Lord Lansdowne Public School

Equipment by Dynamo.

Surfaces: sand, asphalt, wood chips.

Lord Lansdowne has always been one of the best-looking Toronto schools from an architectural standpoint. Take a streetcar south from Spadina station, and as the car slowly makes its way around Spadina Circle you’ll see it there on the west side, a modernist crown-shaped building surrounded by the much older rowhouses of the Annex.

Well thanks to a recent rejuvenation, Lord Lansdowne Public School finally has a playground to match its aesthetic good looks. In fact, if I ever get around to re-doing the list of my top 5 favourite school playgrounds, there’s a good chance this one would make the cut.

What stands out to me most about it is the amount of sand. I had always thought schools shied away from sandboxes, knowing that the sand would eventually make its way into the hallways and classrooms of the school. But not here: a long series of sand pits, interrupted by wooden bridges, lines the south side of the play area. There’s even a water pump that promises the ability to create a river through the sand pit, but it’s either just for decoration or wasn’t working when we visited.

Where the sandy area ends, there are some wooden structures, which look like slightly lower-budget imitations of the kind of thing Earthscape makes, but there was no manufacturer’s stamp so I’m not sure who made it.

At the other end, meanwhile, there’s a Dynamo climber similar to the one we discovered at RV Burgess recently, which offers more traditional climbing. The paved area behind it has opportunities for various ball games, and the whole thing is tied together by a blue line that acts as a kind of ring road for the whole schoolyard. Add to that a small grassy area for general running around, and you’ve got just about everything a kid needs to stay entertained at recess, or on a summer afternoon.

High-fives to whoever was in charge of this rejuvenation. It can’t be easy to create engaging play spaces on tight, oddly-shaped downtown lots like this one, but Lord Lansdowne is worth a trip.