New York City Blog – Aug. 24 – Aug. 30

In my past life I was a fish or one of those creatures that scurried in the ocean’s deep. In Portland, OR. I found a pool that was so very basic high school, 1950’s, I expected the Grease characters to leap out of their convertibles and join me. Alas, no.

In Santa Fe, I used two basic pools and then found Genoveva Chavez Community Center on Rodeo Road. It is the most beautiful and enormous modern complex I’ve ever seen. There are four pools. One is an indoor Olympic-size pool with lap swimming at one end and water exercises, including basketball, at the shallower end.

Chavez Pool
Chavez Pool

One of the reasons I love architecture is because a building in one part of the world will make me recall another, distant building. The Chavez Center’s vastness, interior machinery and light reminded me of the Centrale MonteMartini Annex in Rome. The annex contains Greek and Roman artifacts that are part of the the Capitoline museums’ collection. It’s chock full of statues, busts, friezes and housed in a former power plant, the first public electricity plant, built c. 1922 and named after Giovanni Montemartini.