Moores Park Pool was the prototype for the Bintz pool

Most public pools sit in a hole in the ground. The one tucked into Moores Park, on the bluff above the Grand River, does the opposite. Its big oval tank rises above the earth behind a fieldstone wall, so swimmers climb to the deck instead of walking down to it.

That shape was Wesley Bintz’s practical answer to expensive excavation and groundwater problems. The raised shell also left room for dressing rooms and equipment below the deck. Bintz designed the Lansing pool in 1922, and it was built in 1923. The Michigan Historic Preservation Network says he used it as the prototype for the Bintz Pool Company, which went on to build about 120 municipal pools around the country.

The National Park Service record lists the structure on the National Register of Historic Places for its engineering significance, with Bintz as the architect and 1923 as the significant year. The preservation network describes it as the oldest surviving and longest-operating Bintz pool. That is a narrower, better-supported claim than calling it the oldest above-ground oval pool of any kind.

There is one important present-day catch: this is not a place to plan a swim right now. The pool has been closed to the public since 2019, and renovation work began in 2024. In June 2026, Lansing’s parks director told WKAR that plumbing and accessibility work had delayed the project. The city hoped to fill the basin for testing that summer, but public reopening was expected in summer 2027 at the earliest.

So go to see an unusual piece of Lansing engineering, not an open pool. The original structure is still there, and the restoration is meant to give it another chapter.