Once the largest pool in the world, SF’s Fleishhacker Pool held 6 million gallons of water and at capacity could accommodate 10,000 swimmers and the life guards needed row boats to patrol the vast area. The pool, was fed by salt water from the ocean, had huge gaudy diving towers, swings and diving boards and in it’s heyday was the place to be.

Built in 1925, the pool was the vision of philanthropist banker Herbert Fleishhacker.  After several decades of high times, the pool succumbed to outflow drains problems after a storm and never really recovered from the repairs. Falling into disrepair, low attendance and rumors of water borne illness the pool vanished form the public’s eye.
The only remnants of the facility is the pool house (seen in the background of the photo above) that now sits facing a nicely paved SF Zoo parking lot where the pool use to be.

One afternoon in the early fall of 2009 i jumped the fence and explored the property. As you’ll see from the photos the pool house was filthy with the signs of human inhabitants (feces, bedding, garbage, makeshift housing), marred with graffiti and full of just about everything you could think of.

Enjoy the photos.

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After a bit of time figuring out where to best enter, we scaled the fence and got to the exploring. But not before I caught the inside of my leg on the razor wire and came down to the ground with a hole in my shorts and a good scratch. After a dead end attempt down a flooded safety tunnel below the silos, we found the carefully hidden entrance.  The pics below chronicle our adventure through the building as the afternoon turned and the sun set in the crisp November evening.

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