Betsy Head Memorial Playground Pool, ca. 1920.

The original Betsy Head swimming pool (seen here) was constructed as part of the new Betsy Head Memorial Park in 1915. Betsy Head was wealthy British immigrant who bequeathed money upon her death to the City of New York for the “purchase and improvement of grounds for the purposes of health and recreation.”

The Betsy Head Memorial Park included a rest pavilion, wading pool, playground, school farm garden, bath building, swimming pool, field house, running track, and tennis courts. The variety of recreational activities made the park one of the most comprehensive and popular facilities in the city at the time, particularly for the large Jewish immigrant population of the neighborhood.

In 1936 the pool was expanded into an Olympic sized facility by the WPA. The original bath house from 1915, a twin-gabled building, survived the WPA construction of the pool but would suffer a fire in 1937 and be replaced by an Art Moderne bath house in 1939. Designed by the same architect who created the Astoria Pool house, John Matthews Hatton, this structure, having been designed a few years later, is described as by architect and architectural historian Robert A.M. Stern as being,"perhaps the most inventive and most overtly Modernist structure of this type."

The pool and adjacent park structures had a tumultuous few decades at the end of the 20th century. Suffering through the financial crisis of the 1970s, the pool (along with others) became run down. An early 1980s renovation rehabilitated the pool and park, but the 1980s saw vandalism and serious issues of littering, while the 1990s were marked by a series of assault complaints. In the last 20 years the pools have improved their reputations as a safe and fun summer activity.