Big Pool sign
2023.18.53
Interpretive notes from the 2008 "13 Moments in Time" exhibit: The Big Pool was built in 1927 on North Street near the old road to Holland. It was saucer-shaped with shallow water around the edges and deepest in the middle where there was a diving platform. Here the artist puts us on the diving board where a shapely female swimmer is thinking about making the plunge. Will she? Won't she? The dark line above the word "Saugatuck" was once an arrow pointing to the right. If the artist signed this painting, it was on the right hand corner which had been lost when it was discovered on the ash heap in the furnace room of a former newspaper office on Lake Street about 1970. One of the good things about having a town full of artists was their availability for signs and other artistic endeavors.
1880 Tourism steamship era -1930Signs
Winthers, Sally
33-1/2 in
19-1/2 in
Staircase OSH
Big Pool c1927-1935
According to Dale Marriott Williamson, whose father Robert Marriott built the pool, "I remember my grandmother painting the sign. I don't know where the design of the sign came from. I don't think my grandmother drew it, it wasn't the kind of art that she did, but I remember her painting the sign with the woman in the swim suit. She painted it in the yard of our home on Old Allegan Road. I think she painted more than one of the same sign. Her name was Carrie Stetson. She lived with us there. She came when my older brother was born, and she came to help take care of the baby. She was a widow and didn't have a cent, so there she stayed, much to my father's dismay. He didn't like that very much and it made awkwardness in the home. Anyway she stayed, and five years later I came along, and they needed her again, and she stayed for 14 years." See "Big Pool" organization profile for the entire quote.
12/23/2023
01/08/2024