Alfred E. Smith Playground

Alfred E. Smith Playground stands as a tribute to the man who was born just blocks away and rose to become a four-term governor of New York. Known as The Happy Warrior, Alfred Emanuel Smith started as a local boy from the Lower East Side who left school early to support his family. He later championed landmark labor safety laws and pushed for the very housing and parkland projects that reshaped this neighborhood in the mid-twentieth century.