Piscina

I’ve really got a connection to pools. Perhaps it’s in my genes.

“…in 2500 B.C., Egyptians knew swimming as an organized activity. Depictions of swimming from India are equally old. Ancient Romans constructed artificial pools for athletic training, nautical games and military exercises. Swimming was also part of boys’ education.

Extravagant swimming pools with live fish entertained Roman emperors, and gave the pool its Latin name piscina. Ancient Greeks [...] practice[d] the sport and built swimming pools as part of their baths. The first heated swimming pool was built in Rome in the first century BC.

England’s first indoor swimming pool, the 40-foot-long Bagnio [...] in London, opened in 1742. King Ludwig II of Bavaria built the first-ever wave pool with electrically heated water and light in his Linderhof castle in 1879.

In the U.S., the earliest public swimming pools were small indoor pools built with the intention of encouraging better hygiene among the poor. By the 1920s, the American public pool had become a large public place of amusement and recreation for thousands at a time. Home swimming pools became popular in the U.S. after WWII and Hollywood films made the backyard pool an important status symbol.”

The last building I lived in downtown had a nice pool and spa, and now that I’m without one in Bellevue, I walk a half mile each way just to luxuriate in warm water. I just can’t be without this modern necessity that I’ve grown to love so much.

My favorite condo development in Seattle, Cristalla, is on the site of the former Crystal Pool, which was built in 1915:

The new building incorporates two full walls from the old pool, in addition to sporting a dome at the northeast corner which echoes the old dome of the Crystal Pool (visible at the bottom of the structure, in the middle):

Where are the world’s coolest hotel pools? - The Cool Hunter

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