Vines creep up the yellow brick walls, and the wooden entrance ramp is decaying at Public Bathhouse No. 2 on Albany's Fourth Avenue, the 119-year-old building, once a hive of energy in the South End, is in jeopardy, littered with broken windows, collapsing ceilings and the telltale signs of decay. The building has been vacant for 15 years, and now the elements are trying to reclaim it. Not too long ago, the city's Department of General Services had to clear out the aftermath of detritus left behind by squatters.
For two years, the city has sought proposals from anyone who might undertake what would be a yeoman's effort to breathe life back into this once valuable neighborhood landmark. But this sturdy and stable architectural gem, built at the turn of the 20th century is now desperately compromised, and no one, not a single person or company, has inquired about buying or reviving this building since the city listed the property for sale.
This Thanksgiving, the city will once again renew its request for proposal from individuals and developers who might revive the building. A 20-page report about the property includes estimates on how many thousands of dollars it would take to rebuild. Historic Albany Foundation lists the Bathhouse as one of Albany's “Places in Peril.”
Martin Daley, the city's director of infrastructure management, gave WAMC a tour on a recent cold November afternoon.
“We recently listed it for sale through an RFP process without a price, purposefully. Our hope is that someone comes forward with the financial capability, the experience and also, equally important, enough of a dream, to be able to take on a project like this and do what's appropriate, to save the building, find a vibrant new use and develop a use that's complementary to the neighborhood,” Daley said. “So our goal is to really find somebody who has the capability and the love of a property like this to be able to tackle it.”
Daley, like this interviewer, is an Albany native. These sorts of challenges are personal. Its long history speaks to not only its uniqueness, but its potential.
Daley added: “I think it's important to clarify, it was a bathhouse, and some people may refer to a pool, but it really was built as a public health facility to provide people with the opportunity to bathe. And I think it was also a really great third space for people in the neighborhood to come out in a social way, meet their friends, meet their neighbors, enjoy civic life, if you will. But its main purpose was built as kind of a facility to provide for the sanitary needs of residents.”
By the time TJ Keegan, another Albany native, started working at the Bathhouse in 1989, the building was indeed serving as that multi -purpose third space Daley mentioned, many activities fill the 10,000-square-feet of space from all age groups and social strata.
“It was a community center. There was upstairs, there was a gathering space for the Boy Scouts, and they would meet there on a regular basis, the kids in the community who were involved in scouts. The Albany Rowing team would use the facility in the wintertime. They would take the crew equipment down at the boathouse near the river, and they would bring it in, and they would practice there in the wintertime. But really it was a community center.”
Activities there gave the place life from Keegan's accounting, and it also provided a resource in a neighborhood with few.
Keegan said: “They have individuals there who do not have access to an awful lot of things, whether it's a grocery store, whether it's facilities for after school programs. And we would serve senior citizens who would come in for exercise classes on a regular basis. They would be there three days a week, and they would be there in the morning. We would have people swim laps before they went to work. Many state workers on their lunch hour would come, and kids from the neighborhood could come after school. They would come as groups. There were schools that would bring kids down for recreational activities. Evenings, the Albany Starfish had swimming lessons there for kids who were socio-economically challenged.They might not have been able to join maybe the ‘Y’ or be enrolled in regular swim classes.”
To date, though, the city hasn't received a single nibble. In the meantime, the property continues to deteriorate. The broken windows actually provide the necessary air circulation to help ward off even further degradation. To the naked eye, the pool almost looks inviting. Its tiles seem preserved. It looks like it would be a super swimming pool. But for the pool to be used again, would require extensive planning and investment.
“Do you think this could ever be used for a pool again,” asked WAMC.
“It could be, it certainly could be,” Daley said. “I mean, there are some challenges with restoring it as a pool. Certainly you'd need to meet modern code requirements. You need to be able to have the pool inspected and certified by the county Department of Health to operate in that fashion. I would imagine there are some adjustments that are needed to the infrastructure. I say some, but that's with a capital ‘S’. It has a lot of infrastructure improvements that would need to be made, as well as accessibility improvements that would be need to be made to make sure that people can get in and out of the pool safely and comfortably. The pool would probably be one of the biggest challenges with a property like this, to restore that.
Some people still see hope for this building, Keegan is one of them.
“I would love to see it reborn into potentially another - reborn and revitalized into a pool again. If they offered after school programs for kids again, the community could be involved. I would love to see it revitalized, and the community again having access to that facility.”
Keegan has kept in touch with the people he worked with at the pool. He sees former swimming patrons, and together, they figure it was the pool that drew them together.
“So the people I worked with were wonderful. We have kept in touch through the years, but the individuals that I worked with were fantastic,” Keegan said. “I still will run into individuals who swam there, and we will look at one another and, you know, say, I think I know you. Where do I know you're from? And I can say, you know, I think you used to swim at the pool.
“So even to this day, there are individuals, we would have memories, we would share and reminisce. It was a great place to work. There was a strong sense of community there, and people were very friendly. And we met a lot of different individuals from different backgrounds, and it was a nice time,” Keegan said.
Daley said that folks who want to tackle a project like the Public Bathhouse could identify a bunch of financial support and funding networks.
“In addition to the RFP, we have a very current assessment of the facility in its current condition, and we have redevelopment resources that are published there as well. Folks that are interested in tackling a project like this oftentimes want to know what financial incentives or programs are available to them,” Daley said. “Capitalize Albany Corporation is set up to be able to provide people with connections to resources and advocate on their behalf where necessary, to be able to get financial incentives or resources necessary to put a project like this together, be it foundation support or grants or tax credits, they're really the best equipped to navigate that complex field of financial opportunities.”
But until some magic investment finds its way to Fourth Avenue, the fate of the bath, like so many lost Albany properties, causes a sad sort of nostalgia:
As Keegan said: “It’s a the beautiful facility. It’s sad that it has closed.”
For WAMC, I’m Cailin Brown.