiness ”

“ But with more and more people coming on, more and more leisurely and affluent as technology cuts down on work, more and more urban, outdoor recreation as a specific goal is going to be an ever more important consideration in planning. ”

“ It is chiefly in this character that the park has the advantage for public purposes over any other type of recreation ground, whether wilder or more artificial. Other forms of natural scenery stir the observer to warmer admiration, but it is doubtful if any, and certain that none which under ordinary circumstances man can of set purpose induce nature to supply him, are equally soothing and refreshing; equally adapted to stimulate simple, natural, and wholesome tastes and fancies, and thus to draw the mind from absorption in the interests of an intensely artificial habit of life. ”

“ Room or dining reservations should be made with the Pere Marquette Lodge management, Grafton, Illinois (A.C. 618—Grafton 786-3351) .
2 RECREATION AT ITS BEST
The recreational facilities of the park are many and varied ranging from camping to hiking the many miles of foot trails, boating and fishing, picnicking or horseback riding the bridle paths, or viewing the many scenic wonders from the overlooks atop the bluffs. It’s family recreation at its best! ”

“ Half a day a week, together with the evenings of the long summer days, would suffice where the means of recreation are near at hand. Even the smallest factory villages could afford a little pleasure ground of their own, a public garden with a free gymnasium, a footrace track, ball ground, a tennis-hall or nine-pin-alley, for the winter season, a free bath, and a few zoölogical attractions. ”

“ Oregon's coast is dotted with State-run beaches that offer agate-hunting and surf-fishing, while New York's Adirondack Park-three times the size of Yellowstone and the country's largest State park-boasts more than 9,000 square miles of wilderness within a day's drive of 55 million Americans.
The preservation of wilderness is one goal of the country's park systems. Accessibility is another. Parks and recreation areas all over the country offer a variety of programs, experiences and opportunities to all Americans, including the disabled, the disadvantaged, the elderly and the very young. ”

“ Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity. ”

“ The gymnasium is an artificial and expensive machinery for inducing sweat, but the farmer needs no such artificial machine. The problem is purely one of play, not of exercise. For this purpose a careful study of the community, and of its tendencies and inclinations, is necessary. The great essential of recreation in the country is the opportunity to meet and to talk. Therefore the social life of gatherings in the church, and in the schoolhouse, no matter what their program, provided it be innocent, is valuable. ”

“ FACILITIES FOR DISSIPATION When leisure may be found for recreation, the facilities for it are often inadequate. The city, and even the village, affords facilities for amusement and social enjoyment that good roads, automobiles, and trolley lines have made more accessible than formerly to the country round about. While the urban community naturally affords greater opportunity than the rural community for social recreation, its opportunities for dissipation are equally great. ”

“ We could counteract the temptations of the grog-shops by providing the poor with healthier means of recreation; city parks with free baths, competitive gymnastics and zoölogical attractions for the summer season, and reading rooms with picture galleries and musical entertainments for the long winter evenings. ”

“ The Outdoor Recreation League was organized last year by public-spirited citizens, including many amateur athletes and enthusiastic women, with the object of "obtaining recognition of the necessity for recreation and physical exercise as fundamental to the moral and physical welfare of the people." Together with the Social Reform Club and the Federation of Churches and Christian Workers it maintained a playground on the uptown West Side last summer. ”

“ So great a contrast between work and play—monotony and freedom—is not possible in the country environment. In the midst of country recreations there are likely to be suggestions of the preceding work or the work that is to follow. It is as if the city recreations were held in factories. Country places of play are usually in close contact with fields of labor. Often indeed the country town provides the worker with very little opportunity for recreation in any form. In rural places recreation cannot be had at stated periods. ”

“ The playground is an essential field in the preparation of good citizens and it is not to be wondered at that in country communities, where all provision of recreation is difficult, and no public provision of playgrounds is thought of by those in [Pg 100] authority, that young people and working people, indeed all classes of the population, tend to move away. ”

“ No other country boasts more extraordinary or more diverse options for recreation. Our Nation's federally managed lands account for nearly one in every three acres and, together with our Nation's waters, provide visitors with almost 2 billion opportunities for recreation annually. Eight of ten Americans participate at least monthly in outdoor recreation, and we may choose to challenge ourselves through demanding activities like mountain climbing or river rafting. ”

“ It was soon found, however, that the great mission of playgrounds was not as a therapeutic agent, but as a preventive and constructive force. The movement took on large, positive, constructive aims, purposes, and ideals. It expanded into the playground and recreation movement, with emphasis upon the latter, aiming to provide for and direct the leisure-time activities of all the people. Play was restored as the right of every child, without which no wholesome physical, mental, and moral growth is possible. ”

“ Each Committee considers one great interest of the community. One of these interests is recreation. It is the duty of this Committee in winter to provide musical and literary entertainment and lectures. In the summer this Committee has secured the use of the Knox College recreation field, and employing a trained man, has opened it throughout the summer as a play-ground for all the children of the city.
The use of recreation for the building up of a community seems to involve expensive apparatus and sometimes does so. ”

“ The Survey published the following commentary on this memorandum:
Beginning with the statement that not more than 5 per cent. of the population is reached daily by all the intensive or active recreations under public control, the memorandum finds that “the mass of the people depend on commercialized amusements, notably saloons, motion pictures, and dance halls, and on the street, which is the demoralizing and dangerous playground of most of the children. We urge that wholesome recreation, publicly controlled, is needed by all the people, not by the small fraction now cared for.” ”

“ The size and form and character most desirable for neighborhood recreation grounds depend upon the functions to be performed by each. Some of the activities in the best developed playgrounds, as for example in Chicago, are these: (1) The playing of little children in sand-piles and upon the lawn, under the watchful guidance of an attendant who not only keeps them out of danger and mischief, but plays with them, tells them stories and stimulates the healthy activity of their little minds and bodies. ”

“ Direct construction by the city’s own labor force is slower, and more expensive, but usually more durable.
Parks and Recreation Grounds.—Public parks are of two types, first the large open spaces which cover many acres and can be used by the whole city, and second, the small areas which are provided for use by a single neighborhood only. Every large city has parks of both types. The old-style park which served more for ornament than for use, is now out of favor. ”