The first American playground was built at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1887.Įarly playground equipment resembled gymnasium apparatuses that were meant to appeal to kids of all ages. Social reformers advocated playgrounds as a way to curtail delinquency and provide a safe place for children to play. The trend arrived stateside at a time when immigrant families were crowding into urban neighborhoods. In 1837, German education specialist Friedrich Fröbel founded the precursor to the modern kindergarten and paved the way for children to connect with the outdoors through play. With their roots in 19th-century Germany, playgrounds encourage exercise, good manners, and healthy competition. Remember carefree days outdoors as a youth, spinning until dizzy on a merry-go-round or rubbing waxed paper on a metal slide for a zippier ride? Public playgrounds have long held a special sway, delighting children and filling the rest of us with nostalgia. It’s a point of pride for the whole city.These old-school playground help imaginations soar “Everyone feels very, very protective of it. “The rocket ship is a neighborhood icon,” Payne says. And the view from the top of the rocket ship, Payne says, is even more spectacular. Located at one of the highest points in the city, the park offers sweeping views of Southern California’s South Bay region and, on particularly clear days, landmarks like the Getty Center and Hollywood sign. But, you know, they climbed up there as kids, and now they take their own kids to do the same. “But if a grown-up tries, well, it’s much harder. “Kids can climb up the ship, no problem,” Payne says.
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And the rocket ship continues to be a huge draw. Today, Los Arboles “Rocketship” Park remains one of the most popular parks in Torrance. The Torrance Historical Society installed a plaque on one of the ship’s fins, declaring the structure’s historic status in town, and the park, historically called Los Arboles Park, added “Rocketship” to its name. That September, seven months after its removal, the rocket ship returned to the park, and the city celebrated with a rededication ceremony. The lunar module play piece was also repaired. It was sent to a specialist, where it was rehabilitated, repaired, and brought up to code, complete with new safety features.
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“ had never seen anything like this,” Payne says.īut city officials heard the protesters and vowed to bring the iconic structure back. More than 100 protestors, including some of the region’s aerospace engineers, contacted the city, demanding the rocket ship be returned. The park was even featured in an issue of Life magazine in March 1963.īut in the early 1990s, as the city was reviewing its playground equipment in each of its many parks, the metal rocket ship was targeted as a safety concern. Torrance, an area with a long history in the aerospace industry, was a perfect setting for both the rocket ship and the park’s other major feature, a metal replica of a lunar module. The rocket ship was installed during the height of the Space Race, following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.
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The Rocketship Park opens to a stunning vista of the city. “Kids feel like they’re blasting off into space,” says Janet Payne, a vice president with Torrance Historical Society. On any given day for the last five decades, park visitors would see children scaling the ladder inside the ship from one level to the next and careening down the metal slide on the outside of the structure. The highlight of the 6.3-acre park, completed in the 1960s, has long been the 28-foot-tall rocket ship play structure, purchased from a catalog of playground equipment shortly after a local developer donated the land for the park to the city. The Rocketship Park in Torrance, California.įor generations of children who have grown up in Torrance, Calif., traveling to outer space was as easy as visiting Los Arboles “Rocketship” Park.