Approximately every outdoor pool in DC, mapped

Originally published for Greater Greater Washington’s Water Week 2026. This version has minor edits for structure.

A DC GIS dataset shows every outdoor pool in the city, from little backyard pools, some 15 feet across, to public facilities that can fit hundreds of swimmers. The density of private pools mirrors the city’s zoning regulations and land use.

Take Greystone Mansion, just off of Porter Street where the road rises out of Rock Creek Park, for example. The property sold for $7.5 million in early July. The buyers, a group of residents from nearby neighborhoods, plan to convert the mansion into a private club, with the tennis court and the existing swimming pool at its center.

This part of Cleveland Park is zoned R–1A, for single family homes, and it sports a number of pools. In contrast, the nearby rowhouses blocks of Mount Pleasant have hardly any pools.

All outdoor pools

The DC GIS dataset worked from aerial photographs to identify some 1,931 outdoor pools. Some are separate pools on the same site, like a children’s pool near a larger pool. Importantly, the dataset only shows outdoor, in-ground and above-ground features — it excludes pools under cover and on rooftops. Pools are densest west of Rock Creek Park.

Pools on public land

There are 50 pool features on public land, distributed across some 28 sites. Twenty-two of these sites are outdoor public aquatic facilities, operated by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation. There is one pool at the Police Academy, another at Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling, and one on the grounds of the White House. There are also pools in apartment complexes at Park Naylor (on land co-owned by the District government) and Rhode Island Row (on a parcel owned by WMATA).

Pools in lower-density residential zones

Lower-density residential areas host the great majority of the city’s outdoor pools. The pool shown here is on the grounds of Dumbarton Oaks, formerly the home of Robert and Mildred Bliss and now a museum and research center operated by Harvard. The library is open to researchers, and the author has heard that Dumbarton Oaks librarians take care to check that would-be readers are not merely trying to slip into the pool. This part of Georgetown is zoned R1–B/GT, for single family detached homes, and a number of pools sit behind the nearby residences.

Of DC’s 1,931 outdoor pools, 1,730, or just under 90%, are in single-family detached, semi-detached, and rowhouse zones (R–1, R–2, and R–3).

Denser residential zones

Areas zoned for rowhouses and apartments have higher lot coverage and less room for pools. This pool, with its playful midcentury curves, serves guests at the Omni Shoreham hotel. The Omni’s parcel is zoned RA–4. To the southwest, Normanstone is zoned R–1A/TS.

There are 154 outdoor pools across all of the city’s mixed use, residential flat, and apartment (MU, RA, and RF) zones, 8% of the total, though this number is offset by indoor and rooftop facilities, which this dataset does not include.

Other zones

There are just 14 pools in land zoned for any other use.