In the summer of 1936, beachgoers drove their Model Ts through Pelham Bay Park to the Bronx’s recently renovated Orchard Beach. After parking in the 8,000-space parking lot, they passed through a ceremonial plaza and up a broad staircase, arriving at a terrace with a panorama of the Long Island Sound. In the 25-foot-high arcaded base, locker rooms led to the mile-long, fifty-foot wide, crescent-shaped promenade. They banqueted in the bathhouse’s dining rooms with snowy tablecloths and polished glassware. The formal atmosphere was enforced through prescriptive control: anyone using a newspaper as a beach blanket was tried at a special court, and selling ice cream from a boat was punished by up to thirty days of community service.
Shoring up these aristocratic airs was the transformation of Pelham Bay Park. Located at the northeast corner of the Bronx, the beach was built by Robert Moses, the “master builder” responsible for over 1.1 million acres of parkland and beaches. Three times the size of Central Park, Pelham Bay Park is 13 miles of shallow bays, rock outcrops, …