The Sutro Baths are a distant memory, but old photos of the complex, which could hold 100,000 swimmers and spectators, attest to its former glory. The baths’ seven pools, filled by the Pacific Ocean’s tides, drew swimmers from across San Francisco and beyond. Today, all that remains of those pools are stone ruins filled with murky water. 

Nothing close to the baths’ staggering size remains in the San Francisco Bay Area. But for those willing to make the trek, the closest thing might lie across San Francisco Bay in Point Richmond. 

Built in 1926, the Richmond Municipal Natatorium, known to most as the Richmond Plunge, may be the Bay Area’s oldest indoor swimming pool. The single-pool plunge is much smaller than the baths were but aims for the same grandeur. Peer up at the Plunge’s open truss ceiling and observation decks and the comparison makes sense. 

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A view inside the Richmond Plunge around 1945.

The Sutro Baths burned down in 1966, but the Richmond Plunge has stood for a century, weathering years of neglect, the Loma Prieta earthquake and a nine-year closure. Today, the Plunge is as popular as ever. It turns 100 this year, an occasion that the city of Richmond plans to commemorate in August with a day of celebrations. 

This occasion is largely because locals refused to let it close — even when its walls threatened to give out. 

“Thinking back on it now, it’s a miracle that the building is there and in the shape that it’s in,” Todd Jersey, the architect who restored the Plunge, told SFGATE. 

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With Greco-Roman columns framing its entrance and a metal sign sticking out of its roof, the Plunge looks like a cross between a library and an old movie palace. It’s old but not musty, tidy without being sterile. A lattice of white metal beams crisscross the Plunge’s ceiling, which is vaulted like the top of a church. Swimming backstroke, you can peer upward out the scores of windows and catch a glimpse of tree branches waving outside. If you turn your head to breathe while swimming freestyle, you can pause to admire John Wehrle’s floor-to-ceiling mural.

Swimmers use the Richmond Plunge pool on July 8, 2026.

The exterior of the Richmond Plunge, also known as the municipal natatorium, in Richmond, Calif., on July 8, 2026.

On a recent Wednesday morning, the Plunge was full of seniors in colorful caps, swimming their daily laps. Ventilated by four levels of windows, the building lacked the familiar chlorine stench that wafts from other indoor........

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