Frederick Douglass Playground

What was here before?

This site was the center of what was the Bloomingdale village, a rural area where many affluent New Yorkers had their country homes. Land belonging to St. Michaels, an Episcopalian church founded in 1807 and located southwest of the property, once encompassed this playground.

How did this site become a playground?

In 1954, the City of New York condemned the land for the benefit of the nearby Frederick Douglass Houses. The playground opened in 1958 and the Board of Estimate transferred the property from the New York City Housing Authority to NYC Parks in 1962.

In 1998, the playground was renovated with new modular play equipment and safety surfacing and repaired handball courts. In 2008, the aboveground swimming pool was replaced with a more attractive in-ground mini pool. The playground also features a turf athletic field, a basketball court, a public restroom, a playing field, swings, and a camel play sculpture.

Who is this playground named for?

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a celebrated African American abolitionist, orator, author, and statesman.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (1818-1895) was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland to an enslaved woman named Harriet Bailey. He was owned by Aaron Anthony and sent to work, at age six, to the Wye Plantation. Following Anthony’s death, Frederick was sent to Hugh Auld, in Baltimore, Maryland, where Frederick was introduced to reading and writing. Although literacy among the enslaved was illegal, Frederick developed a passion for the written word and educated himself. In 1834, Auld rented Frederick to a notorious “slave-breaker.” After years of abuse and one unsuccessful escape attempt, Frederick managed to escape to New York City in 1838 and changed his last name from Bailey to Douglass.

Douglass became involved in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and preached abolitionism. In 1841, renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison witnessed Douglass delivering an anti-slavery speech in Massachusetts and immediately enlisted Douglass as an abolitionist lecturer. By 1843 Douglass had become well known throughout the Northern United States for his passionate oratory.

Douglass wrote an autobiography entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass which sold thousands of copies but, it publicly identified Frederick Douglass as an escaped slave subject to the Fugitive Slave Act. While lecturing in Britain, Douglass encountered several prominent abolitionists who purchased his freedom.

In 1847, he served as publisher for the abolitionist periodical North Star. Eight years later, he completed his second autobiography entitled My Bondage and My Freedom. During the 1850s, Douglass supported John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and backed Abraham Lincoln’s presidential bid. Douglass completed his final work, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in 1892. He died shortly after returning home from a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C, in 1895.