22 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



and industrial buildings from the residential streets and thus tend to reduce 

 the enormous toll of street accidents. 



In the crowded tenement districts having stores on the ground floor, 

 the roadways are congested with vehicular traffic and push carts and the 

 sidewalks with business encroachments and pedestrians. There is absolutely 

 no place for the child to exercise natural play instincts. Play is as necessary 

 to the child as food and clothing. It is this thwarting of the boy's craving 

 for play that leads to a large proportion of the juvenile delinquency cases 

 that come before the Children's Courts. Ernest M. Coulter, for ten years 

 clerk of the Children's Court, testified he had found by investigation that 

 this thwarting of the play instinct was responsible for at least 40 per cent. 

 of the delinquency cases. While the population of the city is largely 

 recruited from the country, the city's criminal population is largely bred 

 right within its own congested centers. 



The moral influences surrounding the homes are of the greatest im- 

 portance. The sordid atmosphere of the ordinary business street is not a 

 favorable environment in which to rear children. Immediate and continual 

 proximity to the moving picture show, dance hall, pool room, cigar store, 

 saloon, candy store and other institutions for the creation and satisfaction 

 of appetites and habits is not good for the moral development of the child. 

 Influences and temptations resulting from the proximity of such business 

 to the homes may affect seriously the morals of the youth of the community. 

 Under such conditions it is difficult to cultivate the ideals of life that are 

 essential to the preservation of our civilization. 



Rowland Haynes, an expert on recreation facilities and secretary of 

 the Committee on Recreation of the Board of Estimate, testified to the 

 practical impossibility of providing enough playgrounds for the children in 

 the crowded tenement sections and to the relief to this situation that the 

 districting plan will afford by creating residential districts from which busi- 

 ness and industry will be excluded and which can therefore be used as tempo- 

 rary play spaces. Mr. Haynes said : 



" The advantage to the whole recreation problem lies in having 

 reserved residence streets. By having streets reserved for residence 

 purposes it is going to be possible, since the delivery traffic in such 

 streets will be comparatively light, to use some of them for tempo- 

 rary play places, as was done by the Police Department in about 25 

 locations last Summer. The only thing I wish to emphasize is the 

 urgency and importance of such possibilities which are opened up by 

 the action of your Commission. 



" In the first place, we have to realize that through some studies 

 which we had previously made we have found that wherever the 

 density of population exceeds 37.5 per acre, about 80 per cent., in 

 fact, somewhat over 80 per cent, of the children have to play away 

 from home, either because there is no place in their own back yards 



