[PDF] American Playgrounds eBook

Author : Susan G. Solomon
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 10,86 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781584655176

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A compelling history, a manifesto, and a manual for change.

Author : Biondo, Brenda
Publisher : ForeEdge
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 38,4 MB
Release : 2014-05-06
Category : Photography
ISBN : 1611685125

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Before today's safety-minded structures of wood and plastic, America's playgrounds were full of tottering seesaws, dizzying merry-go-rounds, and towering metal slides. Documenting the evolution of American playgrounds between 1920 and 1975, Once Upon a Playground is a visual tribute to these iconic structures, celebrating their place in our culture and the collective memories of generations. In it, contemporary photos of vintage pieces of playground equipment are juxtaposed with images of the very same pieces as they were shown in classic catalogs, postcards, and photographs. The result is a haunting time capsule showing a rapidly vanishing part of our country's cultural heritage. Whatever the playgrounds of your childhood looked like, the gorgeous photographs in this book will transport you back in time and remind you of just how important play can really be.

Author : Paul J Vanderwood
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 43,20 MB
Release : 2010-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 082239166X

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Satan’s Playground chronicles the rise and fall of the tumultuous and lucrative gambling industry that developed just south of the U.S.-Mexico border in the early twentieth century. As prohibitions against liquor, horse racing, gambling, and prostitution swept the United States, the vice industry flourished in and around Tijuana, to the extent that reformers came to call the town “Satan’s Playground,” unintentionally increasing its licentious allure. The area was dominated by Agua Caliente, a large, elegant gaming resort opened by four entrepreneurial Border Barons (three Americans and one Mexican) in 1928. Diplomats, royalty, film stars, sports celebrities, politicians, patricians, and nouveau-riche capitalists flocked to Agua Caliente’s luxurious complex of casinos, hotels, cabarets, and sports extravaganzas, and to its world-renowned thoroughbred racetrack. Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Louis B. Mayer, the Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, and the boxer Jack Dempsey were among the regular visitors. So were mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel, who later cited Agua Caliente as his inspiration for building the first such resort on what became the Las Vegas Strip. Less than a year after Agua Caliente opened, gangsters held up its money-car in transit to a bank in San Diego, killing the courier and a guard and stealing the company money pouch. Paul J. Vanderwood weaves the story of this heist gone wrong, the search for the killers, and their sensational trial into the overall history of the often-chaotic development of Agua Caliente, Tijuana, and Southern California. Drawing on newspaper accounts, police files, court records, personal memoirs, oral histories, and “true detective” magazines, he presents a fascinating portrait of vice and society in the Jazz Age, and he makes a significant contribution to the history of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Author : Susan G. Solomon
Publisher : University Press of New England
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 14,22 MB
Release : 2014-11-04
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1611686113

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Poor design and wasted funding characterize today's American playgrounds. A range of factors--including a litigious culture, overzealous safety guidelines, and an ethos of risk aversion--have created uniform and unimaginative playgrounds. These spaces fail to nurture the development of children or promote playgrounds as an active component in enlivening community space. Solomon's book demonstrates how to alter the status quo by allying data with design. Recent information from the behavioral sciences indicates that kids need to take risks; experience failure but also have a chance to succeed and master difficult tasks; learn to plan and solve problems; exercise self-control; and develop friendships. Solomon illustrates how architects and landscape architects (most of whom work in Europe and Japan) have already addressed these needs with strong, successful playground designs. These innovative spaces, many of which are more multifunctional and cost effective than traditional playgrounds, are both sustainable and welcoming. Having become vibrant hubs within their neighborhoods, these play sites are models for anyone designing or commissioning an urban area for children and their families. The Science of Play, a clarion call to use playground design to deepen the American commitment to public space, will interest architects, landscape architects, urban policy makers, city managers, local politicians, and parents.

Author : Ben Highmore
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 15,86 MB
Release : 2024-10-14
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1789149851

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A history of post-war playgrounds and their enduring legacy. After World War II, a new kind of playground emerged in Northern Europe and North America. Rather than slides, swings, and roundabouts, these new playgrounds encouraged children to build shacks and invent their own entertainment. Playgrounds tells the story of how waste grounds and bombsites were transformed into hives of activity by children and progressive educators. It shows how a belief in the imaginative capacity of children shaped a new kind of playground and how designers reimagined what playgrounds could be. Ben Highmore tells a compelling story about pioneers, designers, and charities—and above all—about the value of play.

Author : Carroll Pursell
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 47,41 MB
Release : 2015-04-23
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 1421416514

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This “engaging social history of play” explores how technology and culture have shaped toys, games, and leisure—and vice versa (Choice). In this romp through the changing landscape of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American toys, games, hobbies, and amusements, technology historian Carroll Pursell poses a simple but interesting question: What can we learn by studying the relationship between technology and play? From Playgrounds to PlayStation explores how play reflects and drives the evolution of American culture. Pursell engagingly examines the ways in which technology affects play and play shapes people. The objects that children (and adults) play with and play on, along with their games and the hobbies they pursue, can reinforce but also challenge gender roles and cultural norms. Inventors—who often talk about “playing” at their work, as if motivated by the pure fun of invention—have used new materials and technologies to reshape sports and gameplay, sometimes even crafting new, extreme forms of recreation, but always responding to popular demand. Drawing from a range of sources, including scholarly monographs, patent records, newspapers, and popular and technical journals, the book covers numerous modes and sites of play. Pursell touches on the safety-conscious playground reform movement, the dazzling mechanical innovations that gave rise to commercial amusement parks, and the media’s colorful promotion of toys, pastimes, and sporting events. Along the way, he shows readers how technology enables the forms, equipment, and devices of play to evolve constantly, both reflecting consumer choices and driving innovators and manufacturers to promote toys that involve entirely new kinds of play—from LEGOs and skateboards to beading kits and videogames.