H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Brooklyn-based creative studio and development practice founded by David Belt. Best known publicly for the 2010 Brooklyn rooftop dumpster pools installation that became a defining image of the early-2010s wave of low-cost / high-impact urban placemaking.

A prototype Macro-Sea dumpster pool sits on the south face of 601 Delaware in San Antonio — acquired by the project as a sculptural / future-installation piece. Its presence on the H&H property aligns the adaptive-reuse program at 601 Delaware with the broader creative-placemaking lineage Macro-Sea helped establish.

Why Macro-Sea matters for 601 Delaware

The 601 Delaware project is an adaptive-reuse of a 1932 industrial building into a mixed-use heritage venue — museum + roastery + education + events. That project type sits squarely in the lineage Macro-Sea operates in: take an existing industrial fabric, layer in a programmatic mix that activates the space without erasing it, treat the building shell as cultural content rather than as backdrop.

Specific resonances:

  • The dumpster pool as a placemaking gesture. Macro-Sea’s 2010 pools demonstrated that high-impact public-realm interventions don’t require new construction — an upcycled industrial object can become destination programming. The H&H south-face courtyard plan (program vision) has the same gene: the formal 1932 courtyard restored as a venue, augmented by social-pool activation.
  • New Lab and adaptive-reuse-as-program. Macro-Sea / Belt’s work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on New Lab is the canonical example of turning a stripped industrial shell into a creative-economy anchor without losing its industrial character. The H&H factory has the same starting condition — a 1932 industrial shell stripped of its original equipment (per as-is) — and a similar ambition for its second life.
  • Creative-economy / cultural-economy framing. Macro-Sea’s portfolio reads as a precedent set for the kind of mixed-use heritage venue that 601 Delaware aims to be: not a museum that closes at 5 pm, not a roastery that just sells beans, but a programmed cultural site that operates day and night across multiple revenue streams.

The 601 Delaware dumpster pool prototype

Field Value
Location South face of 601 Delaware, on the grass-overgrown apron in front of the building
Acquisition August 2015 — one of three MOCA Tucson shipping-container pools; curator was first in line after Jim Poteet forwarded the museum sale email (mobile-pool-history)
Pool footprint ~7′ × 20′ 3″ perimeter
Deck footprint ~17′ 6″ × 30′ 11″; deck panels ~5′ 4″ × 5′ 3″
Power 30 A / 125 V L5-30 twist-lock (Hubbell HBL2615SW on pool + HBL2610SW on building)
Pump Pentair WhisperFlo 11771 WF-23 — ¾ hp, 10.8 A, 90 gpm max
Capacity / fill ~5,300 gal (~700 cu ft); ~12 hr fill at factory flow (wiki estimate)
Weight (empty) ~10,000 lbs (wiki estimate — verify before crane lift)
Equipment on site Sta-Rite PLM150 filter; RolaChem chlorine/acid pumps + tanks; Aqua Ultraviolet 25 W sterilizer; Pentair skimmer/light/niche parts per mobile-pool
Current state On-site; disposition open — static prototype, activated courtyard pool, or rooftop crown per vision
Full systems compile 601 Delaware — Building Systems § pool

Acquisition narrative (curator wiki + public sources)

Broader lineage in mobile-pool-history and 2015 MOCA exhibition record:

When Event
2009 Brooklyn dumpster-pool images filed after Rackspace; Jim Poteet container-architecture thread
Pre-2015 601 Delaware acquired near Alamodome; in-ground SA pool economics rejected (~$50k dig on limestone)
26 Aug 2015 Poteet forwards MOCA email — three $80k pools, one left; down payment secured; first in line
Jun–Sep 2015 MOCA Mobile Pools in Great Hall — Jocko Weyland curator; Macro-Sea donation
Late 2015 Tucson inspection + farewell fundraiser; pool purchased
Freight Flatbed to San Antonio; wiki names West Texas Dumpsters (BOL unverified)
Delivery Wrong forklift / beached at placement (curator detail TBD)

Still to file in raw-archives/records/: down-payment receipt, MOCA sale invoice, freight BOL, delivery photos, Danny’s Place context (wiki stub — curator to confirm).

The pool’s presence on the property is a curatorial asset — it gives the south-face courtyard a thematic anchor that ties the H&H heritage program to the broader creative-placemaking conversation Macro-Sea helped start.

Open questions

  • Provenance records — narrative expanded 2026-05-27 with MOCA/AZPM public sources; purchase paperwork, freight BOL, and delivery photos still to file in raw-archives/records/. See mobile-pool-history.
  • Macro-Sea relationship status — has there been direct designer contact (David Belt or Macro-Sea staff) about the prototype’s history and intended use? Worth re-establishing for any future activation.
  • Activation feasibility — what does activating the prototype as a working pool require (water hookup, drainage, filtration, code clearance)? Decision in roadmap Phase 0 block F; execution in Phase 3 south-face courtyard.
  • Interpretive framing — if the pool becomes a museum / exhibit piece rather than an active pool, what’s the curatorial narrative? “How Brooklyn taught us to think about industrial-shell reuse” is one direction; “the cultural lineage of the H&H second life” is another.
  • Other Macro-Sea works that may be relevant precedent — the Park Avenue Tunnel summer activations, Glassphemy (Brooklyn glass-bottle smashing public-art piece), New Lab, and other Belt-led projects. Worth a short reference list for the museum / vision narrative.

See also