Renee Gielewski has decades of fond memories at Pittsburgh’s century-old Oliver Bath House, interrupted only by its six-year closure for renovations.
With the historic swimming pool recently opened once again, the 83-year-old Gielewski is already hard at work making new memories.
For the last few weeks since the pool invited the public back in after its 2020 closure, Gielewski has been stopping by to swim laps in the morning three or four days a week.
“It was closed for so long, but they did a great job,” Gielewski told TribLive Wednesday. “I’m so glad they didn’t tear it down.”
Grasping a ladder at the edge of the water and adjusting her swim cap, Gielewski tried to calculate when she first visited. She thinks it must’ve been around 1994, when she moved to the South Side neighborhood.
She and her late husband, Ed, who worked there as a lifeguard, often swam at the bath house at 38 S. 10th St., just a few blocks from their home.
Plenty of updates greeted Gielewski and her fellow swimmers.
During the long renovation process, crews upgraded locker rooms, installed new lighting and made the century-old facility more energy efficient with improvements like a heat-preserving pool cover.
Battling the elements
Construction on the two-story Oliver Bath House — which sits near the bustling East Carson Street entertainment district — began in 1914. It’s named for Henry W. Oliver, who gifted the city the land and $80,000 for the bath house in 1903.
Renovations balanced modernizing the building and paying homage to its historic character.
During a recent tour, Jonathan Decker, project manager for buildings at the city’s Department of Public Works, pointed to a black railing on the second floor, where people can use locker rooms or restrooms and look down on the 40-foot-by-60-foot pool.
The railing is original to the building, Decker said.
Additional bars were added during renovations to ensure there were no holes big enough for a child to slip through.
Workers put strong coatings on the railing and other metal elements throughout the building, protecting them from pool chemicals that have degraded such materials there for decades, Decker said.
“A century or more of chlorinated air and water does a lot of damage to metal,” he told TribLive Wednesday.
Decorative touches
Officials had planned to remove historic windows from the second floor and take them to an off-site shop to be refinished and repaired. But the blocks that hold the windows were actually too heavy to remove, Decker said.
Instead, workers came to the windows and climbed scaffolding to take care of repairs, he explained.
New private locker rooms made of Carrara glass — which looks like marble but is lighter and cheaper — ring the second floor.
An accessible bathroom was added on the ground level.
Decorative lights around the pool are etched with wave patterns.
Renovations upgraded the existing bathrooms, installed occupancy-triggered lighting and added acoustic panels that muffle echoes, which could otherwise be disruptive in a spacious facility full of hard surfaces.
“You can have a lot of people in here and still have pretty good conversation,” said Parks and Recreation Director Eric Sloan, who was struck by how little voices echoed even when the pool was packed for its opening day.
Mixing old and new
An automated computer system now controls the pool’s chemicals and temperature, which is kept around 82 degrees, Decker said. It also maintains humidity at around 50%.
The shoebox-sized machine is mounted to a redbrick wall in the basement, where a shiny new boiler and pool heater contrast sharply with the faded green and tan paint that partially covers the aging walls.
Sloan said pool staff can manually adjust settings as needed, but the new technology largely removes that job from workers’ plates.
Initial plans for the upgrades called for covering the basement walls with a coat of white paint. Crews ultimately decided the worn brick had more character.
Not everything is new. Some of the materials used in the renovations are actually quite old.
Bricks left over from the original construction of the bath house were used to restore some of the arches around the pool deck, Sloan said.
Light blue tiles on the pool’s floor are similarly over 100 years old.
Decker said those older materials had been sitting in the building’s basement, waiting for future renovators who might want to use them.
Photos of the pool from about 100 years ago greet people as they enter.
The pool originally held 107,000 gallons of water, Decker said. It now contains 116,000 gallons because they raised the pool level.
Steady stream
The pool has welcomed a steady of stream of swimmers since its March 7 reopening, Sloan said. On average, about 100 people per day have used the facility, he said, adding that the first week was particularly busy.
Several people trickled in and out as Decker and Sloan showed TribLive reporters around the facility around 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Depending on lifeguard staffing, Sloan said the pool could be open year-round. He hopes to add water yoga, water aerobics and youth swim classes in the coming months.
It’s been particularly beneficial to have the indoor pool open during lifeguard training season, as the city is preparing to open its outdoor pools for the summer.
Lifeguard training currently is split between Oliver Bath House and Carrick High School’s indoor pool, Sloan said.
Sloan said he’s enjoyed seeing people flock to the newly renovated site. He’s met people who told him that they swam there as kids and are now eager to bring their children or grandchildren to enjoy the upgraded facility.
“Everything is really updated and improved,” he said.
The pool is now open for adult lap swims and open swims daily.