Betsy Head Park is a public park in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, United States. The park occupies two non-contiguous plots diagonally across from each other at the intersection of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street, covering a collective . The modern-day park contains a playground, a swimming complex, and fields for baseball, football, tennis, and basketball. The park's swimming complex, the Betsy Head Play Center, was designed by Ely Jacques Kahn and consists of a bathhouse, a general swimming pool, and an infilled diving pool. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also known as NYC Parks.
The construction of the park was funded by Betsy Head, a rich Briton who died in 1907. Plans for Betsy Head Park were completed in 1914 by Henry Beaumont Herts, and the park opened on September 30, 1915, with a bathhouse and a pool complex. The current Art Moderne style pool was built by Aymar Embury II and John Matthews Hatton during a Works Progress Administration project in 1935–1936. The bathhouse was not originally set to be renovated, unlike at other city parks with large pools, but it was rebuilt following a 1937 fire. The park's facilities were renovated from 1979 to 1983 and again in the late 2010s. The Betsy Head Play Center was designated as a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2008.
Recreation fields Betsy Head Park is in two non-contiguous plots of unequal size, diagonally across the intersection of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street. The park's recreational facilities include three baseball fields, two football fields, eight tennis courts, and six basketball courts. The football fields and four of the basketball courts overlap with the baseball fields and cannot be utilized when the baseball field is in use.
The larger plot, at the southwestern corner of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street, measures and is bounded by Thomas S. Boyland Street to the east, Dumont Avenue to the north, Livonia Avenue to the south, and Strauss Street to the west. The plot measures along the western and eastern boundaries and on the northern and southern boundaries. It occupies three typical city blocks. Before 2021, the western two-thirds of the larger plot contained two baseball fields, an overlapping football field, and eight handball courts and one basketball court on the southern border of the plot. In 2021, four of the handball courts were replaced with a full basketball court, and two handball courts were built in another part of the plot. A four-lane running track and a synthetic turf field were also added during the 2021 renovation, within what was previously the baseball and football field.
A smaller plot exists at the northeastern corner of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street. This plot, measuring , is bounded by Blake Avenue to the north, Bristol Street to the east, Dumont Avenue to the south, and Thomas S. Boyland Street to the west. The plot measures along the western and eastern boundaries and on the northern and southern boundaries. It occupies one typical city block. Before 2021, this section of the park contained another baseball field with overlapping football field and four overlapping basketball courts; one non-overlapping basketball court; and four tennis courts. One early feature in the smaller plot was a farmhouse and rest station with a "model kitchen", which in turn was adjacent to a small urban farm with 500 plots for schoolchildren to tend. During the 2021 renovation, a skate park, parkour course, and event area was added.
Betsy Head Play Center
Original facilities The original facilities were modeled after Armour Square Park in Chicago. The western two-thirds of Betsy Head Park's larger southwestern section was originally designed with a 15,000-to-20,000-capacity stadium containing a running track. A two-story field house, measuring , was just east of the stadium. The field house contained restroom facilities on the ground floor, and 25 club-rooms and 25 lockers on the second floor, as well as space for special events. Gymnasiums for men and women were to the north and south of the field house, each with numerous indoor recreation facilities for basketball, handball, tennis, and other sports.
The eastern third of the park's southwestern section contained a swimming pool and bathhouse. The original swimming pool was described as being with the long edge being parallel to the eastern boundary of the park's larger plot. The original bath building was composed of two portions, one wing each to the north and south, just east of the swimming pool. The bathhouse could accommodate 400 people per hour or 4,000 per day, and a boiler room and towel room was in the basement.
Current modernist design
The replacement bathhouse was designed in the Art Moderne style, similar to the Astoria Play Center, in Astoria, Queens. The building was upheld by the architect Ely Jacques Kahn as being "above all...intended for enjoyable use", while parks commissioner Robert Moses called its plans "better than that adopted in any of the existing pools". On the other hand, Embury, known to be a traditionalist in his designs, criticized the style. He once said of modernist architects: "They leave off all ornamentation because, they say, the ornaments do not aid the structure to do its job." Architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern said the Betsy Head Play Center was "perhaps the most inventive and most overtly Modernist structure" of the WPA bathhouses erected by the New York City government.
Unlike its counterparts around the city, the Betsy Head Play Center never contained a wading pool. It included a main swimming pool, as well as a diving pool that was later filled in.
Bathhouse The bathhouse is in Betsy Head Park's southwestern section, with its main entrance along Thomas S. Boyland Street to the east. The eastern facade consists mostly of glass-bricked walls set into a bonded brick wall, which correspond to the walls of the locker rooms inside. Stone coping is at the bottom and top of the facade, and a metal railing is above the stone coping at the top, serving as the handrail for the rooftop deck. The facade was built with materials that could not be easily stolen. The central section of the facade contains the building's main entrance, which is flanked by a curving glass brick wall on either side, and is accessed by a flight of four steps and a wheelchair ramp on the northern side of the steps. The western facade, adjacent to the pool, is similar to the eastern facade, but has two steps up from the pool area to the lobby. The curving glass wall on the northern side of the western facade was replaced for the installation of an elevator, and a wheelchair ramp extends along the southern half of the western facade.
The lobby is in the central section of the bathhouse, separating the men's and women's locker rooms to the north and south, respectively. There are no walls or doorways to the west or east, allowing the facade to be lit naturally. Rather, roll-down metal gates are across the western and eastern entrances. The lobby contains a bluestone-tiled floor, while the white-plaster ceiling contains stepped concentric squares, with the innermost squares being slightly higher. A circular brick column rises through the center of the lobby. A ticket booth was in the lobby, but is no longer operational, as the pool and bathhouse are free to use. There are plaster-and-marble walls separating the lobby from each locker room and various smaller rooms such as the office area to the south and the first-aid room to the north. Above the doorways to each room are Art Deco-style letters indicating the room's purpose, such as the words "MEN" and "WOMEN" above the respective genders' locker rooms. There are metal double-doors leading to each of the locker room areas.
The locker rooms contained several hundred lockers each and are outfitted with concrete floors and brick-with-terracotta walls. The locker rooms are designed with waterproof stepped ceilings similar to the lobby, and as a result, the acoustic quality of the locker rooms is weak. During winters, each locker room could be converted to gym facilities for each gender. The identical shower rooms, at the opposite end of the locker rooms, also contain entrances from the pool area to the west. The pool entrances are recessed into the building, and are flanked by curved walls with cinder blocks that are designed similarly to the original glass blocks. The letters "MEN" and "WOMEN" are also above these entrances.
Above the building is a rooftop observation deck, accessed by stairs to the south and north of the bathhouse. The deck was shaded by a canopy supported by eight metal-clad parabolic arches, and there were concrete bleachers underneath the canopy. The roof is closed to the public.
Pool
The pool area is west of the bathhouse, taking up much of the block between Livonia Avenue to the south and Dumont Avenue to the north. The main pool is rectangular, measuring with the longer axis running north–south, and has a depth of . A cement deck surrounds the pool and is encircled by a chain link fence. Two small islands are in the center of the pool and contain triangular-capped filtration systems. Until the pool was renovated in the early 1980s, these islands contained fountains.
The diving pool was south of the main pool. After it was infilled in 2005–2006, the space has contained a volleyball court. A storage area used by NYC Parks is on the east side of the pool area.
Concrete bleachers, along with a filter house, were on the southern side of the pool area adjacent to the volleyball court. The concrete bleachers were built with the original bathhouse in 1917 and were surrounded by a wall made of Flemish bond brickwork. The space underneath the bleachers contained five circular windows facing toward Livonia Avenue to the south. The bleacher was replaced with a new entrance in 2021. A two-story brick filter house is to the west and contains a metal doorway and short flight of steps that leads to Livonia Avenue. The former bleachers and filter house area are surrounded by a chain link fence.
History
Early history In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brownsville was a densely populated Jewish neighborhood. An estimated 25,000 people lived in Brownsville by 1900, many of whom lived in severely overcrowded tenements. The neighborhood had little open space, and a local group, the Hebrew Educational Society, recommended the establishment of a public park within Brownsville. Furthermore, Brooklyn in general had very few playgrounds: by the time Betsy Head Park was approved in 1913, there were only eight playgrounds in Brooklyn.
Betsy Head, a rich Briton, died in 1907. Head's $365,000 estate () was divided almost equally between facilities for New York City parks and various city charities; Head's daughter received only $5 (), as she disliked that her daughter had married a foreman. As part of Head's will, $190,000 () was allocated to New York City park facilities. The sum allocated to Betsy Head Park in Brooklyn was originally allocated for a park of the same name at Corlears Hook on the Lower East Side. The money was never used for this purpose, so in early 1913 some Brownsville residents asked the New York City Comptroller, William A. Prendergast, for the use of the funds for their own park. This caused controversy, as the land under the proposed park would be funded by a tax paid by landowners in the surrounding community, some of whom opposed paying said tax. In July 1913, the city approved the acquisition of the parkland. The land under the Betsy Head Playground was purchased for $240,000 () and paid-for by Brownsville landowners living within of the site. The playground's facilities were funded by the estate of Betsy Head.