The first playground: the clubwomen's six acres

1908-1923

The board: Organized family play in Fort Wayne begins with government. In 1905, under the state's Cities and Towns Law, Mayor Henry C. Berghoff appointed the first Board of Park Commissioners, and the board's early work ran quickly to children: the department's history records the first supervised playground in 1908, at the corner of Clinton and Douglas Streets, operated by Miss Carrie Snively. Supervised is the operative word. The playground movement's claim, in Fort Wayne as nationally, was that a child at play under a trained eye was being educated and kept safe at once, and the claim sold.

The campaign: The newspapers carry the fundraising in the small print. A playgrounds benefit social fills the Journal Gazette of 22 and 23 August 1910, the second day's account counting 3,000 people at the benefit. On 6 May 1911 the Fort Wayne Daily News announced "Playgrounds Opened Today" over a report that 300 children swarmed the grounds; by 10 July 1911 its columns have boys swimming at the Holman Street ground and a New Bowser playground opening. Play was news because play, as a civic provision, was new.

Guldlin's ground: The city's first playground proper was six acres on the site of the first French fort, built in 1722, and it was made by private hands. Addie Guldlin, concerned that children had no safe places to play, worked through her club associations with other progressive women of the city to raise the funds for a large ground with elaborate equipment; it was dedicated on 20 May 1911. The marker that stands on the site now is also its epitaph: the playground was all swept away in the great flood of 1913. The idea survived the equipment. In 1923 the park board assumed responsibility for all summer playgrounds from the school board, along with the community centers, and supervised play became a standing department duty rather than a campaign. It has never stopped being one since.

The gift with the children's clause: The era's private giving carried the same idea in deed language. When S. F. Bowser and his wife gave the tract around their factory to the city, the parks record preserves their stated purpose: "for the comfort and pleasure of our neighbors and their children for all time." Bowser Park and Playgrounds is the name the gift has carried since. The year of the Bowser gift is printed in the sources two ways, 1923 in the genealogical society's parks narrative and 1932 in the parks list, and this record prints the words, which are fixed, over the year, which is not yet reconciled.

Sources:

1. History of the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department thru 2019 (the 1905 board, the 1908 Snively playground, the 1923 assumption of the summer playgrounds).
2. Allen County Genealogical Society, Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation page (the 1910 and 1911 newspaper citations; the Bowser gift wording).
3. Historical Marker Database, "The First French Fort / The First Playground in Fort Wayne" (the Guldlin playground, dedicated 20 May 1911, destroyed in the 1913 flood).