Astoria Park Pool
24-02 19th Street | Astoria 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.
- 1936
Astoria Pool opens before 20,000 people on the first day of the Olympic swim trials
The pool complex opened on July 2, 1936, the first day of the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, with a crowd of 20,000 at the ceremony. It replaced a smaller wading pool on the site and hosted the U.S. trials in swimming, diving and water polo for the Berlin Games, so newspapers often called it the Olympic Tryout Pool. At 54,450 square feet it was the city's largest pool.
“Enough of the complex was completed for the Astoria Pool to open with much fanfare on July 2, 1936, on the first day of trials…”
- 1936
John M. Hatton designs a glass-block bath house with rooftop viewing terraces
Consulting Park Department architect John Matthews Hatton did most of the design. His bath house uses glass block in the lower, recessed parts of the locker room walls beneath the original metal louver windows, and its entire roof serves as viewing terraces on several levels. Saucer-like roofs cap the upper parts of the filter house, and the entry keeps its Art Moderne ticket booth.
- 1940
Neighborhood boys called the Aquazines stage costumed swim shows on Wednesday nights
In the early 1940s a group of Astoria boys began putting on swimming stunts at the pool on Wednesday nights. Calling themselves the Aquazines, they performed in costume, with music, backdrops, props and at times trained dogs. One member, Whitney Hart, went on to dive professionally and was inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame.
“Known as the Aquazines, they donned costumes and treated audiences to choreographed swimming acts with music, backdrops, props and, sometimes, trained dogs.”
- 1964
Astoria Pool hosts the U.S. Olympic swimming and diving trials again
The pool hosted the U.S. Olympic swimming and diving trials a second time in 1964. To get ready, the pool received its first full overhaul in 1963, twenty-seven years after it opened, with new lightweight concrete decks on the promenades, some new window sash and fresh paint. The original glass pylons over the main entrance were faced in brick.
“The Astoria Park Pool was again host to the swimming and diving trials for the United States Olympic Teams in 1964.”
- 2006
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center
On June 20, 2006, the Landmarks Preservation Commission made the pool complex a city landmark, covering the bath house, the wading and diving pools, the filter house, bleachers and comfort station. At the April hearing, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe spoke in favor, as did speakers from the Art Deco Society and the Historic Districts Council.
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