My forays into Manhattan’s Upper East Side have been shamefully few; only a handful of times in the 26+ years and counting of Forgotten New York. That’s why I was surprised to find this structure, the George and Annette Murphy Center, at East 90th Street and Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in the park known as DeKovats Playground. FNY’s East 88th Street page bears most of the fruit of that walk, but before beginning in Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion, I first visited Asphalt Green.
The Murphy Center was constructed from 1941 to 1944 as part of a large asphalt mixing plant designed by architects Ely Jacques Kahn and Robert Allan Jacobs, hence the name of the nearby center, Asphalt Green. Much of the asphalt used to pave NYC streets was produced here from 1914 to 1968. After that, the rest of the asphalt factory buildings were demolished and the playground built in its place.
Architect Jacobs, an associate of French architect Le Corbusier, was inspired by modernist buildings he had noticed in airports in Paris. While the Museum of Modern Art loved the design, NYC parks and traffic czar Robert Moses called it one of the ugliest buildings he had ever seen. The building was placed near the East River so barges could bring construction materials such as sand and gravel alongside the building using a slip, bypassing trucking which would at the time of construction use local streets.
Hearing of plans to build housing on the asphalt plant site after its closure, Cornell University Medical College pathologist George Murphy and his wife Annette and local senior center residents founded Asphalt Green Inc., an initiative to build physical health facilities that would be affordably available to all. It took over a decade, but in 1984 the building Robert Moses hated so much became a state of the art facility with art and photography studios, a modern gymnasium, Mazur Theater, and in 1993, Aquacenter, an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
8/21/25
4 comments
As a kid, listening to the radio while on road trips that invariably involved driving down the FDR, I always connected this structure to the then-prevalent radio ads for Krakus and Atalanta Polish Hams.
For several years I went to the gym there. Beautiful facilities.
As a kid in the 1960’s I thought this place was defunct.You
never saw any activity around the place and there were no
signs around telling what it was.
There was a rumor that it was run by the Mob to get into the
lucrative paving industry.
If Robert Moses said this building was a unique NYC design like the Guggenheim the haters would of had it demolished.