The Rivi was born in a flood
In January 1933, in the depths of the Depression, an Indianapolis businessman named James H. Makin gathered ten friends at the Butler University Campus Club and asked each of them to bring ten more. He needed 1,000 families to make a private recreational club work.
The early pledges fell through as fast as he could collect them. The club survived its first months only because Mrs. Makin put up her $10,000 life savings to keep it going.
Groundbreaking happened April 1, 1933. Six weeks later, with the clubhouse nearly built in 48 days, the White River rose and collapsed the concrete forms for the big pool. The crew rebuilt them. The clubhouse was finished May 18. The pool opened in early June.
The Rivi has been opening every summer since.
A Century of Summers
The club grew up fast. Soldiers came home from the war, the baby boom arrived, and by the 1950s the Rivi had grown to seven thousand families.
The 21-acre triangle between the White River and the Central Canal filled up on summer afternoons with families who would, in many cases, raise their children and grandchildren on the same pool deck.
The 1950s expansion built much of the club members know today. More pools. Fourteen tennis courts. A gymnasium and an enclosed picnic house. A diving tank with underwater windows, added in 1950 (demolished in 2019).
Beyond the water, there were card parties, camera clubs, dance nights, shuffleboard tournaments and a bowling association that became one of the largest in the country.
The Rivi was not just a pool. It was the social center of north-side Indianapolis.
It still is.
The Swim Story
What put the Rivi on the national map was the water.
The club's main outdoor pool is one of the largest in the country, larger than a football field, holding 1.29 million gallons. From the beginning, that pool drew serious swimmers. Olympic gold medalist Euphrasia Donnelly was hired as one of the original instructors in 1933. By the 1950s, under coaches Johnny Galvich and Gene Lee, the Rivi swim program was producing All-Americans by the dozen. The team won 94 consecutive dual meets at one stretch.
The names that came out of that program belong to swimming history. Becky Collins set world records and reached the cover of Sports Illustrated. Kathy Ellis won four medals at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, two of them gold, and later returned to coach the team that had made her.
Trischa Zorn, who learned to swim at The Rivi, went on to win 46 Paralympic medals between 1980 and 2004 — the most decorated Paralympian in the history of the Games. She is in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Four Olympic gold medalists have come out of these lanes. Thousands of other Indianapolis swimmers learned the sport here, summer by summer, generation by generation.
More about The Rivi’s swim history below
The Decades That Followed
A 92-year-old club has lived through a lot of American history. Neighborhoods change. Economies turn. What a private club needs to be in 1965 is not what it needs to be in 2005, or 2025. The Rivi has had stretches of clear momentum and stretches that asked harder questions. We have made decisions we are proud of and decisions we have learned from.
Through all of it, the pool kept opening every summer.
Major pool renovations in 2018, 2019 and 2020 modernized the championship facility, replacing the old diving tank with a 13-foot dive well and 1- and 3-meter boards. The clubhouse, the fitness center, the tennis courts, the indoor pools, all of it kept running. Every summer, kids who had never been to the Rivi learned to put their face in the water for the first time. Kids whose grandparents had once worked The Beach Stand walked back through the gates.
What The Rivi is Now
We are a 501(c)(7) member-owned club. We're still a community of families and individuals who love swimming, recreation and fitness. We are still here because the people who own The Rivi keep choosing it.
In 2033, the Rivi turns 100. Not many private clubs founded in the Depression are still here. We are. And every next chapter starts the same way the first one did — with a community of families deciding that this place is worth keeping.
Swimming History Highlights
The Club’s first swim instructor Euphrasia Donnelly won the 1924 U.S. Olympic Gold Medal in Paris, France.
In 1940, Rivi swimmer Patty Aspinal Reel’s national swimming records won her a spot on the U.S Olympic team in Helsinki, Finland, but the games were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 because of WWII.
Swimming coaches Johnny Galvich and Gene Lee led the teams to over 400 trophies
In 1959, Riviera Club Swim Team Member Becky Collins captured the National Senior Outdoor Championship in several categories, setting world records. She appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine as a U.S. Olympic Swimmer.
Rivi swimmer Kathy Ellis won the 1961 US Nationals. In 1963 Ellis won gold in the the Pan American Games in Sao Paulo, Brazil and then turned around and set a new world record for the 100-meter butterfly in the US Nationals. In 1964, Kathy Ellis went four-for-four in medals at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
From 1980 to 2004, Rivi Swimmer Trischa Zorn became the most decorated Paralympian in the history of the Games with a total of 46 medals. She won a record 32 gold medals across a range of events and categories.
Riviera Club was the host of one of the World’s Largest Swim Lesson offered on June 18, 2015 with over 75 children participating.
In 2026, Aquatics Director and Swim Coach Therese Love marked 50 years of service to The Rivi and its Members — and innumberable swim lessons taught and swim meets coached.
