Where Play Matters: A Retrospective of Outside Play Spaces at GDS

Georgetown Day School’s founding teacher and director, Aggie O’Neil, was known for her playful, adventurous spirit and approach to life. She also encouraged and conjured this spirit in others, particularly her students, from the spring trips she took across the country with twenty to forty children in tow, to the spontaneous visit they once made to Mexico to visit an exiled Leon Trotsky. She quickly became well known for these adventurous traits and excursions and was often featured in local and national newspapers. Grassroots activist Florence Richardson Wyckoff once said of her, “She was a schemer and able to do things that nobody else could get away with.”

In line with this philosophy, Aggie placed a strong importance on free play and expression for the children at GDS. This was reflected in both the curriculum and the school’s various locations. There was always dedicated space and time for play.

Grasslands, GDS’s first long-term home (1946 to 1956), had perhaps the most idyllic setting for play, situated within a sprawling ten acres of fields and woods, complete with a stream, where the children could run, play, explore, construct maps, or build art projects. This is where art teacher Dante Radice and the students created the often remembered, child-sized town of foot lockers behind the school. At Grasslands, there was room to accommodate a child’s imagination, and it set a precedent for future spaces.

In 1956, when GDS moved into a more permanent space at 5005 MacArthur Boulevard, they were close to Battery Kemble Park and the Potomac, which proved to be a great extended outdoor space. While this may not have been as ideal as Grasslands, it still provided plenty of space for fun and frolic.

In 1965, to support its continued growth, GDS moved to 4530 MacArthur Boulevard, where they made good use of the “Big Room,” a multipurpose space for plays, bazaars, lectures, and science fairs. Outside, a structure for play was constructed, a tower they referred to as the “Big House.”

As the GDS Lower/Middle school stayed at the 4530 MacArthur location for 55 years, at some point the Big House needed replacing. A more modern playground was established, and they began to refer to the tallest structure as the “Big Toy.”

They remained at the 4530 MacArthur location until 2020, when, under the direction of Head of School Russell Shaw, they built the new Lower/Middle School next to the High School at 4200 Davenport, creating a unified campus. 

Special consideration was also given to designing the new playground. As the new building and grounds were created with LEED certification in mind, the new structures and space would look and feel a bit different from the previous ones. But in keeping with tradition, the idea of the Big Toy play tower was resurrected. Our forever playground now features two tall towers in the Woodlands area and three smaller towers on a new wooden Big Toy. The playground is shared with the Tenleytown community, open to visitors on school days from 6:00 p.m. until sundown. Rooted in a long tradition of free play, the playground remains a shared space where students, families, and neighbors connect through curiosity and joy.

 Watch the construction of the new, forever playground in this time-lapse video »