New Deal Accomplishment: Over 2,800 new swimming and wading pools


Above: Across the nation, the WPA built 805 new swimming pools and 848 new wading pools and improved another 339 and 81 respectively. The WPA swimming pool above was built in Forsythe Park, Monroe, Louisiana, 1937. The National Youth Administration (NYA), which began as a subdivision of the WPA, built 407 new swimming and wading pools and improved another 651. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA-built swimming pool in Durham, North Carolina, between 1935 and 1943. During the New Deal years, many areas of the country practiced segregation, which they were constitutionally permitted to do because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. In that apartheid context, which the New Deal did not create, the New Deal improved tens of thousands of African American schools, colleges, recreation facilities, hospitals, and other community public works. Most of these projects have been completely forgotten or dismissed, as an increasing number of journalists, academics, advocates, and think tank analysts have feverishly sought out and focused on anything negative that occurred during the New Deal. It's an unfair and lopsided analysis of what the New Deal did for minority groups. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Like its other recreation projects, WPA swimming pools brought communities together. This is the WPA-built Highland Park Pool in St. Paul, Minnesota. At the time of its construction it was the largest pool in the state. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A pool in Safford, Arizona, constructed by the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, 1934-1935. The Work Division built 351 new swimming pools, improved another 226, built 185 new wading pools, and improved another 80. Its predecessor agency, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) built another 200. Photo from: Federal Emergency Relief Administration, The Emergency Work Relief Program of the F.E.R.A., April 1, 1934 - July 1, 1935 (1935).


Above: Robert Leighninger, Jr., reports that the New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) provided funding for 65 new swimming pools (Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal, Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2007, p. 88). The PWA-financed swimming pool above is in East Chicago, Indiana, ca. 1938. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) also built swimming pools all across the country--like this one in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania (photo taken in 1941)--providing fun and memories for millions of Americans in parks all across the country. While the total number of swimming pools built by the CCC does not appear to be readily available, it was probably somewhere between many dozens and several hundred. Photo by Edwin Rosskam, Farm Security Administration, courtesy of the Library of Congress.


Above: New Deal swimming pools were often accompanied by magnificent facilities, landscaping, and architecture, as depicted in this postcard of the CCC-developed Babcock State Park in West Virginia. Postcard created by the S. Spencer Moore Co., in Charleston, West Virginia and the "Curteich-Chicago" company; used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: New Deal swimming pool construction provided jobs for endless thousands of unemployed workers. The caption for this 1935 photograph reads, "New York City, [WPA Project] #65-97-362 - park - swimming pools - swimming pool at Pier 6 and [Mar]rietta Street, Tompkinsville - bricklayers building walls of the promenade." Photo from the National Archives.

2,800+ New Swimming and Wading Pools

As with most New Deal project-types, it's difficult to determine the exact number of new swimming pools and wading pools created by its various alphabet soup agencies. However, using the data reported in the above captions (gathered mostly from final reports), we can say that the New Deal built at least 2,800 new swimming and wading pools, and had well over a thousand other projects to improve existing pools.

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