Dell Rapids Park Bathhouse
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Gina Smith Campbell Bathhouse
1934, P.L. Peterson. City Park Ave. and Beach Ave.
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(Photograph by Michelle Dennis) -
(Photograph by Michelle Dennis)
When the City of Dell Rapids began making plans in the early twentieth century to acquire land for a city park in the southeast along the Big Sioux River, resident Gina Smith Campbell advocated for the creation of a sand swimming beach. The first bathhouses were wooden structures erected in 1914. These were replaced in 1934, when the Civil Works Administration built a more permanent structure clad in locally quarried Sioux quartzite. Named after Campbell, the long, rectangular bathhouse was originally open to the sky but has since been covered with a corrugated fiberglass gabled roof. The end walls rise to stepped parapets and contain two round-arched door openings flanked by open, round-arched window openings. This center section is flanked by square wings, also roofless, that contained shower and changing areas separated by gender.
The beach is long gone and the bathhouse is now used as a picnic shelter. One of the 1914 wooden bathhouses was relocated to a private property at Tenth Street and Clark Avenue.
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