august1913

I want that dollhouse!

I want that dollhouse too. Hard to believe that was in a playground for public use. Wow!

I'm salivating!! I want that house for MY dolls! LOL Some girls were just so lucky back then!

I think the point is that this dollhouse did not belong to any one girl. 1) You could put something like this out in public without "protection" and it would still be there months later. 2) I'm guessing that if any child broke a piece, the parents would see that it was replaced - probably making the replacement by hand. 3) Kids knew how to SHARE, meaning that kids did not personally own more than a handful of toys at any given time...probably not much more than they could physically carry around with them.

No way was this left outside without protection. The dollhouse was part of a supervised playground activity, and the supervisor (an adult, of at least high school age, who may have been a volunteer, but probably was paid) would have locked it and its contents inside the shed at day's end.

And all those babies are undoubtedly gone forever

Simpler times when mothers enjoyed their children, breastfed , didnt immunize, or mutilate with circumsion, probably co-slept.. When the media wasnt a guide book for parenting! good times, beautiful babies and their beautiful mommas!

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Eye Candy Art Post (share 1 comment 1), and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Excellent image and glas, Very thanks and Greetings.

Kids here in Ann Arbor used to do stuff like this sixty years ago -- probably still do. It was a service of the parks system, called "Supervised Play," and for mere pennies we could weave potholders by stringing elastic cotton loops across a grid of nails, or braid raffia into lanyards. (Our "raffia" came in a selection of bright colors, and was made of some kind of synthetic, plasticized material). We ended up with segments of lanyards that never got finished: the same kind of project that the poet Billy Collins wrote about in his wonderful poem, "The Lanyard," in which he describes one he fashioned as a boy in an Adirondak summer camp: "this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom." "The Lanyard" ---------- thegoodenoughwitch.typepad.com/cyn/2009/04/the-lanyard-by...

NYT of July 3, 1921 query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C04EFD71739E133A... describes the NYC system of playgrounds that operated over the summer. "The public school playgrounds open Tuesday. Throughout the season they will be open from 1:30 P.M, to 5:30 P.M. daily. The regular school term, which closed on June 30, did not end the responsibility of the Board of Education for the welfare of the children...." NYT of August 10. 1913 query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9501E4DC113BE633A... mentions raffia class in particular.

We still had the supervised play when I was growing up in Ann Arbor. I eagerly looked forward to sending my own son off to the park on Saturday afternoons but they have long since discontinued it.