Saving Tony Dapolito: A Landmark of Culture, Community, and Cinema in Jeopardy
Tony Dapolito Recreation Center stands in the heart of Greenwich Village and has served these many years as much more than just a city rec center. It’s a place where generations of New Yorkers learned to swim, shoot hoops, and connect with their neighbors. It’s also a cultural touchstone — immortalized in films like Raging Bull and Kids, and home to a rare public mural by Keith Haring.
Built between 1906–08 as the Carmine Street Public Baths and expanded in the 1920s, it was renamed in 2003 to honor a legendary local parks advocate. It earned landmark status in 2010 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
A Hollywood Backdrop: When Art and Film Met on Carmine Street
The Tony Dapolito Recreation Center isn’t just a public building — it’s a stage for some iconic moments in cinema and art.
Raging Bull (1980)
In Martin Scorsese’s gritty boxing masterpiece, a pivotal early scene takes place at the center’s pool. Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro, a Village resident whose father, Robert De Niro Sr. was a significant artist of the New York School who lived and painted in the area South of Union Square) first lays eyes on Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) while she’s swimming. The scene, quiet and intimate, unfolds against the backdrop of a lively summer afternoon — its authenticity drawn directly from the center’s classic architecture and public face.
Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull at the Tony Dapolito pool
Kids (1995)
In the explosive film Kids, the Tony Dapolito Center once again played a supporting role in telling a raw, unsanitized story of downtown NYC teens. Kids is a 1995 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Larry Clark in his directorial debut and written by Harmony Korine in his screenwriting debut. It stars Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce and Chloë Sevigny in their film debuts, and Rosario Dawson in a role that helped launch her career. The pool, basketball courts, and exterior walls served as natural environments where Telly, Casper, Jennie, and their friends drifted through adolescence, street culture, and danger.
The exterior filming wasn’t done on a soundstage — it was filmed at real locations throughout Manhattan. The swimming pool all the kids sneak into at night was none other than the Tony Dapolito Outdoor Pool. The realism of the locations throughout New York made Kids a defining document of its time.
And, of course, there is the iconic Keith Haring mural that lines the back wall of the outdoor pool at the rec center.
Keith Haring’s Mural (1987)
Painted during a day-long community celebration, Keith Haring’s vivid mural overlooking the pool remains one of his few surviving public works. The wall has become a living piece of cultural history, drawing fans of Haring, art historians, and filmmakers alike.
These cinematic moments — Raging Bull, Kids, and Haring’s mural — don’t just decorate the center’s history. They are the history. Together, they chronicle New York’s cultural DNA, from gritty realism to pop art vibrancy. To lose this place is to lose a site that made those stories real, and gave them room to breathe.
The Tony Dapolito Center was landmarked as part of the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II in 2010. In 2024, the city announced its intention to pursue demolition of the historic structure, which Village Preservation adamantly opposes. To tell city officials to preserve and restore rather than destroy the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, click here.