According to Contested Waters: A Social History ofSwimming Pools in America by Jeff Wiltse, Milwaukee passed an ordinance in 1856 thatrestricted public swimming and bathing. The law forbade any person fromentering Lake Michigan or the Milwaukee River during the daytimeor at a spot “within sight of any dwelling house, public walk, pier, or otherplace of business.” The law, however, wasn’t really enforced. A Milwaukee Sentinel article from Sept. 3,1878, reads that one local boy was famous for his habit of “stripping upon thebank of the river and assuming the pose of Michael Angelo’s Slave just as thelittle river steamer hove in sight with her load of women and children.”
After the Milwaukee Sentinel received severalletters penned by residents who lived on the waterfront describing their dailyview, the newspaper spearheaded a campaign to convince local authorities toenforce the ordinance. The Sentinel’sargument brought the desired effectauthorities began enforcing theanti-swimming law, and soon the municipal court was flooded with “lads” and“youngsters” caught swimming in the lake and river.
Milwaukee’s public swimmers and bathers resistedthe attack on what they believed to be their right to swim when, where andhowever they wanted. Over the next several years, they wrote letters to the Sentinel defending their claim. Asimportant as swimming was to the boys, bathing in the Milwaukee Riverwas a genuine need for many of the city’s working-class men. A group of fourIrish laborers who favored swimming in the river at the Spring Street Bridge (now Wisconsin Avenue)had their employer write a letter for them stating their opinion. Unlike themiddle-class “ladies and gentlemen” who supported the law, many of Milwaukee’s working-classdidn’t have baths in their homes and couldn’t afford the cost of admission intoa private bathhouse. The river was their only place to bathe.
The Irish immigrantsidentified a social quandary. While the era’s popular magazines and domesticadvice journals preached a system of values that emphasized cleanliness,modesty and self-restraint, it was a lifestyle the middle and upper classescould adhere to. Modesty and “respectable” bathing wasn’t an option for afamily of 10 living in a two-bedroom tenement without running water. So, Wiltseexplains, “cities and private charities began providing public baths…becausemiddle-class reformers and public officials came to see personal cleanliness asa public necessity, not just a cultural preference.”
Milwaukee’s first pool, the West SideNatatorium, located on Prairie Street (now West Highland Avenue and Seventh Street) opened on Aug. 14,1889. Designed by Paul Schnetzky, the building was 150 feet by 60 feet andconstructed of Cream City brick. Ladies' dayswere usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday; men's days were Tuesday, Thursdayand Saturday; and the natatorium was closed on Sunday. In the dressing rooms,people would soap themselves under the showers, then have to pass theinspection of a pool custodian before entering the water. While publicofficials intended the municipal pool to be used “seriously” as a bath andfitness facility, working-class boys transplanted their boisterous swimmingculture from the natural waters of the MilwaukeeRiver and Lake Michigan to the chlorinated concrete pools of the Natatorium,helping to define public pools as centers for working-class fun.
