Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House and Day Camp

  • Also Known As: Trenton Bath House

  • Address: 999 Lower Ferry Rd
  • Travel Genus: Sight
  • Sight Category: Building

The Trenton Bath House gave me the first opportunity to work out the separation between the serving and served spaces. It was a very clear and simple problem. It was solved with absolute purity. Every space is accounted for, there is no redundancy. I used hollow columns as entrances to the rooms; I used them as a maze, a baffle, and I used the hollow column itself as a storage area. I use it for toilets, which must be enclosed. And I found, during the expression of this very simple building, the concept of the serving and served spaces.... I thought of a support as being a hollow column which can be used. That's the only place where I could put the services. So the source of support, the column, became the place which harbored the service of the building. Louis Kahn

The Trenton Bath House and Day Camp were designed by Louis I Kahn in 1955-57 for the Trenton Jewish Community Center on Lower Ferry Road, Ewing Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. The Bath House is an enclosed cross-shaped structure 98 feet wide by 98 feet long located in the northwestern corner of an eight acre tract owned by the JCC. It serves as the changing room, storage facility, and chlorination plant for the JCC's outdoor swimming pools. Two of the existing three pools were part of Kahn's original plan. The Day Camp, located on a thirty-seven acre tract leased to the JCC for ninety years, consists of four open air rectangular structures ranging from 24 to 40 feet long by 26 feet wide. Kahn also designed a community building for this site but that design was never executed; the subsequent facility, by Kelley and Gruzen, was erected in 1962. Much of the land is flat and heavily forested, ensuring continuation of the rural feeling which originally attracted the Trenton Jewish Community to this site. The complex, which has always been secular in nature, has become increasingly a total community resource as Ewing has developed from a suburban area into a semi-industrial environment. The Bath House and Day Camp continue to be used actively during the summer. The boundaries of this nomination have been drawn to include the bath house, the pools, and the day camp (all by Kahn) and exclude the later community building (Kelley & Gruzen, archs). - NRHP, 11 January 1984


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Timeline

Y/M/D Person Association Description Composition Food Event
Y/M/D Person Association Description Composition Food Event
1955/00/00 Anne Griswold Tyng Architect With the help of his associate architect Anne Tyng, Louis Kahn bignins designing the Trenton Bath House.
1957/00/00 Louis Kahn Architect With every space is accounted for and no redundancy, the Trenton Bath House is completed.

Data »

Particulars for Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House and Day Camp:
Area of Significance Architecture
Criteria Architecture-Engineering
Sight Category Building
Level of Significance National
Historic Use Outdoor recreation
Owner Private
Historic Use Sport Facility



US National Registry of Historic Places Data »

Accurate at time of registration: 23rd February 1984

PLACE DETAILS
Registry Name: Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House and Day Camp
Registry Address: 999 Lower Ferry Rd.
Registry Number: 84002730
Resource Type: Building
Owner: Private
Architect: Kahn,Louis I.
Architectural Style: No style listed
Area in Acres: 8
Contributing Buildings: 1
Certification: Listed in the National Register
CULTURAL DETAILS
Level of Significance: National
Area of Significance: Architecture
Applicable Criteria: Architecture-Engineering
Criteria Consideration: Significance of less than fifty years
Period of Significance: 1950-1974
Significant Year: 1955, 1957
Historic Function: Recreation and Culture
Historic Sub-Function: Outdoor recreation, Sport facility
Current Function: Recreation and Culture
Current Sub-Function: Sport facility Outdoor recreation

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