‘NYC Privy’ Image: The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Restrooms in the United States
Introduction to the Movement Towards Public Restrooms
In the early 20th century, complaints about the lack of access to public restrooms is what ignited the efforts to install toilets in cities around the U.S specifically in growing industrial regions such as the Northeast and Midwest. These restrooms were referred to as “comfort stations” in an effort to compete with “washrooms” that resided in saloons. However, after Prohibition in the 1920’s the demand for comfort stations began to die down, but people now had to rely on restrooms in privately owned businesses. This defeated the purpose since comfort stations were an effort to divert people from having to use bathrooms in privately owned businesses. This created a new issue of public authority versus the private body. Public health became a main concern, and this was mostly due to the expansion of women’s influence in public affairs as women in these earlier times were the prime example of bodily health. Women advocated for comfort stations because they would, “relieve individual discomfort, promote health, and encourage personal modesty” (Baldwin, 266).
Sanitation and Public Urinals
The efforts of pushing towards access to public toilets was motivated by concerns of sanitation. “Before indoor plumbing, affluent Americans visited free-standing privies in their backyards, or had servants dump chamber pots there. Poorer people in tenements used communal privies. Some of the poorest had no privies at all and simply emptied slops into the gutter or threw them out the window in the alleyway or street” (Baldwin, 267). Before the private restrooms that we know of today, men and women did their business in view of complete strangers of the same sex. Most buildings in cities lacked facilities forcing people to relieve themselves outdoors (Image: NYC Privy). The filth that this indecency caused on the streets in these cities were enough to introduce the idea of water closets and urinals. However, technology for the water closet has not been perfected yet. Plumbing and sewage systems were their own separate issues. Cities began to expand sewage systems originally made for wastewater and private sanitary facilities were becoming more common in these urban public places.
The Appeal of Private Restrooms
Public restrooms still did not compare to restrooms available in privately owned businesses. Privately owned restrooms emphasized on the class system segregating wealthier people from the poor. These restrooms essentially replicated private home bathrooms and only the richest had access to top notch plumbing. Hotels, railroad stations, and department stores were the most common of spaces to provide this service of better-established restrooms for the upper class. “Department stores divided affluent consumers from the rest. Employees were directed to welcome all visitors and treat them politely, but furnishings in many stores clearly signaled to poor people that they were out of their element” (Baldwin, 272).
‘Outhouse‘ Image: The New York Public Library Digital Collections
This ensured that wealthier women shopping in department stores could shield themselves from encountering the poor while using these public restrooms.
Health and Moral Reform
The standards for hygiene in these urban areas were rising in both public and private spaces. Due to the demand for public restrooms and the shift from horse carriages to automobiles began, these city streets were much cleaner than earlier years (Image: A night soil man). Plumbing was also expanding and was practically universal. “As acceptance of germ theory spread in the 1880s and 1890s, physicians and the middle classes became aware that disease was spread not just by unhealthy environments but also by un- healthy individuals. Linked to the poor by the “socialism of the microbe,” affluent city people felt an even greater interest in universalizing their hygiene practices” (Baldwin, 273). This essential demoralized the poor.
‘A night soil man’ Image: Public Domain
Bibliography
Baldwin, P. C. “Public Privacy: Restrooms in American Cities, 1869-1932.” Journal of Social
History, vol. 48, no. 2, 2014, pp. 264–288., doi:10.1093/jsh/shu073.
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. “Row of outhouses,
laundry and backs of tenement…(1904).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902 – 1914. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-321f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. “Outhouse” The New
York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902 – 1914. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-4c70-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99