The pool was planned by Robert Moses and designed by Aymar Embury II during a Works Progress Administration project in 1935–1936.

[2] Events on the baseball fields of McCarren Park include members of the punk and indie communities gathering to participate in league-controlled kickball tournaments.

[4] For several years, the baseball fields have hosted tournament play for the Hasidim; weekend afternoons provide T-ball and softball games for organized area youth groups; Latino families and friends often utilize the fields to play soccer and volleyball into the late hours of the night.

[6] The inside walls of the courtyard and arches contain a mural by Mary Temple, Double Sun, which depicts shadows of trees.

[8][9] There are two identical pavilions to the north and south of the main bathhouse entrance, oriented on a north-south axis parallel to Lorimer Street.

[13] East of the bathhouse, McCarren Park contains an enclosed elliptical pool area that is aligned north-south.

[7][21] According to an 1854 account from the Brooklyn Eagle, the main tributary to McCarren Park formed the boundary between Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

[23] In 1928, the route of the New York City Subway's Crosstown Line was announced, with a tunnel running under the park.

[25] 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".

[31][32] 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.

[42] The McCarren Play Center was mostly complete at the time of its opening, but all the finishing details had been applied by the 1937 season.

[16] Residents had opposed the renovation, preferring that it be closed instead, as they claimed the pool had become a hub for drug dealing and prostitution.

[38][46] The pool was closed after the end of the 1983 season,[47][48] and when contractors tried to perform a renovation in 1984, protestors chained themselves to the complex's gates.

[38] The eagle sculptures were stolen from the bathhouse and recovered by an NYC Parks employee who saw them in the window of an architectural-salvage store in Lower Manhattan.

[15] Additionally, in April 2001, Community Board 1 voted to reconstruct the facility to encompass a skate park, an indoor recreation/performance center, and a smaller pool that could be converted to a seasonal ice rink.

[51][53] Meanwhile, as part of the 2005 rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, the City appropriated $1 million in capital budget funds for restoration of the pool.

In 2004, choreographer Noémie Lafrance requested permission from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to use the derelict pool as a performance space.

[54][56] However, controversy arose as Lafrance and community activists objected to Live Nation's plans for paid concerts using the public space for private profit.

[56] The first public event in the pool, a dance performance called Agora, choreographed by Lafrance, was held by Sens Production that summer.

[57][58] During early 2007, many in the community expressed a preference that the pool be returned to its historic use as an active recreational facility, with a smaller space dedicated to cultural and concert events.

[11][18] In 2013, work was begun to remove "Hipster Lake", a puddle of water that was annoying users of the park's fields.

[70] That year, a draft of a report commissioned for the Parks Department detailed the poor conditions of the bathhouse, including moisture accumulation.