134 COMMISSION' ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



American schools are trying to get 40 and 50 square feet per child for their 

 play use. There comes in the problem of the times in which the play areas 

 are used. That is the reason why we are interested in a duplicate school 

 plan in Xew York City. With the present system, a large number of chil- 

 dren are thrown on small play areas at half past three in the afternoon. If 

 the duplicate school system is extended, it makes possible the use of the 

 small area over and over again. If you have 30 square feet reserved for 

 each child all the time, it uses up a great deal of space, but if you can use 

 that amount of space over and over again by different sets of children 

 through the day, you have an opportunity to make that 30 square feet really 

 adequate and you will not require the 50 square feet which some cities are 

 trying to get. 



I usually say that you can handle about 300 children per acre at one 

 time, but that you can count on an acre's handling a thousand children 

 adequately during the day since it is shown that there is a flux back and 

 forth even without the regulated flux which comes with duplicate schools. 

 When I spoke of duplicate schools I was not referring to school problems. 

 I am particularly interested in the duplicate school plan, not from the stand- 

 point of the educational problem, but from the standpoint of the recreational 

 problem. Such a plan makes possible, by co-operation between the School 

 and the Park Departments, the wider use of both school and park play- 

 grounds. For the park playgrounds, it means that instead of having park 

 plavground leaders who are more or less unemployed part of the day, we 

 should have park playground leaders who would be employed all day because 

 of the different shifts of children coming to them on the park playgrounds 

 from the nearby schools. 



Studies in four or five cities indicate that the average child of twelve 

 vears will not go more than a quarter of a mile to play. However, a slight 

 modification comes in time : that is, after a playground becomes established, 

 after the parents become confident of its good management, the children are 

 drawn from a little wider area. But it is true that little children won't go 

 more than from two to six blocks, sometimes less. 



Statement by Joseph J. Holwell. President, Greenpoint Taxpayers' 



and Citizens' Association, April 10, 1916 

 Need of protecting parks from factories 



I feel that McCarren Park ought to be made a great playground. It 

 is the only big public breathing spot we have in the Eastern District. We 

 as a community are not a community of men and women who are able to 

 get out of Greenpoint for recreation purposes. You who are familiar with 

 Brooklyn and particularly the Eastern District know that a manufacturing 

 center is a tenement house center, and that the people who reside in those 

 tenements have not the wherewith in most cases to get out of such a section 

 for recreation purposes. It is considered a great boon once or twice each 

 vear for these people to go to Coney Island or Rockaway Beach. There- 

 fore, we must bring recreation centers to them, and inasmuch as the City 

 has paid over $1,300,000 for McCarren Park. I think it should be developed 

 into a great public playground and park. It can be made such by prohibit- 

 ing the erection of factories in the future on private property fronting on 

 the park. 



