User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Rhode Island

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

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. A 2021 study found there were ten public toilets per 100,000 people. The cleanest public toilets at a gas station in Rhode Island, according to the GasBuddy, in 2019 were found at Cumberland Farms.

Public toilets are often located in semi-private public accommodations like hotels, stores, restaurants and coffee shops instead of being street level municipal maintained facilities.

History
Providence built public urinals, only able to be used by men, in 1863 at a cost of USD$60 each.

Providence was one 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.

As the Prohibition effort began to take more shape in the 1910s, large cities in the Northeast and Midwest had women's groups advocating for the creation of large numbers of comfort stations as a way of discouraging men from entering drinking establishments in search of public toilets. This was successful in many places in getting cities to build comfort stations, but the volume of new public toilets built was rarely enough to meet public needs.

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.

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.

American Coin Lock Co., Inc operated public toilets in the early 1950s at under contract from railway companies at train stations in New York City in New York, in Hartford, New Haven and New London in Connecticut, in Providence in Rhode Island, in Worcester in Massachusetts, and in Montreal.