Constance Baker Motley Recreation Center
348 East 54th Street | also 342 East 54th Street | East Midtown | built 1911
Open on the map4 entries
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.
- 1911
The East 54th Street public bath opens for tenement neighbors
Under an 1895 state mandate for free public baths, the city built this Classical Revival bathhouse, designed by Werner & Windolph, for the crowded tenement blocks nearby. It opened in 1911 with 79 showers for men, 59 for women and a gymnasium; pools followed in 1915. The Parks Department controlled the whole building by 1938, and the city made it a landmark in 2011.
Source: nycgovparks.org
- 1938
The bathhouse closes and the city turns it into a public gymnasium
The Free Public Bath at 342-348 East 54th Street stops operating as a bathhouse in 1938. The city modernizes the interior for use as a public gymnasium. Public baths had been declining since around 1915, as more landlords added bathing facilities to their buildings and apartments.
Source: hdc.org
- 2011
The city designates the East 54th Street Bath and Gymnasium a landmark
On May 10, 2011, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously designates the former East 54th Street Bath and Gymnasium, designed by Werner & Windolph and completed in 1911, an individual city landmark. Commission staff describe the three-story Classical Revival building as remarkably intact. One commissioner compares it to a Federal rowhouse as a reminder of a vanishing era.
Source: citylandnyc.org
- 2021
The recreation center is renamed for Constance Baker Motley
Known as Recreation Center 54 since 1998, the building was renamed in 2021 for Constance Baker Motley, the NAACP lawyer who helped draft the brief in Brown v. Board of Education. She was the first Black woman elected to the New York State Senate, the first woman to serve as Manhattan Borough President and the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench.
Source: nycgovparks.org
Nearby
- Norwegian Seamen's Church317 East 52nd Street | 2 entries
- Church of St. John the Evangelist1011 1st Avenue | 3 entries
- P.S. 135 (The Beekman Regent)351 East 51st Street | 3 entries
- 980 2nd Avenue1 entry
- Halcyon305 East 51st Street | 7 entries
- 340 East 57th Street2 entries