Sunlite in the spotlight
Coney Island's famous pool is swimming in statistics
Friday, July 17, 1998BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It takes 3 million gallons of water to fill Coney's Sunlite Pool.
(Tony Jones photos)
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For more than 70 years, crowds have cooled off in Coney Island's Sunlite Pool.
Although Coney can no longer claim to be one of the nation's largest amusement parks, as it could in the 1960s, it still boasts the largest recirculating (that is, constantly filtered) pool in the world. (Another concrete pool, Willow Lake in Warren, Ohio, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest pool, but it does not recirculate within 24 hours.)
At Sunlite Pool, summer is the smell of sunscreen and chlorine blending with the sounds of splashing water and gleeful children. It's a big pool, and Tempo wanted to get the big picture. Here's a look at Sunlite . . . by the numbers:
1925: Year the pool opened.
35 million: Estimated number of visitors since pool opened. 450,000: Annual attendance. During Coney Island's heyday (after World War II through the 1960s), annual pool attendance sometimes topped 1 million.
46: Amount, in cents, that adults paid in the 1940s to swim. A towel, swim suit and locker key were provided.
1961: The year African-Americans were first allowed in the pool.
32: Number of lifeguards on duty at busiest periods. (They work one hour on, a half-hour off.)
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3 million: Gallons of water, enough to fill about 100,000 bath tubs. (Does not include 200,000 gallons in the filtration system at any given time.)
3: Days needed to fill the pool.
70-88: Range of water temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit. The source is a 100-foot-deep well that taps into an underground aquifer. Water is 55 degrees when it is pumped into the pool in mid-May, and warms up naturally. (There is no heater.) By Memorial Day weekend, the temperature typically is about 70 degrees. To keep the water refreshing on the hottest days, workers drain some pool water and replace it with cooler well water.
401: Pool length in feet.
200: Pool width in feet.
80,200: Square feet of surface area. (About 1.4 football fields.)
1: Minimum depth in feet.
10: Maximum depth in feet.
30,000: Gallons of chlorine added to water in a season (250 to 400 gallons daily).
5: Hours needed for pool to recirculate (that is, to be filtered) completely.
14.4 million: Gallons of water filtered per day by two filtration systems (a 100-horsepower filter was installed in 1992; a 75-horsepower sand filter has operated since the pool opened).
7,110: Highest single-day attendance this year (July 3).
10,000-plus: Highest single-day pool attendance (reached many times) from the 1940s to 1960s.
7: Number of diving boards.
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11 a.m.-4 p.m.: Busiest hours.
1: Number of in-pool slides.
2: Number of water slides (Zoom Flume and Pipeline Plunge).
51: Number of lifeguards (32 female; 19 male).
18: Average age of lifeguards.
1: Number of lifeguards in a rowboat in the deep end at any given time.
40 plus: Number of years that the late Bob Lowe served as captain of the lifeguards, from the 1940s to 1980s.
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IF YOU GO
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Where: 6201 Kellogg Ave., Anderson Township.
Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. through Sept. 7.
Daily admission: $10.95, $8.95 ages 4-11, $7.95 seniors.
Admission after 4 p.m.: $4.
Parking: $4.
Memberships: $75-$110 for individuals; $280-$350 for families. (Cost varies according to when memberships are purchased.)
Information: 232-8230.
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1?: Drownings since the pool opened. One occurred in 1996; another supposedly happened in the 1940s, but pool officials have no record of it.
11: Average number of people treated in the first-aid station daily. (Most common complaint: scraped feet.)
15: Emergency medical technicians on staff; two on duty at all times.
1,110: Youngsters taking swimming lessons this summer.
115: Members of Sunlite's competitive co-ed swim team, the Aquanauts, ages 5-18.
101: Days expected to be open in 1997.
92: Days actually open in 1997. Pool was closed nine days because of rain and - or cold weather.
35: Pairs of sunglasses turned in to lost and found in 1997.
50,000: Soft drinks -- Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Slice and diet versions -- sold in 1997.
12,000: Orders of Crispura Shoestring French Fries (from Frank J. Catanzaro Sons - Daughters Inc.) sold in 1997.
7,000: Skyline cheese coneys sold in 1997.
950: Gallons of paint applied to pool annually.
1,100: Number of lounge chairs.
0: Number of lounge chairs generally available on a sunny weekend around 1 p.m.
600: Number of lockers.
5: Number of people banned for life because of misconduct.
15: Height above the pool that floodwaters crested during the flood of 1997.
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