User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Massachusetts

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Public toilets in Massachusetts
Example alt text
Harvard Square
Language of toilets
Local wordswashroom
Men's toiletsMen
Women's toiletsWomen
Public toilet statistics
Toilets per 100,000 people??? (2021)
Total toilets??
Public toilet use
TypeWestern style sit toilet
Locations???
Average costfree
Often equipped withtoilet paper
Percent accessible???
Date first modern public toilets???
.

Public toilets in Massachusetts, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of four per 100,000 people. Some public toilets were built for public hygiene reasons. Public pay toilets existed in the 1950s but had all but disappeared by the 1980s. New public toilets began to appear in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 2000s.

The state was the first to pass a law requiring sex-segregated public toilets in the work place. Public toilets have been changed from men to women at MIT. At Harvard University, some men's toilets do not have doors to prevent men from having sex in the stalls.

Public toilets[edit]

washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States.[1] Euphemisms are often used to avoid discussing the purpose of toilets.  Words used include toilet, restroom, bathroom, lavatory and john.[2]

A 2021 study found there were four public toilets per 100,000 people.[3]

History[edit]

The1850 Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts by Lemuel Shattuck said Boston and other areas needed state intervention to expand water and sewage systems, to remove human excrement and in creating a system to collect garbage.[4] There were around 14,000 water closets installed in private residences in Boston by 1864.[4]

A public wrought iron public toilet facility was located at Mercantile and Clinton  in Boston by 1876.  It was fourteen feet by ten feet, contained six sit toilets and four urinals.[4]

Boston was one of the biggest cities by population in the United States in 1900,[5] and a lot of tenement housing in the early 1900s lacks toilet provisions.[6] The Progressive Era saw reformists make a major push to address public hygiene.  As part of this push, they sought to improve the toilet and sanitation in tenement housing in cities across the United States.[6]

As the Prohibition effort began to take more shape in the 1910s, large cities in the Northeast and Midwest had women's groups advocating for the creation of large numbers of comfort stations as a way of discouraging men from entering drinking establishments in search of public toilets. This was successful in many places in getting cities to build comfort stations, but the volume of new public toilets built was rarely enough to meet public needs.[4]

In the 1900s and 1910s, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Toledo, Worcester, Salt Lake City, Providence, Binghamton, Hartford, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Portland and the District of Columbia all built underground public toilets, most located in the city center in the local business district.  The prestige of building underground public comfort stations was so high that some towns and cities who were unable to afford underground public toilets opted for none instead.[7]

Starting in the 1920s, middle and upper-class women living in cities stopped using public toilets, and instead shifted to toilets in facilities like hotels, theaters, train stations and department stores. While these toilets were free to use, the cultural expectation was that they would be exclusively used by clients or people who had purchased tickets. This helped ensure that these facilities were not accessible to working class women.[6]

Boston was one of the largest cities in the United States in 1950,[8] and most cities in the country operated public toilets in that period were pay toilets. The fee to access these toilets was around a nickel or a dime, with the money earned being invested back into toilet maintenance and upkeep.[6] By 1980, coin-operated toilets had almost disappeared from the public landscape.[6]

American Coin Lock Co., Inc operated public toilets in the early 1950s at under contract from railway companies at train stations in New York City in New York, in Hartford, New Haven and New London in Connecticut, in Providence in Rhode Island, in Worcester in Massachusetts, and in Montreal. American Coin Lock Co., Inc operated public toilets in the early 1950s in Boston under contract from the city.[9]

Starting in the early 2000s, Portland, Oregon began a push to put user-friendly stand-alone public toilets on street corners.  They were designed to be vandalism proof.  Their designed proved popular, and the toilets were later installed in other cities including Denver, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Cambridge, Massachusetts.[6]

Sex-segregated toilets[edit]

RefugeRestrooms.org is a website created in 2014 that lists safe and accessible public toilets for transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming people to use around the world.  In July 2016, it did not include any listings for public toilets in New Bedford but did include listings for the Staples in Fairhaven and a Five Guys in Dartmouth.[10]

Women[edit]

The first women's toilets, called women's cottages, did not begin until 1875 when one was built in at Common and Public Garden as part of efforts to modernize women's toilets in the city.[4]

The first state in the United States to require employers to install women's toilets was Massachusetts, who passed a law to that effect in 1887.[11][12][13] The statue was named, An Act to Secure Proper Sanitary Provisions in Factories and Workshops.  It said, "suitable and proper wash-rooms and water-closets shall be provided for females where employed, and the water-closets used by females shell be separate and apart from those used by males."[12]

MIT’s 825 foot long infinite corridor toilets were changed in June 2005 with the one on the east end going from for men to being a women’s toilet. Prior to this, three of the four public toilets in the hall were exclusively for men. The renovations included removing urinals, and replacing them with sinks and additional stalls[14]

Men[edit]

There were men's public urinals on the Common by 1860.  The number of men's public urinals in Boston increased to fifteen by 1873.[4] By 1880, Boston had 22 public urinals.  The major limitation to construction was local opposition to having them in their neighborhoods. Businesses were opposed to public urinals, called P.U., because they created a stench that shop keepers feared would drive away affluent customers.[4] A public urinal was removed from Maverick Square in East Boston after local businesses pressured aldermen to do so.[4]

The men's toilets at Harvard University's Science Center are one of the places with the most foot traffic of its kind on campus. At the same time, it is very unpopular because men do not like the door-less set up that results in the defecating in front of others.  At one point, the facilities had doors but they were removed to prevent homosexual male activity from taking place.[15]

References[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to JustinePorto/Public toilets in Massachusetts.
  1. ^ Hess, Nico (2019-08-04). Introducing Global Englishes. Scientific e-Resources. ISBN 978-1-83947-299-2.
  2. ^ Farb, Peter (2015-08-19). Word Play: What Happens When People Talk. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-97129-1.
  3. ^ QS Supplies (11 October 2021). "Which Cities Have The Most and Fewest Public Toilets?". QS Supplies. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Baldwin, P. C. (2014-12-01). "Public Privacy: Restrooms in American Cities, 1869-1932". Journal of Social History. 48 (2): 264–288. doi:10.1093/jsh/shu073. ISSN 0022-4529.
  5. ^ "Largest US Cities: 1900". demographia.com. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Yuko, Elizabeth (5 November 2021). "Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go?". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
  7. ^ Baldwin, P. C. (2014-12-01). "Public Privacy: Restrooms in American Cities, 1869-1932". Journal of Social History. 48 (2): 264–288. doi:10.1093/jsh/shu073. ISSN 0022-4529.
  8. ^ "Largest US Cities: 1950". demographia.com. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
  9. ^ Board, United States National Labor Relations (1953). Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board. The Board.
  10. ^ Writer, Staff. "Safe restrooms for trans people? There's an app for that". New Bedford Standard-Times. Retrieved 2022-10-31.
  11. ^ FamilyTree.com (26 July 2016). "The History of Public Restrooms". Family Tree. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  12. ^ a b Kogan, Terry S. (2020-12-31), Molotch, Harvey; Noren, Laura (eds.), "7. Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety", Toilet, New York University Press, pp. 145–164, doi:10.18574/nyu/9780814759646.003.0016, ISBN 978-0-8147-5964-6, retrieved 2022-10-23
  13. ^ Mokdad, Allaa (2018). Public Toilets, The Implications In/For Architecture (PDF). Southfield, Michigan: The Lawrence Technological University.
  14. ^ Molotch, Harvey; Noren, Laura, eds. (2020-12-31), "Rest Stop: MIT's Infinite Corridor, Now Shorter for Women", Toilet, New York University Press, pp. 165–166, doi:10.18574/nyu/9780814759646.003.0017, ISBN 978-0-8147-5964-6, retrieved 2022-10-23
  15. ^ Reynolds, Bryan (2010-11-17). Rest Stop. New York University Press. doi:10.18574/nyu/9780814759646.003.0007. ISBN 978-0-8147-5964-6.
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