Crotona Play Center
1700 Fulton Avenue | Crotona Park | built 1936
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1935
Parks files plans for a brick bath house with a monumental gateway on Fulton Avenue
In August 1935 the Parks Department filed plans for the play center's brick bath house, with its monumental entrance on Fulton Avenue, estimated at $563,000 and sized for 4,265 bathers, along with a filter house costed at $230,000. The design is usually credited to Herbert Magoon, though most of the bath house drawings on file were prepared by Joseph L. Hautman. Sculptor Frederick G. R. Roth designed the complex's sculpture, including the ibis-topped pilasters of the bath house.
- 1936
The Bronx's only WPA-era pool complex opens to a crowd of 5,000
The Crotona Play Center opened on a Friday evening, the seventh of the Works Progress Administration pools to open across the city that summer and the only one in the Bronx. About 5,000 people came, and the New York Times said 10,000 more were turned away. Bronx Borough President James Lyons joked about racing Mayor LaGuardia and Robert Moses, a jab at the police having stopped Moses from demolishing a city ferry terminal earlier that week.
“Five-thousand people attended the Friday evening opening of the Crotona Play Center. The New York Times reported that an additional 10,000 hopeful entrants had to be turned away.”
- 1971
Vandals strip the play center of piping and fixtures, and the bath house windows are filled in
During the winter of 1971 vandals took thousands of dollars' worth of pipes, valves and electrical fixtures from the complex. The city spent $25,000 to $70,000 on repairs and kept close to 40 workers busy every day. To guard against a repeat, every window in the bath house and filter house was filled in, while the Parks Department pressed to get the pool reopened.
“All of the bath house and filter house windows were filled in at this time to lessen the likelihood of a repeat incident.”
- 1984
Mayor Koch strips to swim trunks to reopen the restored pool
After staying shut through the summers of 1982 and 1983, the play center reopened following a $6 million restoration that brought a new roof, windows, lockers, showers and filtration and made the facilities accessible. At the rededication Mayor Edward I. Koch called it a brand-new facility and an example of the Bronx coming back. He then took off his clothes to reveal swimming trunks and went in with nearly 200 children.
“…before shedding his clothes to reveal a pair of swimming trunks, and joining nearly 200 children for an inaugural swim…”
- 2007
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Crotona Play Center a landmark
The commission made the bath house, pools, bleachers, filter house and surrounding walls and paths a city landmark in June 2007, after a January hearing where twelve witnesses spoke in favor, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe among them. The site had been heard before in 1982 and 1990. Several speakers also backed designating all of the city's WPA-era pools.
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