In 1947, Macedonia, a small cooperative community in rural Georgia, was looking for a way to pay the bills. False starts involving broilers and persimmon pies left the young entrepreneurs ready to listen when visiting educators urged them to supply the nursery school movement with play equipment made from their 600 acres of woodland. A teacher from Caroline Pratt’s City and Country School in Manhattan introduced Pratt’s modular Unit Block design, and Community Playthings was born.
Meanwhile the Bruderhof community movement was coming out of the backwoods of Paraguay where they had homesteaded as World War II refugees. In 1954 they founded Woodcrest in Rifton, NY, the first Bruderhof in the United States. When Macedonia joined, they brought Community Playthings north with them. The Bruderhof has been making wooden play equipment for a living ever since.
The 1960s brought Head Start. The 1970s introduced daycare for infants and toddlers. The 21st Century presents new challenges. We have lost the original pioneers but we’re grateful that Tom Potts, our early General Manager, held to the mantra “Quality, quality, quality.” We are grateful that the business has grown alongside our communities. We are grateful to our customers--the new and the loyal--for demanding quality, and we look forward to continuing that way together.
