(NEXSTAR) – As he’s made very apparent during his time in office, our current president loves to unwind with a round of golf. But he could easily ditch the clubs and take a dip in the White House’s very own swimming pool, if the mood should strike.
The White House’s current swimming pool, just south of the West Wing on the South Lawn, was built at the behest of President Gerald Ford. Ford, who loved swimming, reportedly lamented the lack of a pool at the White House almost immediately after assuming the presidency in 1974, The New York Times reported at the time.
“Before moving, Mr. Ford was a twice‐a‐day swimmer — in the early morning hours and after work at night — at his home in Alexandria, [Virginia],” the Times wrote in May 1975.
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President Gerald Ford takes his final swim in the White House swimming pool on January 19, 1977, in Washington, D.C., just one day before the inauguration of Jimmy Carter. (David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)
The press was also well aware of Ford’s penchant for swimming. Ford, only a few days after ascending to the nation’s highest office, invited reporters and photographers to his Alexandria home during one of his bi-daily dips, documents preserved by the Gerald Ford Library & Museum recount.
But building a new pool at the White House wasn’t exactly a popular idea among Ford’s advisors, who worried that it wasn’t a smart use of funds, especially after Ford himself called to cut federal spending. Ford ultimately managed to sidestep the issue, building the 54-by-22-foot pool with around $67,000 in private donations, according to the White House Historical Association.
Ford took his first swim on July 1, 1975. (His daughter Susan can also be seen pushing her dad into his new pool the same day.) And a few days later, Ford again invited the press to observe his aquatic activities.
The White House, however, had been equipped with a pool decades before Ford dipped his toes in the water. In 1933, an indoor pool was built in the West Wing for President Franklin Roosevelt, who took up swimming after being diagnosed with polio years earlier. This pool, too, was not constructed with federal money, but rather donations to a fundraiser helmed by The Daily News, according to the White House Historical Association.
The White House swimming pool used by Franklin D. Roosevelt is pictured in 1940. (Bettmann via Getty Images)
The indoor pool remained operational until the administration of President Richard Nixon, who had it covered up to create the White House press room (now known as the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room). But the basin where the pool once sat is still underneath the press room, and has reportedly housed a variety of communications and computer equipment in more recent years, as documented by CNN and Atlas Obscura.
“After decades, it still smells like chlorine,” the latter outlet wrote in 2017.
The outdoor pool and its adjacent cabana, meanwhile, continued to be enjoyed by many of the White House’s inhabitants. Before he quit smoking, President Barack Obama used to have “a cigarette (or two)” by the pool house to allow his thoughts to “wander and deepen,” he recalled in 2020. And Barbara Bush reportedly took daily dips for exercise, the Associated Press reported in 1990, at least until a rat swam by during one of her sessions and President George H.W. Bush was forced to drown it right in front of her.
“It did not look like a Walt Disney rat, I’ll tell you that,” Barbara Bush told the Houston Post at the time per AP. “I was out of that pool so much faster than I thought I could.”
