The Floating Pool Lady in Waiting
Our Town downtown
February 12, 2007
Brooklynites may be first to swim in the pool on a barge; Manhattanites, rotten eggs
“Can I come aboard?” I yell, although it’s clear there’s no point yelling. The trucks rumbling by on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway drown out my words, and the wind coming off the water sweeps them away.
The bundled man aboard the barge puts a hand to his hooded ear and shrugs: the universal sign for “There’s no way I could possibly hear you!”
I point to myself, then to the makeshift ramp leading from the pier to the barge. He shrugs again, thinks about it for a second, then nods, hesitantly.
Four construction men gather on deck, curious, as I clamber aboard The Floating Pool Lady, an approximately 280-foot barge impressively, almost miraculously parallel parked (parallel docked?) at Pier 2 in Brooklyn Heights.
Can I take a look around? I ask no one in particular.
Fine by me, one of them tells me. But if the general contractor comes around, he’ll deny he let me onboard.
Fair enough. Despite an abundance of No Trespassing signs, security seems pretty lax here, a few piers away from the cruise ship terminal. The security booth is empty. Piles of two-by-fours and plywood are probably not worth securing. And if he does come around I’ll just drop the name Ann Buttenweiser, the woman behind this operation, to whom the general contractor reports.
It is an odd sight, a swimming pool in the deck of a barge, although of course it’s standard on cruise ships. But in its previous incarnation this vessel had been a serious no-frills cargo carrier, and a coat of fresh blue paint has not exactly disguised its industrial character – but it’s clearly not meant to. “THE FLOATING POOL LADY” is stenciled in white capital letters on the stern, and underneath, “NEW YORK, NEW YORK.” The spaces between the letters are slightly irregular.
So even though I’m expecting it, it takes me a moment to realize that the rectangle recessed four feet in the deck, whose bottom is covered by an uneven layer of ice, is not some sort of storage area, but an honest to god pool. Or at least, it will be.
“Right now the pool is just a container,” explains Buttenweiser. “It’s a rectangle that holds water, but we have to put in the filters, and the things around the edges where the water spills over, and those kinds of things.”
The other work that remains to be done is putting roofs on the dressing rooms, laying down pavers around the pool that people will walk on, and building a spray pool on the upper deck.
When the pool will open depends in part on when the construction is completed, but the major hurdle is finding the right spot to moor the giant barge. It is, in fact, a bureaucratic nightmare that would be impossible to get through if Buttenweiser didn’t have an “in”: she’s a former Parks Department official.
She still alternates between “they” and “we” when talking about working with the Parks Department. “They didn’t believe I was actually going to do this. They didn’t push it, then when we finally saw it was going to come to New York, then all of a sudden we’re working to try to find a site, which should have been done… possibly could have been done earlier.”
“If I hadn’t worked in these city agencies, I never would have started something like this,” she says. “At least I know where to go.”
Where The Floating Pool Lady will go is another question, and one that remains unanswered for the time being. It looks like she’ll stay put in her present location at Pier 2 this summer, and might possibly be open for swimming. Next summer, she will likely head to the Bronx.
Like a lot of New Yorkers, The Floating Pool Lady is finding it impossible to get a place in Manhattan.
“We certainly have talked with the Hudson River Park Conservancy time and time and time again,” says Buttenweiser. “They don’t have any site on the waterfront. We need water, we need sewage disposal, and we need electricity. And they don’t have a place in the park where they have hook-ups on the waterfront.”
But The Floating Pool Lady is meant to move every six months, so maybe we’ll see her float by.
“Can I come aboard?” I yell, although it’s clear there’s no point yelling. The trucks rumbling by on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway drown out my words, and the wind coming off the water sweeps them away.
The bundled man aboard the barge puts a hand to his hooded ear and shrugs: the universal sign for “There’s no way I could possibly hear you!”
I point to myself, then to the makeshift ramp leading from the pier to the barge. He shrugs again, thinks about it for a second, then nods, hesitantly.
Four construction men gather on deck, curious, as I clamber aboard The Floating Pool Lady, an approximately 280-foot barge impressively, almost miraculously parallel parked (parallel docked?) at Pier 2 in Brooklyn Heights.
Can I take a look around? I ask no one in particular.
Fine by me, one of them tells me. But if the general contractor comes around, he’ll deny he let me onboard.
Fair enough. Despite an abundance of No Trespassing signs, security seems pretty lax here, a few piers away from the cruise ship terminal. The security booth is empty. Piles of two-by-fours and plywood are probably not worth securing. And if he does come around I’ll just drop the name Ann Buttenweiser, the woman behind this operation, to whom the general contractor reports.
It is an odd sight, a swimming pool in the deck of a barge, although of course it’s standard on cruise ships. But in its previous incarnation this vessel had been a serious no-frills cargo carrier, and a coat of fresh blue paint has not exactly disguised its industrial character – but it’s clearly not meant to. “THE FLOATING POOL LADY” is stenciled in white capital letters on the stern, and underneath, “NEW YORK, NEW YORK.” The spaces between the letters are slightly irregular.
So even though I’m expecting it, it takes me a moment to realize that the rectangle recessed four feet in the deck, whose bottom is covered by an uneven layer of ice, is not some sort of storage area, but an honest to god pool. Or at least, it will be.
“Right now the pool is just a container,” explains Buttenweiser. “It’s a rectangle that holds water, but we have to put in the filters, and the things around the edges where the water spills over, and those kinds of things.”
The other work that remains to be done is putting roofs on the dressing rooms, laying down pavers around the pool that people will walk on, and building a spray pool on the upper deck.
When the pool will open depends in part on when the construction is completed, but the major hurdle is finding the right spot to moor the giant barge. It is, in fact, a bureaucratic nightmare that would be impossible to get through if Buttenweiser didn’t have an “in”: she’s a former Parks Department official.
She still alternates between “they” and “we” when talking about working with the Parks Department. “They didn’t believe I was actually going to do this. They didn’t push it, then when we finally saw it was going to come to New York, then all of a sudden we’re working to try to find a site, which should have been done… possibly could have been done earlier.”
“If I hadn’t worked in these city agencies, I never would have started something like this,” she says. “At least I know where to go.”
Where The Floating Pool Lady will go is another question, and one that remains unanswered for the time being. It looks like she’ll stay put in her present location at Pier 2 this summer, and might possibly be open for swimming. Next summer, she will likely head to the Bronx.
Like a lot of New Yorkers, The Floating Pool Lady is finding it impossible to get a place in Manhattan.
“We certainly have talked with the Hudson River Park Conservancy time and time and time again,” says Buttenweiser. “They don’t have any site on the waterfront. We need water, we need sewage disposal, and we need electricity. And they don’t have a place in the park where they have hook-ups on the waterfront.”
But The Floating Pool Lady is meant to move every six months, so maybe we’ll see her float by.
