Astoria Pool, Queens, WPA pool, Photography by Anna Morgowicz
Most public pools in New York City operate only for a short period during the summer, leaving their potential largely untapped for the rest of the year. Aside from the need to build more aquatic facilities, there is an opportunity to extend the swimming season and adapt existing pool grounds for alternative uses during the off-season. Pools can be reimagined as sites for social gathering, education, and health-related programming, expanding their role in the urban fabric beyond traditional recreation. To make this long-overdue transformation possible, the research advocates for an integrated approach that brings together architectural design, programmatic innovation, and supportive policy frameworks.
The exhibition includes a Water Map and Pool Catalogue of all sixty-five public pools in New York City. Through detailed drawings and photographs, it highlights five distinct pool types: former bathhouses, WPA-era pools, mini pools, vest-pocket pools, and an atypical example. Each type is paired with a speculative design or programmatic proposal that amplifies the potential of this existing civic infrastructure and promotes bathing culture.
Public Baths
Metropolitan Pool, Brooklyn, 1922, by Henry Bacon
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In 1895, the New York State legislature passed a law mandating the establishment of public baths in all cities with more than 50,000 residents. Until then, New Yorkers had relied on floating pools in the East and Hudson Rivers, as well as natural bodies of water, to maintain personal hygiene, do laundry, cool off, and swim. The first municipal bath in New York City, the Rivington Street Bath, opened in 1901. By 1915, fifteen more public bath facilities had been established in Manhattan, along with eight in Brooklyn, one in Queens, and another in the Bronx. Inspired by European models, these facilities offered public showers, tubs, laundries, and comfort stations. As private plumbing became more widespread, diminishing their role as essential infrastructure, some bathhouses adapted by incorporating gymnasiums and swimming pools, allowing them to function as recreational spaces and offering much-needed relief during the summer heat. In 1940, several public baths were renovated, but most were closed in the years following World War II. Several former bathhouses survived until today, repurposed as indoor public swimming pools and recreation centers.
Public Laundry
Building on the history of public baths, this speculative programmatic proposal calls for the reintroduction of public laundromats into former bathhouse buildings. Visitors could do their laundry while attending swim classes or fitness programs, highlighting importance of physical activity and necessity of tending to domestic duties. In addition to serving a practical need, these laundromats could act as social gathering spaces and hubs for clothing donation.
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Asser Levy Pool, Manhattan, former bathhouse, Photography Anna Morgowicz
Work Progress Administration (WPA) Pools
Astoria Pool, Queens, 1936, Aymar Embury II, Gilmore Clarke
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In 1936, eleven large-scale public swimming complexes opened across New York City. Built with funds from the Works Progress Administration, as part of the New Deal’s sweeping investment in infrastructure. WPA-era pools, heavily supported by New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, departed from public baths’ utilitarian role, instead providing space for safe swimming, social gathering, and much-needed recreation. These large, Olympic-size complexes also accommodated other uses, from indoor recreational facilities and public performances to off-season outdoor sports, and were equipped with the latest cleaning, heating, and lighting systems. They created a new kind of public architecture, reflecting an evolving approach to recreation and gender integration in public space All WPA-era pools continuously function until today, except for McCarren Park Pool, which, after a period of abandonment and threats of demolition was renovated, and reopened for swimming in 2012. Featured Astoria Pool is the largest New York City public pool.
Cooling & Warming Center and Performance Venue
The speculative proposal includes weatherizing and adapting all WPA pool-adjacent recreational buildings into designated cooling centers in the summer and warming centers in winter and shoulder seasons. The former diving pool area of the featured Astoria Pool can become a year-round performance venue, capitalizing on its existing auditorium shape and size to host local dance and theatre groups, film screenings, and other programs.
Mini Pools
Abe Lincoln Pool, Manhattan, 1960’s
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The second pool-building era in New York City began after the election of John Lindsay as mayor in 1966. This campaign was a response to the scarcity of water facilities and cooling infrastructure in underserved areas of the city. Lindsay’s administration built around 60 mini pools, usually located within public plazas, parks, and playgrounds. Compared with WPA-era facilities, mini pools built in the late 1960s differed significantly in form, size, and distribution. The first mini pools were designed as aboveground, prefabricated, and portable structures of fixed size, 40’ x 20’ x 3’, that could be quickly assembled, dismantled, and moved to other parts of the city. Some took the form of “swimmobiles,” or pools mounted on trucks that would circulate through neighborhoods on hot summer days. Many mini pools still exist today, and some, like the Abe Lincoln Pool, have been renovated and converted into in-ground pools.
Sauna
The speculative design proposes installing saunas on top of mini pools during the shoulder and winter seasons. Aside from their health benefits, public saunas introduce a new and alternative way to engage with water and bathing culture. Not unlike the original mini pools, small, portable sauna structures can be placed above any mini pool, providing a new public facility and winter cover for the basin. Additionally, built-in auditorium seating can serve as a gathering space for the community, an outdoor classroom, or seating for movie screenings.
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PS20 playground mini pool, Brooklyn. Photography by Anna Morgowicz
Vest Pocket Pools
Mapes Pool, Manhattan, 1970-72 by Heery & Heery Architects
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In the early 1970s, the city began constructing larger “vest-pocket” pools, primarily located within parks or adjacent to public schools in densely populated neighborhoods. Vest-pocket pools feature uniformly sized intermediate swimming pools (75′ x 60′ x 3.5′) and wading pools (12′ x 12′ x 1′), accompanied by repeatable building modules. While the components of vest-pocket pools remain consistent, their arrangement varies depending on the site. The modules can be used individually as shading structures or combined to house changing rooms, toilets, maintenance facilities, and other support functions. These modules are composed of prefabricated structural elements, such as concrete columns, beams, and roofs topped by a monitor volume, and are enclosed with prefabricated wall panels and a system of louvers. In 2018, as part of the Cool Pools initiative, the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation upgraded 16 vest-pocket pools with wall art, additional seating, planters, and programming.
Inflatable Pool Cover
This speculative design proposal introduces a temporary, inflatable pool cover to extend the swimming season beyond the summer months. A heated enclosure would allow the free NYC Learn to Swim program to continue during the school year, providing more children with lifesaving skills and offering additional exercise opportunities for adults. The modular, prefabricated nature of vest-pocket pools, which originally allowed for their rapid deployment across the city, makes them well-suited to accommodate a simple, adaptable cover that could be used at any of these pool sites.
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Van Cortlandt Pool, Bronx, vest-pocket pool, Photography Anna Morgowicz
Atypical Pools
Kosciuszko Pool, Brooklyn, 1971, by Morris Lapidus
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The Kosciuszko Pool represents several atypical public pools that don’t belong to other typologies. K-Pool, or People’s Pool as it is also referred to, is located in Bedford-Stuyvesant and was designed by Morris Lapidus. The architectural and social ingenuity of the Kosciuszko Pool is visible in its otherwise brutalist form. Half building, half urban landscape, the pool’s form and organization enables a wide range of concurrent activities: play, active recreation, and human interaction. A large concrete volume raised above these spaces is dedicated to the playground that appropriates concrete-encapsulated mechanical exhausts and pipes as play features. Swimming pools are surrounded by a steped topography of sun decks and bleachers that engage with the architectural language of repetitive walls outlining the pool grounds. Today, with the smaller pools and the raised playground fenced off due to accessibility and operational issues, the architecture that once embraced joy seems to be missing it.
Recreation Center
The design proposal includes a retractable roof over half the existing pool and the reintroduction of night lighting to extend the swimming times and seasons. The proposal also includes a new indoor aquatic center on an adjacent, vacant, and city-owned property that includes indoor water facilities, a gym, community space, offices, and a lifeguard training center. Introducing planting, cooling stations, and shading around the pool grounds reduces the heat island effect and provides cooling during more frequent and intense future heat waves. Additionally, the proposal explores the natural filtration system of the pool and provides accessibility throughout.
Design proposal for the Kosciuszko Pool was developed by Only If and featured in the inaugural Architecture Now: New York, New Publics exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 2023.
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Kosciuszko Pool, Brooklyn, Atypical Pool, Photography by Anna Morgowicz