With the sudden popularity of the Swimply residential pool-rental app, there's been a lot of attention paid to swimming this summer. Public pools have also reopened after the pandemic, including my favorite, the unique and historical Venetian Pool in Coral Gables.
Fashioned from a limestone quarry that supplied early home builders in the City Beautiful, the Venetian Pool is billed as both the largest freshwater pool in the U.S. and the only one to be recognized on the National Register of Historic Places.
I started swimming at the pool several years ago in the summer when it just became too hot for my regular outdoor exercises. Because of its size, the 800,000-gallon pool isn't cooked by the Florida sun like smaller pools in the dead of summer, keeping it refreshing throughout the day.
Helping to keep the pool cool is the spring-fed water it employs. The basin is drained each night during the busy months and refilled from the Florida aquafer below. The drained water is pumped into a recharge well. The operation allows for chlorination of only 1 part per million the minimum allowed by health regulations.
What really makes the pool special are its atmospherics. Designed by architect Denman Fink in 1924 partly as a sales tool for the then-new Coral Gables development, the irregularly shaped pool is a fantasia of Moorish towers, Venetian bridges, loggias and lagoon lamp posts.
Fink was one of a number of architects in 1920s Florida skilled in the Mediterranean-Spanish idiom that was then in vogue. As I chug through its waters, the pool provides constant visuals to stimulate my imagination.
When it opened, the pool had a tall diving tower perched on an outcrop of coral rock. Diving is now gone for safety reasons, but the coral rock gushes a 20-foot waterfall to frolic beneath. There is also a popular grotto that has a smaller water feature as well as a large sand beach and a segregated shallow lagoon for little swimmers.
A bridge at the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables is reminscent of those found in Venice. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst
Daylong visitors can eat at the grill and snack bar or bring their own picnics to enjoy at umbrella-shaded tables.
The Venetian Pool is one of the few such facilities that provides lifeguards for safety. The cost for nonresident adults is $20, and it is popular enough as a tourist stop that there is a $1 entry fee to take a self-guided tour or snap souvenir photos.
The rules haven't changed much during the pandemic. Face coverings are encouraged but not required. And people are asked to stay away if they are experiencing symptoms.
The Venetian isn't the only great swimming hole in Florida. Here are a few more:
• Coral Gables Biltmore: Just around the corner from the Venetian Pool, this 600,000-gallon pool is set beside the historic Biltmore Hotel, also developed in the 1920s. The only way to swim there other than as a hotel guest is to rent a cabana for the day. Rates start at $179 for four people.
• Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center: This pool and diving complex was built in 1965 and is undergoing a 2-year, $47 million reconstruction. If you want to channel your inner-Olympian it is one of the few 50-meter pools around. When it reopens in the fall it will feature a 27-meter diving platform, the only one outside of China.
• Wekiwa Springs State Park: This second-magnitude natural springs north of Orlando gushes 43 million gallons a day, which fills a half-acre swimming area before running into the Wekiwa River. Although crowded in the summer, Wekiwa is the biggest of the spring-fed swimming stations that dot north-central Florida.
• The Lagoon at Epperson: This enormous 7-acre swimming area was opened in 2018 as an amenity for a development in Wesley Chapel, north of Tampa. It is available for limited nonresident access at a cost of $35 for adults, $28 for children. The contractor plans three more similar lagoons on the west coast of Florida.