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This continued until 1954 when I finished my last advanced class. I don’t know when the practice of nude swimming was discontinued there. We never really had a conversation about it. There were a few girls from my school there, but if we talked about the swim lessons no one ever mentioned nudity. Family, along with friends and even the public could come in to watch if they paid a small fee.
I attended The City College of New York in the early 1960’s. Took the subway to 137th and Broadway and walked to the campus. Had an 8:00 AM physical education class for guys who couldn’t swim. We all got swimming lessons nude, no trunks and no one seemed to care. The professor wore a robe and trunks when giving instructions. He would disrobe and remove his trunks only when he went into the water. Out of the water, it was trunks and robe again. It would have been a real hassle carrying wet swimming trunks around all day, so nude swimming was a blessing.
In the late 19th to early 20th century, using tax revenue to provide public bathing facilities for working-class men was not politically popular in , while private establishments served the middle and upper classes. These included swimming at the , which required membership or payment of fees. However, the problem of men being publicly naked while swimming and bathing in open water was recognized. Efforts to regulate nude swimming with laws against doing so during daylight hours did not prevent increases in incidents in the 1860s through the 1880s by laborers and boys.
In the 19th century, boys and working-class men in swimming nude in the Humber and Don Rivers was allowed in secluded swimming holes, while officially prohibited elsewhere. Skinny-dipping was seen by many as an innocent activity for young males, as long as it did not intrude upon the sensibilities of females. In the 20th century, urban growth had encroached upon this isolation, and also created the problem of water pollution. The development of beaches in the district on the Lake Ontario waterfront marked the end of nude outdoor swimming.
In the 1870s, sea bathing at the Athenian seafront was an activity dominated by working class men who swam naked. With the beginning of the 20th century, resorts for the middle class were established, a transition which was at odds with male nudity. This was dealt with by having separate male and female bathing areas, but these became difficult to enforce. In the 1910s, mixed gender bathing began, and became actual swimming away from shore rather that wading. Female beach attire became “semi-nude” by the standard of prior years, exposing women’s arms and legs.
