Famed architect Charles McAfee designed Wichita pool. Now, his family aims to preserve it

When Wichita’s 2017 aquatics master plan called for the swimming pool at McAdams Park to be replaced with a splash pad, a grassroots coalition of community activists joined forces to demand the city reconsider.

In 2021, after receiving a round of renovations, it was renamed McAfee Pool and converted from an Olympic-sized pool to a splash pool with slides and two lap-swimming lanes.

“What meant the world to me was the group of people that came together across the city to support the saving of the pool,” said Cheryl McAfee, whose father, renowned architect Charles McAfee, designed the pool and adjoining concrete and masonry pool house in his iconic modernist style in 1969.

Now, the city has secured $150,000 in funding from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, and is turning to the McAfee family architecture firm to provide upgrades and develop a historic preservation plan to ensure the facility remains a fixture in northeast Wichita for future generations.

“They always talk about value engineering. Well, we don’t want to value engineer this project. If we do something that is supposed to be long-lasting, we want it to be the best,” said Cheryl McAfee, CEO of McAfee3.

The pool design has been featured by the Getty Museum, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Gore Foundation. Cheryl McAfee aims to preserve the “beauty and rhythm” of her father’s vision.

“People may not realize it but there was never a brick cut on this project,” she said. “So when you look at the brick, you can tell that there wasn’t a cut. Everything lined up in a module from the concrete structure to the brick structure.”

Just as important as preserving the original vision is making sure the community members who use the swimming pool see themselves in the design, she said.

“In this structural system or in the brick wall, somehow we (want to) have some kind of artwork — even if they’re old black and white photographs and color photographs juxtaposed of families that used the facility in the past and those that are using it currently,” Cheryl McAfee said.

‘The one pool that everybody could use’

LaWanda Deshazer, a youth advisor for Wichita’s NAACP branch, said she would like to see historical plaques posted around the facility.

“Just capitalizing on the fact that the pool is so historic and we don’t tell that story very well,” DeShazer said.

For many years, McAdams had the only outdoor pool that Black Wichitans were allowed to swim in. But in the late 1960s, when the construction of I-135 fractured the northeast Wichita community, separating neighbors and disrupting a thriving historically Black business district, it also ran right through the park property. The existing pool and baseball fields had to be removed and relocated west of the new highway between 13th and 17th Street. Charles McAfee was asked to design the new pool facility, which was completed in 1969.

“When 1-35 ran through this community, it really tore it apart and it took the pool with it and it took the baseball field with it, but that also turned around and inspired a new park to be developed,” Cheryl McAfee said.

Charles McAfee, now 91, designed the pool and pool house at a time when racial integration was law but segregation persisted in many public facilities, including pools.

“This was the one pool that everybody could use,” Cheryl McAfee said.

Pool upgrades and funding

McAfee Pool was one of eight sites selected to receive restoration funding through the Conserving Black Modernism initiative.

“We are grateful to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund for their support of Wichita Park & Recreation and our dedication to telling stories of African American achievement and resilience,” Parks Director Troy Houtman said.

There’s been some concrete deterioration in the 55 years since the swimming pool opened to the public — nothing structural, but those repairs will likely have to be prioritized. The showers are having a drainage issue, and changing tables need to be added, along with other accessibility upgrades in the bathrooms and locker rooms.

“When I think about accessibility, it’s not just wheelchair accessibility,” Cheryl McAfee said. “It’s, what’s the signage? So that people that may be hearing impaired, they can see the signs, or people that may be blind still feel comfortable coming in and swimming if they’re vision impaired.”

It’s too early to say how far $150,000 will stretch, but the hope is to seek out additional state and federal grant money, and Cheryl McAfee wouldn’t count out the possibility of private fundraising. There isn’t currently a project timeline, but she said the hope is to move quickly.

“My father is 91 years old, and I’d love for him to be able to, I pray that he’ll be here to see the beautiful transformation and the preservation of one of his buildings,” she said.

Preservation and future of the pool

Topeka-based Treanor design studio has also been enlisted to help evaluate the physical condition of the pool and develop a preservation plan.

“This is an important piece of architecture for the community, and sometimes when it’s in your neighborhood you don’t understand how significant it is,” Treanor principal Vance Kelley said.

“The advantage that we have right now in the community is, Charles McAfee is still alive. His family is still practicing architecture, which means we have access to the archives. We can understand what the original design intent was.”

The comprehensive preservation plan will not only outline what needs to be done to protect and maintain the facility, but what sort of programming should be maintained at the pool to ensure its vitality.

Swimming classes and lifeguard training opportunities are an important part of that, Cheryl McAfee said.

“If you have generations that didn’t swim, how do we engage a new generation? How do we get people who never swam before interested in swimming?” she said. “What can we do here at this facility to say, ‘This is the place where you want to learn how to swim.’”

Prospective swimmers aren’t the only ones who can learn something from the historic facility.

“It’s also a learning piece for other architects,” Cheryl McAfee said.

Get Wichita restaurant news & reviews