History of the Bath Tub

History 6 Minutes

Search the web, and you’re sure to read that America’s first bathtub was installed in 1842—December 20, to be exact. It would be nice if such a mercurial vessel had so neat a beginning—even H.L. Mencken, the newspaperman who concocted this hoax as an uplifting wartime news story, would agree. What is true is that no accessory embodies the metamorphosis of bathing equipment (from moveable furniture to plumbed-in-place fixtures) or helps define the use and look of a bathroom in any era as much as the bathtub.

Antebellum Scrubs

Before indoor plumbing, bathtubs—like chamber pots and washbowls—were moveable accessories: large but relatively light containers that bathers pulled out of storage for temporary use. The typical mid-19th-century bathtub was a product of the tinsmith’s craft, a shell of sheet copper or zinc.

“Late 1800’s Zinc and Cast Iron Bath Tub With Oak Trim”

In progressive houses equipped with early water-heating devices, a large bathtub might be site-made of sheet lead and anchored in a coffin-like wooden box.

Later, there were ingenious (though ultimately impractical) hideaway alternatives, like the portable canvas tub (similar to a pot-bellied cot), or the Mosely folding bath tub—an armoire-like contraption with a hinged door that pulled down like a Murphy bed to reveal a bathing saucer.

The Mosely Folding Bath Tub pulled down like a Murphy bed.

However, for decades, the bathtub most Americans knew best was the one available in a 1909 hardware catalog: a tinware plunge bath with wood-covered bottom painted in Japan green (a type of pre-1940 enamel paint).

As running water became more common in the latter 19th century, bathtubs became more prevalent and less portable. Though copper was still used for wood-enclosed tubs as late as the 1910s, it more commonly appeared as a liner for steel-cased tubs, rimmed in oak or cherry, that stood on bronzed iron legs.

This wood-encased period galvanized tin tub is in Astoria, Oregon’s 1885 Flavel House museum.

Cast iron—the all-purpose material of the Victorian era—had been poured into sinks and lavatories since the late 1850s, and by 1867 the famous J.L. Mott Iron Works was finding a ferrous niche in the bathtub market as well.

However, the big catch with all of these conveniences was corrosion. Copper and zinc discolored readily around water and soap, and the seams of sheet metal were hard to keep clean at all. Iron and steel, of course, rusted eventually, even under the most meticulous coat of paint.

Glaze Crusades

A china-like glaze seemed to be the ideal, obvious solution, but producing a vitreous skin on an object the scale of a tub was not so simple. Though cast iron sinks were porcelain enameled, iron bathtubs were a far more complex shape, and when filled with hot water, they could expand more than the coating, risking delamination.

In the 1850s, British artisans cracked the tub-coating code by taking a different tack: all-ceramic tubs with a glazed surface. Because the tubs were both fragile and heavy, they were iffy for export, but the idea found a market on English shores, and by the 1890s, solid porcelain tubs were being fired up by manufacturers like Trenton Potteries.

An ordinary-style tub—sloped at the head, flat and plumbed at the foot—was the most common, and affordable, early porcelain model.

The solid porcelain tub scratched many itches. Besides satisfying the need for a seamless, smooth, washable surface that wouldn’t rust, it provided a continuous, roll-over edge around the perimeter of the basin. Indeed, one of the subtle attractions of the porcelain tub was its sensuous, smooth curves and zaftig proportions. Whether it stood on bulbous ceramic legs or muscular sides that ran to the floor (thereby eliminating unsanitary hidden spaces), the porcelain tub was a study in robust modeling. Ads from the 1910s asked, “Why shouldn’t the bathtub be part of the architecture of the house?”

Seemingly the ultra-modern bathing, solid porcelain had its downside. For one thing, such tubs were dauntingly heavy and equally pricey. In 1909, prices ran from $180 for a 4 1/2′-long model to $255 for a massive 6 1/2-footer—this at a time when a steel-cased footed tub could be had for around $25. Plus, some bathers felt the pottery mass absorbed too much heat from the water, making it expensive to use.

High-Tech Tubs

Drawbacks aside, the solid porcelain tub remained the Cadillac of the bath industry into the 1920s and the hallmark of a high-end bathroom. Indeed, before 1910, bathrooms in and of themselves were often status symbols. In an era when houses with running water and waste piping were new and modern, a single bathroom with lavatory, flushing toilet, and fixed tub was a sign of progressive thinking and an essential step in the march toward better hygiene. What’s more, the bathrooms of the wealthy were not so much places of daily cleanup and dressing, but therapeutic laboratories akin to personal spas. The shower we now associate with a daily spritz was frequently a stand-alone cage of multiple sprays designed for skin or kidney stimulation, while tubs were dispersed around the room for soaking one or more parts of the body.

Roman tubs with nearly vertical, sloping round ends were thought to look more balanced and elegant in bathrooms, and usually came with faucets mounted on a long side.

As multiple-fixture, high-tech bathrooms started to evaporate after World War I (along with the large houses that made them possible), the new paradigm for up-to-date ablution became the porcelain-enameled, cast-iron, footed tub—the ubiquitous clawfoot type still at work for thousands of bathers today.

The Cast-Iron Tub

The J.L. Mott Iron Works was among the first to solve the porcelain-on-iron puzzle in the late 1880s with better techniques for preparing the iron and firing the coating, and when production improvements reduced costs in the 1920s, the cast-iron tub soon took over the bathroom. The typical tub style was the ordinary, a round-bottomed trough with a sloping head and a vertical foot holding water inlets and outlets. The other common style was the Roman, with flat sides and bottom, and identical (nearly vertical) sloping, rounded ends.

Antique Cast Iron Tub

Fancy, upscale lavatories could include both a sitz (at left) and foot bath (at right) to complement the bathtub and state-of-the-art ribcage shower, per a 1912 Standard Sanitary catalog.

The Built-In Tub

For a new century increasingly on the alert for germs, the only thing better than a tiled-in recess tub was one shipped this way straight from the factory. Casting one-piece tubs with a rim that extended down to the floor in an apron wasn’t easy, but by 1911, the Kohler Company, followed swiftly by its competitors, introduced the built-in tub—still a bathroom standard today. Made with one enclosed side (or one side and an end), the built-in tub was not only efficient in its own right, but as a 5′-long model that spanned the walls of the typical 5′ square bathroom, it became the cornerstone of the modern, functional Jazz Age bathroom trinity: wall-hung lavatory, water closet, and tub-and-shower combo.

Color Craze

Like Henry Ford, who promised auto buyers any color they wanted so long as it was black, sanitary ware manufacturers were at first color-blind to anything but white. White was not only the color of sanitation, making it easy to spot grime and therefore clean, it was also the optimal color to produce reliably from item to item.

Just like with the auto industry, however, all that began to change in the late 1920s. Once the bathroom reached a plateau as an efficient, hygienic cleansing hospital, it began to be viewed as a vehicle for design and household beauty, and around 1929, color came into the bathroom in a big way.

This inviting bathroom suite, featuring tan vitrolite walls and colorful Spring Green fixtures—including a separate, petite dental sink—appeared in a 1939 Kohler brochure.

Pigmenting the vitreous finish in fixtures—at first in light pastels, then in deeper hues like royal blue, Ming green, and Chinese red—brought color to the bathroom in solid swaths far more dramatic and permanent than any paint or tile.

Always key bathroom players by dint of their sheer size and function, bathtubs became ever more pivotal when they moved away from white. As color put a design spin on fixtures in the 1930s and ’40s, they began to look—once again—like furniture, with lavatories resembling tables and toilets approximating chairs. In this light, tubs might stand in for beds, especially when detailed with the rectangular outlines popular in the Art Moderne era and in velvety colors of rich maroon or black. It was a long way from the tin tub that had been hauled out of a closet only a generation or two before.

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Published by NebraskaFilly

Army veteran (1976-1979), retired with entirely too much time on my hands

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209 thoughts on “History of the Bath Tub”

  1. Holy shit!!!! I was getting another cup of coffee and heard the wind come up. By the time I could get shoes and my rain slicker on, it was blowing like crazy!! I ran out to get the feeders – my rigged up feeder has to be redone – and I managed to grab all of them. It did, indeed, almost blow me over and, in fact, as I was coming back into the patio, the door hit me and knocked me down – inside the patio, thankfully. But I’m ok – no injuries except a cut lip. Man, that’s the worst wind I’ve ever had here!!! Satellite is out, of course, but no interruption to my internet. I figured it would be off-line when I finally got dried out and changed – pants and socks were soaked – nope, still up!

    Liked by 1 person

      2. O/T but…..Tiger is giggling at my Egyptian stories – yet another one to tell me I need to write a book. She said she was laughing hysterically about my story about HB taking the Egyptians out drinking. WHERE ARE MY EGYPTIANS??!!??

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    2. OK – wind has died down, thankfully. Just as it started to die, here came the Orioles – seriously, guys??!!?? So, of course, I refilled the small feeder and put it back out. Sheesh!

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  3. for the love of mike…we have a baby formula shortage and guess what? bill gates has a start up company that manufactures FAKE breast milk…what the hell is in THAT i wonder…

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  5. And now we’re back to no wind, clearing skies and nice, cool temps – 71 now. I’m waiting, tho, to put the other feeders back out!!!! Jake is such a pansy! I’ve got the patio doors open and he desperately wants to go look for that mouse but – ewwwww! Wet patio!!! Squatting on the rug, looking longingly in that direction.

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  6. Pat, Tiger’s another spitfire! What a hoot!!!! One of her comments when she said I was “a character.” She worked the 7 pm to 7 am shift at the hospital in Iraq.

    “When I told a group of Arabic men who had wondered up to my floors at he hospital to halt, put their hands in the air, because we were told we were on Red Alert for terrorist activity, we took everyone from downrange in all the wars, including contractors , civilians you name it, so always threatened, they did.

    As soon as I said it i thought you idiot, you don’t have a gun, nobody here but you and there are three Arabic men in black leather coats with guns , about that time the colonel stepped out of the OR, saw the men and took over. Every time these guys saw me on base they would honk and wave from the limo, they were the body guards for a certain important patient. They never forgot me and just showered me with praises.

    Another reason people thought me mysterious. After that event though we had better security and we needed it because things were getting hot and heavy. News people sneaking in. putting on dirty scrubs to get pictures of our wounded, it was a mess for awhile.”

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    1. Here you go: “I have some funny stories from the wars, I worked the 7P to 7A shift. So I got all the cases that you had to sign the papers saying you would never talk about the patient. You know the old say anything and you will be pushing up daisies. Nobody wanted to work with me. But I considered it a real privilege to be entrusted with this kind of patient. The sergeant who worked with me didn’t see it that way , I think he got an ulcer from all the worrying.

      Lots of generals in the Surge went right into battle with the men. One had a very odd injury I just cannot talk about. The old line of soldiers loving nurses is a fact. They tend to remember those that were there taking care of them during the critical times. As time past this particular general took to having a wee bit too much to drink during his recovery period and would show up outside my accommodations at wee hours of the AM, honking the horn and giving me a shout out and a toast. Nobody could understand what was going on and it put me in a position because I could not explain.

      I got a kick out of it. I was considered mysterious when I really was not.”

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      1. too funny!!!
        she probably wouldn’t find our little blog serious enough, but invite her if you wish to come and read and share if she wants

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        1. Yeah, but I don’t want to post the blog on the BB comment thread – who knows who we might end up with! IDK how to contact her privately – I am hoping at some point we can “get together” out of the public eye, you know?

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            1. I think I’ll wait a bit; hopefully, as we continue interacting, we’ll figure out a way to get an e-mail address. I can post mine and then delete it as soon as she’s got it – that’s what I did with Burnel.

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  7. EXCERPT: “The pro-baby-slaughtering protests, chanting, and screaming outside the homes of six Supreme Court justices violate federal law, and Joe Biden’s attorney general refuses to enforce that law.
    —————–
    Now, it is a perfectly valid position to oppose this law, to see it as a violation of the First Amendment, to believe it is unconstitutional. As long as the protests are peaceful, why should We the People be restricted in our protests? It’s also possible that the ban on protesting near courthouses is unconstitutional, but that the ban on protesting near someone’s house in a residential neighborhood is constitutional. The Supreme Court has upheld many restrictions on the time, place, or manner of speech.

    What’s more, what is wrong with trying to influence a judge’s ruling? But that’s not the point here…

    The point is that the law is the law is the law, and it is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s sworn duty to uphold federal law, and he is not doing that. Why? Well, does anyone doubt that Garland and the lawless White House that appointed him would like nothing more than to see the endless and demonic slaughter of innocent, unborn children continue? Garland is pro-abortion. That’s why he’s not enforcing the law. This has nothing to do with principle. If it were pro-life protesters out there, you can bet Garland would have already rounded them up and thrown away the key.

    Once again, it is plain to see that in this country, there is one law for people on the left and another for people on the right. Nevertheless, according to the Constitution, the legislature writes the laws. The executive branch, which Garland is part of, enforces that law. Period. End of story. By not enforcing the law, Garland is violating his constitutional oath. It’s not up to him to decide which laws he will and won’t enforce. He is also setting a terrible precedent by allowing this brazen lawbreaking to continue. What’s to stop future attorneys general from doing the same?

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/11/nolte-ag-merrick-garland-refuses-enforce-laws-protecting-scotus/

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    1. Someone commented that he is also jealous of the conservative Justices since he feels it was stolen from him by the GOP. At the same time, he may have been even worse than the idiot they just confirmed – I’d wager he’s a lot smarter than she is.

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    2. exactly.
      as citizens we cannot pick and choose which laws we will follow and which we won’t…and as a member of the executive branch he can’t either

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  8. codifying abortion into law fails 49 to 51.
    manchin votes with repubs

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  9. EXCERPT: “Republican legislators helped ordinary Americans by killing two of three pro-migration plans in the Democrats’ bill to deliver $17 billion in weaponry to Ukraine.

    In closed-door talks, GOP legislators blocked plans to award green cards to many Russian college graduates and roughly 40,000 Afghans — and eventually, to their families. Their arrival would help investors and employers but would deflate ordinary Americans’ wages and inflate their housing costs. But there is bad news for Americans — the GOP did not block funding for the movement of many Ukrainian migrants into the United States.

    The Ukrainians are entering via the parole side door in the border that is being forced open by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas. The funding support covers all Ukrainians admitted until September 2023.

    “I don’t see any limits whatsoever” on the numbers, said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers. “They won’t get a pathway to citizenship yet, but just wait, that will happen,” Lynn added. Migrants can get green cards via marriage or by asking for “Adjustment of Status,” he said. “The better strategy [for Ukraine] is to force the peace process — something this administration doesn’t seem to want to do,” he said.

    At least 19,000 Ukrainians have applied to enter the U.S. via the parole side door, and at least 6,000 have been approved, according to a May 9 report by Bloomberg news. “They’re dusting off the same playbook from Afghanistan where taxpayers were put on the hook to pay for the resettlement of otherwise ineligible foreign nationals,” said Robert Law, the regulatory chief at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Not only are they circumventing our immigration laws [with the parole side door], but American taxpayers have to pay for it too,” he added.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/05/11/ukraine-weapons-bill-oks-more-migration/

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          1. Wellllll……that would require only rich people in Congress……but they definitely shouldn’t get a lifetime pension, that’s for darned sure! And eliminate all the fricking perks – there is a LOT of that! Eliminate the Executive Service and all those people who supposedly can’t be fired. No public employees’ union, too. IMO, what needs to be done is to find a way to get $$$ out of politics to remove the incentives. This seeking out donations to finance a run for office is one of the biggest factors in corruption.

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  16. Good news – a/c popped right on! Yeah! I didn’t need it this morning even tho it was up to 81 because it was cloudy. I sure wish I hadn’t gone with black shingles!!!!

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