The Venetian Water Tower and the Ohio Sandstone Bathhouses
Near Jones Beach, New York
Robert Moses was not a man who built things cheaply, and the buildings at Jones Beach reflect his conviction that public facilities for ordinary people should be as fine as anything the wealthy could commission. After rejecting several design submissions, Moses selected a young and relatively unknown architect named Herbert Magoon to design the park's two great bathhouse complexes. He specified that they be built from Ohio sandstone and Barbizon brick, two of the most expensive construction materials then available.
The style throughout is Art Deco, expressed in the clean geometric lines of the bathhouses, the concession buildings, and the arcades connecting them. The most distinctive landmark in the park is the water tower, completed in nineteen thirty, which stands in the center of a traffic circle at the end of the Wantagh Parkway and is visible for miles in every direction. Moses and his engineers modeled it on the campanile of Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice, choosing the form of an Italian bell tower over the conventional spherical tank design common in American infrastructure.
The tower is as functional as it is beautiful: it is a working water tower that serves the park. When the park opened it was widely praised as one of the finest public beach facilities in the country.
