Art: Pump House

Architect Joseph Freedlander (Museum of the City of New York, Municipal Building, White Plains, N. Y.) returned to Manhattan from Europe last week with a million-dollar plan in his pocket for a project such as few U. S. architects are ever given.

Saratoga Springs, N. Y. has a fine racetrack, several modern hotels, nightclubs, innumerable gambling places and speakeasies. Almost completely ignored by the thousands who descend upon Saratoga every summer for a brief fortnight of track betting are the 25 curative, State-owned mineral springs which brought the town its first fame, made Saratoga more fashionable than Newport in the ‘705, put hump-backed Saratoga trunks in every fashionable attic, Saratoga (thirst-making) chips on every smart table. Throughout the town and the i,ioo-acre state park around it, the springs of Saratoga bubble today as they did 50 years ago through cast-iron hydrants and bronze pipes into dingy pagodas and drinking halls. This despite the fact that Saratoga Springs have the only naturally carbonated water east of the Rockies, that hydrotherapists consider them even more effective than Germany’s Bad-Nauheim (Saratoga’s nearest chemical affinity) in treating diseases of the heart, dyspepsia, jaundice, “abdominal plethora” (paunchiness).

In April, as part of the present $4,000,-ooo investment to develop Saratoga as a State-owned park and health centre, the New York Legislature voted an additional million for a huge central drinking hall, pump room and bath house. The scheme was wangled by two fervent Saratogoers, Bernard Mannes Baruch and George Foster Peabody. Joseph Henry Freedlander was appointed architect.

Architect Freedlander lost no time, took the first boat to Europe. Accompanied by the Messrs. Baruch and Pierrepont Burt Noyes he toured the spas and pump houses of Europe: Vichy, Nauheim, Baden-Baden, Bath, Montecatini, taking notes. He returned last week, full of ideas. For their million dollars, New York cardiacs and taxpayers will have the largest pump house in the world. Because U. S. spas are backward in their understanding of Regime— diet, exercise, rest facilities to accompany a water cure—Architect Freedlander will concentrate on appurtenances.

Water from the principal springs will be run through miles of glass-lined bronze pipe to a magnificent central drinking hall, located over one spring, The Chief (long since capped and abandoned), where drinkers can sit on leather lounges, listen to an orchestra, sip luxuriantly. Adjoining wings will contain hot and cold baths, mud baths, sun baths. There will be theatres, concert halls, gymnasiums, a hospital. The 1,100 acres of the park will be laid out in a series of walks medically graded from easy, level paths for patients with acute heart trouble to active, alpine scrambles for convalescents.

“The whole purpose of our architectural plan,”said Architect Freedlander last week, “is compactness. People, especially those with heart trouble, want things right at hand.”