City Park Pool history

By 1911, Manhattan had twelve new bathhouses, most of them in immigrant neighborhoods, and of these bathhouses, a few offered swimming pool facilities.

George Grundmann, a City Park Board Member since December 16, 1917, celebrated his 87th birthday. [That’s 46 years in office in case you don’t want to do the math.]

Metropolitan Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was built under the auspices of Borough President Edward Riegelmann in 1922.

But it appears to have been part of a College Days celebration in 1923. (Photo from the CSU archive.)

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."

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.

Six of these indoor facilities in Manhattan were reconstructed by the Works Projects Administration in 1940, completely rebuilding and modernizing the pools.

The real jump in population didn’t occur until the late 50s — with just over 25,000 people in 1960 — and it really started to skyrocket by the 70s — reaching 50K by the mid-70s.)

The board started its meeting by standing for a “moment of prayer to invoke God’s blessing on all of the members and on their undertakings during 1963.”

In 1966, a pilot program under the Lindsay administration to create "portable pools" was started with two pre-engineered, pre-fabricated 20' x 40' aluminum or steel above-ground pools with 6' wide attached wooden decks.

The program was expanded to 10 pools in 1967.

The Isaac Delgado Museum of Art is dedicated, renamed in 1971 “New Orleans Museum of Art”

Well Park - Akerson Access Through a Missouri Department of Conservation grant, a boat ramp and access to North River in Well Park was opened in the summer of 2007.

In 2012, the coffee and beignet stand opened in City Park.