Beachcomber was founded in the mid 1950's. A group of people sitting around a kitchen table began talking about creating a place where families could play and swim and relax and have picnic dinners under the stars. Those people invited friends and family to help them make their vision a reality: To create a non-profit cooperative swim club. They found a piece of land in Blue Bell and then began to work. They dug the foundation for the pool. They planted trees. They built a playground for children. They invested themselves: their time, their energy, their many talents.
Decades have passed; Beachcomber has grown. Staff has been hired. Lifestyles have changed and people's lives have become busier. Yet Beachcomber is still a haven, where families can enjoy summer as they imagine it from simpler times thanks to the founding spirit of cooperation. Most Beachcomber members don't recognize the name Donald Ottenberg. But Donald was the guiding light of Beachcomber; the originator of the idea and the purchaser of the land. Donald lived in Wyndmoor, and wanted to build a swim club on the property owned by the Stotesbury Estate, but zoning laws prohibited the building of a pool.
Along DeKalb Pike, Don found available land which was owned by Mr. Tatnell, who agreed to sell Don eleven acres of his farm. Don attended local meetings to get approval for the swim club.
The right-hand picture shows Don Ottenberg and a friend surveying the site that was to become Beachcomber. First time visitors to Beachcomber often remark about the large number of mature trees on our grounds. As you can see in the photo, the original property was forested and actually had to be thinned.
Beachcomber was founded to function as a co-op--not a country club--so members cleared underbrush and removed the rampant poison ivy. Members who were engineers and architects did the planning, and other members dug trenches, laid pipe and everything else that was required, as it should be in a co-op.
The original parcel of land ran from the end grove to the mini-golf course; the rest of the land was acquired later. With 400 families each purchasing a $200 certificate, and $40,000 borrowed from the bank, construction on the pool started in 1956.
Sylvan Pools was contracted to build the pool, but ran into difficulty when they hit bedrock at the deep end and could not make it deep enough for diving. To compensate for this, a separate Dive Tank was built at cost the following year. In 1973 Beachcomber purchased three additional acres (still known as the "new land") where tennis and volleyball courts and mini-golf now stand.
