Walkabout: Taking the Waters, Part 2

Read Part 1 and Part 3 of this story.

“Hot time, summer in the city” has been New York’s theme music for a long time. It gets miserably hot and disgustingly humid here, often for weeks on end in July and August. We say we would die without our air conditioners, or at least our high-powered fans, but can you imagine what it was like one hundred-plus years ago, before electricity, before casual Friday’s, before baths? Part one of this story was told last time, outlining the New York City public bath, that lifeline of cleanliness and relief that was, far too often, all the poor of our city had. From the floating baths on the Hudson and East River, and off the Battery, to the ornate public baths built across the city, the fledgling movement toward public health standards began with the notion of clean running water, and cleansing soap, washing the poor, and inspiring them to better things.

But the building of the great public bath houses in the first two decades of the 20th century came too late for them to be utilized in their original capacity by the “great unwashed”. By the time most of the bath houses were complete, the tenement laws had been changed and upgraded, so that running water and bathtubs in tenement houses became necessities, not novelties. Many of the state of the art bath houses stayed open as such, well into the 1930’s and the Depression, one or two lasted until the 1970’s. Some of them closed, or became something else, and many were re-commissioned by the WPA and through the Parks Department programs instituted by Robert Moses.

Surely one of the most controversial figures in 20th century New York, Robert Moses changed the face of the city like no one before, or since. He was appointed as Parks Commissioner by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in January of 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression. By that July, he had plans on the table to build 23 pools across the city, including six in Brooklyn.

By the 1930’s, swimming pools were a common feature in the city’s YMCA’s, and other youth and fitness clubs. They were also commonplace in the amusement parks of Coney Island. You could swim at places like the Hotel St. George, in Brooklyn Heights, which had a world famous pool. But for all of these watery wonders, you needed to have money. For most of them, you also had to be white, but more on that later. Poor people did not have free access to swimming pools. Many were still seeking relief in the polluted and dangerous waters of our rivers and bays. Robert Moses believed that parks and recreation centers were an important part of city life. The earlier Progressive Movement of the beginning of the 20th century advocated parks and play areas as necessary for the well-being of poor and immigrant children. Moses would take it one step further.

The role of children in American society had changed since the dawn of the 20th century. Reformers had successfully advocated for the right of children to have a childhood. They were not small adults, nor were they merely labor fodder for factories or farms. By the time of the Great Depression, the federal government had taken responsibility for the social welfare of children. Children were now expected to stay in school until the end of high school, and their childhoods were supposed to be dedicated to education and play, not work. In large cities like New York, that meant that more facilities were needed for children: more schools, parks, recreation centers and outdoor recreation facilities. The Parks Department had a whole lot of building to do.

The New Deal was the Great Depression’s stimulus package. The basic premise was to help work America out of the Depression with infrastructure and new public works projects. Millions of federal dollars were given to cities to build all kinds of things, including highways, parks, recreation centers, and yes, swimming pools. Working with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), funds were acquired by LaGuardia and Moses in 1934, to build the largest and best pool project in America. Thousands of kids learned to swim in city pools, beginning in 1934, with a well-publicized Learn to Swim program run by the Parks Department, expanded with WPA funds. Because of these funds, the city was able to have eleven large pool complexes ready for opening in the summer of 1936. That summer was particularly hot, and kids and adults alike were lined up for blocks each time a new public swimming pool opened. And what great pools they were!

The WPA pools were masterpieces of public recreational architecture and engineering. They utilized state of the art technologies. They were designed with elaborate underground piping systems, which heated, filtered and chlorinated tons of water before piping it into or out of the system. The facilities were housed in modern Art Deco buildings masterfully designed with only brick, cement and glass. No fancy Beaux-Arts frou-frou, but the modern design of a new era. The design team was led by architect Aymar Embury, II, a prominent Manhattan architect and scholar, and landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke. The powerful Parks Department worked out of the old Arsenal, in Central Park, where Moses, Embury, Clarke and their staff of 1,800 planned and executed one of the most impressive programs in public recreation ever.

In Brooklyn, they built four recreation and pool complexes in 1936: McCarren Pool, which could accommodate 6,800 bathers at a time. Red Hook, which had an opening crowd of 40,000 people. Sunset Pool, in Sunset Park, boasted an underwater lighting system. Fiorello LaGuardia flipped the switch at the opening ceremonies on July 20, 1936. And lastly, the Betsy Head Pool, in Brownsville, which opened on August 6th. This pool was built to replace another older pool and recreational complex built in 1915. Originally, it was going to be repaired and revamped, but it mysteriously, was a total loss by fire right before the renovation started, so it was built from scratch. How fortuitous. Today, only McCarren Park’s pool is no longer in use, and that is being worked on again, finally.

In addition to these new recreational centers and pools, many of the old bathhouses were also converted. In Manhattan, six of the indoor pools in bathhouses were revamped by WPA money in 1940. The floating bath pools were continued until the end of the 1930’s. And by the 1950’s, Brooklyn got a new indoor pool facility in Brownsville, and the St. John’s Recreation Center was built in Crown Heights. By 1964, the city had 17 outdoor pools and 12 indoor pools, for a grand total of 29.

Ok, the city built all of these wonderful pools for the poor kids of the city. But we’re talking about the 1930’s, not exactly a “we are the world” time period in American history. Racism was institutional. Robert Moses himself was conservative, to say the least, in his ideas about race and class. Did everyone get to “take the waters” or were some purposely excluded? Issues of race and class and pools, as well as an update on today’s city pools, next time.

Photo at top: Sunset Pool, Sunset Park. Opening night ceremonies. 1936. From: NYC Parks Dept.