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Vintage KSDK: Hot mess over public pools

Back in the summer of 1958, it wasn’t a pandemic but a budget mess that kept swimmers out of public pools

ST. LOUIS — This could go down as one of the hottest weekends of the summer.

So, we dug back into the KSDK archives for some film showing hot summers from years gone by.

What we found instead was a hot controversy.

Let’s go back to the summer of 1958 for this week's Vintage KSDK.

Summertime and the living is easy. Check out the photo above. Kids making a rush for the city's Marquette pool.

But back in the summer of 1958, swimmers had to wait until mid-July for this moment. 

Hot Budget Mess

A budget shortfall going all the way back to the start of the year put a freeze on hiring in the city.

Until the St. Louis Board of Aldermen could balance the budget, lifeguards and other workers couldn't be hired and kids, or anyone else for that matter, couldn't get into any of St. Louis' seven pools or 34 playgrounds.

Temperatures were already in the 90s, so people of all ages had to get creative about staying cool.

By the Fourth of July, the St. Louis Globe Democrat posed this question in the paper: “Is it conceivable that a city the size of St. Louis is so poverty-stricken it can't manage to give this one important service to the kids?”

Credit: St. Louis Globe Democrat
Clipping from the St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper, July 4, 1958.

Less than a week later, July 10, 1958, the controversy, and the budget mess, were over.
City playgrounds and pools opened for the first time, bringing back swimming, summer camp and sno-cones.

It could just be coincidence, but according to newspaper accounts at the time, backyard pools started to become popular during the summer of 1958.

MORE #VINTAGEKSDK

We've saved so much film and video over the decades. Look for a weekly segment on 5 On Your Side at 4 p.m. called Vintage KSDK.

We'll be posting on social media using #VintageKSDK.


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