The Blithewood Swimming Pool, ca. 1957.

Creator

Preview

Creation Date

1957

Description

Standing at the right is Carolee Schneemann ’59 talking with Shane Riordan, business manager of the College. Though most people who swam there remember the pool with fondness for its romance, a June 1954 issue of the student newspaper Communitas reports that the pool had suffered an infestation of helgramites, crustaceans described as creatures about three inches long, with six legs, thorny spines and two fierce looking mandibles. It was left to Cal Avery, then head of Building and Grounds, to clear out the pool.

In the spring 2005 issue of About Town magazine, Dorothy Crane writes about the 'pool by the falls': "The pool was an integral part of summer life at Bard for 20 years after the college acquired it. A green canopy of overhanging trees shaded the surrounding wooden deck. Faculty sat in their lawn chairs, smoking cigarettes, drinking gin and tonics, and discussing politics and the latest college gossip. Children perched tentatively on the edge at the shallow end, carefully watched by parents because even the shallow end was pretty deep. Students did cannonballs off the diving board. My husband's friend put his kayak in the pool to practice rollovers. There was no chlorine smell, only the fresh. churned-up mist generated by the falls and the roar of the cascading water. It felt more like a swimming hole than a pool. My husband and his friends who grew up on and around the campus describe the pool as a sort of Garden of Eden. When he and I were first getting to know each other I had the sense that meeting the stream and the pool was almost as important as my meeting his parents."