galvanized and twisted blue iron in Kentucky Civil administrators have long used water as a tool for social engineering. Whether a body of water offers a pristine landscape for city residents or a pure public bathing facility, water has, in lees than obvious dimensions, entered the discourse of administrating the public health. For the public's betterment and welfare, city officials manage the action, motion, and general processes of and access to water. Two examples in Lexington, Kentucky show the strange 'currency' of water in the economy of the public welfare. Lexington's first public playground was Pyramid Playground in Irish Town. The ideology surrounding the establishment of this playground was directed towards uplifting the disenfranchised residents of this poor community. Like other parks of the period, the goal of this park was to reform and civilize the public who used the park. Through organized and supervised play for both children and adults the plan was to socialize the mostly Irish immigrants to a local, natural and hegemonic cultural program. Most importantly for officials, the park brought fresh water from the reservoir via plumbing to the community. This was the first access to potable water residents had enjoyed; enjoyed enough, it was thought, to detour the Irish from their extreme predilection for alcoholic beverages. The first pool in Lexington for African Americans was Douglass Park Swimming Pool. Before this pool, people swam in the 7th Street Pond and the few rock quarries that surrounded the city. As Galen Crantz details in her book, The Politics of Park Design, the phenomena of swimming pools gained popularity during the Progressive Era as a tool for cleaning the working public who often did not have access to plumbing or fresh water. The goal was to sanitize the lowest class of citizens. In addition to class, race played into the discourse of swimming pools. This pool was exclusively for black use. One wonders then, did local officials believe the pool would wash away something intrinsically black for these communities.