Flashback Friday: The First Tot Lot

Baseball's Mel Ott 'cavorted' in Radburn playground

Robert Hudson wrote the first book about Radburn. A Plan of Living, published in 1934, is loaded with facts, from how many residents had attended college (a whopping 80 percent) to the number of books in the association’s library (5,400).

But Hudson, the model community’s first recreation director, was not inerrable. In an interview tape recorded in 1978 and stored ever since at Radburn Association offices in The Grange, he wrongly claimed to have invented the term “tot lot.’’

He said that in summer 1931, two years after the first residents moved in, “we organized a preschool playground activity’’ in the fenced yard of an old farmhouse on Fair Lawn Avenue. The rambling structure became known as The Children’s House and housed the Radburn Nursery School.

“The question was, ‘What do you call it?’’’ Hudson said of the playground. He continued: “One of the very few words I ever coined in my life was ‘Tot Lot.’ … There’s Tot Lots all over the country now. I’m sorry I didn’t register it.’’

Other Radburn residents interviewed in 1978 agreed that the term was invented in Radburn. They, however, credited Betty Christie, director of the nursery school.

But while Radburn was an early adopter of the Tot Lot name and concept, it was not the first.

On July 15, 1929, for instance, a news wire service story from Philadelphia began:

“Totlot! It’s a new magic word. It means rest for mothers. It means rest for babies. It means safety for all.’’

That city’s first “totlot” had been created by the Philadelphia Playground Association, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of poor children. The article reported that similar places existed in Chicago, where they were called “baby playgrounds.’’

The article defined a totlot as an area 18 by 50 feet with a low fence, shower, toilets, sandboxes, swings, jungle gyms and a top bar at the entrance to keep older kids out.

Radburn’s Tot Lot opened June 5, 1931, in what had been the Bogert house on the south side of Fair Lawn Avenue, near an approach to the footbridge over the avenue. At the time, Hudson told reporters that it was “probably the first playground of its kind’’ for 2-year-olds, and that Radburn was “frankly experimenting.’’

He may have been referring to the fact that Radburn had not just a playground but a supervised program -- six mornings a week. In his book, he claimed that in summer, it “released 9,000 hours to 70 mothers.’’

Ott in Tot Lot

In 1939, Radburn’s Tot Lot was the scene of a publicity stunt orchestrated by the New York Herald Tribune that was camouflaged as a scientific experiment.

New York Giants baseball star Mel Ott agreed to mimic the activities of a 4-year-old – Johnny Beckett of Bancroft Place – to determine if an adult, even a trained athlete, could follow “a little tot around and go through all the physical activities that the child does, without fading.’’

Ott duly shadowed Johnny, swinging, climbing, jumping, riding and even playing ball. The Herald Tribune declared Johnny the winner “hands down.’’ But the Bergen Evening Record, whose story was headlined “Mel Ott Cavorts with Boy,’’ emphasized the man’s endurance.

In fact, Ott returned to New York that day and played both ends of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds.

Two Tot Lots

In the summer of 1946, the first after World War II, Radburn’s summer recreation program had record participation, including average daily Tot Lot attendance of 150.

But the following year the developer of an apartment complex on Fair Lawn Avenue bought and tore down the Bogert house. So in summer 1947 Radburn opened two Tot Lots – one in B Park and one in R Park. They’ve been there ever since.

As for Johnny Beckett and Mel Ott: the latter died in 1958 in his native Louisiana from injuries suffered in a car crash. He was 49. And the boy with whom the slugger once cavorted died in 2012 in Irving, Texas. He was 77. To his dying day he loved soccer, a sport in which you never stop moving.

(This article first appeared on the Radburn Association website in 2023.)