For Something Pontoon-Inspired

FLOATING POOL, Hunts Point–Barretto Point Park, the Bronx

BUILT ON A RETROFITTED barge, the Floating Pool has seven lanes and spends the summer parked in the middle of the East River, just off Barretto Point Park in Hunts Point. Since it holds just under 200 swimmers, there can be a line, but according to paralegal Sabrina Rivera, a Bronx resident, it’s well worth it. “You feel like you’re walking on a plank onto a boat,” she says. The pool has comfortable built-in concrete seating— which allowed Rivera to watch her sons enjoy being in and on the water at the same time. “It feels like you’re on top of nature,” she says. “The barge ebbs and flows—not a lot, but you can feel the river.” The pool’s creator, urban planner Ann Buttenwieser, was inspired by the city’s 19th-century pontoon-style public bathhouses that floated on the East and Hudson Rivers—until the water became too polluted to bathe in directly. Buttenwieser chose to anchor it in Hunts Point, where children didn’t have any public pools to go to, so she brought one to them. “It’s a treat for the kids in that neighborhood,” says Rivera.