Voting for Play: The Democratic Potential of Progressive Era Playgrounds

Abstract

For Massachusetts children, including those in the city of Lynn, December 8, 1908 was a date of particular importance. That day their fathers voted whether their city would accept the new state playground law. The law required cities and towns with over 10,000 residents to provide and maintain playgrounds for the “recreation and physical education of minors.” In Lynn, as in other cities, a high level of publicity surrounded the referendum. Editorials and front-page advertisements ran in the local papers, and posters hung in business windows. Even children participated. On election day, members of the Lynn Boys' Club paraded the streets wearing banners that proclaimed, “Vote for playgrounds for me.” The triumphant “yes” vote of 11,122 to 1,083 set a Lynn record for the first time the citizens had ever turned in a vote that reached five figures. By March 1909, thirty-nine Massachusetts cities and towns had held referendums; all but two agreed to impose the new law on themselves.