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"Immigrant children learning to play on the roof garden of the Washington School in Boston." October 1909. View full size. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Those shirtwaists aren't going to sew themselves!
I find that an interesting choice of words. Children need to learn how to play? I wonder if the children were from Beacon street the comment would have been, "Children of New England denizens learn to play..."
Was that building a former prison or something similar?
The ironwork is almost graceful, but the (mesh) fencing seems somewhat out of place for the time period - considering how lax factories were w/shields and the like on machinery compared to nowadays - and the towers look like they could have been guard towers of some kind ...
[The mesh would be there to keep the kids' balls (and selves) from sailing off the roof. - Dave]
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