The conflict came to a head over Jones Beach. In 1926, public bathing beaches in America fell into one of two classifications: ill-equipped huddles of shabby, unpainted wooden bathhouses that contained nothing but toilets, showers and lockers; or "boardwalk beaches" such as Coney Island and Atlantic City, which had surrendered the beauty of their seascapes to roller coasters, weight-guessing games, blaring funhouses, bawling barkers and other carnival concessions. But Robert Moses wasn't thinking of unpainted wood or carnivals.
One day, he invited to Jones Beach Gilmore Clarke, landscape architect of the Bronx River Parkway, Harvey W. Corbett, the architect responsible for the design of some of the Long Island barons' most beautiful manor houses, several other famous architects, landscape architects and engineers, and a handful of young commission staffers with whose work he had been impressed. As the little group of men stood on the vast, empty expanse of sand, Moses began pointing.
One bathhouse would be over there, he said, and the other over there. But then they would be almost a mile apart, the men with him pointed out. Yes, he said, and they should understand at once that he wasn't talking about ordinary bathhouses. These were going to contain ten thousand lockers apiece. In addition to bathrooms and shower rooms, they were going to contain wading pools, diving pools and swimming pools, and the swimming pools were going to be large enough to accommodate hundreds of bathers at a time. There were going to be canopied terraces above the pools so people could sit in the shade and watch the swimmers and there were going to be other terraces on which people could dine at tables set beneath gaily colored umbrellas. The bathhouses were going to contain solaria. They were going to contain restaurants in every price range. Although they were at a bathing beach, they were going to be constructed not of wood but of stone and brick, and the stone and brick were going to be of the finest quality. They were going to be surrounded by landscaped lawns, hedges and flower beds. And he wanted the bathhouses designed with as much care as the finest public buildings in America.
With this difference: most public buildings in America were too heavy and stodgy, designed only to impress and awe. The bathhouses would have to be quite large, of course, but they were buildings for people to have a good time in; the architecture must encourage people to have fun. It must be airy and light, gay and pleasant. There must be a thousand little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed. And he didn't want the bathhouses to spoil the panorama. Let them be designed to complement it, not dominate it. The panorama was long, low lines of sand and dunes and the sweep of the ocean. Let the lines of the bathhouses be long, low and sweeping, he said, horizontal rather than vertical. One other thing, he said. The bathhouses were going to have at least one innovation never included in any public or private building in America: diaper-changing rooms. He had designed them himself, he said. They would be divided into cubicles and each cubicle would contain only a diaper-disposal basket, a washbasin, a mirror and a shelf for a mother to lay her baby on. And the shelf shouldn't be table-height, he said. He had watched mothers changing diapers and higher shelves would make it easier.
Frances Perkins would have smiled.
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