About Parks > History > History of Parks' Swimming Pools

History of Parks' Swimming Pools

Find information about NYC’s pools, their hours, and locations at the Pools webpage.

As another steamy summer approaches, New Yorkers can find relief in one of 34 outdoor pools, 19 outdoor mini-pools and 12 indoor pools in the New York City parks system. Parks outdoor pools are free and open to the public from late June (after City schools let out for the summer) until Labor Day.

Public Baths

The precursor of the modern swimming pool was the public bath. Dr. Simon Baruch (for whom the Baruch baths were named) was a leading proponent of "hydrotherapy" and the possibilities for social reform that followed from providing public baths for "the great unwashed." After decades of lobbying by social reformers, the year 1895 marked a turning point in the public bath movement. Not only did the state legislature pass a law requiring free bathhouses in cities with populations of 50,000 or more but reform-minded William L. Strong won the mayoralty and pledged to construct bathing facilities. The bathhouses were used for bathing, but also when the weather was hot and unbearable, as in the summer of 1906 when long lines at the Rivington Street Bath nearly caused a riot.

By 1911, Manhattan had twelve new bathhouses, most of them in immigrant neighborhoods, and of these bathhouses, a few offered swimming pool facilities. Asser Levy (built in 1908 and then called the "East Twenty-third Street Pool") and Recreation Center 59 (built in 1906 and then called the "West Sixtieth Street Pool") both offered proper pools. (Recreation Center 59 now serves as the main facility for training Parks lifeguards.) The pools on 23rd Street (66' x 25', 70,000 gallons) and 60th Street (60' x 35', 85,000 gallons) were filled using filtered water from the Croton system, which was changed three times a week.

In subsequent years, pools were added at the Baruch Baths on 326 Rivington Street (1917), Carmine Street (1928-29), Rutgers Place (ca. 1910s), and East Fifty-Fourth Street (1915).

Although the facilities that were once public baths are now under the jurisdiction of Parks (as befits an agency charged with recreation and well-being), it was not always the case. Metropolitan Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was built under the auspices of Borough President Edward Riegelmann in 1922.

The Beaux-Arts architecture and neo-classical details of Metropolitan Pool are typical for the period. The pool and bath at Metropolitan were designed by the architect Henry Bacon (1866-1924), who also designed Washington, DC's Lincoln Memorial. The Roman Revival bathhouse at Asser Levy Recreation Center (1908), designed by architects Arnold W. Brunner and William Martin Aiken, was designated a New York City landmark in 1974, and the Beaux-Arts bathhouse at Hamilton Fish Park (1900), designed by Carrère & Hastings, was designated a New York City landmark in 1982.

Floating Baths

Floating baths existed in New York from at least the early 19th century. They became more popular after the Civil War as public health advocates called for legislation to create municipally owned baths.

The city's first free public floating baths debuted in the Hudson and East Rivers in 1870, expanding to 15 by 1890. The baths were 95 feet long and 60 feet wide, floated on eight pontoons placed four on each side. In the center of each floating bath was a large well divided into two parts, one 93 feet long and 34 feet wide for adults, and one 70 feet long and 8 feet wide for children.

The depth of the water in the large well was 4 ½ feet and in the small one 2 ½ feet. There were 68 dressing rooms opening upon a small gangway around the edge of the well. They were open from late June or early July to early October. In 1911, 1,818,721 patrons used floating baths.

By the 1920s environmental degradation of the city's rivers tainted the floating bath experience, and the facilities were slowly taken out of commission. When Parks took over jurisdiction of Manhattan's nine bathhouses in 1938 after the city charter was revised, the agency refurbished three of the last six remaining floating baths and docked them at 96th Street and the Hudson River; the baths only lasted a couple more years.

Taking its inspiration from the floating baths, the Floating Pool Lady appeared in the summer of 2007, docking in the East River at Brooklyn Bridge Park at the foot of Brooklyn Heights. The facility provided an instant seven-lane 25-meter-long pool for visitors, who also could enjoy volleyball on a 40,000-square-foot manmade beach. The Floating Pool Lady was designed by Jonathan Kirschenfeld Associates with a team of engineering consultants and was constructed in the deck of an old cargo barge.

The idea was spearheaded and received major funding by Ann Buttenwieser, founder of the Neptune Foundation and afforded swimmers a panoramic view of Lower Manhattan, New York Harbor, and the Statue of Liberty. In 2008, the pool moved permanently up the East River to Barretto Point Park in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, where visitors enjoyed its refreshing waters for another summer.

WPA-Era Pools

A new era in active recreation arrived in the 1930s and 1940s, when the Department of Parks assumed jurisdiction over the city's bathhouses and harnessed Works Progress Administration labor to develop a series of outdoor pools for the city.

The WPA swimming pools were among the most remarkable public recreational facilities in the country, representing the forefront of design and technology in advanced filtration and chlorination systems. The influence of the pools extended throughout entire communities, attracting aspiring athletes and neighborhood children, and changing the way millions of New Yorkers spent their leisure time.

The eleven pools were opened within weeks of each other in the hot summer of 1936, bringing relief to thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers. Mayor Firorello La Guardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses attended packed dedication ceremonies that summer. At Thomas Jefferson Pool, more than 10,000 celebrated the opening, at which the Mayor said, "Here is something you can be proud of. It is the last word in engineering, hygiene, and construction that could be put into a pool."

The pools were not just huge but also examples of state-of-the-art engineering and fine design. The planning team, led by architect Aymar Embury II and landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke, produced a series of distinct complexes, each one sensitive to its site and topography.

Massive filtration systems, heating units, and even underwater lighting provided a more controlled bathing experience than the often treacherous and polluted waterfront currents in which the city's masses had traditionally swam. The palette of building materials was mainly inexpensive brick, concrete, and cast stone, but the styles ranged from Romanesque Revival to Art Deco.

The WPA pools were designed to adapt to off-season uses such as paddle tennis, shuffleboard, volleyball, basketball, and handball. Wading pools were used as roller skating rinks, and indoor locker rooms and changing areas were adapted for boxing instruction and evening dance halls for teens.

With the notable exception of McCarren Pool in Greenpoint , the WPA-era pools were renovated in the 1980s.

WPA Pools There were eleven WPA pools built in 1936: Astoria Pool, Queens: Opened July 2, 1936, the largest of the eleven WPA pools Crotona Pool, The Bronx: Opened July 24, 1936, the bathhouse features animal-themed sculptural elements (still visible today) created by Frederick George Richard Roth that illustrate the WPA-funded art of the era. Hamilton Fish Pool, Manhattan: Opened June 24, 1936, Hamilton Fish Pool was so highly regarded that the US Olympic Team used it for practice sessions on their way to the 1952 Helsinki Games. Betsy Head Pool, Brooklyn: Opened August 6, 1936, a pool at this Brownsville site dated to 1915 and was one of only two outdoor pools in the Parks system before 1936. Highbridge Pool, Manhattan: Opened July 14, 1936, the pool literally occupies a significant spot in the city's water-related past, sitting in the shadow of the historic Highbridge Water Tower on the site of the old Highbridge Reservoir. Thomas Jefferson Pool, Manhattan: Opened June 27, 1936, 10,000 people attended the ceremony celebrating "the last word in engineering, hygiene, and construction." Joseph H. Lyons Pool, Staten Island: Opened July 7, 1936, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia summed up one of the main goals of the WPA pools, calling the facility "a monument to the progressive government which would not and could not see unemployed men on the breadline. " McCarren Pool, Brooklyn: Opened July 31, 1936, Greenpoint's McCarren Pool was designed to accommodate 6,800 bathers at a time and its bathhouse was the largest in the system, large enough to serve the thousands that used the pool daily. Red Hook Pool, Brooklyn: Opened August 17, 1936, 40,000 people attended the opening, leading The New York Times to describe it as "Red Hook's event of the year." Jackie Robinson Pool, Manhattan: Opened August 8, 1936 and originally known as "Colonial Park Pool," the facility was dedicated at an event featuring Bill "Bojangles" Robinson singing "Battle Hymm of the Republic" to a crowd of 25,000. Sunset Pool, Brooklyn: Opened July 20, 1936, as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dramatically flipped a switch, activating the pool's underwater lighting system.