Betsy Head Play Center ARCHITECT: John Matthews Hatton DATE: 1934-39 STYLE: Art Moderne The Betsy Head Play Center is one of a group of eleven immense outdoor swimming pools opened in the summer of 1936 in a series of grand ceremonies presided over by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Park Commissioner Robert Moses. All of the pools were constructed largely with funding provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The complexes generally employed low-cost building materials, principally brick and cast concrete, and often utilized the streamlined and curvilinear forms of the popular 1930s Art Moderne style. Each had separate swimming, diving and wading pools, and a large bath house with locker room sections which doubled as gymnasiums in non-swimming months. Established in 1914, Betsy Head Park in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn was the city’s first recreation facility designed to include a public outdoor swimming pool and bath house. The pool was replaced in 1936 by the much larger existing swimming and diving pools. The 1914 bath house, a substantial twin-gabled building, was originally retained, but, following a fire in 1937, was replaced by the present bath house exceptionally designed by John Matthews Hatton and completed in 1939. The Betsy Head bath house’s sleek geometric forms stripped of most ornament has been recognized as “perhaps the most inventive and most overtly Modernist structure of this type.” The bath house is distinguished by the extensive use of recessed glass-block walls for the locker room portions of the bath house, making the structure translucent in these sections to a surprising degree. Equally striking is the rooftop observation gallery with its parabolic arches which support a broad, flat roof.

Provident Loan Company, Brownsville Branch, ca. 1905. This simplified Beaux-Arts style structure was built in the first decade of the 20th century. Designed by architect, Arthur G. Stone, the building was erected to house the Jenkins Trust Bank. After that firm collapsed in the financial Panic of 1907 the branch was closed. In 1909 the building was sold to the Provident Loan Society, a non-profit loan firm that provided short-term cash loans, in direct competition to the shady loan sharks and pawn brokers of the day. The Loan Society moved out in the 1960s, after which the structure was occupied by various retail stores. At some point between the early 1980s and the 2007 the facade was reclad with marble tiles at the base and had a large concrete band installed over the tops of the large windows (some of which have also been bricked up). The Beaux-Arts ornamentation just under the roofline remain, as does the lovely tiled Mediterranean style roof.

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.

Betsy Head Park was one of a number of smaller parks around the city developed to provide recreational areas to New Yorkers.

The first decade of the 20th century the population of Brooklyn exploded, particularly in the neighborhood of Brownsville which saw a significant influx of Jewish immigrants from the overcrowded Lower East Side. The Williamsburg Bridge opened at the end of 1903, and between 1905 and 1912 the city established four new schools in Brownsville to attempt to meet the demand of the new school-aged population. Public School 125 predated the opening of the bridge by two years but was heavily renovated in 1917 to add educational and "activity" spaces. The overcrowding never truly abated even as the demographics of the neighborhood changed by the mid-century. By the 1950s the school was predominantly African American (the nearby Brownsville Houses opened in 1948) and was over capacity by 30%. Strangely, the closing date for the school is unknown. The building long stood but was left to ruins, creating a somewhat creepy scene on Rockaway Boulevard. Scaffolding has been erected since late 2017 and work underway. As of late 2018, the work seems completed, but it is unknown what the building's use will be.