Getting Lost at Smith Memorial Playground

Smith Memorial Playground is six and a half free acres in East Fairmount Park, with a historic mansion kids are allowed to charge through and a giant wooden slide built into the hill.

Two children riding burlap sacks down the Ann Newman Giant Wooden Slide at Smith Memorial Playground in East Fairmount Park.

I first found Smith Memorial Playground in the summer of 2025, when my wife said we should take our seven-month-old son there. She had come across it a few months earlier. I said ok, but I want to get a run in, so I ran the two and a half miles up to it while she and the baby drove (which gave me a huge head start). It sits in East Fairmount Park by the disc golf course in Strawberry Mansion, just west of the driving range on W Oxford, a few blocks from where I used to live in North Philly.

Two things stood out while I stood in the parking lot, sweaty, waiting for them to arrive. First, picnic tables where a few families were holding birthday parties. Second, a giant random mansion in the middle of the park, too far off 33rd Street to see from the road; you get to it on a curvy little road through some trees, even though it sits only a couple hundred feet from the main one.

The place turns out to be great. Six and a half free acres with several playground areas spread through the trees, and the Ann Newman Giant Wooden Slide, a long wooden slide built into the hill that kids ride down on burlap potato sacks (they line up for it with the focus of people boarding a very small roller coaster). The mansion is a free playhouse with three levels of indoor play, an indoor racing arena, and a netted climbing gym (basically the net equivalent of McDonald's old playpens).

It's cool that places like this exist. The playground and the playhouse are both free. The official site is here.