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Spotlight on the Leroy Scott City Pool Collection
The heat of August seems a good time to feature something cool and refreshing—and what is more refreshing than a swimming pool?
The Leroy Scott Collection, donated to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in 2010 and open to researchers since 2013, is named for Leroy Scott, the man who directed Little Rock’s public swimming pool programs for more than twenty years. The collection documents the operation of both White City Pool and Fair Park Pool from the 1930s to the 1950s.
White City Pool opened in 1922 in Forest Park, a streetcar park in the area now known as the Heights. The White City Amusement Company, founded in 1907, administered Forest Park and built the pool.
The park and the pool were acquired by the City of Little Rock in 1934 and thereafter administered by the Little Rock Recreation Commission (later the Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department). White City Pool closed after the summer of 1939, and the city’s new swimming pool at Fair Park (now War Memorial Park) opened in the summer of 1941. During this time of racial segregation, these facilities were for white patrons only.
(Floyd) Leroy Scott, the original owner of the items in this collection, was born on March 9, 1899, in Greenleaf, Kansas, to Thomas J. Scott and Flora Scott. He attended Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, from 1918 to 1922, where he excelled in both football and track and field. He also served for a short time in 1918 in the Students Army Training Corps, a college-based program to train army officers and a forerunner of today’s ROTC programs. The corps quickly disbanded after the war ended, and the students returned to full-time college work.
After graduation, Scott taught at Seneca, Kansas, where he married Cleta F. Capps in 1923. The couple moved to Little Rock in the late 1920s, where both worked as teachers—Leroy at Little Rock High School and Cleta at East Side Junior School. Leroy became principal of Little Rock Technical High School when it opened in 1944; he retired in the early 1960s. The Little Rock School District’s Scott Field, at Forest Heights Middle School, is named Scott Field in his honor.
In addition to his work as a teacher and principal, Scott served on the Little Rock Recreation Commission, the group that took over summer programs at city playgrounds from the Little Rock Playground Association. He also became the manager of White City Pool, and later of Fair Park Pool. He continued in this position for twenty years, with a short break for military service during World War II.
This collection holds a scrapbook with documents, photographs, and news clippings dated in the 1940s, and another book for the years 1950 to 1956. Also included are a number of loose photographs with dates going back to the early 1930s. One photograph, of opening day at White City Pool, is dated 1920; however, the pool did not open until 1922. Documents that were loose in the scrapbooks are listed in a separate documents section of the finding aid.
White City Pool and its surrounding park lie on the north side of what is now Kavanaugh Boulevard. Many photographs of the pool include interesting views of the early days of this street. The first pages in the 1940s scrapbook contain snapshots of the construction process for the new swimming pool in Fair Park.
Other items of interest include photographs of AAU swim meets and diving competitions, as well as photographs taken through the underwater window at Fair Park Pool. One photograph, dated 1939, shows Alvin Owen doing a fire dive at White City Pool, while several photographs from 1952 show “Scrappy” Moore doing a clown act off the diving board at Fair Park Pool.
John Brooks, whose son Clyde donated this collection, is pictured in several of the photographs. He was a competitive swimmer in Little Rock and on the staff of both White City Pool and Fair Park Pool, and later founder of Brooks Pool Company of North Little Rock.
The finding aid for the Leroy Scott City Pool Collection can be accessed here or viewed in the Research Room of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art.
For additional information about the development of parks and swimming pools in Little Rock, and the programs held at these facilities, see the Little Rock City Playgrounds Collection, also available in the Research Room of the CALS Roberts Library, with the finding aid here. This collection also contains photographs and news clippings about White City Park and White City Pool.
(Banner image at the top of the post is an overview of White City Pool, 1933.)
Original article was written by Butler Center archival assistant Shirley Schuette.
