In 1930, the City of Chicago's Bureau of Parks and Recreation recommended the creation of a public playground within three blocks of every child living in the city's congested neighborhoods. One area targeted for a small park was the Humboldt Park neighborhood, which was experiencing significant growth as numerous Italian, German, Polish, and Russian-Jewish immigrants were then settling there. The bureau began leasing 1/2-acre from the Board of Education and constructed a park which included playground equipment, sand boxes, a small brick recreation building, and boys' and girls' playing fields that were flooded in the winter for ice skating. Opened to the public in 1931, this site was named for the adjacent Kedvale Avenue, which was likely derived from the Native American word, ked, meaning moccasin, and the Middle English vale, meaning valley. The city transferred Kedvale Park to the Chicago Park District along with more than 250 other sites in 1959. The park district soon installed basketball courts, and then added a spray pool in 1970. In 1990, the Chicago Park District assumed ownership of the park from the Board of Education. Also that year, the park installed a new soft surface playground in Kedvale Park.