I grew up in the 1940s and 50s, on the Colonial Court block in Sunnyside Gardens in Queens.  My parents and I moved from Manhattan to 41-38 48th Street in the summer of 1944, just two months before my younger brother, David, was born.  

 

          We, and our nurse, Florence Baker, lived together during the work week in the five small rooms and bathroom that were the standard in almost all of the housing in that development.  I think the interior apartments, which had only four rooms and a bath, were the same square footage, but the rooms were slightly larger.  Families with as many as four children made do in very small interior spaces.  (As a young adult, I knew a family with six children who lived in one of the four-room apartments.)  This lack of elbow room was made up for in large part because of the wonderfully designed interior of the block… 

 

          Big shade trees, small back yards attached to all the single and two family homes that along with three small apartment buildings edged the perimeter, a fenced-in tennis court, a big fenced-in garden presided over by one of the original tenants of the neighborhood, a large playground in the center, ringed by large play equipment and a grassy slope where we played adventure games in good weather and that was just steep enough to provide a sledding hill in winter.  The far end of the playground had several big trees that shaded the bench-lined and roofed-in structure we all referred to as “the pagoda.”  This open-sided building provided a paved area where we played endless games of potsy, hopscotch, roly-poly, games played with the pink rubber balls we called spaldeens, and sidewalk checkers.  In order to preserve family sanity, most of us spent all day, every day in the playground, referred to by all of us as “out back.”  The pagoda also provided shelter so we could be outside even on rainy days.

 

          This playground was shared by all the children on the block and the ones who lived in the houses immediately across Forty-Seventh Street.  There were big kid swings, baby swings, a slide, two seesaws, benches, and endless opportunities for all kinds of adventure games generated by young imaginations.  Teenagers hung out together and little kids, many in the charge of sisters only a few years older than themselves, played endless games of house and cars in the area surrounding the pagoda.  Kids from six or seven to young teens spent our days from April to October playing softball on the ballfield in the center of the playground.   Adults rarely spent time out back - perhaps an occasional mother with an infant or very young toddler - but for the most part, the playground was ours and ours alone.

 

          One spring day, shortly after my fourth birthday, I begged to be allowed to go out back by myself.  I had spent the morning at The Progressive School, where I attended nursery school.  We, my brother David, our nurse Florence, and I had had lunch together, David was down for a nap, and I was looking for something to do.  After getting the okay by phone from my mother who was at her job in Manhattan, I was buttoned into my sweater, reminded of exactly how to get to the gate to the playground, and allowed to go on my way.

 

          I still remember how proud I was as I walked out into the playground.  The fact that no other children were out there did not make me hesitate.  Mr. Frankel, a neighbor from one of the other two small apartment buildings on the block, was sitting on the bench under the maple tree just behind the baby swings.  I walked over and sat on the bench with him, and we visited for an hour or so until other children came out to play.  I joined them, and in that moment, I became a full-fledged and independent member of the child world.