July 9, 2009
City designates pools landmarks
On the same steamy Friday last month, they all were drawn to the same spot: a sprawling basin of coolness steeped in history, theirs and the city's.
There was the man with black swim trunks and a deep tan who has been coming to Astoria Pool for more than 60 years, first as a teenager to watch dazzling diving shows, and now, in his retirement, to swim laps and take the sun.
The tall guy in the beige uniform, a gardener most of his career, who this summer traded his duties at a city greenhouse to become supervisor of the pool where, as a kid, he'd scale the fence for illicit, after-hours dips.
The couple with the camera visiting from North Carolina -- in the second day of their first trip to New York -- posing for pictures on one of the pool's terraces, with the Triborough Bridge, the East River and the Manhattan skyline filling the frame behind them.
Now, more than 70 years after it first opened, Astoria Pool is among 10 outdoor public pools that the city is designating as landmarks because of their playful architectural flourishes, the grand ambition of the man who built them, Robert Moses, and how they figured in the history of New York and those who use them.
"It really shows how things go around because I used to sneak into this pool as a kid and now I'm the supervisor," said
Parks Department Pool Supervisor Jorge Cisneros, who until this summer worked as a horticulturist at the landmarked greenhouse at Forest Park in Kew Gardens.
"I'm really enjoying this because it brings back a lot of history for me."
Astoria Pool, the city's largest, was the first to be given landmark status, in June of last year. So far, six of the 10 pools have gotten the designation, and another -- Highbridge Pool in Washington Heights -- is scheduled for a hearing before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Aug. 14.
The designation means that the exterior of the structures cannot be altered without permission from the commission.
City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez has such powerful childhood memories from McCarren Pool in Williamsburg, which is now closed, that she insisted on testifying at the hearing on its landmark status last month.
"It's where I learned to swim; it's where we used to have our family outings on Sundays," said Mendez, who grew up in Brooklyn but now lives in the East Village. "When family came from Puerto Rico, we couldn't take them to the beaches, because the beaches they had were so beautiful, but we could take them to this big pool."
The pools were opened one by one in the summer of 1936, in splashy ceremonies that featured fireworks, marching bands and, at Jackie Robinson Pool in Harlem (then called Colonial Pool), a performance by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.
"What these pools said about the '30s and the Great Depression in New York is incredibly significant," said Robert Tierney, chairman of the Landmarks Commission.
The materials used to build the pools were simple -- concrete, steel, glass and brick -- (the federal program that paid for them required the city use the cheapest materials possible), but the designs were fanciful.
Medieval-style turrets and mermaid sculptures are at Jackie Robinson, sprightly images of fish and birds are on the walls of Crotona Pool in the Bronx, and saucer-like roofs are on some of the buildings at Astoria Pool that once housed fountains. Most also had wading pools and high-diving pools.
"They were creating palaces for working people with grand staircases and turrets and towers and archways," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. The pools also made swimming in the city safer, he said, because at the time they were opened, many New Yorkers swam in the city's stagnant, disease-filled rivers.
One of those New Yorkers was Benjamin Roma, a 76-year-old retired city sanitation worker who grew up in East Harlem and learned to swim in the East River.
These days, he lives in Maspeth and spends a few mornings a week at Astoria Pool, perched on the concrete bleachers, tanning oil and bright blue swimming goggles by his side.
He remembers the opening of the outdoor pools in 1936 -- "that was what's-his-name, Moses -- he did a lot around the city," but more than that, Roma can still picture the diving shows he saw at Astoria Pool.
"They were spectacular off the platforms, beautiful dives they did. They were something," Roma said, waving an arm toward the now-abandoned diving pool, its three-deck platform rusted and its floor covered with weeds. "I think this is a fantastic place, but it really hurts me to see this."
Most of the diving pools were shut down because of liability risks, although Benepe said that the city is considering reopening some, including the one at Astoria.
More than 1.5 million people visited the city's 52 pools last summer. Once, the city charged admission, but entry to the pools has been free since the 1980s.
"Free? Really?" said Kathie Gragg of Asheville, N.C., watching the bathers at Astoria Pool last week from one of its many high terraces. She and her husband, Alex, snapped pictures and marveled at the size of the pool -- it is 330 feet long and can accommodate more than 2,000 people.
"Seeing the pool with the bridge and the skyline, it's just so beautiful," she said. "This is one of the places that we really wanted to see."
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