Art Deco Grandeur

by David Andrews

I served out my boyhood where Washington’s East Capitol Street–a leafy byway at the root–blossomed into a brutal swath of concrete sprawl, arrested at the border by trees and tin-roof relics like ours. One side was black, the other white, and trespass rare–a jolt after living in one of the city’s few integrated neighborhoods.

The nation was going from a decade that denied differences to one that embraced them. For a Catholic schoolboy, duded up in starched shirt and monogrammed tie, getting around was often an exercise in eluding the local punks. One day I failed the exercise, and the counselor, taking measure of the evidence, quashed my dream of a day in the Crystal Pool.

It was the Greek god of swimming venues, the love of child of Hercules and Aphrodite swaddled in Art Deco grandeur. There was a quarter-acre beach, a reviewing stand, two low boards, one high, a fountain, an island, and not one but three pools, where thousands of water worshippers could lap up the day, and often did. The exclamation point was a sky-high slide. As evening descended along the Potomac, the place became a Busby Berkeley tableau, alight with underwater incandescence. “It could be separated from Glen Echo park and still be magnificent,” one visitor recalls in the film that airs at the site.

As the other campers jostled by me, through the turnstiles, past the maze of plumbing, past the ice-cold water jets, and on to gulp down a day of pleasure, I could smell the chlorine and the suntan oil, hear the glee refracted by the sapphire surface float up over the park and into the glorious oak canopy. I did find a substitute for the fun in the sun, growing intoxicated with triple helpings of the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Satellite Jet, the Hall of Mirrors, and some of the premier amusements on the planet. On this frosty winter morning, with the wind whipping from across the Potomac, the moment still hangs in the air.

My grandparents take the rap, getting me into Catholic school and camp. Summering with clergy was not my idea of a good time; the hook was the field trip. Today, I stand next to the lifeguard station, perched high above the Potomac. The pool is filled in, weeds crawling up the walls. Most of the rides are history. But the outline survives, and so does the magic. The park sits on a high plateau, a gentle pause where the river meets the Blue Ridge foothills. Below, cascading whitecaps rush toward the city. “The real storywas not just what to do with the 16 acres here,” says Sam Swersky, a National Park Service ranger who gives me a tour-de-force tour. “The story goes back even earlier to what to do with the Potomac. There were serious proposals to pave over the C & O Canal, make it a connecting road to the interstate.” The environmental movement came to the fore around the same time that Glen Echo hit the skids. “The amusement parks, on the outskirts of cities, became prime real estate,” Sam says. “So where you had declining profits in amusements, you had soaring opportunities in apartments and shopping centers and housing tracts. At the same time, lakes and rivers were being described as dead in the media. The fear was that if something wasn’t done, you’d have a cesspool flowing by the Washington Monument.” The locals didn’t want apartments crawling up the hills, either. They found a sympathetic ear in Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and the park owners agreed to swap with GSA for a downtown site. In a month, the citizens raised $80,000, reeling back the purchase of the carousel from a California collector. From there, the place evolved into a national park, melding the past with puppet shows and art exhibits and ballroom dances and more, the carousel restored to its original magnificence. But perhaps the prime use is less tangible. “People come to me to check their memories,” says Sam. “As you grow up, the concerns of the world lay on you. People yearn for a time when they were with family or friends. What’s left is the place, etched in their minds. They might not remember years of work, but they’ll remember one afternoon.”