The Queen City Pool and Pool House, also known as the Queen City Pool, is a historic

bathhouse Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. Though termed "public", they have often been restricted according to gender, religious affiliation, personal membership, and other cr ...

and swimming pool located in

Tuscaloosa Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population of ...

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...

, United States. The bathhouse and pool were added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on September 9, 1992, due to their architectural and historical significance.

History

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

apprentice Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...

Don Buel Schuyler, the Queen City Pool operated from 1943 through 1989. It was constructed as a Civil Works Administration/

Works Project Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...

relief project of the Great Depression. The site features a poured concrete bathhouse, a

wading pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built above ground (as ...

and an

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

fountain. The city of Tuscaloosa constructed two public pools in an era of strict segregation, Gulf States Pool and Queen City, with Queen City being the "whites-only" pool. The pool closed in 1966 when desegregation was mandated. The former swimming pool was filled in with dirt in June 2005. From 2012 to early 2015, the site of the former pool was used as a temporary public

ice rink An ice rink (or ice skating rink) is a frozen body of water and/or an artificial sheet of ice created using hardened chemicals where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The ...

every

holiday season The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late Novembe ...

during Tuscaloosa's annual "Holidays on the River" event before it was moved to the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater in late 2015.

Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum

In May 2005, it was announced that the bathhouse would be converted into a transportation museum. This became possible after the Alabama Department of Transportation awarded the city a grant to convert the facility into a museum illustrating the history of transportation in Tuscaloosa. The financing for the project came from a $1.94 million federal award that required a 20 percent match by the city, or $260,000. The renovation was designed by the Eclectic Group, Inc. of Huntsville and Ward Scott Veron Architects of Tuscaloosa. On December 13, 2011, the renovated bath house was officially opened as the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum. The museum's exhibits trace the city's history through the development of its transportation structures.

References

External links

Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum
- official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Queen City Pool And Pool House National Register of Historic Places in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama Government buildings completed in 1943 Swimming venues in Alabama