An Ephemeral reader sent me this link to Business Insider, which has some incredible photos of Brooklyn in the summer of 1974. They were taken by award-winning photographer Danny Lyon (and are now part of the National Archives).
The collection, making the rounds on different blogs, features beautiful and tender shots of burned out brownstones (now worth millions) and teens hanging out in the park.
But my favorites are the four photos that capture one July day at Kosciusko Pool on Marcy Avenue.
Opened in 1971, the pool must have been the place for neighborhood kids to keep cool, meet friends, and goof off—as 1970s New York sweltered and sputtered.
Scenes like these probably played out every day at dozens of city public pools, some built during the Depression with WPA labor.
Interestingly, Kosciusko Pool was designed by Bed-Stuy native Morris Lapidus, who also designed the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach.
Tags: Astoria Pool, Bed-Stuy photos, Brooklyn in the 1970s, Danny Lyon, famous people born in Brooklyn, Kosciusko Pool, Marcy Avenue photos, Morris Lapidus, New York in 1974, New York street
June 11, 2011 at 11:11 am |
Very nice. I also saw the original just the other day. Some years old but already has nostalgia scattered around it.
June 11, 2011 at 3:44 pm |
I feel like it’s timeless in a way–city kids will always flock to pools on hot summer days. I see the same scene at the pool in East Harlem’s Jefferson Park. I used to go to one on Thompson Street. Wonder if it’s still there.
June 13, 2011 at 7:20 pm |
And I used to spend time at the Betsy Head pool in Crown Heights
Brooklyn. Us kids from the tenements of East NY, Brownsville, and other surrounding neighborhoods were thrilled to be jumping in to the cool water of both the swimming pool and the diving pool. It definitely beat hoping that someone could open the fire hydrant on our street to escape the summer heat.