Img credit: redjar/flickr

By David McAllister

Even with the unseasonably warm weather today, the long, hot, hazy days of summer seem miles away. The kids are in school and ready for Christmas vacation, summer break but a distant dream. What a politically astute time to shutter swimming pools.

This is why, in part, the announcement of the closure of 68 swimming pools has caused so little opposition. The outcry over the proposed closure of 11 library branches has been vociferous and over the closure of five engine and two ladder companies in the Fire Department nearly as loud. The ice on the ground has chilled similar opposition to the slashing of swimming pools, but the cuts there are proportionally much deeper - 84% of all indoor and outdoor pools compared with 20% of library braches and 8% of fire companies. Come summer there will be much fewer recreation options for Philadelphia’s children and, possibly, serious social consequences that pools and recreation have helped ameliorate. The City says it has found a way to keep 12 pools for summer but that still leaves the majority of residents with no pool.

According to Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: a Social History of Swimming Pools in America, public swimming pools have historically provided a needed exercise outlet for poor urbanites in the summer, although they did not start with that purpose. Philadelphia opened one of the first municipal pools in the nation at 12th and Wharton Streets in 1884. It was originally designed as a bath for factory workers, but quickly became a favorite recreation spot for children in South Philadelphia - white and black. Within the decade, six more pools opened up in working class sections across the city and soon became a mainstay for area youth. By the 1920s, reformers and city planners recognized the primacy of organized youth exercise and recreation in preventing crime and delinquency, and spent considerable sums of money providing swimming options for the children of the city’s workers.

But after World War II, according to Wiltse, “providing public recreation for the urban poor, especially black Americans, was not a priority” for many cities. In Chicago in July 1966, for example, children in one neighborhood opened a fire hydrant to cool-off because there was not accessible pool facilities. Police came and closed the hydrant, but a confrontation ensued that sparked a three-day-long race riot. Three people were killed and state officials quelled the rioting only by calling in 1,500 National Guardsmen. Within a month, President Lyndon Johnson had allocated federal funds to build public pools across the country.
For a second summer children will also not have the possibility of attending Camp William Penn (formerly Camp Happy), the camp grounds in the Poconos owned by the city that served thousand Philadelphia youth each summer. The camp had deteriorating conditions and declining attendance, so the city finally managed to axe the program this past summer. The Camp’s director, Michael Shelton, lamented the closing and begged the city to keep ownership of the land so that other groups could use the facilities. On Wednesday, December 3rd, even that possibility ended, when City Council voted to sell the land at fair market value and direct the proceeds to the general fund.

Let’s hope the funds from the sale of the property go right to the Water Department, to cover all those hydrants that will be open this summer.

David McAllister teaches history at Ursinus College.  He also updates the It’s Our City Community Calendar