Free Public Squash Courts Open on Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Alex Wessner and Ryan Wall were playing squash one day. “It was a beautiful spring day, 75 degrees, and I just wanted to go outside,” Wessner says. The only problem? Squash, at least in New York City, is strictly an indoor sport. Four years later, Wessner and Wall teamed up with fellow racquetball enthusiasts Brian Staub and Sean Dragann to start Public Squash and build New York City’s first free public squash courts.

The doors of the gleaming glass building, whose design evokes the sleek modern style of an Apple Store, officially opened Tuesday. The courts, located in Hamilton Fish Park on the Lower East Side, are adjacent to an Olympic-size swimming pool, basketball courts and a Beaux-Arts recreation center designed in 1898 by Carrère & Hastings (the same firm that designed the famous New York Public Library on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue). Squash enthusiasts can rent free rackets and balls before hitting the courts.

Fans of the sport will recognize how new the concept is. Squash courts abound in Manhattan, but most are multi-level clubs and gyms with memberships, often at inflated prices. (In addition to membership fees, most clubs charge a fee to rent the court.) Weisner calls this the sport’s “preppy problem,” which is actually a misconception. “Although it’s considered a sophisticated sport,” he says, “it actually has humble origins.” (Notably, the sport was originally played outdoors.) The first squash players were inmates of London’s Fleet Prison, who began hitting balls with rackets against the prison walls as a form of exercise in the early 19th century. The sport became more formally organized at Harrow School for Boys in London, where the first four squash courts were built in 1864. Since then, the sport has spread around the world to varying degrees of popularity, but for New Yorkers and most Americans, the preppy problem remains.
With a millennial mindset, members of Public Squash Courts did some digital research and found that despite numerous Google searches for public squash courts in New York City, the results were inconclusive because there were no courts. Despite hundreds of public handball courts throughout the five boroughs, online searches for these locations were far less common. Hoping to break with tradition, the group approached the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation with the idea of ​​converting some existing handball courts into squash courts. They reasoned that simply building three additional walls would completely enclose the space to international squash standards. Convinced, the Parks Department leased the courts for free, but the construction fell to Weisner, Staub, Wall, and Dragan.
The organisation launched a multi-year fundraising campaign. Donations of varying sizes, mostly from friends, family and squash enthusiasts, as well as from the sale of PS T-shirts, eventually raised enough money to build a modern outdoor squash court.

These efforts are just the beginning of a rebranding effort to revive the game’s Ivy League roots and make it as accessible as your local basketball game. It’s not just the players who understand the value of squash: Unlike tennis, the sport is surprisingly accessible and has even been named one of the healthiest by Forbes. New York-based organizations like CitySquash have long recognized the benefits squash can have for underprivileged youth: Its website notes that 100 percent of CitySquash alumni graduate from high school, and 98 percent go on to college.

PS also has its sights set on squash’s Olympic future. “It’s never been an Olympic sport, largely due to the difficulty of accessing venues. Hopefully this model will help squash qualify for the Olympics,” Wall said.
The team also sees the space as more than just a court, explaining that the glass walls allow for creativity, and the interior space has the potential to host events. While plans for a second court have not yet materialized, it’s certainly the next step. Which begs the question: What’s stopping someone from building another court? “There’s nothing stopping them, and we hope they do!” says Weisner. “Our goal is accessibility, so feel free to copy that! We just want everyone to be able to come and play.”