By 1905, nine playgrounds had been built in Lower Manhattan—products of a social movement started in the late 19th century that called for safe, supervised places for city boys and girls to play.
But nine playgrounds couldn’t possibly serve all the tenement-district kids who dwelled in downtown neighborhoods at the time. For most of them, the streets remained their playgrounds.
And snowbanks surrounding a block of rundown red brick storefronts made the perfect launching spot for a snowball fight.
George Luks painted “Children Throwing Snowballs” in 1905. The thick brushstrokes suggest action, almost chaos. Is it kids vs. kids, with two adults watching from a shop awning…or a group of kids lobbing snowballs at the adults, a shopkeeper in a smock and female customer dressed in black?
The boy in the red coat is in the center of the image, and our eyes are drawn to his warrior stance. At this moment, the boy might be imagining that he isn’t on a gritty snowbank but on top of a parapet. He’s a knight defending his kingdom, or a soldier leading his backup troops to victory—not just another poor city kid making mischief on a winter afternoon.
Ephemeral New York 