Rumsey Pool Closed October 1. The Eastern Market Plaza Changes Before the Building Does.

The brick building at 635 North Carolina Avenue SE still stands across the plaza from Eastern Market's North Hall. It looks much as it did in September. Behind the doors, the Dr. William H. Rumsey Aquatic Center stopped taking swimmers on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The DC Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of General Services closed it so the old building can be demolished and a new aquatic center built on the same site, according to the DPR notice PoPville published in September.

Long before anyone sees demolition, Rumsey's closure has already rearranged two weekly routines. The first is lap swimming. The second is the weekend market on the plaza out front. The order in which each change arrives is set by a permit sequence the city can't shorten.

Demolition comes fifth in a fixed order

Officials from DPR, DGS and the design-build team explained at a September 22 meeting in Eastern Market's North Hall why the pool had to close well before demolition. HillRag reported that DPR Community Engagement Manager Christopher Dyer said the team could not start the permitting clock while Rumsey was still open. He called the sequence fixed:

1. Remove everything from the pool and the building.
2. Have Pepco cut power to the site.
3. Apply for the raze permit.
4. Receive the raze permit.
5. Begin demolition.

Officials estimated four to six weeks for the move-out and draining, and four to five months for demolition once it starts. Counted from October 1, that first window runs from about October 29 to November 12. That puts the first week of November inside the stretch when the building is being emptied and drained, and the raze permit can't be requested until that's done. A quiet site on North Carolina Avenue in early November is the schedule working as described.

Swimmers got much less notice than the sequence takes. HillRag reported that pool users had roughly two weeks to rearrange their classes and lap routines once the closure date was announced.

Your lap swim now depends on which hours you swam

Rumsey kept full-day hours: Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sunday. Its eight-lane, 20-by-25-yard pool shared the building with a kiddie wading pool and a community room.

DPR moved Rumsey's programs to four aquatic centers. It sent morning and evening lap swimmers to the Ballou Senior High School pool and later added Dunbar as a second school-pool option. Here is how those pools' posted hours compare with the schedule Rumsey kept, according to DPR's indoor pool directory:

The two school pools DPR suggested for lap swimmers have the narrowest hours on the list. They're open two hours in the morning, four in the evening, and not at all on weekends, because DCPS uses them during the school day. Swimmers who went to Rumsey at lunch or on Saturdays will find full-day schedules only at the four aquatic centers. Two of those, Deanwood and Barry Farm, open on Sundays, which Rumsey never did. Turkey Thicket also posts hot tub hours most days of the week.

The directory doesn't carry an update date, and the Joy Evans Saturday entry is cut off mid-line. DPR's Customer Care Center at (202) 673-7647 can confirm current hours on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. DPR's fall replacement classes, which opened for special registration on September 25, run October 13 through November 6. That session ends Friday, November 6.

The plaza becomes a work site, and the market moves around it

Rumsey's closure reaches past the swimmers once the construction fence goes up. The plaza in front of the pool is part of the weekend Eastern Market, which officially runs Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The construction logistics plan shown on September 22 puts fencing around the site. It uses part of the North Carolina Avenue plaza as a laydown area and construction entrance, and it shifts the sidewalk and bike lane into the parking lane. HillRag noted that the plan still needed approval from DDOT's public space committee.

That fence starts a chain of vendor moves. At the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee meeting in North Hall the following week, Market Manager Barry Margeson explained how the market would handle it, Capitol Hill Corner reported. The vendors on the Rumsey Center plaza will move to the North Plaza at Eastern Market. The vendors who now set up on the North Plaza will move inside North Hall. In post-meeting conversations reported by HillRag, officials said most of the food-service vendors would go to the North Hall plaza. Vendors displaced from that area would move into North Hall itself or onto the 200 block of Seventh Street SE, and DGS would work with them on the relocations.

At the September 22 meeting, residents raised the smaller pieces of a weekend routine. These are the answers HillRag recorded:

• Capital Bikeshare: the station stays but moves to the end of the parking area.
• Market alley: expected to remain available to vendors much as it is today, with fencing aligned near the existing wall and Eastern Market's three HVAC stacks preserved.
• Heritage tree: the large tree near North Carolina Avenue gets a protected critical-root zone. The team has already used air spading to locate its major roots.
• Construction traffic: six on-site spaces for crews. Delivery trucks are meant to enter from North Carolina Avenue, unload inside the site and leave without lining up on the street.
• Compost drop-off: logistics not yet settled at the time of the meeting.

The compost tent is the item Saturday shoppers are most likely to go looking for. The city's Zero Waste DC food waste listing still places the staffed Eastern Market drop-off "near Rumsey Aquatic Center" at 635 North Carolina Avenue SE, on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Once fencing goes up on that plaza, check that page before carrying a bin of scraps down Seventh Street.

What returns on the same footprint

The vendor moves and the long lap-swim drive are what Capitol Hill gives up for a while in exchange for a much larger building. The project began as a modernization of the aging 1970 facility after the first community meeting in December 2024. HillRag reported that it grew into a full replacement, a two-story aquatic and community center on the same site.

The DGS project page lists it as a $44.5 million design-build job, with IStudios as architect and WKM/Hess as general contractor, and an end date of "Early 2028." That date is a projection, and the demolition window alone runs four to five months once the raze permit comes through.

The pools inside are built around the people who used the old one. The new lap pool has eight lanes and is 25 yards long. After water-aerobics users complained, the design was changed so the lap pool starts at three and a half feet instead of four, then slopes to five feet and drops to 12. A separate leisure and learn-to-swim pool ranges from three and a half to five feet.

The old center had a single community room. The new building adds a senior center, community rooms, a fitness room, a tech lounge, locker rooms, family restrooms, a sauna, and second-floor spaces overlooking the pool. The exterior uses masonry, a prominent glass entrance, and three separate building masses meant to fit the historic Eastern Market setting. The sauna has been a long-running request. PoPville covered a January 2026 petition asking for one, and Capitol Hill Corner reported in July that the new facility would include it.

The name over the new lobby

The lobby will include integrated art honoring Dr. William H. Rumsey. According to DPR, Rumsey was a former director of the department and co-founded its Black History Invitational Swim Meet. The Washington Post reported that he spent more than 40 years as a Washington educator and directed the D.C. Recreation Department from 1976 to 1983.

The building being emptied now opened in 1970 as the Capitol East Natatorium. Capitol Hill Corner's history of the site records it as the District's first year-round, racially integrated public pool. The same history documents the local controversy over building it beside Eastern Market. Placing the pool beside the market was argued over before the first building went up. More than half a century later, the rebuild is being planned around the market's weekend layout, its alley and its HVAC stacks.

Over the next few weekends, the fence on North Carolina Avenue will set where the plaza vendors, the Bikeshare dock and the compost tent end up. For homeowners near Seventh Street weighing a sale or renovation while this block changes around them, Ethan Carson can talk through how a long civic rebuild next door fits into a property's story. Explore the Portfolio to see how he presents Capitol Hill homes against the history of the blocks around them.