User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Louisiana

Public toilets in Louisiana, commonly called washrooms, with around one public toilet per 100,000 people, one of the lowest rates in the country. Some were built as part of reformist efforts to improve public hygiene. Pay toilets were installed in the 1950s but were almost entirely gone by the 1980s. Public toilets also played a role in racial segregation.

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

A 2021 study found there was one public toilet per 100,000 people, one of the lowest rates in the country.

History
Railway stations began building big terminals in the 187s, 1880s and 1890s. One of their features were big public toilet facilities. Train station designer Walter G. Berg said in his 1893 that public toilet facilities should be used to keep undesirable elements out. In the South, this included colored people.

New Orleans was one of the biggest cities by population in the United States in 1900. A lot of tenement housing in the early 1900s lacks toilet provisions. 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.

The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission was founded in 1909 to combat hookworm disease in the South. A survey was done of eleven southern states, which confirmed the presence of hookworm in 700 countries. A chief cause of spread of hookworm disease as open defecation in farmland. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission program helped install public toilets and promote their use as part of their efforts to reduce hookworm disease. This was coupled with offering free exams and health treatment for hookworm disease.

Because Prohibition saw an increase in the construction of public toilets to address the new found demand, many municipalities located outside the South built sex-segregated public toilets that were essentially the same construction inside, with the same number of stalls and layout for each. In the South, public toilet facilities tended to have four toilet sections that reinforced racial segregation, one for white women, one for white men, one for colored men and one for colored women.

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.

There was a push back against building public toilets in Jim Crow states during the period between 1865 and 1960, because it meant that local governments were not just required to build two toilets, one for men and one for women, but four toilets, one each for men and women who were white and who were colored. Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s.

New Orleans was one of the largest cities in the United States in 1950. Most cities in the United States operated public pay toilets during this period. 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. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, public pay toilets were viewed by feminist activists as sexist because public urinals were free but public sit style toilets were not. The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, more commonly known as CEPTIA, tried to change this by getting municipals on public pay toilets. By 1980, coin-operated toilets had almost disappeared from the public landscape.

The website AirPnP was running by 2014, allowing people to rent out their toilets for use. One of the cities with the most users was New Orleans.