How great is this?!?! Hats off to the guide’s creator, Lily Alexander.
One note: J. Finnegan did not, in the end, open this summer, due to mechanical issues.
About this guide:
Fresh out of graduate school and under-employed, I knew I wasn’t going to be doing much traveling this summer. But who needs travel when you have 60+ public pools all over Philadelphia to choose from?!
In an effort to try new pools (I’d previously mostly been to ones in West and South Philly), I designed a guide for myself to help motivate me.
Using Kali’s amazing pool guide and the City’s pool finder, I cobbled together the list of 62 pools that Parks & Rec opened (or plans to open) this summer. I also added some fun icons to highlight the different qualities of each of the pools.
And when word got out that I made a pool guide, others asked for it and wanted a copy! So here it is.
In this last month of pool season, I hope this little guide can be a resource as you go forth and explore Philly’s incredible public pool scene.
– Lily
P.S. One of my dreams is for one of the public pools in Philly to have an outdoor ping pong table. The community pool of my youth (outside of D.C.) had a couple of tables and we would spend hours playing. If anyone knows of a pool + ping pong situation, drop it in the comments!
And here’s the guide in a printer-friendly brochure format:
It’s a new year, and there are some new year-round public pool developments on the West Philadelphia horizon, although they will be a few years in the making.
In November, I learned through Philly Public Pools Instagram about a meeting related to reopening the Sayre Pool, a drained indoor pool in a building owned by the School District but managed as a City Department of Parks and Recreation recreation center, near 59th and Spruce Streets.
Although I took karate classes in that facility in the late 1980s with a roommate’s daughter, I’d never visited or really been aware of the pool (though I do have memories of its chlorine smell).
The local community is devoted to Sayre and has felt the pain of its absence since it was closed by the City in 2017 due to massive building issues caused by a leaking roof. Prior to its closure, Sayre Pool hosted dozens of community classes and services. Residents from the neighborhood and beyond used the facility every day. These Sayre Pool enthusiasts now use other community (but not public) pools in other parts of the city where they have followed their favorite Sayre lifeguards and instructors. Following a former Sayre lifeguard who taught fitness classes at Mill Creek this past summer is how I met many of these folks, who I continue to work out with in Northwest because they no longer have access to the Sayre Pool.
At the November community meeting at Sayre-Morris Rec Center, hosted by City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, School District consultants unveiled a plan to completely redesign the small recreation center building and its beloved, long-closed pool. The ~100 neighbors attending were very excited by the prospect, although some expressed concern that the building is too small and that they were hoping for expansion, or at least for the renovations to also include repairs to the neglected playground and other outdoor sections of the property. Representatives from the School District and City Council took notes on the conversations between community members and the architects/designers who will be drawing the plans for this extensive project.
I am the new kid on this blog, and I am still — at the very tail end of the season — attempting to compile the records of my visits to over 70 public pools this summer in an effort to present as complete a picture as one person who spent 5-15 minutes in each pool can provide. My apologies for how long it’s taking. I hope that my research will benefit next summer’s Philly swimmers since there’s been a lag in me compiling all of the information. I am thankful for so much guidance from my many friends and fellow waterbugs on Facebook who cheered me on and asked lots of questions.
The big question I am getting right now, as we as we dive into Labor Day weekend and our final chances to get wet in the free outdoor public pools, is: “Which pools are still open?”
Philadelphia Inquirer listing of pools to visit this Labor Day weekend (without the online paywall)
Here is the 2024 season closing schedule, which is much more accurate than the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation Pool Finder. As of today, the Pool Finder indicates that most of the pools are “open regular schedule.” (For most of July, this same site indicated that each pool was “closed to the public,” even though they were open.) I did fill out the feedback form to advise the City web team of this issue. In the meantime, the 2024 season closing schedule doesseem to be correct (though note that Shuler Pool is only open 12-4pm and has no adult swim). I hope that maybe some of you can join me for some final waterplay. I will be at Max Myers for Aqua Zumba tonight at 6pm and Saturday at 12pm. Maybe I will see you there?
This is the twelfth summer since I decided to swim in every Philadelphia public pool, and the eleventh since I started this blog (and later this Instagram) to chronicle them. My love for our pools has both deepened and gotten more complicated in that time. I sometimes joke that I may be the world’s leading expert on Philadelphia public pools (though in truth I know I will always be chasing Larry Brown). But in the past few years, I have put muchmoreenergy into trying to get our year-round indoor public pools reopened than sharing information about the ones that are.
And accurate, accessible info about our pools is such a need. Over much of the last decade, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation’s communication improved. But since last summer, and the intervening mayoral-administration transition, Parks and Rec has had three different leaders, a complete decimation of their comms team, and plenty of other turnover and transition. The valiant staff who stayed did their best. They opened 53 outdoor pools this summer, as well as the one working indoor pool we’ve got left. They hired and trained hundreds of lifeguards and pool attendants. They offered free swim lessons, fitness classes, and sensory swim hours. They found swimsuits for kids who needed them. It wasn’t tidy, easy, or always well communicated, but man did it matter anyway! Our public pools make life in Philly so much better.
No one was more in touch with that this season than Kali Morgan. Recently sprung from running their own small business, Kali decided to cap nearly five decades of Philly-public-pool enthusiasm with a summer swimming in all of them. They took pictures and voice-to-text recorded their impressions as they went. They were considering starting their own blog when they came across this one, and reached out to collaborate.
So – coming soon! – you will find a new page here with a complete compendium of all the public pools in Philly; first-hand accounts of recent visits (and attempted visits) to each pool open this summer; and a round-up of pool accessibility, features, and services available. I often think of our pools as a gift from our city; Kali describes their idea for a 2024 Philly Public Pool Guide as a love letter to our city.
Here’s Kali in their own words:
Out of work for the summer, I am excited to contribute to this blog on one of my favorite topics: Philadelphia public pools.
When the pool finally opened at the end of June, I went with a friend who is relatively new to Philadelphia to splash with me during which time I told her how much I loved the free public pools here, and how the pools’ existence is a primary reason I have never moved to another place. I decided then that I would make an effort to swim in every single Philadelphia public pool this summer.
I posted to my Facebook feed (my only personal social media) and invited friends to join me. An old friend who resides in Kensington/Northern Liberties was the first person to respond, so we kicked off my tour in that neighborhood.
I have lived in Philly most of my life (I moved to Northeast Philly from the suburbs in 1976, when I was in the 2nd grade) and have lived in many different neighborhoods. Each time I moved, I found pools in my neighborhood to jump in each summer by calling the old (pre-internet) City number MU6-1776. (That number now forwards to a voicemail at 311.)
It was not until 2015ish that I visited pools outside of the neighborhoods where I lived. I discovered my love for Aqua Zumba, which rotated through different neighborhoods and with different instructors. I followed AZ almost religiously – when I could find information about classes, and when those classes weren’t cancelled due to weather concerns, heat emergencies, or instructor illness/issues. And because I worked downtown, I would jump into the pools around Center City/South Philly, especially Ridgeway, Sacks, O’Connor and Marian Anderson (once Aqua Zumba classes got scheduled there and I discovered that magical place). When the pandemic happened, I missed going out and most especially missed the pools.
This summer, because I am not working, I have focused on rediscovering my neighborhood and reconnecting with some of my favorite recreational activities. As I ponder what my next chapter will be, and where my future might take me, I want to put out into the universe a love letter to one of my absolute favorite things about Philadelphia: Free public pools.
This journey began on Facebook in July. Once I discovered this blog and the work that Mica had done, I knew I wanted to contribute to this effort in a place where people can find the info even if they are not on social media.
Thank you so much for joining me and lending meaning to this summer adventure.
Love to Philly, love to you all, and love to the FREE pools and the fine folks who jump in!
This is the question, starting around Memorial Day.
But — nevermind what other cities do — Philadelphia’s public pools open after Philadelphia’s public schools close. This year, the last day for students in the School District is June 14th, and the Parks & Rec Commissioner told Fox 29 pools will start opening June 17th.
“Where are you getting this 65 number?” I texted a contact at the paper. Philly has 70 outdoor public pools. Including indoor pools (a heated topic these days), Philadelphia has, or should have, 76 public pools.
The source of the lower pool-count in the news seems to have been a City press release about pool openings, which begins: “The City will open 50 pools this summer, representing 80% of the 63 operating outdoor pools available for use.”
We’d all rather open 80% of pools than 71% (what 50/70 would be) or 66% (50/76). The City’s Department of Parks and Recreation – which operates Philly public pools – has put 110% of effort into trying to recruit lifeguards in the face of a national lifeguard shortage; the School District closing most of the indoor pools that were our local lifeguard pipeline; and long-standing societal disinvestment in education, recreation, and public spaces, especially when Black people might be among those benefitting.
But here’s the thing: What’s counted counts. What’s measured matters. Revising the pools-count down is how we end up losing pools in this city.
When I started documenting Philly public pools in 2013, the count was 75. (Researching pool histories, I saw 84-pools-plus counts from previous decades.) A year or two later, it was down to 74 – sorry, indoor-pool-in-the-heart-of-North-Philly Hartranft. In the years since, three of our remaining indoor pools (Sayre, Pickett, and Carousel House) have also closed. Only one of those closings (Carousel House, owned by the City) came with any communication around why it was closing and what would happen next. The others – all School District-owned, and each at least initially just closed for repairs – quietly slipped out of the count. You’d never even know they existed – unless, of course, it was your pool, where your kids learned to swim, your mom did water aerobics, you kept your lifeguard certification current in case one of the staff lifeguards was out sick and they needed another certified guard on the pool deck to stay open. There are at least six existing, currently unused indoor public/school pools in our city – Sayre and Motivation in West Philly, Hartranft and Rhodes and Marcus Foster in North Philly, Pickett in Germantown – and every single one of them has swimmers, lifeguards, parents, clergy, doctors, and other neighbors trying to get them reopened.
There is much more to write about the former glory of these indoor pools. About the fierce neighborhood leaders fighting to fix them, fill them, and fulfill their potential. But for now, the point I want to make is that if we care about our pools, we’ve got to count them. If we do not, they can disappear.
Sayre-Morris Pool, waiting for a new roof. February 2022.
I wrote the previous post, and then I talked to Kirsten Britt, President of the Sayre-Morris Advisory Council, and I realized I needed to write something else.
What’s needed to reopen Sayre-Morris Pool are not repairs to the pool itself. What’s needed is a new roof that will be safe for those beneath it. Whether they are learning to swim, training to be a lifeguard, doing aqua-aerobics, or participating in any number of non-water-based activities the Sayre-Morris rec center offers: After-school sports. Homework support. Black History Month performances. Dance programs. Senior programs. Meal distribution.
When it rains, it rains in the rec center’s second-floor girls’ bathroom. The roof issues may be worst over the pool, but it’s only a matter of time before they close down the rest of the building too.
The struggle to save Sayre-Morris is not just about the pool. It’s about every form of recreation, safe haven, and community that building holds – for West Philly, and for the city as a whole. I live in South Philly, and when I trained to be a lifeguard in 2013, Sayre-Morris was the closest place for me to do so. If we lose Sayre-Morris – one of only three remaining indoor public pools – we will lose many more of our glimmering, life-sustaining Philadelphia public pools in the decades to come, because there will not be lifeguards to staff them.
Kirsten and the Sayre-Morris Advisory Council are meeting regularly now, strategizing and organizing about how to cut through endless bureaucratic red tape to get a new roof on the building and reopen the pool and playground. They welcome support and participation from all over.
Because this pool, of all pools, must not close. Closing it would be a disservice to its neighborhood, yes. But it’s not just about West Philly. We let this pool close, and we’re going to lose all of them, in the years to come, because we’ll never have enough lifeguards to staff them.
All of Philly needs Sayre-Morris fixed up and reopened. Everyone who wants to swim in a Philly pool come some future July or August – whether in West Philly or beyond – needs Thelma Nesbitt, and the other instructors she and Larry Brown have trained, hollering at young people about how to swim and how to save lives.
Thank you, West Philly, for leading this fight, for all of us.
(Anyone in North Philly thinking about doing the same for Hartranft?)
I’d already set out to swim in every public pool in Philadelphia the afternoon I came across the slides at Athletic. If I hadn’t yet, that might have been the day I decided to.
“There’s a pool with SLIDES,” I practically shouted at my coworkers the next day (I was a lifeguard at the time), showing them the photos I’d taken from every angle.
We worked 25 blocks due south. And we knew the rules. No balls. No games. No rafts or floats. No diving, flipping, or dunking. We understood where a lot of the rules came from, and we knew their intent was to keep everyone safe. But it was always a little disheartening to blow our whistles at parents with their kids on their backs. “You can’t be on someone’s back,” we’d call across the pool, watching a combination of confusion, annoyance and resignation wash across their faces.
But that afternoon, at a playground in North Philly, I saw a pool with built-in fun. What other amazing opportunities might our extensive pool network hold? I had to find out.
Spoiler alert: Athletic is the only pool with slides.
But other pools have their features. And since we’ll all be trying to keep cool in the days ahead, this seems like a good time to mention them.
Chair lifts: Many pools have these, but winters can wreak havoc on their functionality. Two I’ve confirmed are working this year are at Bridesburg and Murphy (3rd and Shunk, South Philly). Let me know what others you know are too! Parks and Rec also runs a year-round indoor pool for people with disabilities at Carousel House (Belmont and Avenue of the Republic, Fairmount Park/West Philly).
Changing rooms (more than a bathroom, which many other pools also have)
A note on links: Info for all Parks and Rec sites is available at https://www.phila.gov/parks-rec-finder. But when a facility has an active Facebook page, that’s often a more up-to-date source for pool hours and info, so I’ve linked to those when available.
I’d already set out to swim in every public pool in Philadelphia the afternoon I came across the slides at Athletic. If I hadn’t yet, that might have been the day I decided to.
Swimming Philadelphia 