Russell Sage Playground
1.469 acres
Russell Sage (1816-1906) was a financier and railroad tycoon who left a philanthropic legacy. He began as a clerk in his brother’s grocery store in Troy, New York, and in 1839 opened his own wholesale grocery business. He acted as treasurer of Rensselaer County from 1844 to 1851, and in 1852 he was elected to Congress on the Whig ticket. He served until 1857 when he took over as vice-president of the La Crosse Railroad in Wisconsin, a company that he had lent money while in office.
In 1863, Sage moved to New York City where he was among the first people to speculate on stocks through “puts” and “calls.” These are stock options that allow investors to reserve stocks at a set price without investing the entire amount initially. He amassed a fortune through his railroad and telegraph ventures in collaboration with the financier Jay Gould (1836-1892). Gould was a successful railroad man, but also partly to blame for the Black Friday financial panic of 1869 when he attempted to corner the gold market.
Through mergers and stock manipulation, Sage controlled 15,000 miles of railways by 1883, including the entire New York City elevated system. He also shared control of the Western Union Telegraph Company with Gould. In 1891, a man entered Sage’s office and demanded $1.2 million, threatening to explode dynamite. When Sage refused, the man detonated the dynamite, killing himself but leaving Sage mostly unharmed.
At the time of his death in 1906, Sage was worth more than $70 million. His wife Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage donated much of the money to philanthropic organizations, such as the YMCA, the YWCA, Women’s Hospital, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also established the Russell Sage Foundation, which is an important contributor to research in the social sciences, and founded Russell Sage College in Troy, New York.
The Russell Sage Foundation was created in 1907 to support “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It looked to urban planning, social work, and labor reform as a way to improve society. The foundation’s first large project was the Pittsburgh Survey, a watershed effort in the use of surveys in social work. Notable among the grants donated by the Russell Sage Foundation was the $1.2 million support for the 1929 plan for the New York metropolitan area by the Regional Plan Association (RPA). This plan brought together many pioneers of urban planning and allowed them to produce one of the most in-depth studies of a metropolitan area ever conducted, with details ranging from transportation to business to open space. The plan was released on the eve of the Great Depression, however, and met many obstacles.
Nevertheless, the RPA plan funded by the Russell Sage Foundation provided many of the ideas used by Robert Moses, who, among his other posts, was Parks Commissioner from 1934 to 1960. At the height of his career, Moses controlled most aspects of public housing, urban renewal and construction (highways, bridges, tunnels, parks). This enabled him to transform much of the city, shaping New York as we know it today.
The City bought the land for this park, located on Booth Street between 68th Avenue and 68th Drive, for recreational and educational purposes in 1950. The park was originally known as JHS 190 Playground. Since the school is also named Russell Sage School the name of the park was changed to Russell Sage Playground in 1985.
The park offers a small basketball court, a spray shower, benches, checkerboards, two handball courts, a comfort station, drinking fountains, and separate play areas for younger and older children with climbing equipment and swings. There is also an asphalt play area, primarily for school use, that can be utilized for tennis, baseball and basketball.
Wednesday, Jan 02, 2002