McCarren Pool Now a Landmark

McCarren Pool—the Depression-era, Olympic-size pool which, for the past two decades, has been just a big, graffiti-ed concrete depression in the Greenpoint landscape—was saved from destruction today by the Landmarks Commission, which declared the waterless wonder a landmark, accorded to The Observer.

I've never seen the pool, I must admit, but I've sure read a truckload about it over the past six months: about its glory days; its closure in 1984; the hipster concerts that have been held in its cement basin over the summer; Bloomberg's plans to bring it back as a watery wonderland ($50 million he plans to spend). Work is supposed to start in 2009. It will need it.