The world of play changed forever in the early 1970s, when the Consumer Product Safety Commission targeted playgrounds as potentially dangerous. Once Upon a Playground: A Celebration of Classic American Playgrounds, 1920-1975, offers a visual tribute to the vanishing playgrounds of the American past, celebrating their place in our culture and the collective memories of generations. Drawing from hundreds of the author’s contemporary photographs and illustrations from her collection of playground catalogs, along with playground images from the Library of Congress, the book provides historical context and cultural insight as it inventories a playground vernacular that developed over decades.

Your earliest memories may be of playground equipment like that shown in this book, or you may be discovering it here for the first time. Either way, you will find here images to delight the eye and inspire the soul. Whether you are young or old, the book will carry you back to an earlier time, where you will relive the joy of play and discover playgrounds’ important role in the country’s cultural history.