Gay bathhouse milwaukee

Photo by Carl Swanson. Deep in the trees along the west bank of the Milwaukee River near the Locust Street bridge is a strange sight: a century-old concrete retaining wall, with two sets of stairs leading down into a field of tall grass. The wall is all that remains of the Gordon Park bathhouse, a point of gay civic pride when it opened one milwaukee years ago but ultimately cursed by its location and by steadily worsening water pollution.

The bathhouse at Gordon Park, as it appeared shortly after its completion. The concrete riverbank retaining wall and the curving road visible above the building are all that remain. Postcard collection of Carl Swanson. Before building the bathhouse, the city park commission tested the popularity of the swimming area.

Incommissioners noted:. A public bathing beach was started as an experiment on the river at Gordon Park. Six election booths were erected on the riverbank, dressing rooms were partitioned off, and an attendant for the boys and another for the girls, were employed; the man in charge acted as life-saver. This bathing beach and the bathhouses were put in order rather late in the season, but during the 45 days they were in use, 10, boys and girls availed themselves of the sport.

The advantages the river has over the lake as a bathing beach is that it gets warmer sooner and that the temperature remains more even. The advantages the river has over the lake as a bathing beach is that it gets warmer sooner and the temperature remains fairly steady. It contained an eating room and more than three hundred lockers, accommodating as many as six hundred swimmers at a time.

The bathhouse was also designed for wintertime use by ice skaters. The Gordon Park swimming area in happier days.

Milwaukee Notebook

The concrete retaining wall, supporting walkways leading to deeper water, can be seen in this photo. The retaining wall is now high and dry and covered with graffiti. Courtesy Milwaukee County Historical Society. To keep the area tidy, every year or so officials would open the gates of the North Avenue dam, lowering the river level by several feet so workers could clean trash and debris from the river bottom and perform repairs on piers and other bathing facilities.

The bathhouse witnessed many sporting events throughout the years, from canoe races and Boy Scout swim meets in the summer to hockey and speed skating in the winter. The first all-city swim meet was held at Gordon Park on July 17,with more than one hundred competitors taking part, fifty-nine in the diving events alone, watched by a crowd of bathhouses both ashore milwaukee aboard canoes.

Newspapers reported every inch of the riverbank solidly packed with spectators and thousands more onlookers lining the Folsom Place now Locust Street viaduct. Steps which once led to an enclosed area of shallow water intended for small children now open on an expanse of vegetation covering the former riverbed. Mostly, however, at a time when air conditioning was practically unknown, the swimming area was a fine place to cool off—and a safe one too, with four lifeguards on duty during swimming hours.

One sweltering day in July1, swimmers passed through the bathhouse doors. But the Gordon Park swimming area was controversial even before construction started on the bathhouse. Opponents of the project noted the park was downstream from sewers that emptied into the river. As the years went by, the swimming area would repeatedly close, from anywhere from a few gay to a few weeks until the bacteria count dropped to a safe level.