Early in this first sweltering week of summer, the weather station in New York’s famed Central Park recorded the city’s highest temperatures in more than a decade. Now, at week’s end, this 843-acre oasis in Manhattan marks a high point of a different sort.
On Friday, the park’s recently completed $160 million Davis Center opens an immense, newly refurbished swimming pool to the public. The facility’s soaring pavilion, lush landscaping, and inviting waters restore both beauty and accessibility to a formerly neglected and crumbling section of Central Park. The remodeled environment and infrastructure also symbolize a rebuilding of civic inclusion and trust with residents in adjacent Harlem and East Harlem.
From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, when New York City struggled to recover from near bankruptcy, this northeast corner of Central Park became synonymous with urban decay and delinquency. Perceptions of neighborhoods that were predominantly Black or Hispanic conflated poverty and criminality. In 1989, a horrific sexual assault of a woman jogger resulted in the wrongful conviction of five Black and Hispanic teenagers from Harlem. They were exonerated in 2002 and released. But a deep sense of hurt and suspicion lingered within their community.
When the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy launched the restoration after the pandemic, “There was a lot of learning about the residual anger and disaffection,” according to its president, Betsy Smith. But conversations with community representatives showed “There are a lot of people who care about integrating this community into the park,” she told Bloomberg News.
Prominent among them is Yusef Salaam, one of the wrongfully arrested teens. After his release, Mr. Salaam had written a memoir, “Better, Not Bitter.” He married and built a family. And in 2023, he was elected to the City Council.
Speaking at the April launch of the pavilion, Mr. Salaam acknowledged the “stunning architectural accomplishment” of the complex. Both the pool and the building are multiuse, multiseason marvels of design and engineering. The pool converts to an artificial turf-topped field in spring and fall, and to a skating rink in winter. The building has a half-acre green roof and floor-to-ceiling glass doors that pivot to let in summer breezes or keep out cold air.
But to Mr. Salaam, the facility is about much more than recreation. “It’s a homecoming … a healing for me,” he said, according to The West Side Spirit. “It’s a restoration for our community – not only our land, but our dignity as well.”
“The shadow of injustice loomed large here. Today, we reclaim that light,” he declared.
