Did you know there was a huge swimming pool on what is now Menotti Street and George Burgess Lane?

It's hard to imagine enjoying a cement pond given the chilly days we've had here in Charleston lately, but all of us at Lois Lane Properties are always thinking ahead. A common theme with most of us is how much we would love to have access to a swimming hole downtown. We thought about writing a letter to the mayor, or perhaps the Union Pier redevelopment will include a huge, glorious swimming pool for all of us to enjoy. Oh, to be that lucky!

An Evening Post article from January 13, 1933, announced that discussions were underway between state senator J.C. Long and Charleston's mayor concerning the construction of a pool at Martin Park on Lee Street, near the foot of the Cooper River Bridge. (A pool would not be built at this site for another 40 years.) Mayor Burnet R. Maybank, who campaigned with the promise of a pool, announced instead, three months later, plans to convert the old George Street water reservoir into Charleston's first municipal pool. I wish politicians were promising such wonderful additions to our community today as they did 100 years ago!

The Water Works Company (later the Commission of Public Works) constructed the 3,000,000-gallon reservoir in 1880 behind the circa 1796 Middleton-Pinckney House at 14 George Street. Since the 53-year-old brick-and-mortar structure only needed to be modified for its transformation into a swimming pool, the city saved a ton of money, according to an undated Post and Courier article titled "Municipal Swimming Pool Built at Moderate Cost." The pool was supplied with water from Goose Creek and artesian wells, which fed into the pool through a concrete foundation in the center. This threw the water twelve or fifteen feet into the air, creating a beautiful effect, especially at night.

The 193 x 131-foot pool had depths ranging from 1 to 10 feet, three 3-foot diving boards, and a 10-foot diving board. The pool was divided into quadrants, with the diving boards on the northern side. The southeastern quarter was set aside for small children, and the southwest quarter was devoted to adults who could not swim, with a depth of 3 to 5 feet. There were seven sets of concrete steps, and at night the pool was lit by ten 600-watt lamps that were once used in Hampton Park. The pool was so large that at least four lifeguards were on duty at all times. The Red Cross taught swimming here, but it looks like most people were more concerned with just having some fun! I'm convinced my daddy is one of the guys on the diving board.

In 1945, the pool was named in honor of George Burgess, a well-known local swimmer and former lifeguard at the pool, who was killed in 1944 while flying a mission over Italy during World War II. The pool nearly closed in 1962 because the wooden bathhouse was in such poor condition, but it remained open until a new pool, appropriate for competitions, was built in 1974 at Martin Park (the current-day MLK pool, as mentioned above). Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the drained pool became a favorite spot for local skateboarders, including my cousin and his friend, Charleston's own Shepard Fairey, the contemporary street artist famous for his 2008 HOPE poster of Barack Obama.  The George Burgess Municipal Pool was demolished in 1991 to allow the construction of new homes on Menotti Lane.