It was the sort of project that anyone who has put together a toddler's tricycle has learned to dread: This geodesic dome-shaped jungle gym took 240 nuts, 240 bolts and 486 washers to build.

The instructions placed assembly time at 10 hours, but last week 18 volunteers, broken into four teams, had the dome with its 115 rungs ready in a little more than two hours.

The building boom on McKeesport's newest playground on Riverview Avenue in Riverview Park was provided by Home Depot and KaBOOM!, a non-profit organization dedicated to building playgrounds.

The playground is the 33rd one built as a cooperative effort of the hardware mega-chain and the national nonprofit. The community's share of the project is $10,000.

The neighborhood in McKeesport's 7th Ward is one that has been plagued by crime and is pocked with abandoned lots and buildings.

But, new homes have been built nearby and families have remained despite the problems.

Last Thursday, it was the adults turn on the playground. From early in the morning until it was completed in the afternoon, children were not allowed on the site because of the dangers posed by holes in the ground and materials being moved from place to place.

That left Sean Johnson, 11, and Malik Thaxton, 9, staring at the swing set they both wanted to use.

Those swings should be sturdy. It took eight men to install them. The swing set was placed into holes that had been hand dug after the auger brought in a few days earlier got bogged down in the mud. The holes for the swingset were then filled with concrete and the set put in place. A cushion of six inches of mulch will protect young riders.

Volunteers arrived in the morning and stayed until late afternoon. There were people who lived in the neighborhood, such as Curtis Nelson, 42, whose youngest daughter is 6, and will be spending many afternoons on the new equipment.

"It's all about the kids," Mr. Nelson said as he took a break from the work to eat some pizza.

There also were more than 100 volunteers who used one of their days off from Home Depot to build a playground for children they had never met.

The crew on the climbing dome had to work together, so that as Mark Lettau, 44, of Harrison, bolted the top section of the dome to the sides everyone on the team had to push in on the structure.

"Don't breathe," Marty Drexler, 50, of Greensburg, said as the volunteers held the bars in place while Mr. Lettau tightened the bolt.

The group that built the dome left the nuts loose so the structure would have a little give as they carried it across the playground and into place.

The dome hovered about six feet above the ground, with scores of hands grasping its lower rungs, and volunteers shouting ''watch the holes" and "watch the spikes." The holes were in the ground for the playground equipment. The spikes were to hold the plastic molding in place for the rim of the play area.

Most days Judy Miller, 47, of Turtle Creek, supervises the return desk for the Home Depot in North Versailles. Last Thursday she was standing on a huge pile of mulch with a shovel. Then the mulch gave way and she was sliding down that pile. She caught herself with the shovel and was back up again, directing the mulch into wheel barrows to be carted around the playground.

The volunteers braved cold feet and running noses, each performing dozens of tasks to get the playground built before the weather turns colder and the ground freezes.

The new playground is actually the second at the park. The first one is designed for much younger children and still needs work to lower hoops on a basketball court there.

A second basketball court, which will be full-sized, will be built in the spring by the city next to the new structures.

The idea to build the new playground came from Roy Jenkins III, 41, of Atlanta. Mr. Jenkins, the finance director for Home Depot in Atlanta, grew up in White Oak. He said he thought McKeesport could use a playground when he heard that Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch had teamed up with Home Depot to renovate a playground in Homestead.

Mr. Jenkins called his parents, Norinne and Roy Jenkins, of White Oak, to organize the drive for a new playground. The Jenkins pulled together a committee and called on the children at the LaRosa Boys' and Girls' Club in McKeesport to design their dream playground. The new play area is based on those ideas.