Lido Pool is a local secret tucked in a neighborhood near the Gulf since the 1920s
Most people can rattle off the bountiful assets of Sarasota's Lido Key with little more than the effort required to order a second margarita: powdery beaches, fine restaurants, sandy boardwalks cutting through mangrove mazes and, most importantly, the gentle Gulf, unfurled before visitors like one endless beach towel.
Here's something you may not have known: in the U.K., public swimming pools and water recreation facilities are commonly referred to as "lidos." What makes a lido “a lido” is its availability; everyone knows where the best neighborhood pool is, and everyone is invited to jump in.
The Lido Pool is a cool melting pot of local swimmers and vacationers, with diving boards and lap lanes built right in.
The birth of a Key, and its pool
When John Ringling bought and began to develop Lido Key in the 1920s, he named the Key lido, Italian for "beach." The islands he purchased, including St. Armands and Bird Key, became the winter resort communities and shopping meccas he envisioned.
As "lido" came to mean "public pool" in the U.K., in a funny linguistic twist, Lido Key got its own lido.
In 1926, after Ringling linked up the various keys both to the mainland and one other with bridges and roads, Lido Key became a haven for bathers near and far. They weren't merely flocking to the Gulf, but to Ringling's newly built pavilion, dock and bathhouse.
Depicted in vintage postcards as a glorious pool compound complete with a blisteringly white patio, azure water and frolicking families, the public pool is a bustling idyll.
Joined by a Sarasota School of Architecture-style casino in the 1940s, the bathhouse remained a stylish playground long after the casino was demolished.
Re-birth
The pool survived until a tropical storm in 2001 inundated it with saltwater. It might have remained in disrepair, gutted and empty and just a stone’s throw from the Gulf, if not for the Lido Key community, who rallied to save their very own historical lido.
The city eventually decided to renovate entirely. They had the existing shell of the old pool and a spectacular location near the Gulf within walking distance of condos and the beach. They had an energetic community who pitched ideas for the new pool and even people in the neighborhood who could still remember swimming in it in the '30s.
Visit the pool today
Today the pool is a bit of a local secret. It glitters in the sun off Ben Franklin Drive near Lido Park. Planners wanted the pool to be conspicuous from the road and it is—the old foundation partially obscured by softly waving Bahia grass.
Like any good lido, it has two lap lanes and can accommodate four, is open to the general public for a small concessions fee and it even comes equipped with a state-of-the-art handicap lift.
A quick soak in the shower on the deck is a crisp prelude to the pool's temperate water and though the diving board has been removed – preserved for its historic significance elsewhere but no longer usable – it's still easy to make a big splash.
Location
400 Ben Franklin Dr, Sarasota
