The Meadowbrook Pool Club Fund

For 50 years, it was summer. 

On those melt-your-shoulders afternoons, The Meadowbrook Pool Club was the place to be. Families gathered around the pool deck. Children took swimming lessons and some later joined the swim team. Folks did laps or stopped down for leisurely swims at twilight. 

Located at the Meadowbrook Co-op housing complex in Hamden, the pool opened in 1960 and residents could join for a very reasonable fee, said Priscilla Bradford, president of the Meadowbrook Cooperative Pool Club.

“A lot of families lived at the Co-op, and it was where their kids learned to swim. Generations of kids grew up at the pool,” she said. Later, families living in the Spring Glen area also discovered the pool and it became their summer spot. 

“Everyone on a street would join – all the neighbors,” Bradford said. “They’d have a really good time, and they didn’t have to keep a pool of their own and it was very affordable.”

Over time, a confluence of factors led to the end of the pool club. Young families moved into other neighborhoods and older people who were downsizing moved in and didn’t join the pool club. “Some people wanted a country club atmosphere and that wasn’t what we were; we were a pool club,” Bradford said. 

The pool, which had served so many so well for so long, showed signs of age. “It had a unique filtering system, and they just didn’t make the parts anymore,” Bradford said. “The expenses went up and up and it wasn’t sustainable.”

The pool club board closed the pool and “the city agreed to take the property,” Bradford said. Thanks to the prudent work of the club’s treasurer, some money remained, and the board wanted it to go to a charity. A friend of Bradford’s told her about the work of The Community Foundation and, after talking with Foundation staff, she found “it was everything we were looking for,” Bradford said. 

They established the Meadow Brook Pool Club Fund which will provide scholarships to Camp Laurel, the Hamden-North Haven YMCA’s summer camp set on 20 acres of wooded space with an open shelter, outdoor swimming pool, archery station, ropes course and climbing wall. Children ages three to 15 can take part in swim lessons and recreational swimming, a variety of other sports, arts and crafts and STEM activities.  

“We want to provide this opportunity so that kids who might not be able to go to camp, can learn how to swim and have lots of fun in the summertime,” Bradford said. 

She said she hopes children can find the same joy in swimming that kids did across the decades at the Meadowbrook Pool Club.