Red Hook Recreation Area, also known as Red Hook Park, is a 58.5-acre (237,000 m2) public park in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, composed of several segments centered around Bay Street. The park's recreational facilities include handball courts, softball fields, a soccer and football field, and a running track. The Sol Goldman Play Center, within the block bounded by Bay, Henry, Lorraine and Clinton Streets, consists of a brick bathhouse and two pools. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also known as NYC Parks. The land for the park was acquired starting in 1913 and was transferred to NYC Parks in 1934. Joseph L. Hautman designed the pool, which was constructed from 1935 to 1936 as part of a Works Progress Administration project. The rest of the park opened in 1940. The pool was extensively refurbished from 1983 to 1986; it was renamed for Sol Goldman in 1991 after he donated funds to keep the pool open. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Sol Goldman Play Center as a city landmark in 2007. As a result of extensive lead contamination, the fields were closed and renovated in phases starting in 2019.
Description
Recreation fields Red Hook Park is in several non-contiguous plots of unequal size, totaling 58 acres (23 ha). The largest plot is bounded by Columbia Street to the west, Clinton Street to the east, and Bay Street to the north. It contains four soccer fields, labeled 2–5, and five baseball fields, labeled 1–4 and 9. Red Hook Park also occupies part or all of five other city blocks to the east and north of the park's main section. Directly across from Clinton Street, extending east to Court Street and south to Halleck Street, is a recreational area containing soccer field 1 and walking paths. The block to the northwest, bounded by Creamer, Court, Bay, and Clinton Streets, contains soccer field 6 and a running track. The track, which is 1⁄6 mile (0.27 km) long, encircled a roller rink when it opened in 1940. The park also occupies two whole city blocks between Bay Street to the south and Lorraine Street to the north. The block between Hicks Street on the west and Henry Street on the east contains ball fields 5–8 and soccer field 7, while the block between Henry Street on the west and Clinton Street on the east contains the Sol Goldman Pool. The Bush-Clinton Playground, containing several basketball courts and a play area, is north of the pool adjacent to Red Hook Houses. The northern boundary of the Bush-Clinton Playground is on the axis of Bush Street, named for a prominent family in the area, while the eastern boundary is on Clinton Street, named for New York governor DeWitt Clinton. This playground used to contain a wading pool on the site of the basketball courts.
Red Hook Play Center The Red Hook Play Center consists of the Sol Goldman Pool and Bathhouse, which are on the city block bounded clockwise from south by Bay, Henry, Lorraine and Clinton Streets. The bathhouse is on the southern end of the block, facing Bay Street. The pool occupies the remainder of the block. The complex was built from 1934 to 1936 in the Art Moderne style, during the Fiorello LaGuardia administration. The supervising architect was Aymar Embury II, and the landscape architect was Gilmore D. Clarke, among others.
Bathhouse The bathhouse contains a facade of brick in Flemish bond and is shaped in a "C" with a 1+1⁄2-story central pavilion, flanked by west and east wings that are separated from the street by a grass strip. The main entrance to the bath house is approached by two short flights of granite steps from Bay Street, though there is also a handicap-accessible ramp east of the steps. The bottom of the stairs is flanked by low piers and has a planting bed to the west. It leads directly to the rotunda. A back entrance, from the north, leads directly to the swimming pool. The top of the building facade is wrapped with a simple cast-stone band, while the bottom sits on a water table of granite blocks. The central pavilion, built in the 1986 renovation, is similar in design to the original bathhouses on the west and east. The southern facade contains three arches separated by sloped brick buttresses, with hopper windows in the top sections of the arches. Metal letters with the words sol goldman/recreation center & pool/red hook park are mounted above the central arch. The main entrance consists of a set of metal doors in the lowest section of the central arch. The northern facade of the central pavilion contains three hopper windows, each of which is topped by a relief panel. The windows and relief panels are flanked by a pair of doors. The west wing is for men and the east wing is for women, but otherwise are similarly designed. Both wings are divided into three sections from west to east. The innermost sections, next to the central pavilion, are each one story tall and have a small cube-shaped pavilion extending south to the Bay Street sidewalk. The central portions of each wing are one and a half stories tall, containing three archways on the southern facade. The outermost sections of each wing have four hopper windows on the southern facade. The western facade of the west wing, and the eastern facade of the east wing, each have three hopper windows. The extreme ends of each wing extend northward to form arcades, each composed of three arches. The west wing's arcade was designed to provide direct access from Henry Street while the east wing's arcade was designed to provide direct access from Clinton Street. The northern facades of both wings each have six buttresses, with hopper windows between each buttress, as well as carved stone lintels above the northern doorways from each wing.
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