Late-summer memories of magical swimming spots, past and present, in Yonkers and Port Washington, not to mention Singapore and Tokyo—plus a lake in Putnam County
By NYCitywoman Writers
A Roman bath reimagined in Westchester: At Tibbetts Brook Park in Yonkers.. . . . . . . . . . . . .
I learned to swim in the public pool in Tibbets Brook Park, in Yonkers, just up the road from the West Bronx. I was a skinny little kid, and the pool was vast. At the far end was a building with a colonnade meant to suggest a Roman bath, and in front of that a seemingly endless plain of blue-white, Jello-like water, probably 50 yards long and what seemed like 20 lanes wide.
What I remember most was the fearful magic of learning to swim. The dead man’s float. Once I trusted the swimming instructor enough to try it, I remember the uncanny, illogical sensation: I should have been sinking, but instead I was floating! It was scarier to try it on my back, but even more wonderful. The vastness of the pool was replaced by the vaster vastness of the sky. Invisible hands were holding me up, my ears were thrumming with the sound of the water purifiers, my eyelashes loaded with chlorine-filled water-beads that made the whole day glitter like summer snowflakes!
Freedom, vastness, the pride that came with allowing my body to float in pure space: everything a skinny little kid longed for, and wasn’t sure he could ever have. –George Blecher
Paddling their own canoes: At Camp Brady in Towners, NY. Photo: Patterson Historical Society. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Favorite pool? None. I learned to swim in a lake at Girl Scout camp in Towners, Putnam County, New York, when I was eight years old. So lakes, and also beaches, mean much more to me than pools, which were not a feature of my Brooklyn upbringing. Even the gooey bottom of the lake did not deter me. I took to the water like a fish. Even before that, as a toddler, I regarded baking on a beach, then cooling off in the ocean, diving through waves, as a primal thrill. I was a blond dolphin. Not too many years ago, I used the pool at the Upper West Side Jewish Community Center for laps I needed to do for rehab. It was fine, but nothing like being at a tranquil lake in 1953 in Putnam County. –Grace Lichtenstein
Seduction in Singapore: At the Goodwood Park Hotel’s Mayfair Pool. Watercolor by Josephine Hemsing.. . . . . . . . . . . . .
It’s never left me—the secluded Mayfair Pool at the Goodwood Park Hotel in Singapore—where I’ve stayed several times on vacation. Other bodies of water, including the Goodwood’s main swimming pool, exact discipline and endurance, forcing you to propel yourself forward in bracing rhythm. But this small turquoise pond, surrounded by tropical plants, is from another world. Undulating floor tiles shimmer in a mosaic of miniature azure, cerulean, and onyx squares, seducing your body to glide into the cool water and succumb to nothing less than enchantment. The equatorial heat, the traffic on nearby Orchard Road, the politics of the day—all forgotten.
The Goodwood Park Hotel itself has a notable history. Founded by German traders as the Teutonia Club in 1900, taken over by three Jewish brothers, the Menassehs, in 1918, when Germans fell out of favor in British-run Singapore, it was requisitioned by the occupying Japanese Imperial Army in WWII, and then transformed into the British War Crimes Court in 1946. As per a 1939 ad in The Straits Times, in peacetime the hotel has lured visitors from everywhere with its “verandahs and running water, European fare & supper club”.
In the 1960s, Kumpulan Akitek, a firm specializing in colonial and postcolonial architecture, was hired to expand the number of rooms, creating the intimate Mayfair Wing. The Mayfair Pool lies at its center, sheltered by traveler’s palms, flowering tropical bromeliaceae plants, bird’s nest ferns, and Balinese lanterns sprouting coconut husks. It calls to you even if the skies unleash a monsoon downpour; chances are, if you climb in, lie still, float on your back, and look up at the sky, you’ll see that rare trick of weather: a perfectly circular rainbow. –Josephine Hemsing
The water’s fine: At the Riviera Bath Club, Port Washington, NY. (So why isn’t everyone diving into the pool?) Photo by Stanley Mason. Port Washington Public Library.. . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was late when I learned to swim—age 11. Before then, the very words swimming pool were fraught with longing and peril for me. I spent my early years on military bases (my father was an Army doctor), where amenities were scarce. Not only had I never been in the vicinity of a swimming pool, but for me the whole idea of swimming was a defiance—of gravity and of my mother, who’d never learned to swim and determinedly stayed away from any bodies of water larger than bathtubs. I came to regard swimming pools as escape hatches.
There have been two outstanding pools in my life. First, the one at the Riviera Bath Club, in Port Washington, Nassau County, New York. My best friend Roberta and her family, living across the street from us in Bayside, Queens, were members of this club. Built in 1925, in its heyday it was known for its restaurant, which attracted singers—Perry Como, for one, who arrived by boat from the City. But by the early 1950s, the Riviera had become an easygoing hangout for dues-paying families, like Roberta’s, who drove out there just about every summer day, usually bringing me along.
The pool was daunting. Playing on a phrase from Sylvia Plath, it hissed at my sin of not knowing how to swim. I started thrashing around with a paddleboard and one of those donut-shaped inflatables. Next, I dared myself to idle in the water, free of any floatation device. That didn’t work, until, despite myself, it hit me … the secret of swimming is relaxing, trusting that the water will let me float. It did. And I did. What a thrill! I think I screamed out of utter joy when that happened. And since then, the Riviera pool has been hallowed in my memory. No wonder I was startled learning that it and the club it was in burned down, in 1974. But wait—a swimming pool can burn down?
My second most memorable pool was in Tokyo, where my son had moved after graduating from college in 1990. On a visit to him, I was invited by the Park Hyatt’s publicist to try its pool—0n the 47th floor. Now there’s no other way to put it—once in the water, surrounded by 360-degree floor-to-ceiling views, I found myself floating in the sky. There was Mount Fuji in the distance, but what really entranced and even shocked me (an ingrained New Yorker) was the scope of the relentlessly packed world’s largest city, shimmering and beckoning directly below. –Linda Dyett
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