Let's Play

For generations, the yards and walkways at the Piatt home served as play spaces for Piatt children, where games from the past included hoop games, hopscotch, croquet, and battledore and shuttlecock. Hoop games had been played for hundreds of years, from ring toss descended from the ancient Roman game of quoits to rolling a large hoop with a stick and playing graces with ribbon-decorated hoops tossed and caught with sticks. A hopscotch version from the 1800s challenged players to throw a stone into each of 10 spaces in order, hop to the space, kick the stone back, and continue without missing until completing the course out and back. While Abram Piatt was building the castle in the 1860s, croquet was a popular adult game, and by 1960 shorter mallets had made it easier for children, including Abram's great-great grandchildren, to play on the lawn. Battledore and shuttlecock, much like badminton, was played alone by keeping a feather-topped shuttlecock aloft with a racket or in pairs by batting it back and forth, sometimes while reciting rhymes line by line until the shuttlecock fell.

Ohio · United States