For several generations now, the Space Age themed playground at Heights Park has fascinated and affixed Heights Park as one of the few truly unique places in Richardson’s suburban landscape. The rocket at least was placed in the park in the early 1960s and other pieces – iconic of many things in Richardson and beyond as we will discuss – such as the radar dish, the submarine and the ringed planet were soon to follow.

The playground has served generations starting with children of post war baby boomers, young hippy wannabees, to the “Me generation” of the 1970s, the MTV generation of the 1980s, to Generation X, and now probably even some children of so-called “Millennials.” Along with serving children, the playground also served adults as well. It allowed parents and even grandparents to return to their roots and share the experience with their children. Even adults without children could identify the iconic shapes, form, and sizes of these pieces in time if they chose to return to the city.

Suburban landscapes change rapidly. Rarely in the ever morphing space of urban sprawl do public and human spaces grow organically from culture and landscape to form truly unique places that give us a true and lasting sense of place. Such a gift as the playground at Heights Park is one such place. It is probably the only truly intergenerational place in Richardson that grew from within the culture itself. I can say that because my parents first brought me to Richardson in August of 1968.

The playground’s lack of compliance with various standards has been known for some time. Most notably it does not live up to safety standards of today. The decision to remove it did not come overnight. I know because I played a part on those decisions.

In 2007, the City of Richardson began to develop a master plan to renew Heights Park. Heights Park was Richardson’s second park coming after Terrace Park in east Richardson. Some of the early plans for renewal essentially ignored the Rocket and other playground pieces. The rocket was relegated to being an “entry feature” at best and the other pieces were ignored and thus relegated to the scrap heap. People raised a stink and I raised a stink too.

That resulted in the essay that was one of the inaugural pieces of the Richardson Echo. (Click Here)  It can be found by clicking here. It also resulted in the Dallas Morning News taking interest as can be seen if you click here. All the dust kicked up from those pieces as well as other people calling city officials put the temporary brakes on the master plan from being accepted immediately.

The City then formed the “Heights Park Playground Task Force” (or HPPTF) made up of hand picked residents (including myself), park board members, and city staff. The HPPTF would gather testimony from experts and make recommendations about the future of the playground. The task force met with safety experts, risk analyst, playground designers, an architectural historian, and various other assorted experts.

The conclusions and much of the testimony can be found on the City of Richardson’s website if you click here. The long and short of it is that the HPPTF concluded that the equipment was far out of alignment with current safety standards and recommended it be removed. I agree with that decision.

I know a great amount of discussion can be had regarding the safety issues. Some people might suggest that this is an attempt to cocoon children and keep them from skinning their knees. Some people might suggest that kids can get injured on new playgrounds and therefore we ought to consider the older equipment safe as well. Some say, “We played on it when we were kids and nobody died.”

Almost all of the plethora of claims of overprotecting children are misplaced. The safety issues of the equipment are very real. Some of the hazards that exist can result in permanent debilitating injury or even death. I know very well that this brief statement will not settle it in the minds of many reading this and I accept that. However, please understand two things. First, remember that we heard hours of expert presentations on the safety issues. Second, understand that I am a very vocal proponent for preservation of this equipment and so for me to say that the equipment ought to be taken out of use is not something I chose to endorse lightly. For the sake of the rest of my discussion I hope you will at least provisionally accept that there are serious safety flaws so that we can get on to what I consider the more serious issues: preservation of this equipment and of culture itself.

My greatest concern is that I believe that Richardson does not understand what it has and what it is losing. What it is losing is not a playground that people are attached to. It is not something that is merely “emotional” as is flippantly stated by some including some City of Richardson employees. Richardson is losing a place. It is losing a place that it does not have plans to continue. Further Richardson is losing a piece of its cultural heritage.

I hesitated getting involved any more than I did after I initially helped bring it to people’s attention. However, I started getting calls at my house and e-mails discussing the playground. People thanked me and urged me to stick up for the issue.

I had an e-mail forwarded to me from someone in Arkansas that used to live in Richardson who hoped the equipment would not leave the park. I had a discussion from someone in Arlington who takes her kids to Richardson so she can visit relatives and all of them can then go to that park. They ranged from adults reminiscing to parents and grandparents glad they could share it with their kids.

There were others. A man told me in the 1970s that he climbed to the top rather clandestinely to paint the nosecone of the rocket for a Boy Scout project. (Incidentally, that man later painted my house!) A woman told me that her friends used to go there before school and practice their music for their school band.

Lastly, I was contacted by a woman from New York who holds both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Arts in Photography. She told me that she was, “working on a project for the past 3 years traveling over 23,000 miles throughout the United States documenting the ‘Cold War Era’ rocket ship playgrounds.” She then said, “It appears that the park has some of the most unique equipment which I have yet to document,” and “I do hope that these pieces have indeed been preserved and are available for use by the public.”

There is a word for these types of experiences. It’s called “culture.” If Richardson does not pay attention to its own then it will drift away like a sandcastles.

For all practical purposes this is an architectural issue. What we are discussing is erected structures that are designed to be used for a human purpose. They are placed and integrated into the landscape and this helps define the space and landscape around them. Further, the equipment was given specific and intentional form which further helps define the experience of using the equipment and experience of being within the equipment.

You might think the HPPTF dealt with these issues. Well, we did sort of. We did bring in two people. They were well qualified people from UTD and they deserve a great amount of credit. They were Drs. Charissa Terranova and Frederick Turner.

However, I was forced to find these experts and negotiate their scheduling. Given the forced rush to schedule them, I had no idea what direction to send them in. As a result they provided excellent presentations but in the end the HPPTF did not really deal with historical, cultural and architectural issues on any deep level.

Although the HPPTF expanded its scope to include all of the equipment on all of the playgrounds at Heights Park, my reason for involvement is the four iconic pieces: The Rocket, the Radar, the Submarine and the Planet.

My firm belief is that these pieces – and I mean all of these pieces – should be reintroduced into the park in some fashion which respects their form, cultural makeup and the culture of Richardson. The pieces represent not just what helped define that place in Heights Park but the pieces represent things about their age of design and the attitudes of the greater culture. All of these merge to form a rare confluence of elements in a public space. Many cities would kill to have such a meaningful confluence within their confines. They would celebrate it.

A confluence of what elements?

These pieces were designed in an era when people had particular attitudes about design of objects. This attitude, which Dr Terranova refers to as “futurity,” exemplifies an optimistic outlook to technology and science. Contrast that with how the future and technology is portrayed today in movies like The Matrix and slightly less recently, Blade Runner. The future and technology in those visions is dystopian. In the 1950s and up to the late 1960s, design and art took a more utopian view. The playground pieces exemplify this optimistic view, as they are exemplary representations of this attitude of futurity.

This attitude was taken up in Richardson in its economic development. Richardson’s post-war economy flourished in Collins Radio and Texas Instruments. Raymond Noah, Richardson’s Mayor from 1968 to 1983, stated in an open letter commemorating Richardson's 100th anniversary, “I invite you to ... view Richardson’s past with a sense of pride in accomplishments and to anticipate the future with confidence.” A motto on Richardson’s official crest at that time read, “A Growing City with a Planned Future.” Richardson's attitude dripped with futurity.

Beyond that the forms of the pieces are iconic to the larger society of which Richardson was and is a part of. The pieces have been described as “Space Age,” “Space Race,” and “Cold War.” It’s not lost on people at all that the age of the Rocket ship was one where the United States was racing the Russians to the moon. The radar and the submarine constitute technologies that warn us of enemies or ward them off. Even if it’s an accident, it should not be forgotten that Richardson’s economic development played a part in the development of these technologies.

The last part – and an essential part – which ties this together like a bow on a Christmas present is that the playground and its pieces (because they are simply not just any playground pieces) form a defined “sense of place.”

Although I understood earlier that there was a kind of place that stood out as greater than the sum of its parts, the term “sense of place” first entered my consciousness when I spoke to architect James Pratt in a telephone call in 2007. Pratt is an architect who was chiefly responsible for the restoration of the “Old Red” Courthouse downtown, and he was involved with the now defunct “Dallas Plan” which was a plan to vision the future of Dallas. (Presumably some of that ended up in the “Forward Dallas” plan and the better parts of the Trinity River Project.) When I spoke to him, he first told me I wasn’t crazy for thinking like this when I asked him. He went on to say that reuse of old structures in a public space can be important because “its hard to know where we are going unless we know where we came from.”

Incidentally, I was intending to get Pratt’s formal input – which he was willing to give surprisingly given how busy and in demand he is – on the HPPTF but the time constraints hoisted upon me by the timetable created by the parks department made that impossible. You would think that someone of James Pratt’s caliber would have been welcomed with open arms by Richardson if he wanted to give input into open, urban space planning. I guess not.

This sense of place, as I have noted, has now crossed generations. For whatever reasons be it accident, intention, or lucky providence, the sense of place provided by the Heights Park playground reaches people from many generations and for many diverse reasons. (Recall my anecdotes above.) To a degree the significance and value of the “Space Ageness” of the Heights Park playground is accidental.

One argument against keeping the pieces and in downplaying their significance (which comes from certain Richardson employees in the parks department no less) is that the pieces were ordered from a catalog and they were not even arranged in the same playground area in the beginning.

However, that account misses the fact that in the entire span of architectural history the sense of place brought out by many of the world’s most significant places was accidental. In my earlier essay I mentioned the Eiffel Tower as one such place. It was thought to be ugly by many upon construction, was intended to be dismantled and not permanent, and now we could not think of Paris without it. According to one account it is the most visited landmark in the world. Its significance is greatly accidental. In the same fashion the Heights Park playground is that in miniature. It even adorns the Richardson, Texas Wikipedia entry in two places which means that people editing that entry thought that playground is what Richardson means to them.

A continuation of this place and this piece of culture cannot be achieved by getting a bunch of neighborhood kids together with an expert playground designer to craft a new playground as is planned. That is a laudable endeavor and one that ought to happen but it is, most definitely, a separate issue from the one of maintaining place and culture.

The HPPTF did not discuss preservation or what preservation meant in any deep sense. We never asked the question, “What does it mean to preserve something?” I attempted to bring this up as a topic or question (along with other topics) during our first meeting and my attempts were rebuffed by Richardson city staff.

During our deliberations on preservation of the rocket, “preservation” amongst the members meant anything from melting the rocket down and creating and selling commemorative coins of it, turning it into a bench, or having it featured in architectural relief in the side of a the recreation center. Seriously. These suggestions were actually presented as forms of preservation. Orwell would be proud: “Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength; Destruction is Preservation.” Never did we ask the question: “Do we have a duty to the present and past to preserve in some way this sense of place for generations beyond ours?”

To be fair, some talk of preservation was added to the recommendation documents given to the city council. However, most of that was vague and does not answer the substantive questions. That document gives the city planners enough wiggle room to follow an Orwellian-like “Destruction is preservation” attitude.

Another argument is to place the rocket at the center and all but ignore the other pieces. Additionally another is to move the pieces including the rocket out of the park itself and into other areas like the new pool or swim area that will go into the new master plan. While its true the rocket is a standout attraction, the entire sense of place is created by the other pieces in its present as well as their longevity in the place. Context plays a part here. A department store without a mall would just be a department store. Going back to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it would not have the significance if not for being injected into Paris. Likewise, whether these playground pieces become objects of art altered by skilled and visionary artists (or whatever might be dreamt up), they belong in the park.

If the Rocket were the only piece in the park it would not have not have nearly the significance it has in the absence of the supporting pieces. It certainly would not have the same significance if not in the park itself.

During our deliberations, someone from the park staff made a comment about removing the playground equipment. He said, somewhat jokingly, that we are not going to be like Chicago Mayor Daley and come in the middle of the night and remove everything.

What he is referring to is Mayor Richard Daley’s unilaterally closing of Chicago’s venerable old airport, Meigs Field, on March 30, 2003. The City of Chicago was fined by the Federal Government for its actions and Daley was criticized as “authoritarian.” Even so, Daley had many widespread vocal supporters. So far, the area has been turned into park space with further expansion expected.

However, it dawned on me is that what Richardson needs is a Richard Daley. (By this I do not mean at all that Mayor Steve Mitchell ought to behave like Daley. This should not be misinterpreted.) What I mean is the character and leadership that Daley portrayed (even if mistaken with Meigs Field which is a matter of opinion) is missing within Richardson. We need someone to step up, take charge, and show an attitude of protecting a sense of place within Richardson.

Since we are on the subject of architectural history, let me give one last lesson from history. One is about Frank Lloyd Wright’s first large work, the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo New York, and other is Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Japan. Neither building exists today.

The Larkin Building was demolished under dubious circumstances in order to make way for a truck stop. No truck stop was ever built. As is the case with many lost works and places, the value and stupidity of demolition was only realized in hindsight. The Imperial Hotel had to be demolished because of earthquake issues. The building was built when engineers and architects did not know enough to build to withstand earthquakes. However, the front façade of the building was deconstructed and reconstructed at an architectural museum in Japan. We sit with the opportunity to imitate one of these cases? Which will it be? Will the descendants of Richardson look back and say, “What were they thinking? Didn’t they realize what they had?”

I challenge anyone to come up with another place within Richardson that has as much significance bound up within it and has spanned generations of Richardsonians. There isn’t one. This is the only one we have got. The place and its physical elements cannot be kept as playground equipment but it can be transformed into something that still has a sense of place for the generations now and in the future.

Which choice will be made? The Heights Park master Plan is certainly a laudable effort. However, if it turns Heights Park into Just Another Park then we will have lost something from Richardson. Without something unique and without a sense of continuity to our own culture Heights may become Just Another Park.