An Elegant Backwater

DARTMOUTH STUDENTS ONCE swam under chandeliers. Today the pool whose ceiling once glittered is almost unknown among undergraduates.

The Spaulding Pool came into being in the early part of this century, when elegance was a built-in architectural standard. Newspapers from New York and Boston covered the 1920 dedication. The Springfield Union called the pool "the most perfect and most beautiful work of its kind in the world." More than a third of the total cost of $130,000 went into the tiling alone, designed by Homer Eaton Keyes '00. Four massive arched windows provided illumination during the day. Three chandeliers hung from the arched ceiling. A gallery on the west side seated 150 spectators. The architecture was the work of Charles A. Rich of New York, and the pool was funded by a former New Hampshire governor, Rolland Spaulding, whose son had graduated from the College five years earlier.

Today, the somewhat forgotten basin exists mainly to absorb the overflow of use from the recently renovated Karl B. Michael Pool. An addition to Alumni Gym in 1972 swallowed three of Spaulding's grand windows. A storage area ate up the gallery. The chandeliers have been replaced by modern lighting. And even most of the swimmers have forsaken the pool for its larger, brighter, and much better equipped neighbor. The tiling in some areas is cracked and worn. But the Spaulding Pool remains beautiful, and even perfect, in its way.

Though the lovely lighting and most of theswimmers are gone, the ambiance andHomer Keyes's tiles remain intact.