Baruch Playground can be found on the corner of Baruch Place and Mangin Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
This large park has facilities such as basketball courts, handball courts, a playground area, spray showers for kids to have some water play time and public restrooms.
What’s at Baruch Playground
For families and kids, one of the main draws of Baruch Playground is the children’s play area which occupies the southeastern section of the larger park.
This consists of climbing frame and obstacles that kids can play on.
The metal frame playground has ladders as well as other climbing apparatus for kids. There is also an arched climbing wall that kids can use to scale up to a set of monkey bars that they can also climb on top of.
In addition, other features of the Baruch Playground children’s play area include plastic “hammocks” that kids can sit in.
There are also vertical bars that function as merry-go-rounds for an individual child. They can swing around on these by shifting their weight around.
The Baruch Playground also has swings for kids to kick up towards the sky in.
Other facilities and features that can be found at Baruch Playground include benches, lovely London planetrees and spaces for league and recreational softball, flag-football, basketball and handball.
Who is Baruch Playground Named For?
Baruch Playground gets its name from not one but two Baruches.
The first was Dr. Simon Baruch who was a doctor who moved to New York in 1881. He managed to lobby for a public bathhouse to be built to help with poor sanitation of the tenements nearby.
This led to the first free public bathhouse opening in 1901. In 1917, the city gave the bathhouse a new name and dedicated it to Dr. Baruch in honour of his unwavering devotion to promoting public health.
In 1939, Bernard Baruch, son of Dr. Baruch donated most of the land for the park to the city. The city renovated the bathhouse and built a playground at the park in 1940.
In 1951, to honor Bernard Baruch’s generosity, the park and the neighboring housing development were named after him.
Unfortunately, the bathhouse was closed off in 1975 because it had become in too bad a state to operate.
However, things may be changing because on September 30, 2020, NYC Park issued a Request for Proposal to revitalise the abandoned Baruch Bathhouse.
Where is Baruch Playground
If you enjoyed this story, you will also enjoy this other story about another park in the Lower East Side.
