Loo, toilet, bathroom, water closet, lavatory, restroom, latrine, privy,
outhouse, john, powder room, comfort station, porta-pottie, outhouse, head…the
names are as varied as the styles and the décor, from the very simple and
utilitarian to the elegant and grandiose.
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| Art-Deco restrooms at an old Gulf filling station in Bedford, PA on our first RV trip to Washington, DC in March of 2012 |
In England, the toilet is called the “loo”. The name derives from the French “guardez l'eau”, which means “watch out for the water”. The British adopted the phrase, but shortened it to the more pronounceable “gardy-loo”. Eventually the toilet itself became simply the “loo”.
For some reason, bathrooms have long fascinated me, and I began taking photos of everything from the simple outhouse that once served the needs of the family that originally homesteaded my parents’ farm to the elegance of a stately hotel built by the British, overlooking Victoria Falls on the Zambizi River in Africa.
The first flush toilets in the U.S. were in hotels. In 1829, the Tremont Hotel in Boston was the first hotel to have indoor plumbing, with eight water closets built by architect Isaiah Rogers. Toilet paper, invented during the 15th century, didn’t become commercially available in the Western world until 1857, when Joseph Gayetty of New York marketed a "Medicated Paper, for the Water-Closet,” sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents.
Even as the current pandemic was unfolding, people began to hoard, of all things, toilet paper, buying it as fast as the stores re-stocked their shelves. Now, with the lockdowns largely over and a return to some sense of normalcy, some stores still limit the purchase of toilet paper. Gone are the days when “TP-ing” someone’s house was a simple practical joke. Now, those rolls are a coveted commodity.
Decades ago, as a college student visiting England, I recall collecting toilet paper samples from the Tower of London and other tourist venues. I was intrigued by the fact that each individual square of paper was embossed with the Royal Seal and the words “Property of Her Majesty, the Queen.”
And that leads us to the corollary topic of this blog. Anthropology is the study of human societies and cultures and their development. Just as scientists have long studied the ancient baths of Greece and Rome, perhaps some future anthropologists will examine our bathrooms in their studies of how we lived.
At any rate, it’s been fun to snap pictures of a variety of “necessary rooms,” from the utilitarian to the elegant. Here, in no particular order, is a sample of my efforts…
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| With my cousin Karen in front of a porta-potty at the Round Top Antique Festival in Round Top, TX |
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| Started in 1874 and completed in 1877, the Fulton Mansion in Rockport, TX had the most up-to-date features at the time, including indoor plumbing |
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| Feature wall of the women's restroom at House on the Rock in Spring Green, WI |
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| This is an original, but no longer in use, outdoor bathroom at the Madison County Historical Society Museum in Winterset, IA - the birthplace of John Wayne (Marion Morrison) and the setting of the novel and movie The Bridges of Madison County |
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| Guys, this is NOT the men's room at McGuire's Irish Pub, Pensacola, FL. This is the women's restroom. (The men's room has a similar sign proclaiming that it is NOT the women's restroom.) |
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| This sign, too, is at McGuire's Pub, but it is in the women's bathroom. I wonder where the rest of the toilets from the San Carlos Hotel went. |
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| At the Bay of Fundy in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia in June 2016 |
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| But what's really interesting about this bathroom is that just outside the door is a display of petrified dinosaur poop. |
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| Porta-potties near the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. during the Cherry Blossom Festival in March 2012, on our inaugural out-of-state RV adventure and the first FROG trip |
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| In May, 2011 we visited Cape May, NJ, which bills itself as "America's Original Seaside Resort". The entire city of Cape May is designated a National Historic Landmark. |
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| This bathroom, including the stunning claw-foot tub, was in the Queen Victoria Bed & Breakfast in Cape May |
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| Cell with two bunks, sink and toilet in the former West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville |
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| Curt Teich & Co. postcard. Teich was an American publisher of German descent who produced popular postcards, primarily of scenes from American life. The postcards pictured in this blog are all from 1940s. |
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| Public restroom at Kingsbrae Gardens, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada (August 2018) |
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| The bathroom of our room at the Camellia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam (January, 2011) |
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| Public bathrooms near the volcanic stone labyrinth of Dimmuborgir in Iceland. Many public bathrooms require payment to get in. This one is very modern, and takes both coins and tickets, dispensed from a machine on the wall (September, 2019) |
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| Here is the ticket to get into the bathroom, complete with QR code, dated September 10. The cost is 200 Icelandic krona (ISK), about $1.46 U.S. |
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| This elephant wandered into our camp in Botswana, Africa in March, 2014, and headed straight toward the bathrooms. Everybody was out taking pictures. The staff said he was a regular visitor |
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| And apparently he really did have to go. Elephants can eat as much as 300 pounds of food per day, and much of it passes un-digested. But the little yellow butterflies like it. |
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| Mrs. Bellingrath's bathroom in the Walter and Bessie Bellingrath home, located in Bellingrath Gardens, Theodore, AL (March 2019) |
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| Bathroom in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, WV. The Asylum operated from 1864 until 1994, and was so much a part of the community that the town's movie theater was in the facility and the local high school held its proms in the asylum's ballroom |
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| Porta-potty on the beach at Port Aransas, TX for Mardi Gras in February 2020. The sign on the side of the porta-potty gives the name of the company that owns it - Texas Throne |
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| Not technically a "bathroom", but the rocks that form the breakwater at the Port Aransas (TX) Municipal Marina are covered with guano from the brown pelicans that frequent the area (January 2020) |
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| When you go to visit Old Blue in the Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee, Alabama, you might have to use the facilities, so they have thoughtfully provided a latrine back behind the grave sites. (May, 2014) |
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| The Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, Canada (June, 2016) |
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| Peeking out of the outhouse at the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Theater, Pigeon Forge, TN (October 2014) |
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| Another Curt Teich & Co. postcard. The company operated from 1898 until 1978. The verse on the card is somewhat reminiscent of the Burma Shave signs, another fixture of early- to mid-20th century travel. |
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| One of our first trips after Mike and I got married in 1984 was to England, and I took this picture... long before dog waste containers became standard in many cities and towns (and every RV park) |
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| Aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier anchored at Corpus Christi, TX. For our son, the head is one deck below; for most civilians, the restrooms are downstairs. |
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| Pay toilet near the "Big White Church" in Reykjavik, Iceland. They must have had the coin mechanism turned off, because if you pushed the button, the door opened. (Sept. 2019) |
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| The interior of the toilet was unbelievably clean, and the whole thing had a "science fiction" look to it. "Beam me up, Scotty" |
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| This picture hangs in our bathroom at home. I bought this painting at a little restaurant called the Eager Beaver in Eldon, MO back during our boating days at Lake of the Ozarks |
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| Another Curt Teich & Co. card. After a visit to Germany in 1904 where he first saw the first "Greetings From..." cards, Teich came home and started producing highly colorful "vacation" themed postcards. |
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| Two students hang out at the door to the bathrooms at a school that we visited in China in 2004. The two signs both say "Restroom for Child Only". |
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| This is at my Dad and Mom's farm. The corrugated tin door at the rear of the shed was once the door to the outhouse. It was long ago filled in and turned into a small closet-like structure to store tools. |
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| This bathroom is under one of the mansions along the cliffs in Newport, RI. It is open to those who take the Cliffwalk Mansion Tour (photo from July 2011) |
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| Our "tent" included an en suite bathroom at Kashawe Camp in Hwange district, Zimbabwe in March, 2014 |
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| More African elephant dung, this time with small mushrooms sprouting up. Once the dung is dry, it is burned in small buckets and the smoke keeps flies and mosquitoes from biting you while on safari |
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| More porta-potties, along with lots of campers on the beach in Port Aransas, TX, during the annual kite festival in February, 2020  We found Iceland to be very modern, but somewhat spartan. China, 2004. This was the women's restroom. You stand over itThis was the bathroom at the Hotel Laugarbakki on the night before we started our journey to the Westfjords  and squat to use it. (No, I'm not using it at the moment.)  Haute Campground. This isn't really an outhouse, but it provides an interesting visual, located next to the dump station  in 1898 by John J. Cruikshank, Jr., who made his fortune in the lumber business. Today it is operated as a bed-and-breakfast.  population of only 7,115 people, so not many roadside amenities. Roadside rest areas are generally porta-potties.  We stopped there because I had to use the restroom (note the W C for water closet on the building), but I found the collection interesting  this one near the harbor in Rockport, TX (Feb. 2020)  Women's bathroom in the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. It was built in 1904, originally to accommodate workers on the Cape- to-Cairo Railway. It is Zimbabwe's oldest and grandest luxury hotel  One of our stops in Iceland had a very modern washroom built very close to the 2010 volcanic lava flow. In this picture you can see the top of the volcano that erupted and shut down air traffic all across Europe  Inside the washroom, looking out toward the sea  Sauk is the highest natural elevation in Missouri. (August 2020)  Curt Teich & Co. employed hundreds of traveling salesmen, who sold picture postcards to domestic residences, and encouraged business to create advertising postcards  the door to a women's restroom in Bisbee, AZ  has been compared to a bridal veil. These brand-new restrooms, near the car park, had just been completed when we were there in Sept. 2019  came upon this ADA-accessible toilet out in the middle of the park. If you look closely, you will also see a red fox in the road.  at Sybill's Restaurant in St. James, MO. This interesting oil painting is hanging in the women's restroom.  and we stopped on a trip south to tour the Raney-Connor- Blackmon-Taylor house, built between 1857 and 1863. The home recently underwent 19 months of restoration.  this outhouse somewhere in rural Wisconsin. I took the picture while they posed, with Karle actually sitting in the still-in-use privy  Co. Historical Society Museum in Winterset, IA. The toilet actually works, but is taped closed to prevent use. I like the antique toilet with the tank mounted high up on the wall. (Oct. 2012)  Skid-O-Can that is ADA accessible. There are wheelchairs with balloon tires that make it possible for wheelchair users to enjoy the beach.  but is no longer used for that - note that the "W C" sign has been X-ed out. It is now the underground punk-rock museum.  Museum Complex" in Branson, MO (July 2019)   at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge at Austwell, Texas (March 2020)  author of The Yearling. She was so proud to have the first flush toilet in the county that she showed it off with flowers that her uncle gave her, during a party at her home.  Each tent had its own en suite bathroom. This "public" restroom was located near the dining room and bar. (March 2014)  to"Key in Delivery" which we kind of thought meant the checkout / front counter area of the snack shop  this "wash room" in Tanzania where you could not only relieve yourself, but you could also buy artwork (March 2008)  smoking. Less obvious: No squatting over the toilets; no cleaning or washing your shoes or boots; no showering. (Was the sign put up beforehand, or only after these practices had taken place?)  found this pair at Dettifoss, reputedly the second-most powerful waterfall in all of Europe, after the Rhine Falls in Switzerland  Restrooms at St. Mary's Primary School in Hwange district, Zimbabwe, Africa (March 2014)  We'll leave you for now, but at some time in the future, we'll be back with more bathroom pictures. In the meantime, we'll share with you the wisdom of the above sign, also from Iceland. Wherever you go in the world, you can always find a restroom, a loo, a W.C., a toilet, a privy. Just, please, don't poop in the stream...and "watch out for the water". We hope that you have stayed well during the pandemic and imagine that, like us, you're ready to get back out and find your own Road Stories. |
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