One of the most active, pleasant and fun places of socialization in the city during the summer season, are the municipal swimming pools. Where almost no one wears jewelry or clothing that identifies degrees of wealth or poverty, and where, in the semi-nakedness of swimsuits, you have the appearance of being equal. In Quinta Normal de Santiago, in 1923, a municipal swimming pool in the form of a strange crescent was inaugurated. Perhaps, believing that it was the traditional course for rodeo, it can be agreed that you could not swim the length of the pool and, even worse, to do it in a semicircle required special skill. Consequently, the municipal swimming pool of Quinta Normal was intended for play, recreation and social encounter.
This occurred during the government of Arturo Alessandri Palma. Years later, in 1929, the architect Luciano Kulczewsky, designed a swimming pool for the sport of swimming in the Independencia neighborhood. Both examples reveal two distinct destinations: social and sporting.
The pool of Quinta Normal, as a space for recreation and meeting, recalls a small history: in Philadelphia, in 1884, one of the first municipal swimming pools in the United States was inaugurated, in the 12th with Wharton Streets. Immigrants, the young working class and children stood in long lines to enter. It was the “quintessence of Victorian reforms,” argued Jeffery Wiltse in his doctoral thesis “Contested Waters. A History of Swimming Pools in America”.
These baths were necessary because of the few facilities that the poor had in their homes. The northern middle class saw dirt as a sign of illness, immorality and mental disorders, so a dirty person was perceived as an agent of pestilence and appeared to be a criminal, lazy and drunk. In this scenario, the authorities had neighborhood pools built with the initial purpose of sanitizing the poor: it’s that simple. But there, in a bathing suit, except for the race, everyone seemed to be the same, everyone shared their semi-nakedness as free from sin and socialized, much more than on the street. The puritanism of offending the decorum and purity of social goods, an aspect that dominated American society until the ’20s, had already been overcome.
In Chile, a public swimming pool opened in those years could not hide those hygienic-social purposes, because there were few bathrooms, drinking water and running water in the cités and tenement houses. In the current era, and in these summer days, it is difficult to imagine a hygienic reason to bathe in a municipal pool, isn’t it?
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