One could attribute the national decline of public pools, at least in part, to an arguably American aversion to sharing space, which was certainly not improved by a global pandemic that mandated isolation and avoidance of crowds. (Notably, the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance reported a huge jump in home swimming-pool construction in 2020.) For some, “public” also carries a connotation of “dirty”—and especially in the case of municipal pools, that connotation has deep ties to racist reactions to desegregation.
The University of Montana historian Jeff Wiltse has traced the rise and fall of municipal pools in the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s, the federal government funded a “tidal wave” of construction, and thousands of public pools were built across the country. During the era of desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s, rather than comply with new requirements for equal access to public facilities, many cities and towns closed their swimming pools—in large part due to outcry from white residents. (Pittsburgh’s Highland Park Pool, which was integrated by court order in the early 1950s, was infamously the site of significant abuse to Black patrons.)
Wiltse writes that during that period, “private swim clubs sprouted in the nation’s suburbs like crabgrass during a wet spring,” from roughly 1,200 in 1952 to more than 23,000 just 12 years later. And as budget deficits increased and the threat of bankruptcy loomed in cities, more and more urban pools closed during the 1970s and 80s.
So how do we come back from years and years of neglecting a crucial public asset? Lately, extreme heat has been—unsurprisingly—coming up more and more in city discussions as a justification for maintaining and adding more municipal pools. As heat waves become more brutal and frequent, perhaps our public pools should no longer be viewed as sites for recreation—they should be categorized as crucial climate infrastructure, and funded accordingly.
In 2022, the residents of Florissant, Missouri—a middle-class suburb of St. Louis—voted to institute the first city-specific property tax in its history for a bond that exclusively funds the pools. This summer, Florissant was able to update and reopen its largest public pool: the Koch Park Aquatic Center, which had been decommissioned since 2017 due to structural failure. Florissant Mayor Timothy Lowery told me that when the city council was considering reopening the pool, they talked about the oppressive temperatures of Missouri summers, which “seem to get hotter and hotter.”