Hot weather changes how New Yorkers behave, inspiring people to search for new ways to cool off in the summertime. As one journalist observed during a 1925 hot spell, “the only relief” in the city “was in water, wherever it could be found.” Water—whether it’s the fountains, fire hydrants, rivers, outer-borough beaches, public baths (both floating and on land), or public pools—could transform a sizzling summer day into a cool afternoon. Source: “Nation’s Death List 300,” New York Times, June 7, 1925, 1.

New York opened its first two municipal baths, floating pools moored at Manhattan piers, in the summer of 1870. Located near tenement districts where people lacked home baths, the municipal baths were immediately popular. By their second summer in operation, more than 860,000 bathers visited the city’s floating baths to wash and cool off. At the peak of the program, the Department of Public Works oversaw a fleet of nearly a dozen floating baths that hosted millions of visitors each summer.