Daily News from New York, New York • 57

Friday. June 29. 1990 DAILY NEWS 57 3 EXT RA LIFESTYLE 3 Bads ddd ffii soobb all fisseir Lof EftlMtaEas PIPT? HI PjT Pool complex reopens with a splash By LARRY HACKETT Daily News Staff Writer HE GHOST OF SUM-mers past, adorned in decidedly neo-Roman fashion, returned to E. 23d St yesterday. "This was our oasis, it really was," remembered Ronnie Hollywood, standing in the resurrected lobby of the As-ser Levy Bathhouse.

Before her, winking under a trussed skylight roof, was the indoor pool that last held water more than 10 years ago. A few yards to the left, past the new senior citizens' community room, the renovated locker facilities and the cavernous exercise room, is the WATER WONDERS: The Harlem Honeys Bears did their aquatic thing at the reopening of tne Asser Levy Bathhouse yesterday. In the '50s, 'We'd come at land leave at 5. We didn't get much work refilled outdoor pool last used in 1988 and a brand-new children's wading pool. "We'd come here at 1 o'clock and leave at 5," Hollywood smiled, remembering the 1950s and the summers spent her with her two children.

"We didn't get much housework done." After two years and $8.3 million in renovations, Mayor Dinkins yesteday re- GSeadly for tie before damn MCOU KNOIVENO DAILY NEWS York City dismisses the 23d St Bath as "Roman Pomp," an indiscriminate reproduction of a classical style. But that interpretation has been revised by some architects in recent years. "The power of that stylist vocabulary is much more respected now," says Tom Mel-lins of Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Asser Levy "suggested something grander than in fact it was," says Mel I ins, "but it was a powerful reflection of civic pride, and an attempt to elevate the common man and woman.

These were monuments that were truly democratic, and to a large extent we've lost that" Course JACK SMITH DAILY NEWS complained. "All the clubs feel that way about it" declares Grabowski, who helped lead the anti-reservation forces. "There'd be no guarantee we'd get a time." Phones, of course, don't discriminate against out-of-county residents, thereby erasing the advantage of those who live nearby. "We're the taxpayers, we built the course, we should have preference," Grabowski dedicated the Asser Levy Bathhouse, named after the Dutch Jew who arrived in New York in 1654 and became the country's first Kosher butcher and its first Jew-. ish citizen.

The complex, along with the city's other 30 public pools, will open for the season tomorrow at 11 a.m. Admission is free. "Now we have something to do during the summer," said Gianmarco Marostica, 10, who was on line for some free lunch during yesterday's ceremony. "Last summer, I was kinda bored." Asser Levy originally called the 23d SL Bathhouse didn't become a pool until hopeful begin to queue up at midnight to insure an early tee-off on one of the park's five courses. By the time the course opens at 5 a.m., there are hundreds waiting to play.

At some courses in New Jersey, swingers show up as early as 8:30 p.m. the night before and sleep in their cars for the earliest starts. At Dunwoodie in Yonkers, Al Grabowski has been greeting the dawn for about 20 years. "Three years ago, you could have come up here at 6 o'clock," Grabowski says. "Now, if you're not here at 3 (in the morning), you're not going to get the time you want" Fred Kaplan, in fact, is one of the lucky ones.

The recent advent of telephone reservations at the city's 13 courses has left only one "open" tee time for each hour. That scarcity has cut down lines at most courses, leaving the truly driven like Kaplan little competition. Gnlf's nnmilaritv has the 1930s. When it opened in 1908, those who poured through its two arching portals one beckoning MEN and the other WOMEN -came from the hivelike tenements nearby, and they came to take a bath. Only one in 79 lower East Side families had a bathtub in those days, and diseases like typhus spread easily.

Convinced of the need for "hydrotherapy," city officials began opening washing facilities in 1902 with the Riving-ton St Baths. By 1912, the city had 23 public baths that served 5 million people each year. Designed by Arnold W. Brunner (who also designed soared over the last decade in New York and around the country. In 1983, for example, 260,000 rounds were played on the seven city courses operated by American Golf.

By 1988, that number had risen to 460,000. Nationwide, there were 17 million golfers in 1984. Today, there are more than 24 million. The big numbers can "probably be correlated to the aging of the baby boom generation," says the National Golf Foundation's Trish Leary. And the overwhelming number of golfers more than 80, says the U.S.

Golf Association are playing on increasingly crowded public courses. THERE'S LOTS OF DE-mand in the Bronx, but where are you going to put a course in the Bronx?" says the USGA's Eric Sheil. The city's telephone reservation system creates its own electronic logjams, it Barnard College Hall) and William Martin Aiken, Asser Levy was part of the "City Beautiful" movement in U.S. urban architecture, historians say, which sought to recreate the inspiring neoclassical edifices of European cities. PJiHE RENOVATION HAS 1 1 restored its white oak moldings, cornices and pilasters, as well as its red granite wainscoting and tile and granite floors.

The original silver lion's-head fountain, fastened to a free-standing marble slab, still stands at the head of the pool. The American Institute of Architects Guide to New EARLY arrivals at Douglaston Golf least guarantees a tee time, and most golfers say it's better than waiting in line. The downside: Reservations must be made 10 days in advance. Don't expect reservation systems everywhere. "It would kill the public golf point of it" argues Elaine Marzolli, the assistant park superintendent at Bethpage.

In Westchester, a plan to install a computerized reservation system at the five public courses was put on hold some local golf groups By LARRY HACKETT Daily News Staff Writer DT'S 4 A.M. DO YOU know where your husband Well, if it's a weekend morning and your husband is Fred Kaplan, he's probably sitting in the inky darkness outside the Douglaston Golf Course clubhouse in Queens. If he's lucky, no other golfers are around to greet him; earlier birds than Kaplan could extend his wait an hour, perhaps more. At the very least the 31-year-old lawyer will sit for nearly 90 minutes before he has a chance to get onto the links. "If you play at 10 or 11 o'clock," Kaplan explains, "the day is pretty much done by the time you get home, shower, and get yelled at by your spouse.

It's pretty much part of the deal to get up and play by 9." Welcome to the leisure-de ficient world of public golf. At Bethpage State Park, the.