Posts Tagged ‘history of swimming’

Images from SPLASH! The Backyard Pool

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 12: “Swimming Together, Swimming Alone.”

The post-WWII GI Bill helped create the suburbs, and gunite-enabled amoeba-shaped pools brought swimming to the American backyard.

 

 

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Statbad Mitte

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 12: “Swimming Together, Swimming Alone.”

Another monster public facility from the Golden Age of swimming-pool construction: Berlin’s glass-enclosed Stadtbad Mitte, opened in 1930. Free swim, anyone?

 

 

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Community Pools from the ’20s

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 12: “Swimming Together, Swimming Alone.”

The massive Fleishhacker Pool in San Francisco, opened in 1925, billed itself as the largest heated saltwater pool in the world: 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, with a 10,000-swimmer capacity and a dozen lifeguards on duty on all times.

 

 

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Ursula Andress

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 11: “Nylon, WWII, James Bond, and the G-String.”

Ursula Andress, as Honey Ryder, in the very first James Bond movie, Dr. No, from 1960. Andress emerged from the Caribbean in a slim white bikini and walked into the dreams of a generation of schoolboys, myself included. (Credit: Everett Collection.)

 

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Nylon Racing Suit 1961

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 11: “Nylon, WWII, James Bond, and the G-String.”

The author (me) leaving the starting block at J.P. McCaskey High School in 1961. The baggy nylon suit dates the photo, but the dive dates it even more. I’m looking to land flat on the water. Swimmers today dive deeper off the blocks so they can propel themselves 15 yards (or meters) underwater, using the dolphin kick, before breaking to the surface.

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Beachwear 1915

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 11: “Nylon, WWII, James Bond, and the G-String.”

My grandfather, uncle, and mother on the New Jersey coast circa 1915. Men were not allowed to show any flesh beneath a line connecting the armpits.

 

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Women’s Swimming-Lib 1914-Style

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 10: “An Aussie Wrecking Ball Goes Rogue.”
Women’s swimming-lib, 1914-style: The suits were inspired by Annette Kellerman, and there’s not a matron in sight at the start of this open-water race in Sheepshead Bay, off the south end of Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Annette Kellerman

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 10: “An Aussie Wrecking Ball Goes Rogue.”
No one did more than Annette Kellerman to change the social history of swimming. In 1910, the head of Harvard’s Hemenway Gymnasium declared Kellerman the “most beautifully formed woman of modern times.”

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Olympics Swimwear 1912

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 9: “The Great Swimming Cover-Up.”
Tipping point: Great Britain’s gold-medalists in the inaugural women’s 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay at the 1912  Olympics are all dressed for the 20th century, while the stern matron behind them reminds that the past lingered on.

 

 

Images from SPLASH! Mermaids of Brighton

Continuing the series of posts from my new book SPLASH!

From Chapter 9: “The Great Swimming Cover-Up.”
In this 1829 illustration titled “Mermaids of Brighton,” formidable older women known as dippers introduce female bathers to the wonders of the sea. The bathing machines were horse-drawn.

 

 

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