pool
“Now that they’re not going to destroy the pool, it’s magnetic” Phyllis Yampolsky, an artist and a longtime Greepoint resident, says about the McCarren pool, shown above in a 1937 photograph. The following year after the pool shut down in 1983, residents blocked Parks Department workers from repairing it because they wanted to give youths from other nabes less reason to hang around the park. Twenty two years later, the neighborhood is split over the pool’s future: on one side those who would love to have a gigantic swimming hole in their front yard; on the other, those who like the idea of continuing to use the pool as a space for music and performing arts.
The Glory of the Past–Or Not [NY Times]


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. It’s a shame that out of the top ten biggest outdoor pools in America this is the only one of the ten that is disused. Heck if everywhere else can keep these things alive, why can’t NYC? People need outdoor recreation in this time of obesity! Let the city provide for it’s people. Let there be a pool!

  2. I’m not really sure what to think? I just invested a large sum of $ in one of the new penthouse apartments across the pool, I hope I didn’t make a mistake? I figure if Bloomburg is granting over 50 million dollars to this pool project, he’s going to assure it doesn’t go to hell, again, and works to benefit the surrounding tax payers? The pool was magnificent in its former glory, and I’m very curious to see it come back to life. I just hope the plans include a separate adult side where us big kids could enjoy it too……

  3. Hello!

    I am a Brooklyn Boy, born and raised on Newton Street in the 50s, attended St. Stan’s and spent many summers swimming at McCarren. It was great boyhood experience. I saw McCarren POOL last year just prior to the “tendy, artsy-fartsy, expensive” outdoor amusement it had decended into. It was sad to see a beautiful memory changed in light of the fact that ALL the other POOLS built by the WPA in the 30s are STILL POOLS and to the great enjoyment of their respective neighborhoods. I am still a Brooklyn Boy at heart and, maybe, soon, physically will be there again to see the treasures that make Greenpoint a “home for everyone”. I would like to see McCarren declared a Historical Monument and renovated as it was when it was open in 1936. It seems that it has been closed for longer that it was open. Why? Why is there so much interest in McCarren? Especially by non-Greenpoint neighbors? I smell a dollar to be made! And that smell is more toxic than all the shit that was filling up the old pool. Imagine 6,000 to 6,500 neighbors swimming in the cool waters of McCarren during the muggy, hot summers. After the POOL is gone, where will you swim? Now imagine what’s it’s become. Another symbol of the dollar merchants! Another shot at “If it’s NOT broke, don’t fix it!” It started as a POOL, it should remain a POOL! It should be fixed and preserved as it was intended to be in 1936. I’m sure that there are other “spaces” available thoughtout Brooklyn for the “tendies” for outside dancing but my memories of Greenpoint were of family and summers. And neighbors shouting across streets from windows during the summer evenings, of running though McCarren Park and, of course, swimming in her cool waters. Has it changed? Is Greenpoint abandoning her history of blue collar workers, of modest apartments and homes. of boyhood dreamers, of local neighborhoods where you knew almost everyone and everything that was happening. Of shovling snow down the storm drains during the winter. Redoing McCarren is not just “filling-in” the hole. IT’s forever changing a neighbohood. It’s a definite step backwards. But the DOLLAR! I almost forgot. It will consume the neighborhood and the neighbors who were there will no longer be, the POOL will be reduced to a photo and something unique and magic will have disappeared forever. Try to save yourselves before it’s too late. There are powerfull DOLLARS out there whose sole objective is to cahnge everything and leave nothing behind to remind us of the Greenpoint I knew, of the Greenpoint I think I still know. I hope the next McCarren POOL article I read is about a movement to preserve the POOL and the neighborhood from which it was born. Thanks. BB