Thomas Jefferson Park and Pool

About this listing

WPA-era public pool that has seen some eras of racial strife

Place Details

Place Matters Profile

The Thomas Jefferson Pool, one of eleven giant pools opened in city neighborhoods in the 1930s that changed New York’s summer landscape forever, is a popular summer destination for swimmers, dippers, and waders. Opened in 1936, and with few renovations since, the pool maintains its historic place in the community as a summer escape from New York City’s humid, grimy summers without the racial strife that plagued the pool and the community not so many years ago.

A product of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the eleven pools, implemented by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and his Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, were a government-sponsored effort to alleviate bad health conditions and allow for safe recreation in working class neighborhoods. Combined, the new pools could accommodate more than 43,000 bathers at once. Except for McCarren Pool in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, the other ten pools remain open today. Moses, a devoted swimmer himself funded the pools at $1 million apiece from WPA monies provided

The Thomas Jefferson Pool, one of eleven giant pools opened in city neighborhoods in the 1930s that changed New York’s summer landscape forever, is a popular summer destination for swimmers, dippers, and waders. Opened in 1936, and with few renovations since, the pool maintains its historic place in the community as a summer escape from New York City’s humid, grimy summers without the racial strife that plagued the pool and the community not so many years ago.

A product of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the eleven pools, implemented by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and his Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, were a government-sponsored effort to alleviate bad health conditions and allow for safe recreation in working class neighborhoods. Combined, the new pools could accommodate more than 43,000 bathers at once. Except for McCarren Pool in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, the other ten pools remain open today. Moses, a devoted swimmer himself funded the pools at $1 million apiece from WPA monies provided by the federal government to create desperately-needed jobs and stimulate the economy in the midst of the Great Depression.

The second of the new pools to open, Jefferson Park's pool -- 270 feet long by 125 feet wide -- accommodated 2,600 people at a time. Two large fountains emerged from either end of the swimming area, and the separate diving pool featured seven diving boards -- one of them a high board. In the 1990s the Parks Department decided the diving pool was dangerous and has since transformed it into a wading pool.

Like all the new Moses pools, Jefferson sported innovative underwater lighting that looked particularly spectacular at night when the celebratory ribbon cuttings were held. According to Robert Caro in the Power Broker, neighborhood parades preceded the speeches; local priests blessed the clear, chlorinated waters; diving and racing competitions fired the crowd up; and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia took the stage. "It was he," Caro writes, "who pulled the switch that turned on the underwater lighting, an event that never failed to bring a murmur of "oooohs" from the crowd, it was he who gave the word to raise the flag and it was he who got to cut the ribbon and shout to the waiting children, "Okay, kids, it's all yours!"

The Jefferson Park Pool is located right by the East River on 111th St. in what is now a primarily Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican neighborhood. However, in the 1930s, the neighborhood hosted the largest Italian-American community in the United States, and a very large Jewish community as well.

Robert Moses, concerned for the peace and safety of the pools, set out to prevent racial mixing. Jefferson Park's Pool, in ethnically-mixed East Harlem, not far from largely African American Central Harlem, was the place Moses most worried about. Some historians are questioning Caro’s claims regarding how Moses deterred use of the pool by New Yorkers of color, but his key point still stands. “One could go to the pool on the hottest summer days,” Caro wrote, “when the slums of Negro and Spanish Harlem a few blocks away sweltered in the heat, and not see a single non-Caucasian face. Negroes who lived only half a mile away, Puerto Ricans who lived three blocks away, would travel instead to Colonial Park, three miles away -- even though many of them could not afford the bus fare for their families and had to walk all the way."

Bizarre as it seems, swimming pools defined the front lines of racial segregation -- and integration -- in both the south and the north. Treasured by all, pools demarked turf. Thomas Jefferson Pool didn't remain as lily-white as Caro suggests, but as Italians and Puerto Ricans bartered and battered for control over neighborhood territory, the pool glowed hot.

As Puerto Ricans evolved into the area's new majority, their ability to claim territory also increased. Bobby Rodríguez and Frankie Yulfo, still of El Barrio today, remember having to make their way through the Italian gang called the Redwings to get to the pool. One attempt was particularly unsuccessful and Bobby got stabbed in the back. A?rea Almeida remembers that sympathetic Italians would sometimes watch out for her as she passed through their territory. Other times, she explained, when the ground was particularly fought over, "you had to cross the Italian section with a lot of Puerto Ricans. And if you were by yourself, honey, you would not walk, you would run."

So if it was so hard to get to the pool, why did the Puerto Ricans keep trying? Partly because they wanted to use the pool and have fun like everybody else. Carlos Diaz remembers jumping over the fence at night with his friends after the pool had closed. They would find crowds of kids still swimming; trying to keep away from the patrol cop's flashlight. If play was one reason to persist in using Thomas Jefferson pool, equal rights was another. Felipe Colón, who owns the popular restaurant El Fogón, put it this way: They fought until they were finally left alone. They fought for access. The pool was a nice place built by the City -- so it was meant for everyone. The pool is a symbol of determination. Puerto Ricans wouldn’t let anyone browbeat them and not let them use a facility that belonged to everyone. They suffered and fought to get a better way of life and the benefits that they have now.

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to permanently protect the pools by designating them as landmarks when some citizens suggested that action in the 1990s. But landmarks of a kind they are: marking an era of city leaders willing and able to take responsibility for the population's health and well-being; the painful struggles of the city's diverse populations to claim space for themselves; and the sweetness of triumph over the meanness of racism. Today the public can bathe in the pool’s history as it bathes in its cool water. Come and swim.

Sources

The quotes from Robert Caro’s Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), are from pages 457 and 514.

City Lore interview with Carlos Diaz, 1999

City Lore interview with Aurea Almeida, 1999

City Lore interview with Felipe Colon, 1999

City Lore interview with Bobby Rodriguez, 1999

City Lore interview with Frankie Yulfo

Other WPA Pools

Astoria

19th Street and 23rd Drive, Queens

330’ x 165’, capacity 6,670 people

Opened July 2, 1936

As the largest of the eleven pools and framed by the Triborough and Hell Gate Bridges, WPA administrator Harry Hopkins described it as “the finest in the world.” The Olympic Trials for the United States Swim and Diving Teams in 1936 and 1964 were held at the pool.

Betsy Head (listed in the Place Matters census)

Boyland, Livonia and Dumont Avenues, Brooklyn

330’ x 165’, capacity 1,200 people

Opened August 6, 1936

One of only two pools in the Parks system, A pool on this site dated to 1915, but was completely redesigned in 1936. This Olympic-size pool in Brownsville burned down a year after opening and was substantially rebuilt.

Crotona

173rd Street and Fulton Avenue, The Bronx

330’ x 120’. capacity 4,265 people

Opened July 24, 1936

This pool features stylized sculptures and tiles by Frederick G.R. Roth showing marine life and birds.

Hamilton Fish

Pitt and Houston Streets, Manhattan

165’ x 100’, capacity 1,700 people

Opened June 24, 1936

This pool in the Lower East Side lessened the attractiveness of swimming in the disease-infested and dangerous East River and helped keep children off the streets.

Highbridge (listed in the Place Matters census)

Amsterdam Avenue and West 173rd Street, Manhattan

228’ and 166’, capacity 4,880 people

Opened July 14, 1936

In the shadow of the historic Highbridge Water tower and on site of the old Highbridge receiving reservoir, this Washington Height’s pool is surrounded by the city’s water history.

Jackie Robinson

Bradhurst Avenue and West 146th Street, Manhattan

235’ x 82’, capacity 4,090 people

Opened August 8, 1936

Originally known as the “Colonial Park Pool,” this pool in Harlem has an arcaded façade that resembles a medieval castle. At its famous opening tap dance Bill “Bojangles” Robinson danced to a crowd of 25,000.

Joseph H. Lyons

Pier 6 and Victory Boulevard, Staten Island

165’ x 100’, capacity 2,800 people

Opened July 7, 1936

Right off the ferry terminal, at its opening Mayor LaGuardia called the facility “a monument to the progressive government which would not and could not see unemployed men on the breadline.”

McCarren (listed in the Place Matters census)

Lorimer Street between Bayard Street and Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn

330’ x 165’, capacity 6,800 people

Opened July 31, 1936

The only pool of the eleven to no longer be in use, the pool closed in 1984. It was famous for the biggest bathhouses in the system. Currently, summer dance and music performances are held in the dry pool.

Red Hook

Bay and Henry Streets, Brooklyn

330’ x 130’, capacity 4,460 people

Opened August 17, 1936

With over 40,000 people attending its opening, the New York Times called it Red Hook’s event of the year.

Sunset

Seventh Avenue between 41st and 44th Streets, Brooklyn

256’ x 165’, capacity 4,850 people

Opened July 20, 1936

Located on a high bluff overlooking the New York harbor, the entryway has a curved façade.

Nominations

Site nominated through the East Harlem Community Focus project.

I played a lot of softball in Jefferson Park, and after that we used to go swimming because it was so hot in the summer... After you finished swimming, right across the street on 112th Street, there was a little luncheonette, where you bought your French fries for a quarter and they put it in a basket and you'd eat fries all the way till you got back to your house. If you had enough money, you would buy a soda.

We're talking about the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Even until they revamped the pool, which is about eight years ago, there were still people jumping over the railings to go swimming.

The lights were on in the pool, and by the time you shut the lights off, it took a couple of hours to shut off by itself, because it was probably on a timer. So the lights remained on, and it was still dark; you still would go swimming in the dark.

When the cops would come, we used to go around what looked like a little house. His flashlight beam wouldn't reach that far out, so it stayed dark and then we'd swim around the other side, and he'd say, 'You guys gotta get out.' But we used to keep switching places, and there are long distances in the pool, and by the time the cop got to one point, we'd be gone and he was following some other kids.

Swimming was very important for us. If you were a good swimmer, you were able to get pretty girls, if you knew how to swim... You'd go over to the girls, 'Let me teach you how to swim.'

Of course, you had a lot of guys there, and you didn't want your sister sitting around three, four, five hundred guys. So your sister didn't go swimming.

I had the best times with my brothers, every summer in the 1960s. (November 2014)