You don't know what you got...
The symbolism and reality of public swimming pools
I was born in the “Jersey Shore” town. Yeah, that one.
I didn’t live there long. My family moved roughly 40 minutes north about a year after I came into existence. Still, my summers were spent at Seaside Heights, Point Pleasant, even Wildwood. Endless hours swimming in the Atlantic defined my youth.
My first job was as a waiter at a private swimming club—summer after eighth grade. I became a lifeguard at a public swimming pool two years later. I held that job for six years, lifeguarding at hotels in college as well.
The pool was essential aspect to my life, even my identity. The park included a Little League field, makeshift ice and street hockey rink, and the basketball court I spent countless years playing pick-up games on—all public infrastructures as well.
And here’s the thing about public infrastructure: they’re invisible, woven into the fabric of life. Consider another topic I cover often: public health. In both regards, we’re the victims of our own success. In fact, vaccines, antibiotics, and public health protocols are why many of us are even here. But we rarely talk about the virus or infection we didn’t die from because we were already protected. Likewise, we use public infrastructure without realizing how important it is, and only come to recognize the fact when it’s failing or gone.
This reality hit home while reading The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality. The authors, Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L Alstott, discuss the importance of those invisible layers. Things like health care, post offices, libraries, and one of my favorite infrastructures: the public pool.
Because it wasn’t always that way.
But what has always been true, when it comes to societies, is that what feels personal is political. The formation of my identity, heavily influenced by sports and physical fitness (in both recreation and vocation), was created by the political forces that created both public infrastructures and public health.
A brief history of the public pool
Public swimming pools emerged in the late 19th century, driven by concerns about public health and hygiene, as well as a growing interest in recreation and physical fitness. This dual purpose reflected a shift from solely environmental sanitation measures to a greater emphasis on individual health and well-being.
Pools were initially scandalous. Victorian-era modesty led to restrictions on public swimming in lakes and rivers, particularly during daytime hours when all that skin could be seen.
As they write,
From the late eighteenth century, working class people— boys especially— swam in nearby lakes and rivers for enjoyment. By the mid-nineteenth century, Victorian norms of modesty pushed municipalities to ban daytime swimming in lakes and rivers. The result was to block working class families from both recreation and hygiene, because most were unable to afford baths in their homes or the expense of visiting a private bath house. With the emergence of a trend toward physical fitness, the advent of vacations (which made swimming acceptable to those with middle class sensibilities), and the fear that dirtiness would lead to disease and criminality, municipalities started building public swimming pools.
These restrictions excluded working-class families who couldn't afford private baths or bathhouses. Swimming grew in popularity in the middle class, becoming associated with vacations and leisure. Municipalities constructed public pools, a trend that highlights how social norms influence the development of public infrastructure.
Yet it is America we’re talking about, and so public pools became intertwined with class and racial segregation. Some towns started charging fees for pool access, which doubled as a mechanism to exclude working-class families. The integration of genders further led to racial segregation, driven by fears and prejudices. And so the pool became a battleground for social and racial anxieties as well.
Eventually city leaders reopened pools on “ free days” in hopes that working class people wouldn’t cause trouble in town during their free time. When pools became integrated by gender, they became segregated by race. Mixing genders meant that pools be came sexualized spaces, and fears of black men alongside white women led to segregation, enforced by private violence and intimidation.
As with many public programs, the New Deal introduced a surge in pool construction: 750 pools and nearly 1,700 wading pools were built in the thirties and forties. Federal programs like the Works Progress Administration and Public Works Administration were tasked with those jobs.
This led to inclusion of previously marginalized communities—which, the authors write, was more likely the results of Depression-era job creation rather than any sort of moral clarity. Still, a public win.
Then World War II ended and white middle-class families retreated to private swim clubs and backyard pools. As with most industries being privatized, a broad disinvestment in public infrastructure began. Public pools didn’t disappear; they primarily served working-class and minority communities. Not a bad result per se, but funding dried up, contributing to the deterioration of those pools. They became a “blight” to the middle class.
As the authors note, swimming pools serve as a case study of how seemingly innocuous public spaces become entangled with larger societal forces, shaping access, equity, and the fabric of community life.
Not something I considered all those years I spent working at and swimming in them, which is indicative of how seemingly benign public forces operate—and a reminder that we often don’t know what we have until it’s gone.