The park occupies two non-contiguous plots diagonally across from each other at the intersection of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street, covering a collective 10.55 acres (4.27 ha).

The modern-day park contains a playground, a swimming complex, and fields for baseball, football, tennis, and basketball.

The current Art Moderne style pool was built by Aymar Embury II and John Matthews Hatton during a Works Progress Administration project in 1935–1936.

The bathhouse was not originally set to be renovated, unlike at other city parks with large pools, but it was rebuilt following a 1937 fire.

Betsy Head Park is in two non-contiguous plots of unequal size, diagonally across the intersection of Dumont Avenue and Thomas S. Boyland Street.

[9] The western two-thirds of Betsy Head Park's larger southwestern section was originally designed with a 15,000-to-20,000-capacity stadium containing a running track.

[9] Gymnasiums for men and women were to the north and south of the field house, each with numerous indoor recreation facilities for basketball, handball, tennis, and other sports.

The original swimming pool was described as being 150 by 60 feet (46 by 18 m) with the long edge being parallel to the eastern boundary of the park's larger plot.

[3] The structure had to be adaptable to a multiplicity of uses: hence the locker rooms can become basketball courts in winter; the roof is a stadium for viewing water pageants held in the pool.

[11] The building was upheld by the architect Ely Jacques Kahn as being "above all...intended for enjoyable use",[10] while parks commissioner Robert Moses called its plans "better than that adopted in any of the existing pools".

"[11] Architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern said the Betsy Head Play Center was "perhaps the most inventive and most overtly Modernist structure" of the WPA bathhouses erected by the New York City government.

[13] The bathhouse is in Betsy Head Park's southwestern section, with its main entrance along Thomas S. Boyland Street to the east.

[14] The lobby is in the central section of the bathhouse, separating the men's and women's locker rooms to the north and south, respectively.

[6] A two-story brick filter house is to the west and contains a metal doorway and short flight of steps that leads to Livonia Avenue.

[21] The neighborhood had little open space, and a local group, the Hebrew Educational Society, recommended the establishment of a public park within Brownsville.

[5][24] The money was never used for this purpose, so in early 1913 some Brownsville residents asked the New York City Comptroller, William A. Prendergast, for the use of the funds for their own park.

[26][27] The land under the Betsy Head Playground was purchased for $240,000 (equivalent to $7,399,000 in 2023) and paid-for by Brownsville landowners living within 1 mile (1.6 km) of the site.

[2][19] In 1934, mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia nominated Robert Moses to become commissioner of a unified New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

At the time, the United States was experiencing the Great Depression; immediately after La Guardia won the 1933 election, Moses began to write "a plan for putting 80,000 men to work on 1,700 relief projects".

[34][35] The pools would be built using funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal agency created as part of the New Deal to combat the Depression's negative effects.

Moses, along with architects Aymar Embury II and Gilmore David Clarke, created a common design for these proposed aquatic centers.

Each location was to have distinct pools for diving, swimming, and wading; bleachers and viewing areas; and bathhouses with locker rooms that could be used as gymnasiums.

The pools were to have several common features, such as a minimum 55-yard (50 m) length, underwater lighting, heating, filtration, and low-cost construction materials.

To fit the requirement for cheap materials, each building would be built using elements of the Streamline Moderne and Classical architectural styles.

[50] Park commissioner Moses's letter to La Guardia, addressed three days later, advocated for the total replacement of the bathhouse.

[52] A new indoor playground in Betsy Head Park, to serve as a community recreation center during the winter, was announced in May 1948 and was supposed to begin the next year.

[55] The rest of the indoor Betsy Head Recreation Center was removed from the NYC Parks budget, and the money was instead allocated to the Brownsville Boys Club, which the city acquired in 1954.

[69] NYC Parks continued to face financial shortfalls in the coming years, and the pools retained a reputation for high crime.

[71] Additionally, in the 1990s, a practice called "whirlpooling" became common in New York City pools such as Betsy Head Park, wherein women would be inappropriately fondled by teenage boys.

[72][73] By the beginning of the 21st century, crimes such as sexual assaults had decreased in parks citywide due to increased security.