100 Years Ago This Week: July 31-Aug. 6

From The Indianapolis News, Thursday, August 5, 1920: Thirteen Indianapolis playgrounds will have swimming pools for children and two large city pools for adults, one at Brookside Park, will be ready next summer under plans approved today by the board of park commissioners. “This program must go through regardless of the cost,” said park superintendent James Lowry. “The present condition must not be permitted to continue. Our boys and girls are going swimming in streams which we say are unfit for bathing purposes. We can issue a manifesto ordering them to keep out of the streams, but they go in anyway, and we can’t put lifeguards on duty because that would only encourage swimming in streams where we are trying to prevent it. As a result of this condition, fourteen young lives have been lost in swimming fatalities this summer.”