For the Most Space

ASTORIA POOL, 19th St.and 23rd Dr., Queens

WHEN ADAM GANSER, executive director of the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, moved to the city in the ’90s, he marveled at the sheer size of the Astoria Pool—the Art Deco–style pool is 330 feet long and permits 2,178 swimmers. “I had never seen a body of water that large that wasn’t one of the Great Lakes or the ocean,” says Ganser. “It was a sea of water and of people, so beyond the scale of anything I’d experienced before in a pool.” Built under the WPA, the pool, which opened in 1936, has straight-ahead views of the RFK and Hell Gate Bridges and a handsome triple-tiered diving board (a relic from hosting three Olympics trials that’s unfortunately now off limits to swimmers). Swimming in sight of the bridges makes her feel like she’s in a bygone era, says Annie Madden, a grant-making foundation’s special assistant, who praises the “beautiful, highceilinged” changing rooms with old-fashioned—but quite clean— wood stalls. Astoria, says city employee and former competitive swimmer Annie Mabus, is the only public pool with a snack bar

(burgers are on sale). “It’s shocking to me it’s a public space,” she says.