Lillian D. Wald Playground

The Lillian D. Wald Playground is named after a pioneering public health nurse and social reformer who fundamentally changed how the city cares for its most vulnerable residents. In the late nineteenth century, Wald lived in this neighborhood and observed that local children had no space to play except for dangerous, traffic-filled streets. She advocated for the creation of public recreational areas as a fundamental human right, eventually helping to establish the nation's first permanent municipal playground. In nineteen thirty-seven, the city made an extremely rare exception to its laws by naming this site after her while she was still alive, honoring her decades of work for district nursing and child welfare.