Fred Samuel Playground

What was here before?
In 1658 Peter Stuyvesant established the village of Nieuw Haarlem north of New Amsterdam along what was then the Post Road, a former Lenape trail. The area remained farmland and country estates for the next century. This parcel was located along the property lines of two prominent Loyalist families, the Delanceys and Coldens, whose members played important roles in New York politics. In the nineteenth century, when Harlem development boomed, their heirs divided and sold their properties and by the early 1900s several buildings occupied this lot, which bordered the new P.S. 139 school building.

How did this site become a playground?
The city acquired this property through condemnation in 1937 and the playground, built through the Works Progress Administration, opened two years later. It was the first site jointly purchased and managed by the Departments of Parks and Education. This precursor evolved into Jointly-Operated Playgrounds, hundreds of schoolyards managed by both agencies that open to the community after school hours. At the playground’s opening ceremony, a parade including “troops from the 369th Infantry, the Monarch Elks Band, and Park Department Band and approximately a thousand neighborhood children led by a mounted police escort” marched from a playground opening that had concluded on 150th Street to this site.

The playground was unofficially known as Readers Digest Park in 1975 after the publisher donated funds for its reconstruction. In 1984 the vacant school was adapted for senior housing and the playground was formally transferred to NYC Parks. The park also expanded into what was formerly the schoolyard and was later reconstructed in 1992.

Who is this playground named for?
Frederick E. Samuel (1924-1985) devoted his career as a lawyer and politician to improving Harlem residents’ quality of life. Samuel was born in Montserrat, West Indies and came to New York in 1943. Samuel received his B.S. from McGill University, Montreal in 1949, his M.A. degree from New York University in 1950, and his J.D. from Fordham University in 1954.

Samuel earned a reputation as the “People’s Lawyer” in Harlem. He began his political career as a Democratic Party district leader and was elected councilman in 1973. He held the office for three terms over the next twelve years. As Chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Samuel was responsible for the adoption of influential legislation, including laws that changed how juveniles were detained and an early warning system for neighborhoods experiencing frequent arson. He also helped organize Harlem Days, the annual observance in which volunteer lawyers, doctors, and other professionals provide free services to residents. This playground is a block from Samuel’s home on Strivers’ Row, where he lived for 17 years.

Samuel died on September 12, 1985, just two days after he won the Democratic nomination for a fourth term. The playground was named in his memory that same year by a local law.