User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Pennsylvania

Public toilets in Pennsylvania, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of six per 100,000 people. 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
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 were six public toilets per 100,000 people.

History
Railway stations began building big terminals in the 1870s, 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. Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broad Street in Philadelphia described in their 1887 guide to their facilities, "The ladies' waiting room is a magnificent apartment, having tall, Gothic-arched windows, set with ornamental glass, a hardwood paneled ceiling, and a great, cheery, open fire place, ornamented with tiles. [...]  It is very comfortably furnished with settees and easy-chairs and rugs."

Department stores, catering to a large female client base, started building women's public toilets for their customers by the late 1800s. One department store in Philadelphia estimated that 85% of its customers were women in 1890.

Pittsburg and Philadelphia were some of the biggest cities by population in the United States in 1900. 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.

Wilkes-Barre considered replacing the stall doors with smaller ones in men's public toilets in 1914 because of the level of theft and vandalism that took place in them; smaller doors would allow staff to see inside.

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.

Allentown, Atlanta, Detroit, Jackson, Lansing, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Francisco all began construction of public toilets in response to the passage of the 18th amendment and the resulting closure of public toilets in saloons.

The Commissioner of Public Health in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was allowed to post public notices in all public toilets in the state in 1920 warning of the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and offer free treatment to fight them.

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.

Philadelphia and  Pittsburg were some 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. After Philadelphia tried to bring public pay toilets to the city paid for by JC Decaux through advertising fees, there was backlash because this was not a model for public toilets people in the city approved of in the 2000s.

A New York Times reporter joking advised Republican National Convention delegees in 2004 to use the toilets at McDonalds if they had to go because the city had so few public ones that all the locals used Starbucks toilets. Starbucks nominally support this idea that New Yorkers and in other places in the US should use their toilets because they earned money from people coming into their stores for that purpose as people often bought drinks after using the toilet. Starbucks codified their policy of allowing non-customers to use their toilets following an incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks in 2018 when two black men were arrested in the store while waiting for a friend after one of the men asked to use the toilet and an employee responded by calling the cops. Starbucks’ interim CEO Howard Schultz said in June 2022 that the company was considering limiting public toilet access across their United States stores, citing the increasing problems of dealing with people with mental health issues using them who can in turn pose a risk for Starbucks staff and Starbucks customers.

Upper Perkiomen Middle School has had urinals in stalls of the women and girl's toilets since fall of 2019. This was partly in response to repeated lawsuits from transgender students who demanded access to toilets that matched with their gender identity instead of their sex.