Final Writing: “Swimming Pools as Public Spaces in the United States”

 

Swimming Pools as Public Spaces in the United States

 

Yuzhou Zhang

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Many municipal swimming pools are used by citizens in the United States annually. The essay primarily discusses the developmental history of the outdoor public pools which is long and not only setting up an image of summer and friends but also pulling out tragic stories of segregations. In the meanwhile, pools benefit humans in sociology and physiology of the development of urban cities. They can alleviate depression and stress and develop social bonds with others by improving communication and interaction. The project is designed by Yuzhou Zhang, a communication designer currently studying at Parsons School of Design in New York, which directs to the topic and provides an available platform allowing people to participate in the activity.

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

It didn’t matter who you were, you swam at the pool. ——Joseph Plechavy

Americans mostly used municipal pools in ways that divided communities and reinforced social distinctions. —— Jeff Wiltse

 

When asked to pick several favorite places in New York City last month, someone said swimming pool. It was not sure why people said that but probably because of being a fan of blue, water, summer, sun, and artist Mr. David Hockney in life. Through further research discovered that swimming pools, the municipal ones in particular, actually have been involved with both benefits and harm——classism, sexism, ageism, and racism——in its history.[1]And because all of the discrimination mentioned above took place in the past, they triggered private swimming pools and private swimming clubs to start growing up rapidly during the mid- 20thcentury. The research results are extremely different from what expected based on people’s memory and impression of swimming pools, in the further research, some of the information emphasizing on the bright side of swimming pools is considered as one of the most important elements in the city humanizing, entertaining, and activating the neighborhood it locates in.[2]The interior design, as well as the environmental design of different municipal swimming pools, were different, especially applied to the private ones. I went to a municipal swimming pool in McCarren Park in Brooklyn last month and a private swimming pool in a luxury apartment. The municipal swimming pool was unfortunately but not surprisingly closed during the seasonal condition, and after visiting the private one, it explained the word “private” well. People were having slightly different behaviors including being comfortable, intimate, friendly, satisfying, and pleasant in the observation conducted in April 2019.[3](Figure 1.1.)(Figure 1.2.) The observation has shown the focusing direction as my design project, dealing with a way to help people in the city find out a pool to use. Within the proposal, the project would partner with willing private swimming pools and mostly all the municipal swimming pools to promote customers in the city and also provide access to the public.

 

 

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History & Context

 

The working class in the very beginning of the history of American municipal swimming pools were a group of people sharing no sensibility as what middle class did and they swam in the public waters——rivers and lakes——being naked, which seriously offended the middle-class residents in the neighborhood. Therefore, social elites and government officials approved to design municipal swimming pools to attract most of the dirty working-class people assembled to the designated place.[4]Before the 1920s, municipal swimming pools were prevailingly segregated by gender, class, age, and generational lines.[5]Men had to swim with men and women swam with women[6]. Officials believed to build up the separate-sex swimming pools would prevent young women from sexual assaults.[7]Jeff Wiltse who is a professor studying in humanities and history in the University of Montanawrote this in his book, “Groups of teenage boys surrounded a girl in the water, tore off her swimsuit top and then grabbed her breasts. In some cases, the assault went further. One seventeen-year-old boy inserted his finger into a girl’s vagina, and a twenty-six-year-old man attempted to rape and Sodomize a girl.”[8]Therefore,  it is reasonable to understand why in the Progressive Era in which all the municipal swimming pools confined the same gender to swim together. The purpose was to protect females from getting sexual shame and attack by men. It reduced unnecessary interaction with different genders. It was an act considered as reinforcing regulation over gender. Collectively, the focusing divisions’ areas to gender, class, age, and generational lines had been gradually transferred to race and ethnicity. In the 1920s-30s, United States had gone through a municipal-swimming-pools-construction spree, a period academically called “Swimming Pool Age” in which municipal swimming pools welcomed white males and females, middle-class, working-class, and teenagers altogether to use at the same time. However, those gender-integrated municipal swimming pools set restriction against African Americans.[9]An image was taken in Junior Swimming Pool in the 1930s well prove that.[10](Figure 2.) Before the Swimming Pool Age, African Americans were free accessing municipal swimming pools with whites but after World War I, the primary users were white males and white females. The users were shifted at this time from white males with black males and white females with black females to all whites. Afterthe desegregation in the mid-20thcentury in the country, in response to cool down angry African Americans rather than ignore them to riot and disturb public order, African Americans were officially entitled to get access to municipal swimming pools.[11]An interesting finding coincidently took place in the racial desegregation was the private swimming pools began to skyrocket. Before the period, private swimming pools were few but from 1950 to 1999, millions of private swimming pools appeared in the country. Most of them were established in the suburbs.[12]Whereas the public swimming pools mostly shared a feature locating underneath bridges or non-central-area of cities.[13](Figure 3.) The obvious migration of middle class from using municipal swimming pools to suburban private swimming pools could be noticed. Whites were trying to not swim with Black Americans in joining private swimming clubs or directly moving out to suburbs, depending on how affluent they were.

 

In April, a noticeable observation from the visit of McCarren Park Pool was that the size of the pool is giant, at least larger than a standard football field. It also provided resting benches, beach umbrellas, etc. A week followed, another hours-long observation conducted in private swimming pool which represented a different kind of visual impression——marble floor, carpet, and bathhouse. The establishment of the bath reminds of the very early municipal swimming pools during the Progressive Era which similarly had bathhouses. Their purpose was to clean up poor and working class in the city so that reduce the possibility to spread disease and dirt.[14]

 

Municipal swimming pools were vulnerable and limited to the public in addition to the segregation issue from African Americans accessing them, external factors including people’s interests, time, weather, seasons, federal finance situation, etc. affected White Americans using them, too. There were several times in which municipal swimming pools either opened widely or closed largely for the above factors in history. After desegregation, due to a large number of white Americans escaped and abandoned the swimming pools that were mandated to open to public black Americans.[15]Many cities pools in the country had closed. Cities did not expand pools-building as previous decades in the early two decades in the 20thcentury.[16]In fact, during the decades——“The Second Industrial Revolution”, public pools-built increased six fold from 117 pools in 1916 to 700 pools by 1929.[17]The spree was triggered by not only citizens’ increased leisure time, popularized swimming sports, and “a general trend toward communities devoting public resources to recreation facilities” but also the sufficient government’s financial budget. The thriving economy led to economic prosperity.[18]However, a fiscal crisis hit the United States after desegregation, around the 1970s. It was a period in which no more new public swimming pools would be built, the existing pools largely had not been in repair and maintenance. In other words, few swimming pools were still open to the public.[19]The archival image taken in McCabe Pool shows the real situation during that time, working class and black Americans were heavily affected.[20]Conceivably, the working class, marginalized people, African Americans, and the poor became the tragic victims to the closure of municipal pools and privatization of pools. The working-class and poor white people did not afford private swimming pools or clubs in suburbs; Black Americans still suffered from continuous racial discrimination even though they had enough money using “white-dominated” luxury pools.

 

Looking for the values of swimming pools recognizing as one of the most important elements in the city, “relief,” “entertainment,” “communication,” “interaction,” and so on are several impressions named often by surrounding people. Believes that “Swimming pools and public space generally have the potential to foster a vibrant community life… They offer an informal social space… can interact and communicate face to face. Municipal pools can humanize relationships between people. They enable the sustained and unhurried interaction necessary for members of a community to meet, forge bonds of friendship, and develop a sense of shared interest and identity.”[21]  When people swim in a pool, they are sharing an intimate water, space, and even disease, interacting with bodies, behaviors, and communication. At this point, swimming pool diminishes many human externalities. It was represented the beginning of the “Swimming Pool Age” that in the 1920s when literally anyone was allowed to use public swimming pools and just at the stage of where discrimination of sex lines, generational lines, and class lines ended, and racial segregation had not risen yet.

 

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Description of Studio Project

 

 

Throughout the research, urban swimming pools effectively serving as psychological and social lounges providing people with immediate relief heavy workload, depression, anxiety, etc. Swimming pools provide areas for people to spend hours playing games, bathing, resting, and chatting. The importance of them to reestablish community bonds eroded by modern city life[22]and diminish social, or external distinctions cannot be neglected.[23]Swimming pools are beneficial to neighbors’ mental and physical health. In the meantime, urban swimming pools, the public ones, in particular, were and are vulnerable and limited to the public. Winter, rainy days, financial situation, swimmers’ attendance, etc. all result in the closure. And therefore, citizens have failure using the resource and the spaces are not fully taken advantage of. So, I am thinking of a method primarily to assist users or citizens in searching for the available swimming pools in an area. Aiming to allow people to rejoin in the activity. “PoolFinder” as a phone app conveniently and timely embedded in real lives to provide necessary help and service. The app would include message notices in lock page and top bar presented when using, it also notifies people information of pools’ open and closure, swimming training course registration, payment confirmation, profile notices, privacy, etc. Users could easily look up a map with all accessible pools labeled under orange pins, after selecting a location, there are options: directions, sign up for a class, and about this pool. The “PoolFinder” offer training courses of swimming to the public. One of the purposes of the project is to reduce history-caused high drowning rate of the country according to a national survey conducted by Red Cross that more than 54% of Americans do not know how to swim.[24]The project actively engages in finding the partnership of local swimming pools and the institution to provide users with free swimming courses in a day or a week. For the course registration, the app includes swim coaches of every swimming pool. They would have submitted their pictures in their profiles, introduction, teaching years, etc. for users to select based on their preferences. Otherwise, it could be also selected depending on calendar and courses time. Chatting page is a platform offered to allow swimmers and couches to communicate with, discuss class time and any problems in terms of swimming. It is basically considered as a social chatting app in its service.  People are also freely able to spend quality time swimming at a favorite swimming pool with their families or friends. The app also features a reporting channel which gives opportunities for people to write their comments and any suggestions when using in a swimming pool and the partner pool would be received in a short time. In general, “PoolFinder” involved with the stakeholders includes app developers. App users, or customers, partner swimming pools, partner payment methods, and banks, GPS, government, etc.

 

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Questions and Future Directions

 

Generally speaking, the time is limited and not adequate enough to allow furthermore research in terms of the aspects of the “PoolFinder” project design and the contents of pools’ development in history field to be conducted. About the app, regarding as a service product reaching real user, the design research must be conducted fully. The necessary sessions include users research to find out its target users, the app design preference, etc. by utilizing survey, interview and questionnaire in this situation. Due to the swimming pool history in America in particular, which carries the connotation of sex, age, ethnicity, race, and social class, the consideration of these might be counted into the design to make it users-friendly. The overall representation of the project whether or not it would be successfully used by the public must complete many several times surveying the users and co-design methods with them. In the process, it would help the work in an efficient and effective way. Besides, the research direction might be also related to swimsuits’ fashion transition in addition to the swimming pools in the future.

 

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Conclusion

 

The swimming pool bringing up pleasant childhood pictures to many people but at the same reminds of multiple discriminations on several lines: gender, racial class, generation, and race. These were subsequent because different steps of the history depended on temporary circumstances, places, and conceptions. swimming pools existing in cities have their own reasons for this. It is effective to connect individual’s bonds in social relationship, foster humanity, and vitality of the neighborhood, build up a center for mental relief as well as human bodies in such a limited space, provide people with a chance to connect with nature out of the concrete jungle, etc. The design project is trying to address these areas, to let people take advantage of them.

 

 

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Postscript

 

 

It is a treasurable opportunity for me to explore a lot of history behind the swimming pool and documents related to it. I have a special obsession with the fixation on the swimming pool from the beginning of my life when my parents often took me to the small swimming pool in front of my old house and beach in the city during my childhood. Later on, I happened to see the artworks made by David Hockney and I have been showing a strong admiration and favor of them and their environments in the works——swimming pools. These motivated me to choose swimming pools in my project direction. Throughout the process of research, I learned a lot of information about the little blue pools that I did not expect in the past. I was overwhelmed but the process and research results actually made me fairly pleased and even interested more in them. I conducted on the early stage of brainstorm, investigation, observation, ethnographic drawing, prototypes of “PoolFinder”, interviews, etc. for this project. The aspects most fascinated me with the swimming pools are how did the pools play a role interacting with humans in the city and raise up multiple discriminations as well as diminish the distinctions of each other.

 

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Annotated Bibliography

 

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “Racial History of American Swimming Pools.” Interview by Rachel Martin and      Mike Pesca. NPR, May 6, 2008. Audio, 1:30.            https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675.

Jeff Wiltse, the author of Contested Waters, is given a talk about the history of American swimming pools, focusing on a result found that 58 percent of Black-American children cannot swim.

 

Anonymous.McCabe Pool, Detroit. 1989. Photograph. Detroit News Photo Archive. Quoted in   Jeff Wiltse “Alone in the Backyard.” In Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 190.

Cities in the United States neglected maintenance and repairs on municipal pools during the 1970s and 1980s. McCabe Pool, for example, became unusable and dilapidated in fiscal crisis.

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “Plunging into Public Pools’ Contentious Past.” Interview by Jacki Lyden. NPR, May 26, 2017. Audio, 0:52.            https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10407533.

Wiltse explains the original reason of building the outdoor swimming pools. Municipal swimming pools which established in the late 19thcentury aimed to deal with many working-class boys who are bathing and swimming in the open waters by setting up bathhouses to attract the people in rivers and lakes. After the pools were built, the number of these people decrease.

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces.” In  Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 209.

It reveals the history of how Americans used municipal swimming pools to divide people in society in the last two centuries. Based on his research, the segregation of the pools uses included gender, age, social class, and race in total. He also explains several benefits of the pools bringing to people in neighborhoods. He has stressed the importance of presence of swimming pools.

 

Elisofon, Eliot. Junior Swimming Pool. 1930s. Gelatin silver print, 22.2 x 17.4 cm. The    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accessed in May 5, 2019,          https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265358?&searchField=All&sortBy=R            elevance&ft=swimming+pool&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=.

The picture was taken in the Junior Swimming Pool, a municipal pool in the Swimming Pool Age, by Eliot Elisofon during the 1920s. It is a valuable archival resource illustrating the circumstance of people swimming and how they behaved.

 

 

 

 

 

 Extended Bibliography

 

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces.” In Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 209.

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “Plunging into Public Pools’ Contentious Past.” Interview by Jacki Lyden. NPR,      May 26, 2017. Audio, 0:52.            https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10407533.

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “Racial History of American Swimming Pools.” Interview by Rachel Martin and      Mike Pesca. NPR, May 6, 2008. Audio, 1:30.            https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675.

 

Anonymous.McCabe Pool, Detroit. 1989. Photograph. Detroit News Photo Archive. Quoted in   Jeff Wiltse “Alone in the Backyard.” Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 190.

 

Elisofon, Eliot. Junior Swimming Pool. 1930s. Gelatin silver print, 22.2 x 17.4 cm. The    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accessed in May 5, 2019,    https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265358?&searchField=All&sortBy=R            elevance&ft=swimming+pool&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=.

 

Wiltse, Jeff. “Alone in the Backyard.” In Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of    North Carolina Press, 2007), 182.

 

Google Maps. “Public Swimming Pool.” Accessed May 5, 2019.    https://www.google.com/maps/search/public+swimming+pool/@40.7502326,-            74.0175354,13z.

 

Anonymous. Wilmington Evening Journal (1925), report. Quoted in Jeff Wiltse, “The Promise    and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces.” In Contested Waters (North Carolina:         The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 208.

 

American Red Cross. “Red Cross Launches Campaign to Cut Drowning in Half in 50 Cities,”      Accessed May 6, 2019,

https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/red-cross-launches-campaign-to-cut-drowning-in-half-in-50-cities.html.

 

Oppenheimer, Mark. “Why Can’t We Just All Go to the Pool?.” The New York Times, July 1,     2017.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/opinion/sunday/why-cant-we-all-just-go-to-the-pool.html.

 

 

[1]Jeff Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” in Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 209.

 

[2]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 207-208.

[3]Yuzhou Zhang, (Observation, 28-10 Jackson Park Luxury Apartment, 2019).

[4]Jeff Wiltse, “Plunging into Public Pools’ Contentious Past, ” interview by Jacki Lyden, NPR, May 26, 2017, audio, 0:52, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10407533.

[5]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 209.

[6]Mark Oppenheimer, “Why Can’t We Just All Go to the Pool?,” The New York Times, July 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/opinion/sunday/why-cant-we-all-just-go-to-the-pool.html.

[7]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 212.

[8]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 212.

[9]Jeff Wiltse, “Racial History of American Swimming Pools,” interview by Rachel Martin and Mike Pisca, NPR, May 6, 2008, audio, 1:30, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90213675.

[10]Eliot Elisofon, Junior Swimming Pool, 1930s, gelatin silver print, 22.2 x 17.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accessed in May 5, 2019, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265358?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=swimming+pool&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1.

[11]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 210.

 

[12]Jeff Wiltse, “Alone in the Backyard,” in Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 182.

[13]“Public Swimming Pool,” Google Maps, accessed May 5, 2019, https://www.google.com/maps/search/public+swimming+pool/@40.7502326,-74.0175354,13z.

[14]Wiltse, interview.

[15]Wiltse, interview.

[16]Jeff Wiltse, “The Swimming Pool Age,” in Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 88.

 

[17]Wiltse, “Swimming Pool Age,” 92.

[18]Wiltse, “Swimming Pool Age,” 91.

[19]Wiltse, “Alone in the Backyard,” 182.

[20]Anonymous, McCabe Pool, Detroit, 1989, photograph, Detroit News Photo Archive, quoted in Jeff Wiltse “Alone in the Backyard,” in Contested Waters(North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 190.

[21]Anonymous, Wilmington Evening Journal (1925), report, quoted in Jeff Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” in Contested Waters (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 208.

[22]Wiltse, “Swimming Pool Age,” 89.

[23]Wiltse, “The Promise and Reality of Swimming Pools as Public Spaces,” 208.

[24]“Red Cross Launches Campaign to Cut Drowning in Half in 50 Cities,” American Red Cross, accessed May 6, 2019, https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/red-cross-launches-campaign-to-cut-drowning-in-half-in-50-cities.html.

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