The Brennan Pools

The Great Depression stopped nearly all development of the new River Rouge Park in the 1930s. A few amenities from the original 1925 design plan had been built including the roads, bridges and the golf course. However, one other major development was also completed that was not in the plan, the Rouge Park Pools.

Detroit’s economy was booming in the late 1920s and several new public pools were being proposed across the city. The first plan for a pool in Rouge Park would have been the largest pool in the U.S. A 100-acre concrete bottomed pool to be built using prison labor was planned for Scout Hollow. It would have been filled either with city water or by damming the river, and be used as an ice skating rink in the winter. In the 1927 budget, the plan was changed to a complex of three Olympic-sized pools and a 17,000 sq. ft. pool house at a cost of $362,000 at its current location on Plymouth Road.

Though the plan had strong support from City Council President, John C. Nagel and the Commissioner of Parks and Boulevards, Henry W. Busch, the Planning Commission consultant on the original 1925 Rouge Park Plan, T. Glenn Phillips, strongly opposed the location of the pools saying that they “would be out of place among the natural beauties of River Rouge Park.” ​Several hundred west side residents 

also submitted a petition opposing the pools. Over these objections, City Council approved the plan for the pools on September 7, 1927.

The pools and building were designed by city engineer, Perry A. Fellows, with input on the design of the pools themselves from Charles H. Brennan, president of the Michigan Amateur Athletic Union and a nationally renowned pool designer. The John L. Beecher Company began construction in June 1928 and the pools were opened on July 29, 1929. The speakers at the dedication ceremony on that date included Park Commissioner Henry Busch and Charles H. Brennan. Busch formally dedicated the pools by tossing a red rose in the water. This was followed by a demonstration of three swim strokes by a six-year-old girl, Jean Adams, the first swimmer in the pools.

The pools were immensely popular. Being four miles from the nearest city neighborhood, A trolley car was added along Plymouth Rd. from Grand River Rd. for public access to the pools. The capacity of the pools was 2,800 swimmers, and that number was routinely exceeded on hot summer days with many reports of 4-5,000 a day. The all-time record was 9,718 one day in 1931. The pools recorded about 200,000 swimmers each summer.

The Rouge Pools were the premiere location for championship swim meets. Annual swim meets for adults and youth were sponsored by the Detroit News and the AAU and routinely attracted over a thousand contestants. In 1948, the pools were chosen for the Olympic try-outs. A new diving tower and seating stands for 5,000 were built. In March of that year, Charles H. Brennan died, and the pools were renamed in his honor at a ceremony on July 7th, one day before the Olympic try-outs began. Twenty-four thousand spectators attended the try-outs over the four-day event. The event was so successful that Rouge Park was chosen for the Olympic try-outs again in 1956 and 1960 with 37,000 and 30,000 attending respectively.

High school and college swim meets and Parks and Recreation Department sponsored youth swim meets were regular events along with the annual Aquarette which began in 1944 featuring 600 swimmers performing water ballet and synchronized swimming.

The Brennan Pools received a $758,000 renovation (approximately $5 million in 2025 dollars) in 1974. Sixteen years later, in 1991, the pools were closed temporarily due to budget cuts. In 2010 the pools were closed again, this time for four years and re-opened for the 2014 season after the Lear Corporation completed a $5.5 million renovation, reducing the size of the locker rooms to create a large poolside banquet room.

In 2026, construction will begin on a new recreation center sponsored by Tom Gores Family Foundation that will be connected to the Brennan Pools building.

​There is much more history of the Brennan Pools to tell! Read the story here about attorney William V. Banks who exposed racial discrimination at the pools, and champion swimmer, Mitchell Lucas, who made a bit of civil rights history of his own at the Rouge Park Pools in 1936.