Save Tony Dapolito Rec. Center, Public Tells Parks Dept. & Landmarks Commission

Furious Manhattan residents attended a Community Board 2 meeting to demand that the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center stay intact, as the NYC Parks Department continues to float the possibility of demolishing the registered landmark, citing onerous repair costs. Its outdoor pool, made famous by a Keith Haring mural, may have a better chance at remaining untouched.

The agency says that it would relocate its services into an incoming affordable housing complex across the street at 388 Hudson. Skeptics note that the planned construction time for that complex is currently sitting at around five years, which they believe is adding insult to injury.

The center has been closed to the public for repairs since 2021. Its beloved outdoor pool, which is technically a separate entity, has been closed since 2019. In July, the city agency said that complete repairs to the structure would cost $100 million, meaning that shifting services into a future housing development would be significantly cheaper. The Parks Department has told Community Board 2 that they will provide more clarity on a demolition decision by the end of the year.

At the September 30 CB2 meeting, which was exclusively addressed to the topic, Village Preservation employee Dena Tasse-Winter told everybody why her organization believes the site is indispensable.

Known to many locals as the “Carmine St. Pool,” she clarified that it was renamed the Tony Dapolito Rec Center in 2003, to honor the passing of a “community leader, parks and playgrounds advocate, and longtime chair of Community Board 2.” Dapolito was the “son of Italian immigrants,” Tasse-Winter said, and his family had “strong ties to the immigrant communities of the South Village, which they called home.”

It’s significance to immigrant communities and “working-class architecture” date to its initial 1908 opening date, she said, when it was designed as a “bathing and hygiene” facility during “a time when running water was not a given in many people’s homes.” She described how this resonance only became more pronounced by mid-century, when it transitioned into a recreational space.

“In the second-half of the 20th century and into the 21st, people traveled from all over the city to take advantage of the free outdoor pool and other facilities,” she continued. She also noted that the pool’s famed mural, which was painted by Haring over the course of one summer day in 1986, is a lasting touchstone for the community’s LBTQIA+ communities (Haring, a gay Pop Art pioneer, died of AIDS in 1990).

Andrew Berman, Village Preservation’s Executive Director, later echoed Tasse-Winter with comments of his own. The center was “very intentionally landmarked by the city...it’s exactly why we have landmarking and the register,” he said. “Demolishing it would fly in the face of generations of work to preserve the history and character of our neighborhoods.”

When it came time for locals to speak, they seemed to be of one voice when it came to preserving the center. Dr. Gil Horowitz, who noted that he’s 88 in December and was once a friend of Dapolito’s, called it a “venerable landmark in NYC.” He emphasized that it “should be with us long after I am dead, which, at the moment, I’m not.”

“I hope my community board has the daring, strength, consciousness, and conviction to say ‘NO!’ to the demolition of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center,” Horowitz concluded.

Joel Lobenthal, who has lived in the area for 35 years, was pointed about the longterm effects that a demolition would have on his health: “The [possible] closing of this center is a catastrophe for me, because I’m diabetic and I was used to going there three times a week. Since its closed, my blood sugar has gone haywire and up-and-down, constantly.” He added that the rec center is a “public gem” and a “benefit to working people.”

Trevor Stewart simply described the planned demolition as “appalling.” As for the agency’s rationale for the planned relocation, Stewart deemed it “highly dubious.”