🎡 What happened to the Longfellow School playground?

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A climbable yellow caterpillar now sits lonely in a vacant half-acre expanse of woodchips at the Longfellow School (3017 31st St.), one of the few surviving pieces of equipment where a bustling playground once stood. The school's playground, which has served as the immediate area's de facto play place for more than 100 years, was quietly removed last summer. Because the school no longer serves elementary-aged students, it will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Background

The original Longfellow School dates back to 1886 near the present-day Lake Street Cub. (Regular LW readers will by now expect that even a simple story about a playground removal will involve a detour back to the 1800s.)

It was the first school in the neighborhood, and the first in the city to offer kindergarten. After increasing frustration that the kids didn't have a playground and instead used neighboring Jake Martin's farm, regularly breaking the windows of his barn with their errant baseballs, the newly-formed Minneapolis Women's Club led the charge to build the neighborhood's first playground there in 1908. According to the Minneapolis Tribune, it was "equipped with swings, see-saws, slides, boxes of sand and other attractions dear to the 'kid' heart. Besides these, there will be little tea tables with a full equipment of children's cups and saucers, and the little women of the Longfellow school are due to have afternoon teas on their own hook." It was also the first in the city to be staffed with an adult supervisor, sort of like a lifeguard, on duty during the non-winter months. 

The school moved to its current location at 31st and 31st in 1919, where it served as a K-5 elementary school for 90 years. In 2010, the elementary school was shuttered during a small wave of school closures, and the building pivoted to housing an alternative high school for students who are pregnant or have children, as well as a preschool and a daycare. The high school provides childcare, health services, parenting classes, door-to-door transportation, and other support services to the small student body of about 60 students. The building is also home to the Longfellow Early Learning Center, which offers parenting classes for neighborhood families.

The playground in question was built in 1990. The red-and-yellow jungle gym was geared toward the elementary students that the school then served, with the usual hallmarks of the era: Monkey bars, slides, tubes, elevated walkways. And of course the undulating metal caterpillar.

Like at other neighborhood schools, the playground served as the de facto park for residents of the surrounding blocks, even though it’s not an official public park. From that area, the closest park playground is either Brackett or Longfellow Park, both about a 20-minute walk at an adult's pace.

Removal 

Last year, a story that will sound familiar to those who’ve followed the push to save the Cooper School Playground began to unfold: An inspection of the equipment found that it wasn’t up to the school district’s safety standards. And since it’s no longer an elementary school, there wasn't a budget for rebuilding the equipment. 

Instead, the district budgeted $30,000 for removing the playground. Over the summer, crews took down most of the elementary school equipment on the southwest corner of the lot. They spared the caterpillar, two chair swings, and two tire swings, which had passed the safety inspection. 

They also upgraded the very modest “tot lot” playground that’s geared toward the young children served by the onsite daycare and preschool, and is well used by neighboring families. 

For the time being, the playground will likely remain empty. A spokesperson for Minneapolis Public Schools said they do not have plans to rebuild the playground as long as the building is geared toward high schoolers.