As New York’s state park system continued to develop in the post-war era, buildings and features accommodating an expanding range of functions were needed to meet the surge of visitation that followed the end of the war.
Among these were pool complexes, such as at James Baird State Park in the Taconic region in Dutchess County, NY. While the swimming pool no longer exists, the complex’s keynote feature — the bathhouse (1950) — remains.
Note the building’s long, low-slung profile and material palette that skillfully integrates bluestone, slate, wood, and brick elements. Interior features such as salt-glazed tile walls and clerestory windows provided a clean modern feel.
Understated in overall effect, with well-scaled individual features that form a cohesive whole, it reveals an increasingly modern disposition.
Many of the larger buildings erected in state parks during this era were designed by outside architectural firms. The Baird bathhouse is a notable early work of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a pioneer of modern architecture and skyscraper design in the United States.
At Harriman State Park, a new beach at Lake Sebago and the Anthony Wayne Recreation Area expanded the park’s recreational capacity. With the completion of the Palisades Interstate Parkway, demand for state park facilities increased.
The Lake Sebago beach development and the bathhouse addressed this demand. The new beach area could accommodate 2,000 automobiles and 10,000 patrons.
Designed by New York City architect Elliott L. Chisling, the Lake Sebago bathhouse exhibits both traditional and progressive impulses. The symmetrical form of the main block, with its hipped roof and large ocular windows, suggests classical sources. But the building’s proportions, form, limited decorative elaboration and polychrome brickwork largely account for its overall effect.
Although not precisely of modern conception, in the context of the Harriman-Bear Mountain complex, it represented a significant departure from the rustic motif that was established early and used extensively in the Palisades Interstate Park. This distinction becomes clearer when the building is contrasted with the bathhouse at Lake Tiorati, with its sloped heavy stone walls and low hipped roof.
Evangola State Park opened in the mid-1950s on the shores of Lake Erie. It represented the expansion of the State Parks’ Niagara region, guided in part by a 1952 regional master plan.
The design of the 1957 bathhouse illustrated the trend towards a modern park aesthetic. No longer evident are hints of the rusticity of the preceding era, either in form or material, nor traditional design sources.
Instead, the building employs a rectilinear brick exterior. Its overall form is geometric, with flat roof surfaces and steel-frame windows, many of the tripartite “Chicago window” type.
In contrast to the previous era, this design program was highly economical and illuminates the key association between modern design trends and financial economy.
Also of note is Evangola’s site plan, with a crescent-shaped parking lot that anticipated the crowds that soon filled the park.
Bill Krattinger is Historic Preservation Project Director at the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks). A version of this essay first appeared on the New York State Parks & Historic Sites Blog.
Illustrations, from above: The 1950 bathhouse at James Baird State Park; the interior of the bathhouse at James Baird State Park; the 1952 Lake Sebago Pool and Bathhouse at Harriman State Park; and the 1957 bathhouse at Evangola State Park.
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