Highland Park Playground Improvements – Seattle WA

Description

In 1925, the Seattle Park Department purchased the site for Highland Park Playground at Thistle Street and 10th Avenue SW. The playground site saw few improvements during the late 1920s and early 1930s. A series of WPA projects between 1935 and 1940, however, transformed the site for use as a neighborhood playground.

The first project, begun in 1935, involved the extension of water mains into the site. That same year, WPA workers began regrading the site and completed some initial planting and landscaping tasks. Additional grading work on the playing field was completed in 1936, along with the installation of several cinder paths. Construction of a concrete wading pool on the western side of the grounds was also begun in 1936. The pool, which was identical in design to another built at the Georgetown Playground, was completed the following year.

In 1938, WPA workers constructed a tennis court in the southwest corner of the grounds and a one-story brick shelter house immediately to the east of the wading pool. The shelter house was a duplicate of the one built about the same time at Van Asselt Playground. The following year, WPA workers completed additional cinder paths across the site, graded and turfed the playground field, and built bull rails around the shelter house and tennis court. Finally, in 1940, the parks department utilized WPA labor to add a bull rail along the northern boundary of the field and to level up the grade around the shelter house.