Playground Preservation, cont'd: The Case of Tommy the Turtle

Thanks for your patience while I've had to devote myself to science for a bit!  But now back to playgrounds, and specifically to our discussion of this idea of playground preservation.

Fully realized landscapes for play (as opposed to sets of equipment) from the last mid-century, whether well-known ones like Richard Dattner's, or La Laguna Park, or more obscure sites like Fayetteville Arkansas' Wilson Park, are quite rare.  That means if your community has one you should absolutely be taking pains to preserve it!  But it also means that most communities are dealing with, at most, the preservation of worthwhile vintage play features, rather than entire landscapes, and that's rather an easier task.

To illustrate, I present to you the case of Tommy the Turtle.

Note the price:  $350.00 with delivery!

 

 

 

A modernist concrete turtle was one of the play sculpture offerings of the Creative Playthings company in the 1950s and 1960s (in researching this post I was thrilled to find that  Mondo-blogo has posted the entire 1956 Creative Playthings play sculptures catalog online...hooray!)  Designed for durability in reinforced concrete and constructed as a 'tent' so that children could play under as well as on it, the turtle became one of CP's most popular playground features:  its realism was more attractive to buyers than their more abstract offerings, like amorphous climbing stalactites.

The turtle's compact size led to installations, including the companion baby turtles, not just in designated playgrounds but in front of stores and restaurants and along streetscapes (a notion of distributed play space that needs to be revived!). And their concrete durability means that many of them have survived into the twenty-first century. 

But not enough...a fan of the turtle "formerly in the courtyard of Belair Shopping Center" in Bowie, Maryland has created a facebook page devoted to its memory, to which many have contributed their own photos of present and past "Tommy the Turtles".

I want to point out, again, that creators of public space must take seriously the accumulated fondness of a community toward features such as these.  Even leaving aside the fact that the Creative Playthings turtles are now bona-fide artifacts of mid-century design, why tear out something that has proven its value for something that people might, but might not, have the same fun with?  And which certainly, won't have the same  my-mom-played-on-this-turtle-too community memory.

Unless deterioration is simply too far advanced, there is absolutely no reason why a worthy vintage playground feature can't be worked into a new landscape or playground scheme.  At the very least, they should be relocated rather than scrapped.   In perusing a public google map to track the locations of concrete play turtles, both those that are still in place and those that are just a memory, I was disappointed to find that one had been removed for a new playground by a firm that has been featured on this blog (you know who you are, and I want to know what you did with Tommy!).

If you know of a vintage turtle in your area, please add it to the map!  Raising their profile can only increase their chance of making it through the next 30 or so years, until when they're a hundred years old we decide that, oops, maybe we shouldn't have so readily discarded them.

Turtles aren't the only features that should be preserved of course:  I recently stopped by a defunct park in my own city to photograph this mid-century climber:   

I haven't had much time to research its origins yet, so if you can enlighten me, please do.  But I've added it as the first entry in a new public google map I've created  (inspired by the turtle map) of "Playgrounds Worth Preserving".  If you know of a DNA-like climber or a concrete pipe playground or a vintage rocket-ship worth preserving, do please add it to the map, it's set so that anyone can edit, and all countries are welcome! 

(over time I'll be adding the vintage playgrounds that have been featured on this blog to the map; if you'd like to give me a hand with this task get in touch) 

I must say it's a relief to get back to playgrounds after a fierce bout with electrons...more turtle playgrounds on Monday. 

[thanks to reader Mike G for sending me the link to the concrete turtle map, like, a year ago...]