78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



All around here there is an immense population of Italians — hundreds and thousands 

 of them; whole tenement houses packed with Italians extend back for some ten blocks; 

 they have their national shows there; they come in there certain fete days, and it is very 

 interesting to see them. 



The building in this park is not so large as that in the W. H. Seward Park, although 

 very nearly, but it does not give that impression because the park is so much larger than 

 the other; there are large platforms around the building which gives an opportunity for a 

 great many people to gather there. 



The whole park has been surrounded with a 6-foot fence; the playground is enclosed 

 with a 6-foot fence; there is little grass; chiefly playgrounds. I think before long we shall 

 have a farm-garden in there, at a point that seems a suitable place for it, quite level, and 

 lying near the street. Maintenance is difficult because the people go and dig up every- 

 thing that is planted. The ItaKans who live in the neighborhood are liable to quarrel 

 and do damage in that way. 



ST. GABRIEL PARK 



There is another small park down at 35th Street, 36th Street, Second Avenue and 

 First Avenue, near the 34th Street Ferry. We have just taken the land down to the water 

 so as to have the right of making a park through to the river. They want to make an 

 elaborate, expensive building for shelter and baths, the value of which I question very 

 much, and have always questioned whether these baths are just the things to have in 

 the park. I think their place is not in the park but in the city, just outside the park. I 

 do not see why they should have baths in a park; they will sometimes have a hundred 

 baths and two or three hundred people in there in the morning in this crowded section. 

 So that we will probably give up making buildings for baths, and use parks for athletic 

 games and playing. There will probably be a recreation pier built here going about the 

 length of half a block into the water, and it will make it very attractive. 



For apparatus, there are teeters, swings, and sHdes; they think a great deal of these 

 slides. I was looking through a catalogue of a Chicago concern the other day, and there 

 are quite a number of these things for children; some of them are very good. 



We have about thirty attendants, who go through the civil service course and have 

 regular salaries paid by the year; these attendants have charge of about 30,000 children, 

 more or less, all told, in the different parks. I found that these attendants were the most 

 difficult to deal with of all the employees we had in the park. They all had their own 

 notions; they were generally educated, and they each had their ideas of how the place 

 should be run; they quarreled with each other over the methods; one would say the children 

 must play ball in a certain way, and one would say they must play in another way; I 

 recollect one day they shut the whole place up on the ground that it was Thanksgiving 

 Day. I had fifteen down before me in one day, and I suspended three. That is the trouble 

 with that kind of help. The whole thing is more or less new. I have seen the teachers 

 keep the children standing there for hours while they explained things to them; and yet 

 the children were there to have a good time. This is not to be wondered at because it 

 is a new thing, and it will have to be established and used in a reasonable way, and it 

 will be in time. 



