DPR has principal authority over the construction and maintenance of city-owned (but not federally owned) parks, and over nearly all public recreation facilities in District of Columbia.

[3] This includes 25 outdoor pools, eight spray parks, and 10 indoor pools—all offered with no admission fee for residents of the District.

[5] DPR's history is long and greatly complicated by the unique constitutional and legal nature of the District of Columbia.

[6] Under legislation enacted in March 1849, the United States Department of the Interior was created and responsibility for Washington's city parks was given to this agency.

The three-commissioner form of the District government was created by federal legislation in 1878, but only purely local parks remained under the control of the commissioners.

[9] Although great strides had been made in the development of the city's municipal as well as federal parks, no comprehensive strategy had been followed.

[12] Over the next few years, the President and Congress established several new agencies to supervise the approval, design, and construction of parks in the District of Columbia.

[18] Two years later, Congress established the Community Center Department under the D.C. Board of Education to provide adult recreation throughout the city (not just at public schools).

[19] Congress enacted legislation in 1932 authorizing the NPS to transfer land to the government of the District of Columbia (after following certain procedures) without Congressional approval, and vice versa.

This caused extensive friction between the citizens and government of the District on the one hand and the NPS on the other, and in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed legislation to transfer a number of parks to city control.

[24] After the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, in 1954 (which desegregated city public schools), public recreational programs, recreational facilities, and parks quickly desegregated (although isolated incidents of racial discrimination continued into the late 1950s).

On September 6, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson (who had strongly supported home rule) issued Executive Order 11379, which abolished the Commissioner form of government in D.C. and implemented a presidentially appointed mayor and city council system.

[30] DPR Director Robert P. Newman was forced to resign in July 2000 after growing criticism, revelations that he had misused federal funds, and accusations that the department had not paid hundreds of teenage workers after missing payroll deadlines.

By 2003, DPR and the D.C. public school system were the two biggest providers of subsidized meals to impoverished children in the city.

[40] Fenty charged Ray with aggressively opening new recreation centers and parks and rapidly expanding existing programs.

[41] A month later, in April 2009, Fenty nominated Ximena Hartsock, Deputy Chief of the Office of Teaching and Learning in the D.C. public school system, to be the new DPR director.

[46] As the controversy over DPR's leadership continued, the D.C. City Council discovered that Fenty administration had diverted tens of millions of dollars from DPR to the city housing authority, and then used the money to fund contracts with a firm owned by a Fenty associate.

[47] DCHA then awarded contracts to build recreation centers and athletic facilities to Banneker Ventures (a firm owned by one of Fenty's college fraternity brothers, Omar Karim), RBK Landscaping and Construction (owned by Fenty friend Keith Lomax), and Regan Associates (whose co-owners, Sean M. Regan and Thomas J. Regan, made significant financial contributions to Fenty's 2010 re-election campaign).

[50] A month later, in December 2009, the D.C. City Council stripped Banneker Ventures and its subcontractor, Liberty Engineering & Design (which is owned by another Fenty college fraternity brother who was also a paid campaign staffer on Fenty's 2006 election campaign), of the recreation contracts awarded through DCHA.

[51] Mayor Fenty nominated Jesús Aguirre, a D.C. Public Schools official, to be the new DPR Director on December 2, 2009.

[52] On February 23, 2011, Aguirre was selected by newly elected Mayor Vincent Gray to continue as department director.

[52] The Department of Parks and Recreation has four divisions:[53] As of July 2010, the Office of the Director was divided into four units: The Director's Office, Community Relations (which oversees donations, sponsorships, and public-private partnerships), Data and Accountability (which provides information technology services and collects data on DPR programs), and Program Development (which coordinates DPR's relations with community and non-profit organizations and volunteers).

The first is the Operations program, which maintains seven activity areas: Site Management (which coordinates programming and maintenance needs), Aquatics-Operations (which provides safety personnel and equipment at DPR aquatic centers); Park Rangers (which provides safety personnel in city parks as well as exhibits, informational materials, and tours); Stagecraft (which provides personnel, lighting, sound, and other equipment for events requiring audio-visual support); Warehouse; Athletic Fields (which maintains DPR's playing fields); and Permit Services (which supervises the process by which non-governmental organizations may access DPR facilities).

In October 2012, the city announced it would renovate 32 playgrounds over the next 12 months, after discovering $30 million in unspent capital funds.