& Dock Street
P.O. Box 496
Yonkers, NY 10702
(914) 965-4027
By the middle of the twentieth century, bath houses had lost most of their clientele since improved housing legislation and the increased affluence of American society made the private bathroom, rather than a system of municipal baths, the norm throughout the nation. Responding to these socio–economic changes, the baths’ program shifted from simply providing sanitary facilities to the urban poor, to exclusive recreational uses. Yonkers’ Bath House #1, located in the Jefferson–Riverdale urban renewal area, was demolished by the city in March of 1962 to make way for state sponsored housing. In September of the same year, Bath House #2 on Vineyard Avenue was closed as “it was no longer economically justifiable to continue the operation”18 Subsequent to its closing, the building was purchased from the city by a religious group which now utilizes the structure as a church. Bath Houses #3 and #4 on Yonkers Avenue and Linden Street both underwent a series of renovations entailing the modernization of their interiors and are now maintained by the Yonkers Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation as municipal swimming pools. Despite these alterations, together these three extant structures illustrate changing conceptions concerning public welfare as well as the evolution of a specific building type over a twenty–seven year period. As representative examples of a quickly vanishing building type and reminders of the Progressive Era’s contribution to the reshaping of the industrial city, Bath Houses #2, #3, and &035;4 were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Footnotes
1Dr. George H. Robe. “Recent Advances in Preventive Medicine,” an address delivered to the American Medical Association in Chicago in 1897 and quoted in William Paul Gerhard’s On Bathing and Different Forms of Baths (New York, 1895), pp.16–17.
2For the complete text see The Yonkers Gazette, August 29, 1891.
3Report on Free Bathing Facilities (Boston: City Document Number 102, 1866) and A. B. Stout, Report on Abattoirs and Public Baths (Sacramento, Ca., 1879).
4Harvey F. Fiske, The Introduction of Public Rain Baths in America: A Historical Sketch (undated pamphlet in the Research Division of the New York Public Library).
5John Paton. Public Baths (1893), p. 11.
6Fiske, pp.5–7.
7Fiske, p. 1.
8Fiske.
9Gerhard, p.21.
10Marilyn Thornton Williams, The Municipal Bath Movement in the United States, 1890–1915 (unpublished doctoral dissertation for New York University. 1974).
11See letter dated February 4, 1896 in The People’s Baths, 9 Centre Market Place, New York City. A Study on Public Baths (reprint from AICP Notes #2, 1896).
12Fiske, p.3.
13Yonkers Board of Trade. Yonkers Illustrated (Yonkers, 1902?), p.7.
14Civic Club of Allegheny County, Report of Boards of Managers of Bath Houses (Pittsburgh, May 1, 1899).
15Gerhard, p.19.
16Fiske, pp.8–9.
17Joan E. Draper, “Country Clubs for the Poor: Chicago’s Small Parks of 1903” (unpublished paper presented at the thirty–fifth annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, New Haven, 1982).
18Public Works Commissioner Albert T. Noonan quoted in “Bathhouses Too Costly and Used By Too Few, So City Shuts Another,” Yonkers Herald Statesman, September 29, 1962.
Notes on Contributors
Michael P. Rebic is Architectural Preservation Consultant with the Yonkers Planning Bureau. Currently a candidate for a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Mr. Rebic is author of Landmarks Lost & Found: An Introduction to the Architecture and History of Yonkers, soon to be published by the Yonkers Planning Bureau.
[This article has been republished in electronic form from The Westchester Historian, Quarterly of the Westchester County Historical Society; vol. 62, Fall 1986, number 4.]
