Betsy Head Play Center bath house
694 Thomas S Boyland Street | also 720 Thomas S Boyland Street, 167 Livonia Avenue | Brownsville | built 1939
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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.
- 1914
Betsy Head Park opens in Brownsville with a twin-gabled bath house and outdoor pool
Brownsville property owners paid $250,000 for the land, and the buildings were funded by a bequest from Betsy Head, a Long Island widow who left half her estate to the city for playgrounds and public baths. Henry B. Herts designed the larger lot, which was planned as the city's first recreation facility with a public outdoor pool and a substantial twin-gabled bath house. That 1914 bath house stood on the lot of today's play center and was later replaced by the present building.
- 1936
About 450 children open the new Betsy Head pool with no ceremony
Unlike the other WPA pools that summer, Betsy Head opened without the mayor or Parks officials, because the diving and wading pools were not finished. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that some 450 youngsters dedicated the new 1,400,000-gallon pool in their own way, after word spread through the neighborhood in under half an hour. The 1914 bath house, which stood where the present one does, remained in use beside the enlarged pool.
- 1937
A fire guts the old Betsy Head bath house and Moses calls for a replacement
The blaze destroyed the interior of the 1914 bath house, the building later replaced by the present one, and cut short that summer's swim season. Three days later Parks Commissioner Robert Moses wrote to Mayor La Guardia that it should be replaced with a modern play center instead of being repaired. A temporary one-story shower building stood in for the 1938 season.
“On August 17, 1937, a fire destroyed the interior of the bath house and shortened the swimming season at Betsy Head that summer.”
- 1939
The present one-story Betsy Head bath house is completed
Finished on May 27, 1939, the bath house replaced the fire-damaged 1914 building and carried out Robert Moses's plan for the Brownsville pool complex. Moses had pressed for a new building by the 1938 season, but a temporary shower building was used that year instead.
- 1939
John Matthews Hatton, later known for store modernization, is the architect of the bath house
Hatton was born in Iowa around 1886 and shows up in New York City directories from 1915. In the early 1920s he briefly partnered with Diego DeSuarez. For the Parks Department he also designed the Astoria Play Center in Queens and the Pelham Bay Park golf clubhouse. By the 1940s he was regarded as an expert in store modernization, with Stetson among his clients, and he also worked for the Housing Authority.
“The Betsy Head Play Center bath house was designed by architect John Matthews Hatton who was born c. 1886 in Iowa…”
- 1939
The bath house is recognized as an unusually inventive, overtly Modernist pool building
The Landmarks Commission describes it as perhaps the most inventive and overtly Modernist building of its kind. Its sleek, nearly unornamented geometry carries a cantilevered rooftop canopy of eight parabolic arches, which once sheltered spectators at water pageants and diving meets below. Recessed glass-block windows between brick piers, and concrete panels incised with patterns reminiscent of waves, complete the design. Architect Ely Jacques Kahn praised the roof and its stepped bleachers in Architectural Record.
“…perhaps the most inventive and most overtly Modernist structure of this type.”
- 1983
Koch reopens the restored Betsy Head Play Center after a three-year closure
Budgeted at an estimated $5.2 million in 1979, the restoration closed the complex for three years while the pools were rebuilt and the bath house gained handicap-accessible locker rooms. At the June 28, 1983 rededication, Mayor Edward I. Koch and Parks Commissioner Henry Stern joined hundreds of neighborhood children, and the Morningside Diving Association gave a diving exhibition.
- 2008
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Betsy Head Play Center a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the play center on September 16, 2008. At a January 30, 2007 hearing nine witnesses supported designation, among them Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and speakers for the Municipal Art Society and the Historic Districts Council, and no one spoke against it. The landmark covers the bath house, swimming pool, diving pool, bleachers, filter house and perimeter fencing.
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