Turn of the Century Women's Organizations, Urban Design, and the Origin of the American Playground Movement

Abstract

Traditional histories of urban design and the playground movement have focused on individual men's accomplishments. This article uses a feminist theoretical approach to find previously overlooked evidence of achievements by women's organizations in designing urban landscaped across the United States. Women's organizations cooperated and negotiated with men to design urban landscapes with green spaces and playgrounds that conveyed the women's values. The U.S. playground movement was not established by individual men as claimed by recent histories, but rather developed out of the early playgrounds created by women's organizations in Boston.