YEADON, PA—New life is being breathed into a beloved, historic place once considered by local families to be a jewel in the crown of Delaware County, and the man behind the revitalization is someone who grew up swimming there.
Anthony Patterson Sr., 57, president of the board of directors of the Nile Swim Club at 513 S. Union Ave. in Yeadon, Pa., has been working hard over the past four-and-a-half years to not only return the Nile to its past glory but improve it with year-round activities that will draw families from across the region.
Several years ago while scouting a place to have his family’s Patterson –Jaynes reunion, Patterson, a realtor who lives in Wynnefield, went to the Nile, was disturbed by its declining condition and got involved in helping direct its resurgence. But Patterson said that was not the only reason he decided to help.
“I also got involved because the Nile was near and dear to my heart and my community raised money to buy those four acres where it’s built. I was prideful of that,” said Patterson, a graduate of Yeadon High School and Cheyney University. “When I learned they were talking about putting up the Nile for foreclosure I reached out to my brother, Sam (Patterson), and said, ‘This cannot happen!’”
Built after area Black families were turned away for membership to the all-white Yeadon Swim Club in the 1950s, a group of African-American men from Yeadon decided their community needed its own private pool and plans were made to build a swim club that was bigger and better. The group solicited neighborhood families in Yeadon and Lansdowne to invest in the club by buying a $300 bond. Those neighbors, who were skilled, would perform some sort of labor, such as digging the pool or doing electrical work. There was available land in the west end of Yeadon, just feet from the border of Lansdowne Borough, in an area where many upper-middle-class Blacks lived. The group used the money to purchase the land and the Nile Swim Club opened in 1958. It was the first Black-owned, private swimming club in the country.
For years the Nile bustled with people. It was the daily meeting place every summer for many families – especially neighborhood kids who learned to swim and dive there – and for outside groups taking weekend bus excursions. The club was built on four acres, had locker rooms and facilities for males and females to change, plenty of picnic area, a playground, tennis court, basketball court, pavilion with a jukebox and dancing area, a snack bar famous for its water ice and fries, a large baby pool and the main pool, which included a 12-foot area with a low diving board and a high dive too.
“The Pool,” as neighborhood residents called it, offered activities such as water ballet, swimming and lifesaving courses, archery, a basketball league, arts and crafts and more. But by the 1990s, as the youth who enjoyed those initial decades of going to the Nile, grew up and moved away, and their parents aged, the pool received less and less support. That and inflation made it difficult to stay afloat just collecting dues. Then the Borough of Yeadon realized the Nile had not been paying the proper amount of property taxes due to land adjacent to the original property the club acquired years after the initial purchase. The tax bill was high and the club was now deeply in debt.
“The Nile had 150 members and was $150,000 in debt and going up for Sheriff Sale,” said Patterson the youngest of 19 children, whose family home while growing up was located around the corner from the Nile. Patterson said when he visited the facility about having his family reunion there, he saw the club was still using the original locker rooms and bathrooms installed in the 50s. That’s when board members Shawn Johnson and Lisa Ivory approached him and asked for his help.
“In 2017, I reached out to my network and associates and explained the situation,” said Patterson. We began raising money with the Nile board of directors and have paid-off the taxes and took the membership to over 1,000 people in 2019. Last year we had 600 members due to COVID-19.”
Among Patterson’s network of investors and helpers were two neighborhood guys, Michael Pearson, president and CEO of Union Packaging Group, LLC, and his brother, Sam, chairman and CEO of TreCom Systems Group, Inc., who was also a lifeguard at the Nile as a teenager. The two men pledged $130,000. That helped the club, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice – once in 2010 and again in 2016 – and at one time had owed as much as $270,000 in back taxes. The Nile negotiated a payment plan for taxes owed to the borough, which forgave fees and penalties and began renovations on the facility.
“First things we did over were the bathrooms, locker rooms and entrance desk,” said Patterson. “We ripped the locker rooms to the studs and put in a new sewer line. There were cracks in the sewer line that kept it backing up. We put in two new decks with regulation handicapped accessible ramps and the bathrooms are handicapped accessible too. Then we upgraded the covers on the pools, the tile around the pools, got new filters and new LED lights in the pool. The old lights were actually headlights and installed by (member) Richard Barnes’ father, who was an electrician – and they still worked!”
As the club sought grants and donations, help came from an unexpected place. Because of a column he read in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Nile, Jeff Brown, owner of Brown’s Super Stores, Inc., which includes 10 ShopRite supermarkets in the Delaware Valley region, in conjunction with Pepsi, last year installed a $30,000 basketball court where the antiquated old one once sat. The new court includes a soft blacktop and Lucite backboards. Patterson said he hoped more, much-needed donations would come. Meanwhile, the club pays for what it can, and Patterson and his crew continue to do some work themselves.
Patterson said his operations chairman, Bruce Earland, a board member who grew up in Yeadon swimming at the Nile, “is more than willing to step up,” and has a steady number of volunteers – most grew up in the neighborhood and swam at the Nile. They do everything from construction and yard work, to help give out free food. During the winter, the Nile Swim Club hosts a free food giveaway every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. The giveaway ends when the day’s supplies are depleted.
According to Patterson, Nile board members are planning for 2021 to be an even bigger year for the club. “Jeff Brown is coming on May 21 to cut the ribbon on the basketball court and we’re going to have our historic marker presentation. (Yeadon resident) Billy Mellix helped with that. He and his father helped dig the pool and do the sod work. It’s been a long road but I see a light at the end of the tunnel and a bright future coming.”
Individual memberships at the Nile Swim Club start at $200. For more information or to donate, go to www.NileSwimClub.org, go to the club’s Nile Swim Club Facebook page, or call 610-623-1535.
