Magazine Beach Bath House & Pool

Great pool that’s free and pretty clean. It has limited parking and a Starbucks across the street. Huge changing rooms with showers I believe. Open every day 11 – 7. Come at 11 during the week and it’s faulty calm and relaxing. Def recommend!

Fantastic, super clean pool overlooking the river. The pool is really big and doesn’t usually feel crowded, except for maybe in the shallow end with all the kids. The locker rooms get pretty gross, so I recommend never going barefoot. They got really strict about the no food/​drink (other than water) rule this year, so eat outside if you want to picnic. Definitely bring a chair unless you want to lounge on a wet towel on concrete. There are a couple of benches under an overhang, but people stake those out early.
This is more of a rec swimming pool than a lap swimming pool, but there is one lap lane. Don’t count on getting parking in the tiny lot, even if you find a space getting in and turning around to leave is a nightmare. Park on Magazine St. if you have a Cambridge sticker. On Sundays, anyone can park in residential parking. Bike or take an über if you can.
Don’t miss out on this public pool this summer, it’s a great (and free) way to spend a summer day.

On a sweltering day in Somerville this summer, a friend and I had a need to go swimming. I looked up nearby «beaches» and found Magazine Beach. We got some towels and some snacks and headed over. We found a little tiny strip of parking spots and a grassy shore to the Charles River, next to a fenced-​in pool. Yup, embarassed to say I did not realize until I got there that Magazine «Beach» is not a beach at all. Probably should have guessed that open swimming in the Charles is probably not encouraged.
However, the free public pool, though packed with kids on the weekends, is a great amenity in the city. Changing rooms, lifequards, showers, the whole thing (though no lockers). And a great view of the river!

I’ve lived here for 3 years, run by it many times, and never knew it existed! It’s free, clean, and the lap-​swimming lane was totally empty (on a weekday around noon). It seems to be longer than a standard 25-​yard pool, which I liked. Way less crowded than the Harvard pool. Water is nice and cold.

This place is not fancy, but it is 100% awesome. Bring your own towel and/​or beach chair. Bring a book. Enjoy the view and the water. There are a lot of kids, but as long as like me, you know how to practice selective hearing, you will be just fine. It is a 15 minute drive from my house, if that… so much more convenient than the beach. Wish I’d known about it sooner.

One of Cambridge’s best kept summer secrets! A clean and non-​crowded free swimming pool! Seriously, you just walk in and swim to your heart’s content. OK, so there are no white tuxedo-​clad waiters serving up cocktails on lounge chairs– in fact, there are no chairs at all. Folks just lay out their towels on hot concrete in a show of true Cantabrigian equality for all. Awesome.

This place is free. Anyone, literally anyone can walk right in and swim in the pool for as long as you want. This is what you do: enter the facility from the Memorial drive side, and once in, go through the locker rooms (left for boys, right for girls — you’ll meet back up poolside), change (there’s benches but no lockers), rinse off in the showers, walk on through to the pool, then jump in the pool. Get it? It’s easy.
There are life guards on duty, a roped off kiddy section at the North end of the pool, and roped off lap lane on the river side of the pool. Oh, and the whole thing over looks the Charles River, where you can picnic before or after.

Like others, I can’t BELIEVE how long it took me to find out about this pool.
It’s free, about 4 – 5 ft at its deepest (NOT a baby wading pool like the other DCR pools along the river), open from 11 – 7 daily during the summer. It’s clean but nothing fancy– just a pool, with a cement deck, bathrooms, changing rooms, and showers. There are always a lot of kids, but still plenty of room to swim around and/​or lounge around. Exactly what you need for a summer like this.

free public pool on the charles.
and nobody know about it.
i shouldn’t even Unilocal this.
bring art magazines and lounge by the pool.
swim in the refreshing water and enjoy the vistas of boston.

Ooooohhhhh my GOODNESS. I’m in disbelief about two things:
First, that I only now, today, learned about this fabulous, outdoor, free, open-​to-​the-​public-​every-​day-​of-​the-​week POOL, even though it’s only 5 minutes from my house. IT’S A FREE OUTDOOR POOL IN THE MIDDLE OF CAMBRIDGE, ON THE SHORE OF THE CHARLES RIVER.
Secondly, I’m mystified how I could be the first to review this place. Does everyone on Unilocal know about it but there’s some sort of hush law, an agreement that no one will reveal this money spot hidden in plain sight? This doesn’t seem to jive with the culture of Unilocal,so I’ll cross that one off.
Maybe it just opened? This is possible, except for a google search for «magazine beach bath house» reveals that it was built in 1952 to answer to the recreational needs of park goers who no longer could swim in the Charles. So maybe it’s just been RE-​opened to the public?
Or perhaps it’s been open all year, but because summer has really just gotten under way now that the monsoon season is over, and therefore POOL season has really just begun, so people are just beginning to search for the new outdoor spot to consider if they’re not feeling The Colonnade roof deck and its entry fee.
I don’t know the reasons. But my god it’s the discovery of the summer for me.
Open 11a-​7p every day of the week. A bath house with bathrooms, showers, and lockers; a pool that’s clean (if a little cold), with three lifeguards always on duty; a lane for swimming laps that’s always reserved for this purpose; and a lot of concrete pool deck to spread out your towels.
The pool deck is surrounded by a nice manicured part of the Charles River esplanade, so if one wanted to, they could have a very nice picnic on the grass, take a dip in the pool, lie on the pool deck for a tan, and return to the grass for a short summertime nap before heading home for dinner.
When I went on a Friday at 3pm, the pool was full of kids, but not overcrowded. There were probably about 40 people just hanging out, getting a tan on the deck.
There are no chairs to sit in, except for a few park benches, which is a small but pretty insignificant drawback considering the pool is as awesome, open, and free as it is.
It’s located behind a brick building called the «Magazine Beach Bath House», on the river side of Memorial Drive, directly across the street from the Trader Joes/​Starbucks/​MicroCenter shopping mall.