Jacobin62%
Jacob Riis, NYC’s “People’s Beach,” Is Under Threat 58%
By C. G. Beck73%
7/20/2026, 12:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 37 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Halo Effect, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 17.8% saturation with 370 hits. Analysis detected 3,704 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,081 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 55% and a BS Rank of 58% (8,159 of 19,034 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 57.10% of the article peer group.
Jacob Riis beach is a space beloved by many in New York City.
The “People’s Beach” was notably named after the famed Progressive Era journalist and photographer Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives.
Born in Denmark, the eventual Queens resident spent a lifetime documenting working people’s struggles.
When the city was seeking a name for a new beach in Queens, Riis was a perfect fit.
For decades, through changing ownership and competing uses, the name has stuck.
This year, a new private luxury club is readying to take over the beach’s historic bathhouse, a relic of the golden age of public works in New York City.
Longtime beachgoers and residents of the Rockaways can be forgiven for their nervousness about the changes, given the exclusive nature of the club in a place that has been open to all.
The area has always seen a constant evolution in the definition of public space.
But the new club feels like an existential threat to the democratic nature of the beach.
A People’s History of Jacob Riis Beach
New York City purchased what is now Riis Park in 1913.
It was first named Seaside Park, then renamed Telawana Park with an accompanying new vision for the space.
This first name was in honor of Culluloo Telawana, presumably the last representative of the Rockaway Lenape tribe.
The design proposed at the time by the city was an ambitious park in the vein of lauded landscape architect Frederick Olmsted.
Like those parks around the rest of New York City, it featured large ponds and forested walking paths, creating a gentle connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay.
The plan was a surprisingly thoughtful testament to both the native history of the Rockaways and the environmentally harmonious ambitions of earlier municipal and national parks.
The city eventually hosted a competition for further ideas for the park, but none of these versions materialized, as the site was converted to a naval air station for use in World War I, the remnants of which can still be seen at Floyd Bennett Field.
After the war, the city regained control of the area and resumed planning a public park.
By that time, major changes were happening in the New York City Parks Department.
In 1932, with the park renamed after the passing of Jacob Riis, the bathhouse was designed by NYC Parks chief architect Aymar Embury II.
One of the original designs for the area featured large ponds and forested walking paths, creating a gentle connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay.
(NYC Department of Records)
Now a registered historic structure along with the broader park, the bathhouse was designed in a simple but bold art deco style, with two brick towers flanking each side and a heavy concrete center.
Inside one could find a range of dining options, including a restaurant, cafeteria, and concession stands.
This was followed by other amenities focused on health and betterment, including recreation fields, playgrounds, and even calisthenic classes run by the Parks Department.
With Robert Moses at the helm of the agency in 1934, a more modern vision was brought to the park’s design.
Trapped by the emerging dominance of the car, Moses still intended Riis beach to be a more public version of Jones Beach, a favorite destination for beachgoers on Long Island, because of its close proximity to public transit.
Here lies one of the biggest flaws of the design, one that still plagues the park.
While it is possible to take the bus or ferry (plus shuttle) to the beach, it’s hard to miss the massive parking lot that surrounds the historic bathhouse.
The inclusion of a parking lot that is almost as big as the beach itself challenges the original intention of public accessibility and natural beauty.
The island of asphalt also missed the opportunity to connect the two bodies of water, Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, in the way that the original Telawana Park design did.
In fact, at the time of its construction, the Moses-designed parking lot was the largest in the world, and it still holds at least five thousand cars.
Both the National Park Service and residents acknowledge the lack of public transit accessibility to Riis and the broader Rockaways, which was made even worse by the crippling shutdown of the A train last year.
While service is now restored, the area is still isolated in an otherwise transit-rich city.
Outside the formal amenities and supposedly acceptable uses of the public park, New Yorkers found ways to use the beach to best fit their needs.
As early as the 1940s, Riis was known as a gay beach.
The beach continued to serve as an important location of LGBTQ activism when, due to the larger financial crisis the city was facing, it was formally adopted into the National Park Service in 1972.
This next change in ownership challenged both the original design intent of the city-designed park with public amenities and its more informal uses.
The early use by the LGBTQ community was a spontaneous use of a public space, while the formation of the Gateway National Recreation Area was a more formal expression of publicness through the control of the National Park Service and the formation of a registered historic site.
Official designations like this created rules around beach use, and activities like nude sunbathing became more difficult.
While the former created a space for marginalized people, the latter cemented protections for wildlife with further resources.
Though full of struggle, it was a debate between legitimate, albeit contesting, forms of accessibility to public goods.
But the newest chapter in development threatens to further erode the beach’s history.
Out With the Public, In With the Private
The new Rockaway Ocean Club is the latest and flashiest reinvention of the site, set to open before summer’s end.
It is also the most troubling.
Most of the changes are happening within the historic structure, though there is the glaring addition of an ominous metal-clad box on the roof between the two towers.
The developers behind the project are ostensibly taking on the work as a form of altruism to restore the dilapidated bathhouse.
At a price tag of almost $90 million, a cost well beyond what the federal government is willing to take on for restoration work, there’s some truth to this claim.
But as the case with any privately developed project, the promise of profit lies on the other side of these investments.
Though their goal is to make money, the developers behind the club are eager to mention that the beach and parts of its offerings will be public.
From the landing page on the website to the extensive FAQs, the word “public” is mentioned repeatedly.
According to the club, “60% of the building is still public,” including everything on the ground floor.
And though the beach club is a “home for New Yorkers who love all things summer,” the most exciting parts of the redesign, floating above the public ground floor, will only be available to those who pay.
The developers behind the Rockaway Ocean Club project are ostensibly taking on the work as a form of altruism to restore the dilapidated bathhouse.
(Christopher Beck)
To gain access to those amenities, an individual membership for residents of the Rockaways will run $1,000 a year, with a family membership costing $3,000.
According to the NYU Furman Center, median household income in Rockaway and Broad Channel was $72,750 in 2024, meaning a membership would cost 4% of the median family’s yearly income.
It gets worse for regular residents of the city, with membership starting at $1,500 for individuals and $4,000 for families with additional “joining fees.”
It’s unclear if the club will be open all year, but even the cheapest option suggests a rate of over $300 a month during the summer season.
Regardless of the specifics, the language throughout the Rockaway Ocean Club portends ownership’s anxiety about putting such a beloved space behind a subscription fee.
The first question on the FAQ page makes this obvious: “Is the beach still public?”
They reassure worried beachgoers that it is, but are also certainly aware of the optics of paywalling a large portion of the People’s Beach in the most publicly accessible city in the United States.
Though contested, Riis beach has a proud history of public accessibility.
The opening of the luxury Rockaway Ocean Club will only accelerate the trend of privatization and unaffordability.
The Other People’s Beach
Riis is most strongly associated with the ideal of the public beach, but many of the city’s other beaches similarly embody it.
Just seven miles west of Riis beach sits Coney Island, a historic beach that is more closely interlinked with the city, both physically through the Brooklyn grid, but most importantly with direct public transit options, making it far more accessible to the public.
Interestingly, Coney Island has an almost reverse history of Jacob Riis Park.
Beginning in the mid-1800s, the Coney Island House hotel opened, primarily serving upper-class residents of mainland Brooklyn.
(Coney Island was still an actual island then, not connected to inner Brooklyn until the construction of the Belt Parkway and the necessary infill of Coney Island Creek required to support the highway.)
But soon many from the “rougher” classes came to party.
Between them and the emerging middle class, the rich were slowly squeezed.
The area officially became a playground for the masses when the first roller coaster opened in 1884, the famous Cyclone, followed by Steeplechase Park in 1895 and Luna Park in 1903.
Today Luna Park continues to be a relatively affordable entertainment option for families.
The pay-to-play pricing can get expensive, but there are options to buy tickets for single rides.
Compare this to a typical amusement park like Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey: while a ticket costs a comparable $45 ($90 at the gate), the cost of transportation and entry for anyone into the park, along with overpriced food, means a much more inaccessible experience.
But the open nature of Luna Park also means anyone is free to enter even if they opt out of the rides.
Parents, family members, friends, and the public can watch from the sidelines without paying a dime.
Because the amusement park is built into the surrounding fabric of the city, it functions more like a city park than the typical gated amusement parks found elsewhere.
While not public, the park has been owned and operated by the Zamperlas, an Italian family with over five generations of experience in amusement parks, circuses, and carnival rides, and with a longstanding commitment to the uniquely open and accessible spirit of Coney Island.
The same spirit exists in the other businesses that make up the formal and informal Coney Island economy.
Much of this likely has to do with the ease of access via transit and the city at large.
This mix of traditional small businesses and informal ones directly connected with greater New York is what has kept the neighborhood feeling like just that: a neighborhood.
Broader urban links and internal community involvement are harder to break, as they are less susceptible to a single owner changing the entire nature of the development, like what is happening at Riis Beach.
A proposal for a new casino recently tested this spirit, but local residents, businesses, and elected officials mobilized to successfully defeat it.
The Future of the People’s Beach
Maybe Jacob Riis was never really the People’s Beach.
But the first iteration of a park that would honor the past of its site, as well as create a more ecologically sensitive design, would have gone a long way.
Later when the city transformed the site from a military base to a public park, it took the important step of giving back the space to all New Yorkers.
But the flaws of Moses’s design sensibilities stifled some of that potential.
Still, many positive elements have remained through it all.
And because of activist endeavors like the Plover Project powered by everyday people as well as the distinct feeling one gets while on the beach that it is indeed a uniquely democratic and open space, the name stuck.
The enclaves of private beach clubs that have encircled Riis beach are taking one step closer with the creation of the Rockaway Ocean Club — and one step closer to the end of the People’s Beach.
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