“Fun Fact” Urban Legend #74
North Portland community members distraught over pool closures rehash a mysterious source of parts repurposed to facilitate original construction of Pier Park Pool. What was the source of those now failed parts?
According to Urban Legend a liberty ship – if that’s true maybe original parts were replace because the timeline for use of parts produced in 1941 in a 1940s structures seems suspect.
After losing the MLC Pool to budget cuts I prioritized moving my family to a community with a small neighborhood pool. Images of the pool my children first swimed in were included in Fun Fact #15 in 2015. Pier Park is a 62-acer park dedicated on March 12, 1922. The park itself grew by absorbing land in 1960 that had once served as WWII Parkside Homes defense housing. Once again this year my family has experienced a summer without a neighborhood pool. The 84-year old swimming facility (pool) was shut down this summer because of a significant failure in a water line. Where did the parts come from that the original designers of the pool repurposed for the inner mechanical workings?
Pier Pool’s water pump is attributed to being a part repurposed from a World War II Victory Ship. The online Bath House & Swimming Pool blueprints drafted on March 7, 1940 by Knighton & Howell lack detailed mechanical details. The Pier Park Pool opened prior to as liberty ships were being produced. Toy industrial factories and other factories stopped producing consumer goods and started producing items for military use. It is potentially that a part pulled off “new” from Portland’s liberty ship production line but the timing seems off. The other guess would be that a pump failed a decade in and parts were pulled off a deconstructed liberty ship post war. As a child I created fictional uses for the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet colloquially known as the mothball fleet – perhaps a fellow daydreamer was also pondering ways to make use of the US mothball fleets.
