called for an Audio Box to provide fifty boys and girls at a time with headsets to enable them to hear their favorite recordings but which would produce no external sound to bother anyone else in the playground. “Near the Audio Box,” said Shirley, “I see a cleverly designed obstacle course with fifteen ways for the boys to show off to each other and to the girls; parallel bars, twenty-foot ropes to climb, an outdoor gym that would beat standing around street corners.”
In her audience there were murmurs about expense, and counter-murmurs that it would be a lot cheaper than funded housing. There were applause and boos.
“Please hear me out,” said Shirley, and because they were being televised, the legislators quieted down.
“I see the entire six-block area surrounded by a border of yard-square mini-gardens, thousands of them filled with topsoil, each allocated to a teen-ager for the season so that she or he could grow flowers or tomatoes and get in touch with the growing seasons in a way few children in Harlem have ever experienced. Think how beautiful it would look during the outdoor months. And believe me, growing vegetables would be doubly constructive.”
For adults beyond working age, Shirley spoke of putting up dozens of triangular checkers-domino-chess tables whose tops rotated to provide a board of the players’ choice, each table sheltered in a plastic cupola that made afternoon-long games possible even in inclement weather. And she suggested that throughout the playground there be placed what she called “stoop chairs,” colorful plastic rockers, their seats connected by ball-and-socket joints to stands anchored in the concrete in twos and threes, so oldsters could sit around and talk or rotate the chairs to face the sun.
Shirley recommended that the six-block area be tended not by Parks Department employees but by Courtesy Patrols, older teen-agers who wore arm bands and received two dollars an hour for maintaining order and cleaning up at the end of the day.
“Now,” said Shirley, “I know the people in this chamber are concerned about the funds for all this. I suggest that the seed money be provided by executives in selected industries at the rate of one hundred dollars for each ten thousand dollars of annual income, tunneled through a tax-deductible organization, and that people like George Delacorte and Roger Stevens be invited to chip in bigger amounts.”
The suggestion for private funding, recorded by television, drew the biggest applause of all from the assembled legislators.
“I suggest to you,” she concluded, “that this playground will attract not only thousands from the nearby tenements but that the mayors of other cities with blighted ghetto areas will send delegations to study this New York plan, that instead of practicing the national sport of reviling this city they will come to emulate it. Even tourists and hardened New Yorkers will come to observe this playground in action. It may result in the first steady incursion of white spectators to Harlem since the days of Small’s Paradise.”
There was laughter in the audience.
“It might even get some of you legislators up there,” she said, and the applause was loudest from the gallery as Shirley left the rostrum.
And so it came to pass that the playground was funded with private donations and, because of the simplicity of the concept, it was built in a fifth of the time it would have taken to put high rises up. The mayor of the city of New York announced with pleasure that in recognition of Shirley Hartman’s plan she would be given the city’s highest award, the Fiorello La Guardia Medallion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK presented Shirley with the La Guardia Medallion in her office, not City Hall. “Look,” she had told the aide who called to make the arrangements, “down there it’ll just be another City Hall photograph. My office is across the street from St. Patrick’s. Why doesn’t he come up here
In her audience there were murmurs about expense, and counter-murmurs that it would be a lot cheaper than funded housing. There were applause and boos.
“Please hear me out,” said Shirley, and because they were being televised, the legislators quieted down.
“I see the entire six-block area surrounded by a border of yard-square mini-gardens, thousands of them filled with topsoil, each allocated to a teen-ager for the season so that she or he could grow flowers or tomatoes and get in touch with the growing seasons in a way few children in Harlem have ever experienced. Think how beautiful it would look during the outdoor months. And believe me, growing vegetables would be doubly constructive.”
For adults beyond working age, Shirley spoke of putting up dozens of triangular checkers-domino-chess tables whose tops rotated to provide a board of the players’ choice, each table sheltered in a plastic cupola that made afternoon-long games possible even in inclement weather. And she suggested that throughout the playground there be placed what she called “stoop chairs,” colorful plastic rockers, their seats connected by ball-and-socket joints to stands anchored in the concrete in twos and threes, so oldsters could sit around and talk or rotate the chairs to face the sun.
Shirley recommended that the six-block area be tended not by Parks Department employees but by Courtesy Patrols, older teen-agers who wore arm bands and received two dollars an hour for maintaining order and cleaning up at the end of the day.
“Now,” said Shirley, “I know the people in this chamber are concerned about the funds for all this. I suggest that the seed money be provided by executives in selected industries at the rate of one hundred dollars for each ten thousand dollars of annual income, tunneled through a tax-deductible organization, and that people like George Delacorte and Roger Stevens be invited to chip in bigger amounts.”
The suggestion for private funding, recorded by television, drew the biggest applause of all from the assembled legislators.
“I suggest to you,” she concluded, “that this playground will attract not only thousands from the nearby tenements but that the mayors of other cities with blighted ghetto areas will send delegations to study this New York plan, that instead of practicing the national sport of reviling this city they will come to emulate it. Even tourists and hardened New Yorkers will come to observe this playground in action. It may result in the first steady incursion of white spectators to Harlem since the days of Small’s Paradise.”
There was laughter in the audience.
“It might even get some of you legislators up there,” she said, and the applause was loudest from the gallery as Shirley left the rostrum.
And so it came to pass that the playground was funded with private donations and, because of the simplicity of the concept, it was built in a fifth of the time it would have taken to put high rises up. The mayor of the city of New York announced with pleasure that in recognition of Shirley Hartman’s plan she would be given the city’s highest award, the Fiorello La Guardia Medallion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK presented Shirley with the La Guardia Medallion in her office, not City Hall. “Look,” she had told the aide who called to make the arrangements, “down there it’ll just be another City Hall photograph. My office is across the street from St. Patrick’s. Why doesn’t he come up here
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