Three hundred and thirty feet of water between two bridges, opened in the summer of 1936 and called the finest in the world by the man who paid for it. Lap swimmers, cannonballs, lifeguards on their chairs, the diving tower that outlived its pool, and Hell Gate to the north. The New Yorkers hang under the colonnade of the bathhouse, out of the sun, facing the water.
Astoria Park Pool opened on July 2, 1936, the largest of the eleven pools the Works Progress Administration completed in New York City that summer; WPA administrator Harry Hopkins called it the finest in the world. The main pool is 330 by 165 feet and four feet deep, 54,450 square feet of water, and at its peak the pool area held 6,200 swimmers. It hosted the United States Olympic trials in 1936, 1952 and 1964. The diving pool, with its 32 foot three tier cantilevered platform, was drained in the 1980s and filled in between 2017 and 2019; the platform still stands. The complex was designated a city landmark in 2006.
Source · Astoria Park, Wikipedia ↗
The WPA pool of 1936 at 330 by 165 feet, the brick and limestone bathhouse with its central block and colonnade, lane ropes and ladders, lifeguard chairs, the filled in diving pool and its 32 foot three tier concrete platform, the Hell Gate Bridge arch to the north and the RFK Bridge towers to the south, the East River and Manhattan beyond. Mood: ninety three degrees, everybody in. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.