Astoria Park Pool: The 1936 Art Deco Olympic Wonder
Why is it significant?
Gaze across the vast blue expanse of the Astoria Park Pool, a colossal public swimming facility that resembles an inland ocean.
Key Facts
| Place | Astoria Park Pool: The 1936 Art Deco Olympic Wonder |
|---|---|
| Address | Astoria Park, 19th St & 23rd Dr, Astoria, NY 11105, USA |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.78050, -73.92320 |
| Part of Walk | New York: Astoria Queens, Film Studios and Greek Tavernas |
| Generated | Generated |
Gaze across the vast blue expanse of the Astoria Park Pool, a colossal public swimming facility that resembles an inland ocean. Opened on July 4, 1936, this monumental Art Deco pool measures an astounding three hundred and thirty feet long by one hundred and sixty-five feet wide—the largest single public swimming pool in the entire United States, capable of accommodating over three thousand swimmers at a single time. It was the crowning jewel of eleven monumental public swimming complexes built across New York City in the summer of 1936 by the Works Progress Administration under Robert Moses.
Just one week after opening, this pool hosted the 1936 United States Olympic Swimming and Diving Trials. A young seventeen-year-old diver named Sammy Lee and swimming legend Adolph Kiefer competed on this very pool deck before sailing to Berlin for the Olympic Games. The pool featured an ingenious undersea lighting system, massive filtered salt-water pumping mechanisms, and thirty-two-foot concrete diving towers designed with streamlined Art Deco fins that look like airplanes taking flight. The pool remains a beloved summer sanctuary for thousands of neighborhood youth, symbolizing the New Deal's profound conviction that high-quality recreational and athletic facilities should be accessible to all urban citizens regardless of wealth.
The pool hosted the Olympic Trials again in 1964, demonstrating its world-class aquatic engineering. For over eight decades, on hot sweltering summer days, generations of neighborhood children learned to swim in these cool waters, splashing under the protective shadows of the Hell Gate Bridge arches.
Look at the monumental curved Art Deco grandstands and brick filtration pavilions, preserved as triumphant monuments of New Deal civic architecture.
Walk along Shore Boulevard to the northernmost point of the park to stand directly beneath the thunderous steel arch of the Hell Gate Bridge.