Alice Dietz, Park Board staff 1916-1957
Alice Dietz’s 40-year career in recreation with Minneapolis parks, from 1916 to 1957, expanded athletic programs for women and youth, and produced some of the most notable pageant events in the city’s history.
Dietz was first hired as an instructor at Maple Hill (Beltrami) Park and Bryant Square Park, then moved on to become the director of the Logan Park field house, the only year-round park facility at the time. Dietz began to organize the highly popular playground pageants which took place in Lyndale Park each summer. Pageants involved upwards of 1500 children who represented every Minneapolis park. Dietz wrote and directed the pageants, which were performed in elaborate homemade costumes. The pageants attracted up to 40,000 audience members over a two-day run, and were held every year from 1916 to 1941, with just one break due to the Depression.
Dietz was best known for her pageants, but she also greatly expanded athletic programs for women and girls. In 1922 she oversaw the conversion of the Logan Park social room into an indoor gymnasium for sports, and during the hard years of the Depression when recreation budgets were slashed and the park board eliminated the positions for all 74 playground instructors, she continued to train volunteers from the American Legion.
From 1934 to 1943, the Works Progress Administration supported a recreation program which would place more than 240 staff in Minneapolis parks and playgrounds. During that time, Alice Dietz trained personnel and expanded programs to include arts such as dance, music, and handcrafts, some of the most comprehensive programming in the city’s history.