Made of wool, this one-piece garment is black with a red trim on the bottom. It only measures 32 inches long and 18 inches wide at its widest point, and its inseam is a mere 5 inches long. One of its two straps has a single button, and the bottom is constructed much like a skort in today’s fashion. A faded, barely legible insignia is painted on the chest.
This month, we take a deeper look at a men’s bathing suit.
This wool bathing suit came to the museum in 2006 as a donation from Billy and Darlene Windes, but it came with very little information. Also included in the donation was a purple and green bathing suit that, frankly, is way more fun. But it was the faded, worn logo on the front of this men’s suit that drew my attention.
But I just couldn’t make out what it said! Lucky for us, the suit still maintains its original tag, and that tag gives us helpful information.
It reads, “The Miramar Club Santa Monica, Calif.”
How on Earth did a bathing suit from a resort in Santa Monica end up in the Pennyroyal Area Museum?!
The bad news is that … I don’t know. I’m honestly not sure how the suit came into the possession of the folks who donated it to us. Even without this answer, this simple garment opened up a whole set of things for me to explore. When was this worn? What was the Miramar Club? And where could people go for a swim in and around Hopkinsville 100 or so years ago?
Based on the style of the suit (and on a super obvious clue on the suit’s tag that says “1931”), I believe the bathing suit to be from the early 1930s. It is a one-piece garment with shorts layered under a skirt-like cover. Earlier suits had longer pant legs. Later suits were two pieces, and by the mid-1930s, most men simply went bare-chested with trunks.
On to the Miramar Club. The Miramar Hotel opened in Santa Monica in 1925 and featured the Miramar — Spanish for “view of the sea” — mansion built by town founder and Sen. John P. Jones and a new, six-story apartment building. The resort catered to Hollywood stars and the wealthy — with the likes of Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and John F. and Jackie Kennedy on its guest register. And possibly a Hopkinsville dude who left with this branded bathing suit.
I found a postcard of the Miramar Hotel on eBay postmarked on May 28, 1931. It provides the best glimpse of the hotel when this bathing suit was popular. How one made his or her way down that cliff to the beach has me positively stumped. In 1932 under new ownership, the historic Jones family home was replaced with a modern building and a collection of seaside bungalows and the property’s first swimming pool were added to the resort.
During World War II, the Army Air Corps used the hotel as a redistribution center for men returning from overseas. By the 1950s, the hotel expanded yet again with a 10-story addition and a new pool. In 2001, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts completed a $16 million renovation. You can still stay there today!
Ok. This bathing suit is from the early 1930s and is connected to a luxurious resort in southern California. Got it.
But where might someone have worn a suit like this here?
This question led me down a slippery slide and crashing into tales of swimming holes and pools across the decades. Crystal Swimming Pool on Butler Road, Frazer’s Natatorium on Hayes Street, Rock Bridge Park on Edwards Mill Road, and the Kiwanis pool on Richard Street are all well-known spots where folks found refuge and respite in the heat of summer days. We’ve heard of these. Our grandparents, our parents, even we swam in these, so I’ll save their stories for another time.
I want to take a swan dive into a brief moment in our history instead. As I was searching our local newspapers online, I came across a reference to a place with a name I have never seen or heard: “Edgewater Park.” Touted as a pleasure resort, this forgotten park made a big splash in 1912 and 1913.
And y’all are never going to guess where this resort was located! It was on the Little River — in what I can best estimate as the general vicinity of the main station of the Hopkinsville Fire Department today. North of Second Street, the “bathing place will be at the bend of the river northward from what has been known as the mill pond,” the Hopkinsville Kentuckian reported on May 23, 1912. Bathing and boating would be available for more than a mile up the river.
Officially named the Edgewater Boating and Bathing Club, the park was part of big improvements to the Little River spearheaded by Mayor Charles Meacham. The pool was created by opening a flood gate in the water works dam which was, I believe, near today’s Jeffers Bend. The newspaper described the result as a clear stream that measured from 6 to 8 feet deep.
The full layout included a 30-foot driveway extending along the river, a bath house, diving platforms, and a diving board. The park was stocked with bathing suits and boats for rent. Five electric lights were strung along the river and in the park.
Hugh Nelson operated the place. The city did not pay him directly, but he had the exclusive privilege of taking home the profits on rentals and any other activities. Boats rented for 25 cents an hour. Bathing suits were 25 cents, as well, and came with access to the bath house. It must have been quite the little structure — painted red and with multiple dressing rooms, a long porch, and an office. Nelson taught swimming lessons, too.
By the time the Edgewater Boating and Bathing Club opened on June 14, 1912, more than 100 season passes had been sold for $5 a pop. Nelson ordered 10 famous Mullins steel boats for boating excursions upstream — leading to a new favorite pastime of moonlight river cruises — “a thing never dreamed of as possible in Hopkinsville,” according to the newspaper. Parties would sail up the river and have picnics on the rocks at the waterworks dam.
How insanely charming is that?
Private boats also launched at Edgewater Park. Hugh Linton, a local attorney and owner of the pair of snowshoes I wrote about previously, impressed everyone with a boat named “The Trojan.” Built locally by Forbes Manufacturing Co., the boat was 16 feet long and required two sets of oars. J.H. Cate, owner of Cate’s Mill on the river at Ninth Street (near Wood Mill Road today), attracted special attention with a motor boat that was propelled by a five-horsepower gasoline motor. Oh, and he built the boat himself!
By all accounts, the bathing resort was popular with both men and women and was a favorite with young people. While I cannot imagine that the park was integrated, I did find reference to a “colored bathing resort on Little River” that was about half a mile upstream from Edgewater Park. Sadly, the reference I found was about a 20-year old man named John Henry Alexander Jr. who drowned there on June 16, 1912. It was the fourth drowning in three weeks at the site.
The inaugural season of the Edgewater Boating and Bathing Club closed on Oct. 1. More than 1,000 people had been served at the bath house from June through September.
Boating and bathing dominated the summer of 1913, as well. Nelson maintained his role as the park manager. The number of bathrooms increased from 10 to 16, and more bathing suits were added to the inventory. Women were becoming expert swimmers — even as they wore long gloves with their bathing suits to keep up with the fashions of the day. The park closed on Sept. 1, a month earlier than the previous summer, after a successful season.
And then, in 1914, the flood gate in the dam was not replaced. Without the flood gate, the clear, deep spring didn’t fill, replaced by stagnant pools. By June 23 and after repeated attempts to convince the city to open the park, Hugh Nelson leased the swimming pool at McLean College on Belmont Hill so that he could continue to teach swimming lessons. Vandals destroyed the bath house, and the once beautiful leisure spot turned into a disorderly swimming hole.
The community didn’t give up completely yet. Virginia Street Baptist Church utilized the site for a baptism of 26 people in December 1915. That had to have been frigid! In 1916, a petition to reopen the park was signed by hundreds of young people. By then, all of the 1912 improvements — including the bath house — were gone. In August of that summer, mention was made to the “lamented Edgewater Park.”
And that was it. Edgewater Park floated away as just a memory.
On June 25, 1918, a small note ran in the newspaper that a number of local men joining the Navy to fight in World War I had learned to swim in the river at Edgewater Park. The newspaper stated, “But that was five years ago when the floatage of the dam was kept closed and swimming and boating were privileges of the public. The river and dam are still there but the floodgate is open and our future sailors will have to learn how to swim in bathtubs or swimming schools.”
I think about how much I would love to go back in time … a lot. Not to stay forever, but just to get a glimpse of some of these places that just seem so magical. How much I would love to take a jump off the diving board into the clear waters of the Little River — or to row up the river with a sky full of stars overhead. Sign me up for that $5 season pass every summer!
And while our wool bathing suit that started us on this journey would have been worn 20 years after this park we discovered, it still led us to this delightful little blip in our community’s history when people enjoyed a waterfront pleasure resort for a couple of summers.
And they didn’t even have to go all the way to Santa Monica, California, to do it.
Alissa Keller is the executive director of the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County. She’s a graduate of Centre College with degrees in history and English and of Clemson University/College of Charleston with a master’s degree in historic preservation. She serves on the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Museum and Heritage Alliance boards.
