With Mural Gone, Another Piece of History Bites the Dust
By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS – Neighborhood outrage is being expressed over the demolition of a tile mosaic depicting aquatic scenes that hung for decades on the walls surrounding the pool at the Eastern Athletic Club in Brooklyn Heights. The mural was one of the last remnants of the glory days of the fabulous pool at the St. George Hotel – once the largest indoor salt-water pool in the United States.
Benita Berman, a reader of the Brooklyn Heights Blog (BHB) first alerted the neighborhood to the destruction of the mosaic. The reason given to Ms. Berman was that the “mural had a crack.” (To which she responded, “So does the Sistine Chapel.”)
Regardless of its historical value, however, the mosaic had to go, said the architect in charge of the work, Walter C. Maffei.
“The mural over the pool had a crack,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle Thursday. “It had to be removed for safety’s sake. The building insisted on it being removed.”
Mr. Maffei said that the mosaic had been “modified so much, there’s nothing left.” Besides the major crack, the structural backing is gone, he said. “It’s going to be replaced with a new wall.”
“It’s a way to protect people – a pre-emptive move to make the place secure and safe.”
Comments from to the Brooklyn Heights Blog came fast and mostly furious with Eastern Athletic Club and the building’s owners.
“It is incredible that we still destroy our architectural history with so little thought to its value. We put little pieces of a decorative treasure in the Dumpster -- so wasteful to not even recycle it,” read a comment from someone called Neighborhood Observer.
“This kind of mosaic work is unique and the EAC management should have tried reaching out to the community before destroying it,” said commenter Nabeguy.
“They could have made an effort to carefully take it down, preserve it, give it to a Brooklyn Museum, put it elsewhere... whatever,” added AliG.
Not everyone treasured the mosaic, however. According to commenter Bee Heights, “Folks... it’s ugly. I belong to EAC and I say do away with all the nasty green tiles that they HAVE to keep around. If you wanted to preserve the pool you should have started a long time ago before the club even existed.”
The swimming pool in the St. George, opened in 1933, cost $1.3 million, with decor by Hollywood art director Willy Pogany and a 40 x 120-foot basin filled with “natural artesian salt water.”
Celebrity swimmers such as Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weismuller were among its patrons (both U.S. Olympic Swimming Team stars).
An article by Dr. Howard Moshman which ran in the Brooklyn Eagle on Nov. 17, 2006 (How It Was:
Fond Memories of That Wondrous Hotel St. George Swimming Pool), talks about his memory of the pool.
According to Moshman, the huge hotel pool varied in depth from 3 feet to 10 feet, with a waterfall at the shallow end, three diving boards at the deep end, a 10-foot-high board in the center, and low boards on either side of it.
“Everything was tiled, with mosaics set into the walls depicting aquatic scenes, alternating with mirrors, and a series of supporting pillars faced with translucent green ceramic tiles.”
But by 1974, the pool had fallen into disrepair and was no longer being used.
The entire section occupied by the pool and its copious locker rooms was taken over by the Eastern Athletic Club, with its own entrance on Clark Street. A small portion of the shallow end of the pool was saved, walled off, retiled and continues in use. Instead of salt water, it now has chlorinated fresh water. The width of the original pool is now the longer dimension, and the depth is a uniform three and a half feet. The remainder of the pool, drained and covered by a wood floor, serves as a gymnasium.
And so, says Dr. Moshman: “The largest indoor salt water pool in the world is gone with hardly a trace.”
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