Photos

This photo was taken from the other end of the greens, from the front of the Bathhouse, looking towards the Blue Baths that I described as the swimming pool in my previous photo. I loved the long shadows and took the shot towards the setting sun. Considering the exposure difficulties that entailed, I am happy with the result.

The official sight for the Blue Baths states the following:

Today, The Blue Baths are once again promising pleasure in a delightful environment. First opened in 1933, the Spanish Mission building with its elegant Art Deco highlights was designed by John T Mair. In its heyday young and old reveled in the hitherto unknown joys of mixed bathing - for fun!

Described as “one of New Zealand’s most loved buildings,” The Blue Baths complex has been meticulously restored to its former glory. Care has been taken to retain the unique ambience of this icon of Rotorua.

Today The Blue Baths operates as an private function venue and visitor attraction. Its unique features include historic thermally heated pools, Museum Galleries in the old changing rooms and an elegant 1930s style Tearoom.

Mixed bathing in liquid light… such was the promise of pleasure used to entice visitors to Rotorua’s Blue Baths in the 1930s.And they came in their droves, lured by the luxury of it all.
Readers of a 1936 tourist brochure were tempted by a glamourous vision: “White-tiled…sparkling blue waters…submerged lighting…diving towers…sun balconies…richly furnished rest room. Picture this and you have not a Hollywood conception, but a mental image of the peerless Blue Baths” .
The Hollywood overtones were no coincidence. The lavish design was the creation of Public Works Architect John T Mair, inspired as much by the need to escape the drabness of the Depression in the fabulous moving picture palaces of the day as by the images of clean and cool Californian architecture which flickered on the screen.

With a recreational rather than a medicinal focus, the new baths were a by-word for the good life. Built during the Great Depression, the thoroughly moderne swimming establishment was a considerable break away from Rotorua’s other Government bath houses, both architecturally and in attitude.
Where they promised health, the Blue baths promised only pleasure. Where they offered treatments for a variety of ailments from gout to psoriasis, The Blue Baths offered movie-style glamour, for an afternoon at least.

The Blue baths were the last gasp of New Zealand’s large scale spa development, begun in the nineteenth century by colonial dreamers who envisaged a great spa in the South Seas and had set about recreating the Dominion as the premier watering hole for the Empire.
The Blue Baths were the final symbol of the government’s intention to fulfill that dream and attract more tourists, and proof positive of the New Zealand Dominions claim to being one of the world’s most attractive playgrounds.

Mixed bathing was the highlight of those attractions. For the first time, men and women could get (almost) naked, together in public – a reflection of the changing attitudes and increasingly relaxed mores in existence after the First World War.
The intention was also to make Rotorua the chief centre of the Dominions sporting activities. To that end, the Blue Baths also offered instruction in “fancy and scientific swimming” as well as diving tuition. Its swimming and diving carnivals became the stuff of legends, as did the sporting stars who hailed from the district.