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Back in the 1950’s, Shirley Rosenthal, then just a young girl growing up in Washington Heights, knew that when she’d hear the Highbridge water tower bells chiming at six o’clock, it was time to wrap up her pool party and head home.
Rosenthal, now married to local historian James Renner, remembers the memories fondly.
“Every hour, on the hour the bells would go off reminding kids to go home for dinner,” said Renner, of summers spent at the pool.
The bells are long gone, but the magnificent tower still stands in its restored beauty, the centerpiece to many a sultry summer en El Alto.
This week, when the air conditioner wasn’t doing it, cooking was not even a thought, and furiously fanning myself with anything at hand’s reach was no longer satisfying, I headed to Highbridge pool, armed with sunscreen, and leaving my resistance to crowds at home, determined to explore this Uptown gem.
First lesson – I recommend you get there early.
There is usually a line right before opening time at 11 am, but once you make it in, you’ll find an oasis surrounded by the greenery of High Bridge Park, with plenty of space to lay out, and plenty of pool to splash into.
Highbridge pool serves as more than just a recreation space. It’s also a true community center, a place that provides the youth with summer jobs, and an outreach beacon currently undergoing a number of renovations, like a new “splash house” which will serve as stand-alone locker rooms outside near the pool deck. By next summer, all changes should be completed.
And recently, the pool has been flexing its community involvement muscles, serving as a gathering site for more than just fun. The Healthy Kids in the Heights program has been doing outreach at the pool to inform parents and children about free fitness classes. The program offers families with a health log booklet so kids can track their progress on eating fruits and vegetables, drinking more water, and exercising while they attend the fitness classes.
The High Bridge pool recreation center also provides many local youths their first summer job. For F’nahsa Prilleau, 16, a smiling, bubbly pool worker, it’s the first summer she is employed by the Parks Department summer youth job program and so far she said the experience has been a positive one.
“I’ve made friends with some of the other pool workers and lifeguards,” said Prilleau of her work at Highbridge pool.
But the Olympic-sized pool wasn’t always a pool. The massive 220 by 162 feet crater was initially built to serve as a water reservoir for the old Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River. The recreation center and pool were built in 1936 when then-Parks Commissioner Robert Moses spearheaded a flurry of pool construction across the City. The pool opened in the month of July to much fanfare, and was named “the swimming pool of the year” by Fortune magazine.
Ever since, the Highbridge pool has remained as an important community asset, a place where residents from El Alto can soak up the sun, relax, and exercise.
And El Alto knows how to get down on the pool game: cannonballs abound, swan dives off the deep end are executed with grace, and the obligatory Marco Polo games among teenagers can be heard from each end of the pool.
As for me, a swimmer since my mother threw me in a pool hoping I’d learn, Highbridge pool looks like a freestyle-lap paradise. Arrive in the mornings for adult swim time and burn off the summer calories with a few laps of freestyle, follow with sun bathing, rinse, and repeat.
In El Alto we have it all: the people, the trees, the bridge, the piragua man, the mango woman, and the pool.
On the streets of Uptown, as the humidity climbs and we feel like we might melt, let’s stop to appreciate.
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