Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Iowa State University Capstones, Theses andDissertations

1992

All the modern conveniences: American householdplumbing, 1840-1870Maureen OgleIowa State University

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All the modern conveniences: American household plumbing, 1840-1870

Ogle, Maureen, Ph.D.

Iowa State University, 1992

Copyright ©1992 by Ogle, Maureen. All rights reserved.

U M I 300N.ZeebRd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106

All the modern conveniences:

American household plumbing, 1840-1870

by

Maureen Ogle

A Dissertation Submitted to the

Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY

Department; History Major; History of Technology and Science

Approved:

Met

In Charge of Major Work

For the #ajor Department

For ythé Graduate College

Iowa State University Ames, Iowa

1992

Copyright ©Maureen Ogle, 1992. All rights reserved.

Signature was redacted for privacy.

Signature was redacted for privacy.

Signature was redacted for privacy.

Signature was redacted for privacy.

il

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ill

PREFACE V

CHAPTER 1 DOMESTIC REFORM AND THE IDEA OF CONVENIENCE 1

CHAPTER 2 THE LIMITS OF CONVENIENCE 40

CHAPTER 3 CONSTRUCTING HOUSEHOLD WATER SUPPLY 93 AND DRAINAGE SYSTEMS

CHAPTER 4 HOUSEHOLD WATER FIXTURES IN FORM AND 137 FUNCTION; SINKS, TUBS, BASINS, SHOWERS, FAUCETS, AND BOILERS

CHAPTER 5 HOUSEHOLD WATER FIXTURES IN FORM AND 183 FUNCTION: WATER CLOSETS

CHAPTER 6 EPILOGUE 226

BIBILOGRAPHY 242

ill

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was funded in part by a Garst Company

Research Fellowship, awarded to me by the Iowa State University Depart­

ment of History, and by a National Science Foundation Dissertation

Research Grant that enabled me to conduct research in Washington, D. C.

and Boston. At the Library of Congress the wonderful staff answered

many questions, helped locate documents, and best of all, gave me

permission to go into the stacks alone. At Harvard's Frances Countway

Library of Medicine, I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of

Edith Kimball, Miriam Allgood, and John Krynick. They took time out of

their already overburdened schedules to talk with me about this project,

escort me to the treasure-laden basement, and search through the stacks

for things that I could use. Their generosity and good will is still

fresh in my mind. In Boston I also spent several days studying

architectural drawings and building contracts at the Society for the

Preservation of New England Antiquities where I quickly came to

appreciate archivist Lorna Condon's energy and competence.

The research for this project could not have been undertaken

without the assistance of the Interlibrary Loan Department of Parks

Library at Iowa State. I ordered approximately five hundred documents

from ILL; every request was met with friendly courtesy, and processed

with speed, efficiency, and good humor. I especially thank Tracy Rus­

sell, Kathryn Patton, Katie Lively, and Mary Jane Thune, as well as all

the part-time student employees who smiled rather than groaned when I

came through the door.

Andrejs Plakans, Robert E. Schofield, George McJimsey, and Alan

Marcus from the History Department, and Robert Hollinger from the

Philosophy Department served on my dissertation committee. I thank them

for creating an atmosphere in which I was simply allowed to get on with

my work, which was, after all, what I was supposed to be doing; I salute

their wisdom in realizing that fact. Professors Schofield and McJimsey

in particular gave me tremendous moral support and encouragement at a

critical moment; I can never thank them enough. If this dissertation

has any merit whatsoever it is due to their input. As scholars their

work is exemplary; as gentlemen they are of the highest rank.

In the History Department the good humor and good will of

Carole Kennedy (the department's indefatigable secretary), Erik Manthey,

Valerie Grimm, Anne Effland, Judith Lopez, Ron Paulsen, Bill Hubbard,

Anne Slakey, Gail Evans, and Laura Sander helped make life as a graduate

student more bearable. From the beginning, one of my colleagues in par­

ticular expressed interest in this project. Judy Fabry did what any

interested and curious person does: she asked questions, lots of them,

most of which either forced me to clarify my explanations or led me to

think about issues I might not otherwise have considered. Finally, I

thank my best friend Bill Robinson for his companionship, encouragement,

and support, without which this wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

V

PREFACE

Getting beneath the surface of an historically obsolete tech­

nology and into an understanding of the way people used it is always

difficult: often the object itself—its nuts and bolts, levers and

cranks—no longer exists, at least not in the form in which people

originally used it. Without physical evidence, historians have a hard

time determining exactly how well or how poorly an object worked, what

the relationship was of one part to another and the whole to some other

object, and most importantly, what use people actually made of the

object day in and day out. Mid-nineteenth century American plumbing

fixtures are a case in point. The objects themselves, mundane then and

humor-provoking now, are almost nonexistent; as people abandoned wells

and cisterns in favor of late century municipal water systems, and

replaced pan and hopper closets with washdown and syphon toilets, the

tangible record of the old technology largely disappeared. And because

plumbing is the stuff of which the mundane is made, no archive exists to

preserve its memory; no one captured on film the remains of a rapidly

disappearing era of household sanitation, the way they might think to

capture a battlefield, inaugural ceremony, or famous politician. Maga­

zines, trade catalogs, and architectural sketch books can provide much

information about water fixtures' form and use, but even if a water

closet or sink used in 1850 looked somewhat like one used in 1900, that

resemblance was limited to form only. In both form and function, as

vi

well as in its legal and cultural setting, mid-century plumbing differed

markedly from that used at century's end.

Little scholarly or historical attention has been paid to this

ubiquitous American technology. Typically historians have been most

interested in late nineteenth and early twentieth century plumbing,

reasoning that the historically significant moment in plumbing history

occurred when most American cities had municipal water and sewer

systems, and when low-cost porcelain fixtures and the modern flush

toilet appeared on the scene. Their reasons for defining that particu­

lar moment, which occurred in the 1880s and 1890s, as primary are

twofold. First, historians have assumed that the use of plumbing

requires an external system of sewer and water conduits, and so plumbing

could become widespread only after most cities had built the appropriate

infrastructure.! Second, some historians believe plumbing's real his­

tory began when all the people, not just the wealthy, could afford to

use it, a moment that occurred when low-cost porcelain fixtures and the

flush toilet appeared.2 At that point American plumbing assumed its

"modern" form which, for all intents and purposes, has remained

unchanged; thus, those seeking the "roots" of modern plumbing find it at

the tail end of the nineteenth century.

But looking at plumbing only at that moment, when it became

"democratized," as Daniel Boorstin has described it, means missing out

on about fifty years of American plumbing history and making it diffi­

cult if not impossible to understand how earlier plumbing differed from

later.3 For example, late-nineteenth century Americans regarded plumb­

ing as a necessity for both comfort and health. But the tens of thou­

sands of mid-nineteenth century Americans who used plumbing did not

share that attitude, nor did they expect to find plumbing in every home.

Indeed, the very fact, as some historians have pointed out, that mid-

century Americans connected its use to "class," rather than to concerns

about private and public health and sanitation, provides a tantalizing

historical puzzle.4 Moreover, as suggested above, beginning in the

1870s the American attitude toward plumbing underwent a profound trans­

formation that had significant consequences. This new attitude prompted

the universal adoption of plumbing and in a form that more or less

resembles what is still being used today. Americans came to see

"sanitary ware" as a household necessity for good health and hygiene;

this attitude created a consumer demand, from which followed the

appearance of low cost fixtures and installation in homes of every

income level.® But it seems reasonable to ponder the plumbing and

plumbing use that preceded that moment of transition. If people adopted

a new attitude toward plumbing in the 1870s, what was the old one? More

importantly, how had the earlier attitude shaped both the technology and

people's use of it, and what does that view say about American society

at the time? Put another way, what has been treated as the important

starting point for plumbing history, the late nineteenth century, is

regarded here as the aftermath of a thirty year period during which a

large and diverse group of Americans began to experiment with plumbing

as part of domestic life. This study examines only briefly the moment

of transition, and instead focuses on household plumbing used between

1840 and 1870, the decades during which many Americans introduced all

the modern conveniences into their homes for the first time.

viii

Endnotes

^Historians usually claim that Americans adopted water fixtures after the construction of municipal water works. See for example Ruth Scwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 13, 86-87; May N. Stone, "The Plumbing Paradox: American Attitudes Toward Late Nineteenth Century Domestic Sanitary Arrangements," Winterthur Portfolio 14 (1979): 285; Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 90; Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 686 (page references are to reprint edition); Joel Arthur Tarr and Francis Clay McMichael, "The Evolution of Wastewater Technology and the Development of State Regula­tion: A Retrospective Analysis," in Retrospective Technology Assessment-1976, ed. Joel A. Tarr (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1977), 169. Giedion's remarks are addressed toward the subject of plumbing in gen­eral, the history of which he regards as universal rather than national.

Daniel Boorstin has made a somewhat different argument: he claims that "running water could not become a universal convenience until there were municipal systems of sewage disposal .... As sewage systems matched water systems, there grew up a large market for plumbing fixtures." See Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Expe­rience (New York: Random House, 1973), 351, 352.

^See especially Strasser, Never Done, 86; Stone, "Plumbing Paradox," 285; Cowan, More Work for Mother, 87, 173.

^Boorstin, The Democratic Experience, 353.

4see Elizabeth Mickle Bacon, "The Growth of Household Con­veniences in the United States From 1865-1900," (Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe College, 1942), 32-33; Strasser, Never Done, 86, ff.; Stone, "Plumbing Paradox," 285.

^An especially cogent and articulate account of this change is in Nancy Tomes, "The Private Side of Public Health: Sanitary Science, Domestic Hygiene, and the Germ Theory, 1870-1900," Bulletin of the His­tory of Medicine 64 (1990): 509-39.

1

CHAPTER 1

DOMESTIC REFORM AND THE IDEA OF CONVENIENCE

The 1840s and 1850s marked a period of great excitement in the

United States. Immigrants flooded the nation's harbors, migrants poured

across the plains to the far west, the issue of slavery commanded

national attention, reform movements competed for adherents, and cities

grew apace. These events had such far-reaching historical consequences,

that it is easy to overlook other ripples in the nation's social and

cultural fabric. The antebellum decades also marked a period of change

in American domestic life, which in turn prompted the appearance of

plumbing in the American home.

Plumbing in Mid-Nineteenth Centurv America

Prior to about 1840 Americans showed little interest in

installing permanent plumbing fixtures and piped water in their homes,

and the many builders' manuals published during the first forty years of

the century rarely included information for plumbers or about plumbing.1

There is even some evidence that people approached water-based tech­

nologies with trepidation.2 Until the 1840s the federal government

issued few plumbing-related patents, which suggests that Americans had

little interest in either modifying or improving upon the kinds of fix­

tures already available; people interested in experimenting with water

fixtures apparently used common cisterns and hand pumps, portable wash­

basins and tubs, and the many mechanical water closets patented in Great

2

Britain or Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries.3 Of course some wealthy households boasted piped water,

permanent bathing tubs, and water closets. By the early 1830s, for

example, the White House had water closets, shower baths of some sort,

and piped spring water in the kitchen area.* But those cases seem to

have been rare, and few people owned private baths and showers attached

to running water. Early nineteenth century Philadelphians, for

instance, who had access to the nation's best water works, seldom used

their piped water to supply plumbing fixtures; according to one source,

the first household tub with plumbing appeared in that city almost

twenty-five years after the water works opened.^ Instead, the most con­

spicuous and copious displays of plumbing technology appeared in hotels,

rather than private homes.®

Beginning in the 1840s, however, Americans began to express a

definite and widespread interest in this technology as discussions of

plumbing and plumbing fixtures began to appear in magazines and books,

and running water and water fixtures entered the private home. One

indicator of change is that virtually all of the many mid-century

architectural "style" or plan books, which also made their first

appearance in the early 1840s, included discussions of plumbing.? The

books' authors compiled house plans and elevations and wrote lengthy

essays on architectural principles in an effort to provide Americans

with the knowledge necessary to create quality homes. Style books

offered the reader guidance in choosing the appropriate dwelling style,

size, and internal arrangement for his or her needs, and made sugges­

tions on architectural aesthetics. But many of these manuals also con­

tained discussions, albeit of varying length and detail, on how to

3

install and use water fixtures. They also included numerous house plans

with plumbing, and described the plumbing fixtures and installations

found in houses that had already been built. Housekeeping manuals and

many periodicals also began devoting space to the subject of plumbing.®

The appearance of plumbing in print paralleled the appearance

of plumbing in the home. By the early 1850s the number of water fix­

tures found in private homes ran into the tens of thousands, and by 1870

the quantity had risen considerably, a trend clearly documented by

annual reports issued by municipal water boards.9 In 1847, for example,

Philadelphians used an estimated 3,521 private baths.In 1853 the

water registrar for Boston's Cochituate Water Board reported that

customers were using over twenty-seven thousand plumbing fixtures,

including sinks, wash basins, water closets, and showers; by 1870 that

number had risen to more than 124,000.11 gy the mid-1850s, customers of

the Croton Aqueduct in New York were using 1,361 baths and 10,384 water

closets.12 Almost twenty thousand water closets were in use in New York

and Boston alone by about 1860.13 During 1861 Baltimore's 16,421

residential water customers purchased water for use in 2,644 baths and

820 water closets. A year later that city's water registrar estimated

that in the calendar year 1863 the Board would collect rents on 3,604

baths and 1,260 water closets; in 1871 he announced that the city

expected revenues on 5,486 bathing tubs and 2,596 w. c.'s for calendar

year 1872.14 By the mid-1870s in Buffalo, New York, a city with a popu­

lation of about 117,000, water takers employed over thirty-three hundred

water closets.15 Nor was plumbing use limited to the citizens of the

nation's largest cities. Across the river from Boston, by the end of

1871 Cambridge water takers were using water in 8,222 faucets and

4

slightly more than eighty-eight hundred other fixtures, including tubs,

slop and water closets, and wash basins.An 1876 survey in Savannah,

Georgia, revealed that the city's approximately 30,000 residents owned a

total of 1,759 water closets.

These numbers pale when compared to the millions of fixtures

that would be in use by the early twentieth century, and they seem small

when compared both to total populations and to the total number of water

customers in any given city; nonetheless, the numbers indicate a

widespread interest in water fixtures during the middle of the century.

For example, in 1861, when Baltimore residents used 2,644 baths and 820

water closets, the total number of residential water customers stood at

16,421 (at six people per house that totals slightly under half the

total city population of 210,000), meaning that about a fifth of them

used baths and closets. By 1871 the population had risen slightly, to

just over 267,000, but the number of residential customers had climbed

to 26,324 (more than half the population received water), and water

closets and tubs in use stood at 8,032: about a third of Baltimore water

takers had access to a closet or tub.^® In 1853, as the city's popula­

tion neared 140,000, Boston's Water Board supplied water to over fifteen

thousand buildings (mostly houses); these customers owned just under

twenty-five hundred water closets. By 1870 the city's population had

risen to slightly over 250,000 and Bostonians had installed over twenty-

five thousand water closets. The Board supplied about thirty-thousand

public and private buildings, including houses (22,846), banks, shops,

and the like; these figures indicate not only that a majority of water

takers were using w. c.'s, but also document a relatively rapid increase

in the use of this technology.19 Similarly, by the mid-1870s in Buf­

5

falo. New York, when that city's population topped one hundred thousand,

city water flowed to just over five thousand houses, thirty-three hun­

dred of which had water closets.^0 Plumbing may not have been "demo­

cratic," but beginning in the 1840s a significant segment of the popula­

tion had made the decision to use it. The question, of course, is why?

Why this apparently sudden interest in plumbing, and why at that partic­

ular time? What prompted Americans to begin writing about and using

plumbing during the 1840s?

The water works data reported above suggest a possible explana­

tion. In the early part of the century a few municipalities, often

aided by local entrepreneurs, built water works primarily as a way to

protect property owners from fire and as a way to aid commerce and

manufacturing. Beginning in the 1840s, however, Americans perceived a

crisis in their cities as immigrants and other undesirables threatened

community well-being; urbanités complained that tainted wells and ground

water along with overcrowding and unacceptable sanitation practices

posed public health problems on a scale that demanded municipally-

sponsored action. In other words, mid-century cities used water works

as a tool, a social service, one historian has labelled it, with which

to alleviate urban chaos.21 As a consequence, the number of water works

increased dramatically between 1840 and 1870: in 1840 about fifty

existed in the nation, but during the next two decades that number more

than doubled.22 And, as the figures cited above show, Americans used

this water to do more than flush befouled streets and fight fires; they

also filled sinks, tubs, and water closets. As noted earlier, it is

difficult to determine the precise number of plumbing fixtures in use

prior to the formation of a water works supervisory board, but common

6

sense dictates—and the figures above demonstrate—that once New Yorkers

had access to Croton water, and Bostonians to Cochituate supplies,' they

began to install plumbing fixtures in record numbers. The answer to the

question why?, seems simple: the construction of public works facili­

tated the use of water and prompted the adoption of plumbing tech­

nologies .

Unfortunately, that argument does not hold up under scrutiny.

Americans living in very large cities used large scale water works as a

tool for dealing with urban crises, but in smaller towns and villages

like Portland, Maine, and Concord, New Hampshire, citizens continued to

rely on wells and cisterns, both municipally and privately owned,

because in those places immigration and sanitation problems did not

create a crisis atmosphere.The appearance of water works in a few

cities does not explain what was a nationwide interest in plumbing.

That is, it may be true that the construction of a water works prompted

people to install plumbing; it may even be true that the majority of

mid-century plumbing users relied on water obtained from such a works.

But in the middle decades of the century, Americans did not perceive a

necessary link between plumbing and water works. Rather, they routinely

constructed private household water systems to support their plumbing

fixtures, a practice amply documented in contemporary magazines and

books. A later chapter examines mid-century household water supply

technologies in greater detail but now it may be useful to look at some

examples of household plumbing used in conjunction with a private water

source.

For example, in an 1849 collection of house plans, William Ran-

lett described two "cottages" with plumbing. For the first, a Staten

7

Island dwelling, the owner obtained water from a spring-fed brook

adjacent to his lot. A fifty foot conduit of lead pipe carried water to

a hydraulic ram, which pumped the water through 350 feet of pipe to an

attic tank. Water flowed from the tank to a tub, a water closet, and

the kitchen sink. Inhabitants of the second house, "Waldwic Cottage" in

New Jersey, piped water from a nearby river. A pump and pipe arrange­

ment transported water 450 feet to an attic tank, from which it ran

throughout the house to sinks, basins, a tub, and a water closet.24

Andrew Jackson Downing described a similar arrangement in one of his

books: the occupants of "Riverside Villa," located at Burlington, New

Jersey, near the Delaware River, pumped their household water from the

river; pipes carried the liquid throughout the house, which had a water

closet and bathing room.25

Some house plans published in the 1850s outlined similar

arrangements. The owner of a Troy, New York, "suburban cottage" piped

water from a nearby spring to the house, where it fed the bath tub, the

kitchen sink, and other fixtures. The "rural cottage" of Alexander

Davis, located at Stuyvesant, New York, got its water from a well and a

cistern. The kitchen sink drew water from both, as did, presumably, the

bathtub and several wash basins located on the second floor.26

Phrenologist and octagonal house enthusiast Orson Fowler, who couldn't

say enough about the pleasures of running water, installed cisterns and

wash basins in five bedrooms, filling the cisterns with rainwater chan­

neled from the roof. This same water, along with that from a well, also

supplied a hot water heater, a water closet, and several cisterns and

sinks located in the lower level of the house.2?

Some houses built during the 1860s also relied on private

8

water. Occupants of a "country residence" located several miles from

Baltimore stored water in a third floor tank and piped it to a second

floor bathroom with tub and water closet, as well as the kitchen sink.

Since "country" houses rarely had access to public water, the owner

probably filled the tank with rain or well water.28 The occupants of a

"suburban" Chicago home filled their water closets, tubs, and sinks with

water provided by an attic rain-water tank. A "country residence" built

near Orange, New Jersey, and a "villa" built at Bethel, Connecticut,

both had hot and cold running water that ran from attic tanks to tubs,

water closets, basins, and sinks. Since the former was located in a

rural area, and the latter in a small town that had no public water

works until the late 1870s, it seems safe to assume that the houses'

owners pumped water into the tanks from private sources, probably wells

and rainwater cisterns, but possibly from water sellers.

These examples do not exhaust those available but for now they

serve three purposes. First, they demonstrate that some factor other

than the appearance of water works prompted Americans to adopt plumbing.

Second, they suggest that mid-nineteenth century Americans conceived of

"running water" in broad terms; "running water" meant something more

than the stuff that flowed from a publicly supported and maintained

water works. Finally, these examples demonstrate the technological

feasibility of using plumbing without the benefit of water from a large-

scale engineering project such as the Croton Aqueduct. Later chapters

discuss these three ideas in greater detail, but for now these claims

suggest that there was no compelling technological explanation for the

s u d d e n i n t e r e s t i n h o u s e h o l d p l u m b i n g b e g i n n i n g i n t h e 1 8 4 0 s . I f

plumbing did not require the presence of a water works, and if Americans

9

created a variety of private water supply arrangements that supported

plumbing, then, in theory at any rate, plumbing just as easily could

have appeared any time before 1840. Once again, the question looms: how

can historians account for the widespread interest in and use of plumb­

ing in the mid-nineteenth century, an interest and use that began rather

abruptly in the 1840s?

Historians mark the 1840s as the decade that initiated the

modern American public health movement, an event that presents strong

possibilities as the cause of plumbing's sudden popularity. During that

decade large cities with their dense populations seemed to pose a health

threat on a scale never before seen. John Griscom, Lemuel Shattuck, and

others, apparently influenced by a concurrent British movement, agitated

for health reforms. A severe cholera outbreak in 1849 along with Edwin

Snow's discovery of the relationship between tainted water and disease

strengthened the reform movement. Four "sanitary conventions" and the

appearance of a few permanent full-time health boards in the late 1850s

seem to represent the end result and the natural consequences of an

entrenched public health movement.

Although Americans expressed considerable concern about public

health during the mid-nineteenth century, but there is little evidence

to suggest those concerns prompted them to adopt plumbing. For the most

part, the movement's activists aimed their rhetoric and actions at a

specific segment of the community, namely the urban poor: reformers

argued that substandard housing, unacceptable sanitary habits, and

propensity for disease made the urban poor obvious targets for reform.

No one, however, suggested targeting public health reforms or legisla­

tion at the whole community.For example, the movement's rhetoric

10

stopped short of advocating the regulation of private sanitation prac­

tices, and the national drive to require household plumbing, to license

plumbers, and to establish mandatory uniform plumbing codes did not

begin until the last two decades of the century.33 Few mid-century

cities built unified central sewer systems or established municipally

sponsored waste removal services, let alone tried to mandate the use of

household plumbing as a way to achieve a higher standard of public

health.34 a possible explanation for plumbing's newfound mid-century

popularity, public health falls well short of the mark.

Mid-century methods of dealing with private health, on the

other hand, may offer more fruitful grounds for understanding the inter­

est in plumbing. Throughout the nineteenth century Americans experi­

mented with a number of health fads and sects, one of which was

hydropathy, a medical treatment based on the curative powers of water

that first gained American popularity in the 1840s. Eschewing "heroic"

drug treatments, hydropaths used a variety of baths and bathing techni­

ques, such as foot and eye baths, douches, plunges, and wet packs to

restore good health. While cold-water cures formed the core of this

regimen, hydropaths linked these treatments to a broader personal

improvement plan based on exercise, temperance, good hygiene, and

vegetarianism. Because water formed the heart of hydropathy, it stands

to reason that adherents would adopt indoor running water and water fix­

tures in their homes, so it is possible that the national interest in

hydropathy prompted the appearance of plumbing during the 1840s.35

It seems highly unlikely, however, that every plumbing user was

also an adherent of hydropathy, so it is doubtful that the popularity of

this medical philosophy was the only or even a major source of plumb­

11

ing's growing popularity. Moreover, hydropathy offered concrete advice

about how to live a healthy life, but did not require the patient to

commit him or herself either to an acknowledged healer or to a formal

process of curing. Adherents need not embrace vegetarianism,

temperance, or dress reform in order to benefit from hydropathy, nor did

they have to install plumbing in order to take advantage of water's

healing powers.^® Nonetheless, hydropathy's appearance and popularity

in the 1840s provides important insights into the nature of mid-

nineteenth century American society, insights that in turn help explain

the appearance of plumbing.

Hydropathy encouraged patient participation in the healing

process, and thereby fostered self-reliance, self-determination, and

self-improvement. Water merely served as a means to the end of self-

improvement at both the physical and spiritual level. Hydropathy

achieved popularity when it did because mid-nineteenth century Americans

believed firmly in the inevitable progress of American civilization, and

in both the ability and the necessity of each person to contribute to

that progress. Hydropaths, like abolitionists, vegetarians,

phrenologists, and feminists, prison reformers, temperance activists,

and communitarians, strived for individual self-improvement in the name

of national progress.3? In that sense, then, hydropathy's emphasis on

self-cure and hygiene served as manifestations of a larger set of

cultural notions that articulated the value of self-improvement in the

name of national progress.

12

America as a Nation and the Idea of Reform

Mid-century interest in self-improvement and national progress

stemmed from a growing awareness of the United States as a unique civi­

lization, one whose democratic institutions stood as a beacon of hope

for the rest of the world.39 Put simply, mid-century Americans self­

consciously identified themselves as parts of a national unit. Accord­

ing to one historian, this self-awareness emerged as one result of a

"redivision, reclassification, and reorganization of society's nature"

that occurred in the United States in the late 1830s, as the early nine­

teenth century American emphasis on the "individual" gave way to a

recognition of Americans as members of a nation and the United States as

a unique civilization. This awareness of a totality—a unified

civilization—also implied the existence of a group, "Americans," as

well as the existence of other groups of people living in the United

States but not behaving in an "American" manner. This shift in ideas,

Alan Marcus has argued, "had profound implications" for the nation, and

Americans "accorded a high priority" to individual and "institutional

reform," such as that expressed in food fads and hydropathy, and in the

abolition and temperance movements.Urbanités, for example,

identified the presence of "strangers," as contemporaries labelled them,

as the cause of urban upheaval; strangers' unfamiliarity with American

mores prompted those who did understand "America" to engage in a variety

of activities that would educate or reform these ill-fitting members of

society.41 At the same time, however, others recognized that the future

progress of the nation depended upon the continued strength and well-

being of each individual American; since moral fiber stemmed from family

upbringing, the new national self-awareness also prompted a new interest

13

in the nature, activities, and structure of the American family.

Reformers reasoned that if national progress depended upon the contribu­

tions of individuals, then the upbringing, socialization, and nurturing

of those individuals became an activity fraught with important implica­

tions for the future of the nation, and the family, which shouldered

this important burden, became the focus of intense scrutiny.42

Reform and the Family

Unlike other more formally organized reform drives of the mid-

nineteenth century, the effort to establish a new model of family life

was less a movement than it was an informal but nonetheless national

reaction to and against forces that threatened American civilization and

buffeted family life from all sides. According to one historian, those

who touted family reform shared "the common conviction that the pace of

social change at mid-century was too great."43 Changes in production

techniques and workplace locations altered domestic life, and some fam­

ily members began spending large parts of the day outside of the home at

work or school. The early nineteenth century emphasis on individualism

and associationalism had eroded traditional family hierarchy, and

prompted the formation of new familial relationships.Reformers also

believed that "outside forces that did not share traditional beliefs,"

or what Marcus called a "plague of strangers," threatened the very

existence of American civilization, and thus, of course, the American

family.45 This threat proved especially great at mid-century because

"American society appeared to have outgrown the old standards for family

life without having developed any new ones."46

Reformers based their efforts on the belief that the family

served as "the pattern, the foundation, the beginning of all society, .

14

. . In this institution, to which, more than to governments or to great

men, the progress of humanity may be traced, centre [sic] those ties

which connect the individual with the community at large."4? Andrew

Jackson Downing, arguably the period's most popular architectural

writer, remarked simply that "whatever systems may be needed for the

regeneration of an old and enfeebled nation, we are persuaded that, in

America, . . . the distinct family [is] the best social form . . . ."48

Magazines and books, religious leaders and educators, analyzed the

importance of family, and pondered its past, present, and future role in

American civilization.49 When reformers scrutinized the family,

however, they also pondered the meaning of "home." The inseparable

institutions of home and family figured prominently in mid-century

novels, short stories, poems, paintings, and even in political debates

such as the one over slavery, and writers paid rhetorical homage to what

contemporaries called "home feeling."50 "If it is true 'there is no

place like home,'" wrote one observer, then "a person without a home is

a special object of commiseration.The "HOME," commented one

architectural instructor, is the "dearest spot on earth, the centre

[sic] and sanctuary of our social sympathies."52 In an 1840 speech

Daniel Webster explained his strong emotional attachment to the

"remains" of the family log cabin where his brothers and sisters were

born, and to which he made an annual pilgrimage. There, he said, "I

love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early

affections, and the touching narratives and incidents, which mingle with

all I know of this primitive family abode."53

But "home" was more than just a feeling; it was also a place,

and it was toward that place that numerous writers, architects, and

15

others directed their attentions. During the middle decades of the

nineteenth century, the dwelling house, site of the family's functions

and center of "home," came under meticulous scrutiny as Americans

attempted first to define and then to create that environment within

which the American family could best flourish. This interest in the

dwelling house prompted the introduction of plumbing into the American

household.

Reform and the Family Dwelling

Virtually every mid-century architectural writer complained

about the quality of the nation's domestic architecture. Citing

ignorance on the part of builders and owners as a cause of this problem,

they pleaded for the development of an "American" architecture, and for

closer attention to beauty, taste, and the fundamental principles of

architecture.54 some historians have interpreted these architecturally-

based complaints and the reform movement itself as an effort on the part

of architects to gain professional credibility. That may be the

case—after all, the word "architect" rarely appeared in print without

the word "professional" preceding it—but focusing on mid-century pleas

for professionalism obscures the structural underpinnings of the

architects' complaints and their connection to both family and national

reform; critics based their arguments on a specific assumption about the

relationship between the domestic environment, individual character, and

national progress.56

Put simply, mid-century Americans believed if home and family

functioned as the primary institutions for producing people with good

morals and good character--as the building blocks of American

civilization—then the American family deserved, no, required, a

16

domestic structure worthy of housing this important national institu­

tion. Architectural books published in the 1840s and 1850s paid homage

to this idea, and Downing expressed the views of many when he wrote that

"a good house ... is a powerful means of civilization."5? The authors

of the 1856 Village and Farm Cottages elaborated on that idea when they

wrote that "... every improvement in the abodes of men, which renders

them more neat, comfortable, and pleasing, contributes not only to

physical enjoyment, but to mental and moral advancement." They insisted

that any "enlightened plan for the advancement of family influences and

of society in general" ought to include plans for

the improvement of dwellings. ... He who improves the dwelling-houses of a people in relation to their comforts, habits, and morals, makes a benignant and lasting reform at the very foundation of society. . . . [Homes], however humble, may teach lessons of neatness and order; they may and should inspire a regard for com­fort and decorum.58

Orson Fowler developed a particularly complicated explanation

of the relationship between domestic environment and character. People

must have houses, he noted, and therefore "nature has kindly provided

[them] with a BUILDING INSTINCT, called, in phrenological language, CON-

STRUCTIVENESS." The expression of this instinct, and thus the com­

plexity of dwellings, bore a close correlation to innate intelligence:

the "half-human, half-brute orang-outang" builds "huts of stick and

brushes," but the "Hottentots, Carib, Indian, Malay, and Caucasian build

houses better, and still better, the higher the order of their

mentality." Thus American dwellings, despite their imperfections,

reflected a high level of development. Fowler nonetheless urged his

countrymen to educate themselves in the principles of architecture and

house design: convenience and proper arrangement of the house's parts,

he explained, made the family "amiable and good," while a lack of sound

17

design "sour[ed] the tempers of children, even BEFORE BIRTH, by per­

petually irritating their mothers" and making the whole family "bad dis-

positioned."59

Catharine Beecher explicitly tied national progress to the

ability of the American woman to manage house and family effectively.

The progress and success of American civilization, as embodied in its

"democratic institutions," she wrote, "depends upon the intellectual and

moral character of the mass of the people." But the people's character,

she added, was "committed mainly to the female hand" and therefore

American women bore the "peculiar" responsibility of obtaining "a

thorough practical knowledge of all kinds of domestic employments."®®

"Our dwellings," noted one plan book author, "are the surest index of

our civilization; . . . ."61 Another elaborated on this idea; "Nothing

has more to do with the morals, the civilization, and refinement of a

nation, than its prevailing Architecture. Virtue and Beauty are twin

sisters; while Vice and Deformity are in constant association.

Creating the Good American Home

This linkage of character, family, and national progress

prompted Americans to re-create, to re-form as it were, their domestic

environments. To effect domestic reform, writers produced architectural

books and housekeeping manuals in record numbers, and periodicals of all

types routinely published house plans and discussions of "domestic econ­

omy." For example, popular magazines such as Godey's Lady's Book, Col-

man's Rural World, Scientific American, Harper's Magazine, and Country

Gentleman published house plans both with and without descriptive texts.

Some magazines borrowed their designs from plan books, but others

solicited designs from readers or commissioned architects to create

IB-

original plans.63 Downing's architectural plan books enjoyed enormous

popularity: his Cottage Residences, for example, first published in

1842, went through four revisions and the publishers issued the fourth

edition eight times between 1852 and 1868. The Cleaveland-Backus text

Village and Farm Cottages appeared four times between 1856 and 1870, and

Orson Fowler issued his treatise on octagonal structures eight times in

less than a decade, a publishing record shared by other books.

Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy enjoyed similar success: it went

through four printings between 1841 and 1843, and appeared almost

annually, often in revised editions, through the mid-1850s.®® Nor did

interest in these texts appear to be regional. Architects and builders

in Illinois and North Carolina bought and used these texts, publishing

houses in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago printed them, and local

newspapers such as the Raleigh, North Carolina, Register carried adver­

tisements for them.®® At mid-century, the notion of domestic improve­

ment apparently met with nationwide public approval.

These mid-century books, magazines, and manuals supplied

readers with house plans and building information, but they also out­

lined the basic principles of domestic economy and architecture, knowl­

edge of which enabled American families to create homes that fostered

"home feeling" and that provided a healthy, beautiful, comfortable

environment within which to raise future generations of Americans. The

texts offered readers general principles, rather than specific instruc­

tion, because, as one writer put it, "no two households are exactly

alike in their domestic habits. . . . The fact that individual wants and

tastes are infinitely varied, renders it impossible ... to give . . .

directions or plans that will exactly suit individual cases; . . . .

As a result, advice tended to consist of a few broadly sketched

guidelines. For'example, writers stressed the importance of building on

a healthy site, one that included adequate breezes, a good water supply,

and dry, porous, and well-drained soil since swampy soil created a

malarial environment that could endanger the inhabitants' health.68

Architectural texts urged readers to choose a house style that suited

the site and matched the inhabitants' income. Domestic health also

depended upon the proper arrangement of rooms, because, as Beecher

warned her readers, "nothing is so expensive as sickness. Every

arrangement [of the house], therefore, which tends to injure the health,

is a serious violation of economy. It sacrifices not only health, but

also comfort, time, and money. There is much bad economy, in this

respect, in constructing houses."®® Correctly placed rooms and windows

took advantage of prevailing winds and provided the inhabitants with

plenty of health-giving light, but as another writer explained, "one of

the most important principles of interior arrangement is the disposing

of the rooms in such relative positions that the work of the family may

be done with the least possible amount of labor.Downing stressed

the importance of correct arrangement as a way to reduce dependence on

servants, because, as Beecher and other writers pointed out, a dearth of

competent servants threw the burden of household labor onto women, who

were then too tired to perform their other familial duties as wife and

mother.

Proper ventilation contributed to domestic health. Architec­

tural plan books, domestic advice manuals, and magazines discussed this

topic at great length and in minute detail. One of the subject's fore­

most experts described the problem of household ventilation as "one of

20

the most important objects of hygiene, [which] should be deemed an

essential, and not a mere secondary question in all architectural struc­

tures. As one writer commented, drainage, cleanliness, and adequate

water supplies were helpful, but they left "absolutely untouched the

other and really important kind [of impurity] . . . namely, the filth

and poison of the human breath.The need for adequate ventilation

stemmed from the harmful consequences of breathing stale air. Mid-

nineteenth century Americans understood air to be composed primarily of

oxygen and nitrogen, and of smaller quantities of a third element, "car­

bonic acid." Relatively harmless when mixed with other gases or when

dispersed freely throughout the air, carbonic acid became positively

lethal in large doses. Without adequate ventilation, the room's air

became polluted, "shak[ing] off those aerial wings, which would have

carried it away . . . ."74 During cold weather months, closed windows,

burning lights, and roaring stoves contributed to "the transformation of

the life-giving element, with which the room was originally filled, into

a subtile [sic] but active and powerful agent of disease and death.

In this situtation the inhabitants inhaled increasingly foul air,

poisoning their bodies, and then exhaled it, filling the air with still

more toxic gas.76 This vicious cycle led to lethargy, listlessness,

headaches, intellectual torpor, and eventually to scrofula, consumption,

and other diseases. An adequate household ventilation system prevented

these problems.77

21

Convenience and the Good American Home

The principle of convenience served as another underpinning of

a quality domestic environment. Architects and domestic experts

regarded "convenience," a word that appeared repeatedly in architectural

books and housekeeping manuals, as one of the "essentials of comfort," a

lack of which threatened to destroy family happiness; a quality dwelling

offered not just beauty and utility, but also convenience, without which

beauty and utility amounted to little.78 Downing called convenience the

"highest rule of utility," and urged "all persons, and especially

ladies, who understand best the principle of convenience" to obtain at

least some knowledge of architecture, of which convenience, or what

Downing also called "rules of fitness," was one aspect.He explained

that, like house design and arrangement, the particulars of convenience

varied from family to family: "What may be entirely fit and convenient

for one, would be considered quite unsuitable for another."®® For that

reason, architects regarded convenience as one of the primary principles

of architecture, and declared an understanding of it as essential for

creating a good house.

Contemporaries defined a convenience as any thing or any

arrangement that facilitated domestic labor, reduced dependency on ser­

vants, safeguarded the health of the family, and generally improved home

life. The proper arrangement of rooms within the house clearly con­

stituted one aspect of domestic convenience. But Americans also derived

convenience from a variety of other arrangements and objects, usually

labelled "conveniences" or, sometimes, "improvements," found inside and

outside the house. The author of one housekeeping manual decried the

"oppressions of those" who suffered from an "utter destitution of the

22

many and almost indispensable conveniences of domestic labor and econ­

omy.

Perhaps no water near the house, or if near, requiring all the strength to draw one pailful; no dry or hard wood, or not suitably prepared to burn, if dry; no drain for water, nor walks around the door, and perhaps not even safe and suitable steps, to say nothing of many other very great comforts and conveniences.82

Convenience came in many forms. Miss Leslie's House Book pronounced

household refrigerating devices "conveniences no family should be

without."83 An architectural text informed readers that "every cottage

[should] have a door-bell. Its cost is small and its convenience

great."84 Beecher deemed nursery closets to be "very convenient," and a

"dish-closet" positioned between dining room and kitchen "a great con­

venience." She termed the "sliding closet, or dumb waiter" a "con­

venience which saves much labor."85 Other writers defined task-specific

rooms, such as sink-rooms and butler's pantries, and room arrangements

as conveniences. One writer decreed the small kitchen to be more useful

than a large one as long as it had "proper conveniences" such as a

"pastry-room, store-closet, . . . sink-room, and scullery" attached to

it.86 The text accompanying a published house plan touted the con­

venience of a butler's pantry attached to a dining room, especially

since the pantry contained "all the necessary modern conveniences,"

including a dumb-waiter.87 An article in a "rural" magazine urged

readers to furnish their homes with household conveniences, including a

wood house adjacent to the kitchen, a well with a good drawing

apparatus, and "ample cisterns" connected to the kitchen "by means of

good pumps."88 Downing counted the dumb-waiter, the "speaking-tube,"

and the rotary pump as important conveniences. The pump, he explained,

when installed "in some convenient position" and attached to a pipe and

23

an outside cistern, placed "an abundant supply of water within a few

steps of every bed-room" of a house's upper floors. Another mid-century

writer applauded the American "ambition to occupy a 'modern house,' . .

. with the 'modern . improvements" among which he counted hot-air,

water, steam, and gas furnaces, speaking-tubes, ventilation systems,

dumb-waiters, and "water-closets and bath-rooms . . . ."89

Plumbing Technology and the Idea of Convenience

These last three writers proved to be absolutely typical in

their assessment of piped water and water fixtures as conveniences.

Beginning in the 1840s Americans treated piped and running water and

water fixtures such as sinks, water closets, and bath tubs as members of

that category of things and arrangements defined as "conveniences."

Indeed, the objects of plumbing—the fixtures, pipes, and pumps—almost

always appeared in printed discussions coupled with the words "con­

venient" or "conveniences": the occupants of a New Haven house enjoyed

the "very convenient addition" of a "gentleman's wash closet on the

first floor." Architect George Woodward praised the kitchen of a Cold

Spring, New York, house outfitted with a "sink and other kitchen con­

veniences," and a "suburban cottage" that had a "sink, pump, and other

pantry conveniences."^0 The "modern conveniences" found in the butler's

pantry mentioned above included a sink with hot and cold running

water.91 Architectural plan books routinely described water closets,

bathing rooms, and sinks as "conveniences. "92 in the Treatise on

Domestic Economy Beecher included a description of an interior cistern

and pump arrangement that supplied water to a sink and tub, and urged

the woman of the house to "use her influence to secure all these con­

veniences."93 In an 1866 essay she noted that "the front wash closet is

24

a great convenience before and after meals . . • ."94 his 1856

Architectural Instructor architect Minard Lafever noted that "within the

past few years, more regard than formerly has been paid to domestic con­

veniences," among which he counted "the various modes of warming and

ventilating buildings," as well as "the supplying of water to the

several stories" of a building.An 1861 survey of American progress

echoed Lafever's words; the author termed the "introduction of water

from water works" a "labor-saving and convenient improvement in our

modern domestic architectural arrangements . . . ." "The fountains thus

set flowing," he continued, "save all water-carrying. • . . The bur­

densome daily details of housework are . . . greatly lightened, and

health, and time, and exertion, very much economized . . . ."96

As these descriptions indicate, mid-century Americans linked

the use of household running water and water fixtures to the concept of

convenience. Convenience, however, had several faces. When embodied in

a physical object—a "convenience"—it saved labor, and reduced the need

for servants. As an abstraction, adherence to the "principle of con­

venience" embodied one route to better families and creation of "home

feeling": the use of conveniences increased the amount of leisure time

families had to spend together. Americans also linked the principle of

convenience to good health and moral improvement, albeit indirectly; the

elimination of unnecessary drudgery protected the health and well-being

of women and enabled them to devote maximum effort to the important

tasks of nurturing and moral guidance.

Finally, the introduction of conveniences enabled Americans to

create homes whose modernity and comfort surpassed those found in Europe

and Great Britain; speaking tubes and plumbing fixtures served as tools

with which to affirm the distinctive character of American civilization

and the American people's dedication to progress and improvement. In

that sense, then, the project of domestic reform--that is, reform

directed specifically at the house and family—represented just one com­

ponent of the larger ongoing task of national improvement.9? In the

1830s and 1840s Americans regarded themselves not just as a people with

a mission, but a people whose past and future distinguished them from

other nations and peoples. Americans were a unique people "uniquely

free to achieve the goals that other nations had not been able to reach"

not just because of the vitality of their democratic institutions but

also because, for Americans, the future was "freed from the encum-

berances of the past."98 This view of the future enabled Americans to

perceive progress as both "kinetic" and potentially malleable. People

"could change the character and quality of [their] institutions to make

them new and different in result and kind."^9 The material alteration

of the home exemplified the American dedication to progress and the

future, and symbolized the differences between young modern America and

old decaying Europe.

Beginning in the 1840s, then, Americans adopted in-house run­

ning water and water fixtures as tools with which to render their homes

convenient, an impulse which itself stemmed from a broader desire to

create excellent domestic environments and thereby effect national pro­

gress. As later chapters will show, the technology of mid-century

plumbing was not particularly new; indeed, for the most part permanently

installed bathing tubs and sinks replicated the portable objects they

replaced, and while it is true that plumbing-related patents increased

beginning in the 1840s, those patents were the consequence, rather than

26

the cause of a new interest in plumbing. Put simply, at mid-century

Americans began to install the water closet, tub, and pump, as well as

the dumb waiter, speaking tube, and furnace, as part of a contemporary

effort to reform and improve American domestic life, and it is within

the dual contexts of reform and convenience that the appearance of

plumbing is best understood.

27

Endnotes

^Many people, of course, used portable bathing tubs, wash basins, and shower baths, but the distinction here is between those portable objects and permanently installed fixtures attached to a. supply of running water. For portable fixtures see Archibald M. Haddock, II, The Polished Earth: A History of the Pottery Plumbing Fixture Industry in the United States (Trenton, N. J.; n. p., 1962), 351-52; Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closet (New York; Viking Press, 1960), 112-23, 126-27 and pas­sim. ; but also see the brief discussion in Siegfried Giedion, Mechaniza­tion Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948; reprint. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1969), 682, 684 (page references are to reprint edition).

There are a couple of exceptions to the general claim that the builders' manuals ignored plumbing. Edward Shaw's Civil Architecture, which first appeared in 1830, included a section entitled "Plumbing." In it Shaw described the plumber as one primarily concerned with "pump-work" and with "the making and forming of cisterns and reservoirs, large or small closets, &c. for the purposes of domestic economy." But the text focused primarily on the properties of lead and other metals, and the tools and techniques used in working with them. See Shaw, Civil Architecture ; or, A Complete Theoretical and Practical System of Build­ing, . . . (Boston: Marsh, Capen and Lyon, 1834), 148. Another builders' manuals, Chester Hills' 1834 Builder's Guide, showed two water closets on the floor plan of a "castellated Gothic Villa." Hills defined the Gothic style as "more properly called, British Architec­ture," and the house plan itself may have come from a British text. In any event, these two examples were the exception to the general tendency to ignore sinks, closets, and other water fixtures in the early century manuals. See Chester Hills, The Builder's Guide; or A Practical Treatise on the Several Orders of Grecian and Roman Architecture, Together With the Gothic Style of Building (Hartford: D. W. Kellogg and Co., 1834), 23 and Plate 25.

For discussions of early nineteenth century builders' manuals see Dell Upton, "Pattern Books and Professionalism: Aspects of the Transformation of Domestic Architecture in America, 1800-1860," Winterthur Portfolio 19 (1984): 109-110 and 116-18; and Clay Lancaster, "Builders' Guide and Plan Books and American Architecture from the Revolution to the Civil War," Magazine of Art 41 (1948): 16-18.

2see Richard L. and Claudia L. Bushman, "The Early History of Cleanliness in America," Journal of American History 74 (1987-88): 1214-15 and 1225.

^The most accessible patent index for this period is M. D. Leg-gett, comp., Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the United States Patent Office From 1790-1873, Inclusive, 3 vols. (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1874; reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1976). Between. 1800 and 1840 the Patent Office issued only a few patents for cisterns, bathing tubs, and water closets. The real flood began after 1840. The best discussion of the British patents (and

28

of ancient running water arrangements) is in Glenn Brown, Water-closets. A Historical, Mechanical, and Sanitary Treatise (New York: The Indus­trial Publication Co., 1884; also published as "Water-closets" in American Architect and Building News: 12 (1882): 287-89, 299-300; 13 (1883): 30, 75-76, 111, 135-36, 147, 171, 183-84, 195, 222-23, 234-35, 383-85; and 14 (1883); 15, 27, 64, 75, 92, 138, 177, 183); 18-27; but also see Wright, Clean and Decent, 107-08; and Roy Palmer, The Water Closet: A New History (Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1973), 22-23.

^For examples of fixtures used in some late eighteenth and early nineteenth century homes see Haddock, The Polished Earth, 343, 345-46, 351, 353-54, 357-58; Nelson Blake, Water for the Cities: A His­tory of the Urban Water Supply Problem In the United States (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1956), 271. Also see the example of the "Old Merchant's House" (1832-33) in May N. Stone, "The Plumbing Paradox: American Attitudes Toward Late Nineteenth-Century Domestic Sanitary Arrangements," Wlnterthur Portfolio 14 (1979): 300.

^Bushman and Bushman, "Early History of Cleanliness," 1214-17, 1225.

^The best discussion of hotel plumbing, especially as found in the 1830s, is in Jefferson Williamson, The American Hotel: An Anecdotal History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), 55-56, ff. An excellent con­temporary description of hotel plumbing is in William Harvard Eliot, A Description of Tremont House, with Architectural Illustrations (Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830), 13-16. Also see Bushman and Bushman, "Early His­tory of Cleanliness in America," 1215.

^For discussions of style books and of the differences between them and the builders' books mentioned earlier, see Upton, "Pattern Books and Professionalism," 120-24; Lancaster, "Builders' Guide and Plan Books," 19-22; James L. Garvin, "Mail-Order House Plans and American Victorian Architecture," Wlnterthur Portfolio 16 (1981): 309-34; Clif­ford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill, N. C.; University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 16-17, 19, 21-24; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing In America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 80, 81-87 (page references are to paperback edition); Michael J. Cros-bie, "From 'Cookbooks' to 'Menus': The Transformation of Architecture Books in Nineteenth-Century America," Material Culture 17 (1985): 1-23; Edward F. Zimmer, "Luther Briggs and The Picturesque Pattern Books," Old-Tlme New England 67 (1977): 36-55.

®Style books, journals, and housekeeping books served as pri­mary sources of information for this study, and are footnoted extensively throughout its pages. The Hitchcock bibliography of architectural books contains a chronological and alphabetical listing of the manuals. See Henry-Russell Hitchcock, ed., American Architectural Books, new ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976).

9Annual reports published by municipal water boards are an enormously useful source of information because the boards often

29

required the "water registrar" to keep tallies of the number of fixtures being used in customers' homes; the resulting information appeared in the annual reports. Sometimes, but not always, the registrar broke this information into specific categories of fixtures, so that in Boston, for example, the annual reports included tallies of bath tubs, showers, sinks, various kinds of water closets, and so forth; in other cases, the registrar simply counted the fixtures as a single group. Reports such as these do have one drawback. Registrars were only interested in and had access to the fixtures used by paying customers, so that water reports do not include information about city residents who obtained water from other sources, such as private water sellers, backyard wells, and the like.

^^Isaac Parrish, "Report on the Sanitary Condition of Philadel­phia," Transactions of the American Medical Association 2 (1849): 478.

^^Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1853 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, 1854) 53; Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year Ending April 30, 1871 (n. p., n. d.), 66.

12gdgar Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860: American Con­sumption Levels on the Eve of the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 111-12. In 1848 Croton water flowed to 14,507 dwellings at a time when New York's population neared the half million point. For population see Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D. C.: Robert Armstrong, 1853), cxxiii; the count of dwell­ing houses is in Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 119.

^%artin. Standard of Living, 111-12.

^^The Baltimore water registrar typically only recorded the number of new water takers each year, and he only specified the number of plumbing fixtures for which customers paid extra, in this case water closets and tubs, so that figures are harder to calculate for that city. Since bath tubs and water closets used a great deal of water, water boards almost always charged an extra fee for them over and above the flat water rate. City of Baltimore, "Annual Report of the Water Depart­ment of the City of Baltimore to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore," in Annual Reports of the City Departments (n. p., 1861), 380; Baltimore, Water Department, Annual Report of the Water Department of the City of Baltimore, to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (Baltimore: James Young, 1863), 11; and Report of the Water Department to the Mayor and City council of Baltimore, for the Year Ending Oct. 31st, 1871 (Baltimore; John Cox, 1872), 40.

^^Stanley K. Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture : American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 166; population figures are in The Statistics of the Popu­lation of the United States . . . Compiled from the Original Returns of the Ninth Census (Washington, D. C.; Government Printing Office, 1872),

30

209.

^®Cambridge, Mass., Water Board, The Seventh Annual Report of the Cambridge Water Board to the City Council, Together With the Reports of the Registrar and Superintendent, and Other Documents, for the Year 1871 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1872), 18.

James J. Waring, "A Communication to the City Council on the Privy System of Savannah," in Supplement to the Mayor's Report, January 1st, 1879. The Epidemic at Savannah, 1876, by James J. Waring (Savannah: Morning News Steam Printing House, 1879), 165. Population figures are in Ninth Census, 100.

^®Baltimore, Annual Reports (1861), 380; Baltimore, Water Department, Report (1871), 28. The figure of six people per dwelling was calculated in Thomas P. Kettell, "Buildings and Building Materials," in Eighty Years' Progress of the United States, 2 vols. (Worcester, Mass.: L. Stebbins, 1861), 2:354-55.

^^Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report (1853), 51-53; Report (1871), 64-66. Population figures are from Seventh Census, cvi; Ninth Census, 167.

20schultz, constructing Urban Culture, 166.

^^The social service interpretation is in Alan I Marcus, Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincin­nati, 1819-1870 (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1991), xix, but also see 144-46.

^^The exact number of works built is difficult to determine, mainly because no two sources agree, but the general trend is quite obvious. Moses Baker's late nineteenth century compilation of works data, issued annually for four years, remains the best single source of information. M. N. Baker, ed., The Manual of American Water-Works, 4 vols. (New York: Engineering News, 1889-1897). But also see Blake, Water for the Cities, 266-67; Martin, Standard of Living, 38-42.

23physicians residing in Concord and Portland responded to an American Medical Association questionnaire, as did AMA members in larger cities like New York and New Orleans. Respondents from the larger cities described horrific conditions in their typically lengthy reports, while the Portland and Concord respondents wrote brief replies that pic­tured cities of tranquility. See J. T. Oilman, "Replies to Circular Letter," Transactions of the American Medical Association 2 (1849): 451-53, and Charles P. Gage, "Sanitary Report of Concord, N. H.," in ibid., 445-49.

^'^William H. Ranlett, The Architect, A Series of Designs for Domestic and Ornamental Villas, vol. 2 (New York: Dewitt and Davenport, 1849), 10, 32, Plate 6.

^^Andrew Jackson Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening . . . With Remarks on Rural Architecture (New

31

York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 315-16.

2®John Bullock, The American Cottage Builder: A Series of Designs, Plana, and Specifications from $200 to $20,000 (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1854), 190-91, 235-37.

27orson S. Fowler, A Home for All; or. The Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, rev. ed. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1856), 119-20, 132, 136-37. Fowler was a "water cure" enthusiast, which likely explains his tendency to wax rhapsodic about water. See Susan E. Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 14-15, 25, and 110-11.

2®Thos. Dixon and J. M. Dixon, "Hints on Rural Homes," Rural Register 1 (1860): 79.

^^chas. Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 38-39; Henry Hudson Holly, Holly's Country Seats: Containing Lithographic Designs for Cottages, Villas, Mansions, Etc., with Their Accompanying Outbuildings; Also, Country Churces, city Bullldngs, Railway Stations, etc., etc. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1863), 97-99. Information on Bethel's water supply is in M. N. Baker, ed.. The Manual of American Water-Works, 1st issue, 1888 (New York: Engineering News, 1889), 76.

S^Typically historians have treated plumbing as an offshoot of and dependent upon public water systems. See, for example, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technol­ogy from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 86-87; Stone, "The Plumbing Paradox," 291; Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, 686; Joel Arthur Tarr and Francis Clay McMichael, "The Evolution of Wastewater Technology and the Development of State Regula­tion: A Retrospective Analysis," in Retrospective Technology Assessment-1976, ed. Joel A. Tarr (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, Inc., 1977), 170-71; Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture, 165. Daniel J. Boorstin, on the other hand, linked the introduction of plumbing to sewer, rather than water, systems, while Susan Strasser has linked plumbing's intro­duction to both public health and class and to the appearance of running water. See Boorstin, The Americans : The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), 347, 349; and Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 89, 90, 93.

^^The material on mid-century public .health activities is voluminous, but especially useful are Howard D. Kramer, "The Beginnings of the Public Health Movement in the United States," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 21 (1947): 352-76; Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 101-172; Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz, Public Health and the State: Changing Views in Massachusetts, 1842-1936 (Cam­bridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 8-36; John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 93-108; Harold M. Cavins, "The National Quarantine and Sanitary Conventions of 1857 to 1860 and the Beginnings of the American Public Health Association," Bulletin of the

32

History of Medicine 13 (1943): 404-14. A significant revisionist view of mid-century public health activities is in Marcus, Plague of Strangers, 17-20, 27-30, passim.

^^with few exceptions, raid-century public health rhetoric targeted the poor, especially the urban poor, and it was to them that reformers directed their efforts. The classic statement is John Gris-com. The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York. With Suggestions for Its Improvement (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845; rprint: New York: Arno Press, 1970). Also see Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, 55-64 and 133-50; Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture, 112-14; Duffy, The Sanitarians 95-97, 99. In his study of Cincinnati, Alan Marcus subsumed the "poor" under a broader category he called "strangers." See Marcus, Plague of Strangers, 10, 72-74.

^^A later chapter discusses municipal regulation of plumbing, but a survey of late century plumbing codes is in Charles Chapin, Municipal Séinitation in the United States (Providence, Rhode Island: The Providence Press, 1901), 221-61.

^^Good descriptions of mid-century sewer construction efforts are in Stuart Galishoff, "Drainage, Disease, Comfort, and Class: A His­tory of Newark's Sewers," Societas 6 (1976): 121-25; Geoffrey Giglierano, "The City and the System: Developing a Municipal Service, 1800-1915," Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 35 (1977): 223-31; Jon A. Peterson, "The Impact of Sanitary Reform Upon American Urban Planning, 1840-1890," Journal of Social History 13 (1979): 84-87; Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture, 169-72.

35cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, 15-16, 29-39, passim; Jane B. Donegan, 'Hydropathic Highway to Health': Women and Water-Care in Antebellum America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), xi-xv, 3-14, and passim.

36cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, 44-48.

37The reform movement's history has been well-documented, but for a new interpretation of the period see Marcus, Plague of Strangers, 38-42. A good general discussion of the idea of progress is in Arthur Alphonse Ekirch, The Idea of Progress in America, 1815-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944; Studies in History, Economics, and Pub­lic Law, No. 511). For a comprehensive discussion of reform see Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History From the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, 1944; reprint, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 227-350 (page references are to reprint edition).

^®Hydropathy's specific relationship to other reform drives is discussed in Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, 109-39.

^^Three good general discussions of this idea are in Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 4-7, 37-38, and ff.; and Russel Blaine Nye, Society and Culture in America: 1830-1860 (New York: Harper and Row, 1974; New York:

33

Harper Torchbooks, 1974), 3-6, 10-18 (page references are to paperback edition); Ekirch, The Idea of Progress. 38-41, passim.

^^Marcus, Plague of Strangers, 39. For his discussion of fam­ily reform in particular see 75-77.

^^Ibid., 70-81, passim.

42por surveys of the mid-century family reform effort see Wright, Building the Dream, 73-89; David P. Handlin, The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815-1915 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1979), 4-88; Clark, American Family Home, 15-47.

43ciark, American Family Home, 15.

^^One of the most important discussions of changes in family structure and in family-community relationships is in Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. 52-75 and 141-42. For a good discussion of changes in the workplace, espe­cially in relation to the family, see Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 68-107.

^^Clark, American Family Home, 15; and Marcus, Plague of Strangers, esp. 10-12 and 72-75.

^®Clark, American Family Home, 16. Other analyses of mid-nineteenth century attitudes toward the family, as well as the reform effort are in Kirk Jeffrey, "The Family as Utopian Retreat from the City: The Nineteenth-Century Contribution," Soundings 55 (1972): 21-41; Stow Persons, The Decline of American Gentility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 74-79, 84, 92; Wright, Building the Dream, 73-89; Handlin, The American Home, 4-88; John R. Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 97-98.

^^Henry W. Cleaveland, William Backus, and Samuel D. Backus, Village and Farm Cottages. The Requirements of American Village Homes Considered and Suggested; With Designs for Such Houses of Moderate Cost (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1856), 3.

^^Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1850), v.

49see especially Jeffrey, "The Family as Utopian Retreat," 21-25; Handlin, The American Home, 2-24.

SOpor a discussion of "home feeling" and the metaphorical and literary uses of home and family see Handlin, The American Home, 11-19, 21, 23-24, and 63-84.

^^Zebulon Baker, The Cottage Builder's Manual (Worcester; Z. Baker and Co., 1856), 24.

34

^^Oliver Smith, The Domestic Architect (Buffalo: Derby and Co, 1852), iv.

^^Cited in Richard N. Current, Daniel Webster and The Rise of National Conservatism (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1952), 112.

®^For example see William H. Ranlett, The Architect, A Series of Original Designs for Domestic and Ornamental Cottages and Villas, vol. 1 (New York: William H. Graham, 1847), 11, 77-78; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 8-23; Smith, Domestic Architect, iii-iv; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 11-14; Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cot­tages. A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution In the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), 13-20, passim; Daniel H. Jacques, The House: A Pocket Manual of Rural Architecture (New York; Fowler and Wells, 1859), 25-26; Holly, Holly's Country Seats, 20, 26-27.

Good discussions of the character of "American" architecture are in Jan Cohn, The Palace or the Poorhouse: The American House As a Cultural Symbol (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1979), 35-37; Nye, Society and Culture, 191-96.

S^Clifford E. Clark, Jr., "Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840-1870," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (1976): 47-48; Upton, "Pattern Books and Professionalism," 119-20.

®®An excellent discussion of the house as "a significant meta­phor for American culture" and its role as a symbol of progress is in Cohn, Palace or Poorhouse, 29-61. Good discussions of contemporaries' efforts to alter the house are in Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Fron­tier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York; Oxford University Press, 1985), 47-52; Clark, American Family Home, 16-19, 21-24; Handlin, The American Home, 26-46.

®^Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, v.

®®Cleaveland, et al., Village and Farm Cottages, iv, 4.

S^orson S. Fowler, A Home for All: or a New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building (New York; Fowler and Wells, 1848), 12, 18-19.

GOcatharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladles at Home, and At School, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1848), 36, 37, 49. Beecher devoted much energy to raising funds for and promoting female education, with a view to teaching women how to manage homes and families. The best discussion of her views on the relation between national progress and domesticity are in Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study In American Domesticity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 151-67.

®^Baker, Cottage Builder's Manual, 13.

®^Smith, Domestic Architect, iii.

35

discussion of the plans used in Godey's is in George L. Hersey, "Godey's Choice," Journal of the Society of Architectural His­torians 18 (1959): 104-11.

^'^The Hitchcock catalog of architectural books documents the immense popularity of these plan books; it lists every edition of every book that appeared. See Hitchcock, American Architectural Books.

GSsklar, Catharine Beecher, 151 and note 1, page 305.

®®Clark, American Family Home, 47-53; Catherine W. Bishir et al.. Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History of the Prac­tice of Building (Chapel Hill, N. C.; University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 142, 149-50, 152-53, note 38, p. 458.

67jacques, The House, 21.

®®For discussions on choosing a site see Gervase Wheeler, Rural Homes; or Sketches of Houses Suited to American Country Life with Original Plans, Designs, Sc., rev. ed., (New York: Charles Scribner, 1851), 11-18; Lewis Allen, Rural Architecture : Being A Complete Descrip­tion of Farmhouses, Cottages and Outbuildings (New York; C. M. Saxton, 1852), 29-32; Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 35-36; Mrs. [Elizabeth] Ellet, ed.. The Practical Housekeeper: A Cyclopedia of Domestic Economy (New York: Stringer and Co., 1857), 19; J. H. Hammond, The Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect; and Guide in Rural Economy (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1858), 60-64; "The Foundations of Houses," Scientific American n. s. 1 (1859); 50; Jacques, The House, 16-19; Samuel Sloan, Sloan's Homestead Architecture, Containing Forty Designs for villas. Cottages, and Farm Houses (Philadelphia; J. B. Lip-pincott and Co., 1861), 18-24; [Samuel D. Backus], "Hints Upon Farm Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61); 3.

G^Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy, 272. Some good gen­eral discussions of principles are in Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas (New York; Wiley and Putnam, 1842), 10-34; Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies At Home, and At School (Boston; Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1841), 268-74; Robert G. Hatfield, The American House Carpenter . . . (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1844), 89-90, 92, 96-97; Ranlett, The Architect, 1:19-20; J. Sidney, American Cottage and Villa Architecture, A Series of Views and Plans of Residences Actually Built; Intended as Models for Those About To Build . . . (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1850), 3-20; Baker, Cot­tage Builder's Manual, 11-16; Ellett, Practical Housekeeper, 19-21; Mrs. L. G. Abell, Voman in Her Various Relations: Containing Practical Rules for American Females (New York; Hubbard and Burgess, 1860), 74-77 and passim.

^®Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 113.

^^For Downing's argument see Cottage Residences, 13. For Beecher and others see Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), 259-73; Wheeler, Rural Homes, 19-26; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 41-44;

36

Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 43-44; Jacques, The House, 22-25; Hammond, Fanner's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 112-15; "The Home - Influence of Light and Air Upon Health," Rural Register 1 (1860): 392; [Backus,] "Hints Upon Farm Houses," 3-4; Joseph B. Lyman and Laura E. Lyman, The Philosophy of House-keeping: A Scientific and Practical Manual for the Preparation of All Kinds of Food, the Making Up of All Articles of Dress, the Preservation of Health, and the Intelligent and Skilful Performance of Every Household Office (Hartford, Conn.: Goodwin and Betts, 1867), 439-58; Abell, Woman in Her Various Relations, 74-77; Catharine E. Beecher, "The American People Starved and Poisoned," Harper's Magazine 32 (1866): 764-72; George E. Woodward and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture, Landscape Gardening, and Rural Art - No. 1 - 1867 (New York: George E. and F. W. Woodward, 1867), 39-45. For a discussion of the healthy house that focuses more generally on ideas held in the first half of the nineteenth century see Handlin, The American Home, 46-56.

^^David Reid, Ventilation in American Dwellings (New York: Wiley and Halsted, 1858), 4. The emergence of ideas about the dangers of foul air and the need for ventilation is discussed in Eugene S. Ferguson, "An Historical Sketch of Central Heating: 1800-1860," in Building Early America: Contributions Toward the History of A Great Industry, ed. Charles E. Peterson (Radnor, Penn.: Chilton Book Co. for The Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, 1976), 172-76. I am grateful to Bruce Seely for telling me about Ferguson's essay. Also see Handlin, The American House, 56-58; and Gavin Townsend, "Airborne Toxins and the American House, 1865-1895," Winterthur Port­folio 24 (1989): 29-30.

^^Letter from Dr. Arnott, cited in Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 179.

^^Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 66. Descriptions of con­temporaries' understanding of the respiration process and its relation to health—which remained remarkably constant throughout the period—are in Ranlett, The Architect, 1:28-29; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 462-63; Minard Lafever, The Architectural Instructor (New York: G. P. Putnam and Co., 1856), 434; John Griscom, The Uses and Abuses of Air: Showing Its Influence in Sustaining Life, and Producing Disease; with Remarks on the Ventilation of Houses, and the Best Methods of Securing a Pure and Wholesome Atmosphere Inside of Dwellings, Churches, Court-rooms, Workshops, and Buildings of All Kinds, 2d ed., (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850; reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1970), 21-38, ff. (page references are to reprint edition); Edward L. Youmans, The Hand­book of Household Science. A Popular Account of Heat, Light, Air, Ali­ment, and Cleansing, in Their Scientific Principles and Domestic Appli­cations (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1857), 161-63, Reid, Ventilation in American Dwellings, 1-3; E. M. Richards, "Important Hints on Ventila­tion," Scientific American n. s. 1 (1859): 363; "Breathing—Out of Doors and in the House," Scientific American n. s. 15 (1866): 151 ; "Ventilation—Its Necessity and Neglect," Scientific American n. s. 15 (1866): 323; Beecher, "American People Starved and Poisoned," 762-63; Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home (New York: J. B. Ford and Co., 1869), 44-49; Lewis W. Leeds,

37

"Ventilation—Diffusion of Gases," Technologist 1 (1870): 319; Todd S. Goodholme, éd., A Domestic Cyclopaedia (New York; Henry Holt and Co., 1878), s. v., "Air."

Jacques, The House, 36.

^^Other general discussions of the dangers of unventilated rooms are in John Haviland, An Improved and Enlarged Edition of 'Biddle's Young Carpenter's Assistant' (Philadelphia: McCarty and Davis, 1837), 43-44; Charles E. Buckingham, Circumstances Affecting Individual and Public Health (Boston: William Chadwick, 1848), l-.Sî "Reviews [Treatises on Ventilation]," American Journal of Medical Sciences n. s. 18 (1849): 131-33; Smith, Domestic Architect, 37-42; "On Warming and Ventilating Houses," Appleton's Mechanics' Magazine and Engineers' Journal 3 (1853): 166-67, 188-90, 213-15, 258-59, 286-87; "Ventilation," Appleton's Mechanics' Magazine and Engineers' Journal 2 (1853): 68, 113-14; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 63-67; Baker, Cottage Builder's Manual, 19-20; Youmans, Hand-book of Household Science, 168-74; Reid, Ventilation in American Buildings; E. G. Storke, ed.. The Family and Householder's Guide; or How to Keep House; How to Provide; How to Cook; How to Wash; How to Dye; How to Paint; How to Preserve Health; How to Cure Disease; etc., etc.: A Manual Of Household Management, From the Latest Authorities (Auburn, N. Y.: Auburn Publishing Co., 1859), 107-09, 110-11; Sloan, Homestead Architecture, 182-86; "Warming and Ventilation of Buildings," Scientific American n. s. 7 (1862): 372; "What is in the Bedroom?" Scientific American n. s. 7 (1862): 355; "Ventilation-Its Necessity and Neglect," 323; A Countryman, "On Warming and Ventilation," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 720-23; Lewis W. Leeds, "Ventilation and Heating," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 53-54, 152-54; Sereno Edwards Todd, Todd's Country Homes and How to Save Money (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Publishing Co., 1870), 263-72; Ross Winans, Ventilation and Other Requisites to a Healthy and Comfortable Dwelling (Baltimore: John P. Des Forges, 1871).

^^Good general discussions of ventilation methods are in Ran-lett. The Architect, 1:29, 35-36; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 465-74; Griscom, Uses and Abuses of Air, 222-31, ff.; "Report of the Committee on Hygiene," Transactions of the American Medical Associa­tion 4 (1851): 517-44; Wheeler, Rural Homes, 45-54; Samuel Sloan, The Model Architect; A Series of Original Designs for Cottages, Villas, Sub­urban Residences, etc., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: E. S. Jones and Co., [1852]), 2:52-53; Allen, Rural Architecture, 56-65; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 45-46; "Ventilation," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1858, No. 4, ed., J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Sons, 1858), 121-24; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 168-70; Beecher and Stowe, American Woman's Home, 59-65.

Discussions of ventilation typically were closely tied to the topic of heating. Most of the sources already cited included descrip­tions of heating technologies and their relationship to ventilation, but especially see Griscom, Uses and Abuses of Air, 228-42 ; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 475-81; Wheeler, Rural Homes, 172-85; Ferguson, "Historical Sketch of Central Heating."

^^"Architectural Design," Scientific American 7 (1851-52): 16.

38

^^Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 6; and Downing, Cot­tages Residences, 12.

®®Downing, Cottage Residences, 12. Other discussions of the meaning and importance of "convenience" are in Baker, Cottage Builder's Manual, 22-23; Lyman and Lyman, Philosophy of House-keeping, 442-43; "Comfort Considered in Building," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal, 541; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, SO­BS and 112-15; Jacques, The House, 22-23.

®^Abell, Woman in Her Various Relations, 75.

®2ibid.

®^Cited in James Marston Fitch, American Building; 1: The His­torical Forces that Shaped It, 2d ed., rev. and enl. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966), 111.

G^Cleaveland, et al. Village and Farm Cottages, 131.

®^Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), 283, 295.

®®Wheeler, Rural Homes, 26.

87"Two Adjoining City Dwellings," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69); 301.

88"provide Domestic Conveniences," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1862, ed., J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Son, 1862), 224.

®^Downing, Cottage Residences, 14-15; Kettell, "Building and Building Materials," 2:355.

^^Woodward and Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art-No. 1, 76, 88.

91"Two Adjoining City Dwellings," 301.

92see for example, Gervase Wheeler, Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country (New York: Charles Scriber, 1855), 137; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 18, 54; Chas. M. Windship, "Our Modern Household Conveniences - Mineral Poisons," Scientific American n. s. 2 (1860): 372; Charles Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 39.

S^Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), 292.

S^Beecher, "American People Starved and Poisoned," 768.

^^Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 426. Similar comments and descriptions are in "Another Premium Farm House," Rural New-Yorker 10 (1859): 77; "Water Cisterns," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 164; Jacques, The House, 70; William G. Rhoads, "Plumbing," Architectural Review and

39

Builder's Journal 1 (1868-69); 143; "A First-Class Farm House," Rural New-Yorker 22 (1870); 121.

®®Frederick B. Perkins, "Social and Domestic Life," in Eighty Years' Progress in the United States, 1:249.

®^It is worth noting that many of those who issued domestic advice manuals and architectural plan books perceived the project of domestic reform as just one part of the much larger task of national self-improvement. Andrew Jackson Downing, for example, treated the house—and the problem of "American" architecture and good taste—as one component what might be called aesthetic self-improvement. He edited The Horticulturalist, a "rural" journal devoted to the improvement of rural and country life, and his books examined not just architeture itself, but also landscape gardening and the environment within which buildings sat. Orson Fowler perceived reform as a project that encompassed the totality of the individual. His "interests included phrenology, and the correction of perverted sexuality," as well as home construction and home ownership, hydropathy, and diet. His Home for All promoted the use of cement in house construction and the octagonal shape, which, he claimed, provided more living space and a more pleasant domestic environment than conventional rectangular or square houses. Catharine Beecher was another domestic reformer who treated reform as a project that went beyond the four (or eight) walls of the house; she campaigned strenuously for better female education. Lewis Allen, whose 1852 Rural Architecture appeared eight times in just over a decade, shared Downing's interest in rural improvement, although he devoted his efforts to farming and stock breeding.

For Downing's views see Handlin, American Home, 30-38 and 40-42; Cohn, Palace or Poorhouse, 68-74; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 63-66. For Fowler see Cohn, Palace or Poorhouse, 85-88; the quote is on page 85. For Beecher see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 61-63; and Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 170-82. For Allen see Cohn, Palace or Poorhouse, 83-85; and "A Grand-Island Home," Country Gentleman 7 (1856); 377-78.

®®Welter, Mind of America, 6, 7. A good discussion of the notion of past, present, and future during this period is in Fred Som-kin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom, 1815-1860 (Ithaca, N. Y.; Cornell University Press, 1967), esp. 72-78.

S^Nye, Society and Culture, 26.

40

CHAPTER 2

THE LIMITS OF CONVENIENCE

"A water-closet, or its equivalent, is an absolute necessity in

any house that is proposed to be a convenient and agreeable residence, "

wrote Calvert Vaux in 1857, but, noting that there was "always an

expense, in arranging a regular water-closet," he suggested the inven­

tion of "some simple plan" that would "approximate" a closet's

"advantages" at a lesser cost. Architect Henry Hudson Holly sounded a

similar note in 1863. He recommended against installing "extensive

plumbing" in a house "unless it [could] be ascertained that the means

for repairing are at hand," and he omitted bathing rooms from some

houses "on account of the expense." The Vaux and Holly comments neatly

capture the limits of the idea of convenience in mid-nineteenth century

America. Put simply, one person's convenience was another person's

luxury.1

Categories and the Limits of Reform

The limits of convenience stemmed in part from the obvious

limits of the "domestic reform" effort detailed in the previous chapter.

Not every American woman could afford the luxury of total devotion to

the domestic sphere, nor could all families enjoy the luxury of leisured

togetherness in a comfortable home outfitted with all the modern con­

veniences. More importantly, Americans did not expect all of them to

participate in the effort to reshape home and family. Magazines arti-

41

des and books touted the virtues of furnaces, dumb-waiters, and water

closets as the necessary weapons with which to foment domestic reform,

but their authors wrote for a select group. The expectation that only

some Americans would or should embrace domestic reform stemmed from what

can be termed the principle of classification: in the 1840s and 1850s

Americans viewed their society as composed of different groups of

people. Contemporaries spoke of the "laboring class," the "farming

class," the "business class," the "dangerous classes," and so on. These

distinctions, which Americans apparently perceived as the natural pat­

tern of society, had less to do with wealth—although often a correla­

tion existed—than they did with occupation and what might be termed

"attitude."2 As a result, reformers regarded the domestic improvement

effort in general and the adoption of water fixtures in particular as

activities with limited appeal. They assumed that only some families

would understand the national importance of domestic reform, would

understand that domestic reform was less a choice than a necessity; the

future of the nation depended in part on their efforts to protect and

nurture the American family. For those families, conveniences were

necessities. On the other hand, advice manuals, some magazines, and the

architectural plan books seldom addressed the problems or needs of the

wretched huddled in the urban tenement, because the texts' authors

recognized that those types of people had little to contribute to family

reform; indeed, the tenement constituted part of the crisis that

threatened national well-being, and, by extension, the family unit.

Dumb-waiters and speaking tubes solved the problems of some family

types, but not all.^ Manifestations of this principle of categorization

are best seen by looking at the domestic reform movement's primary

42

treatises, the architectural plan books, and at the process of economic

and material differentiation in mid-century America.

Categories, Classes, and Architecture

Mid-century architectural plan books often included a paen to

home ownership and the single family dwelling, but their authors treated

"dwelling" as a highly relative concept: wealthy people built and owned

large, often ostentatious homes, while mechanics and laborers lived in

"tenements" or in small two or three room structures. By mid-century,

the American house embodied "general cultural values, particularly as an

index of progress, ..." and "particular house-types . . . had become

associated with particular values, . . . Hence, mid-century

architectural writers targeted both their books and their house plans to

specific people and situations: they defined styles of houses, such as

Italian, Norman, Gothic, Swiss; they established categories of houses,

such as rural, suburban, cottage, city, villa; they assigned dwellings

to different categories of people—laborers, mechanics, businessmen, as

well as to different categories of places—city, suburb, country, farm,

and village (Fig. 2. 1).®

The homes that Americans built thus ranged over a wide con­

tinuum, and contemporary architectural writers understood and responded

to the varieties of that continuum, just as they understood and

responded to the fact that while houses within a category might be

similar, houses of one category differed from those of another. For

example, the authors of a collection of plans for "village and farm cot­

tages" included houses designed for "a family of the smallest size and

most moderate aims," for members of "a numerous, but active and earnest

class . . . compelled to make the most of their means," and for persons

43

pBapEonvx vuKw.

V E R A N D A

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PORCH

PLAN CF PRINC:PALFLQSa.j£

S C O R O O M

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id-c X i5o

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pun or chambers.

. 1 A "suburban cottage" from Vaux's Villas and Cottages

44

DEDIOOH—I2> 16

"Wian Rooa 9 > 10

FÀILOE—IS X IT

PEUïrisctiT» Viiw. FIUST FIOOB FLAK.

Fig. 2.2 Jacques' The House showed this suburban cottage

of "substantial" "employment and character."® Another book included

plans for rural and suburban cottages, country and suburban houses, town

houses, and villas (figs. 2.2 and 2.3).? In his Homes for the People,

Gervaae Wheeler included designs for suburban villas, country villas,

"villa-like" houses, city houses, and cottages; he also delineated the

three "classes" of people most likely to build in the country. Wheeler

omitted house plans for the "poorer class," explaining that their situa­

tion posed an architectural problem beyond the scope of his work, but he

did offer his readers a design for "a tenement-house suited for respect­

able families of limited means."8 "Laborer's cottages" and homes for

the "mechanic or clerk" routinely figured in the pages of mid-century

architectural books.^ One writer noted that although the "subject of

house building" commanded "the attention of all classes in the com­

munity," few books on the subject met the needs of "the multitude," a

sentiment echoed by another architectural writer who dedicated his book

to the "working classes."10 William Ranlett created the plans in his

45

1856 City Architect for "the middle classes-the people who form the

backbone" of the country.Lewis Allen dedicated his 1852 Rural

Architecture to farmers, whom he described as the nation's "life-

sustaining" and "large and important" class of people.12 The authors of

another book offered their work to "a class, numerous and important in

every community, . . . comprehending mechanics and tradesmen of moderate

c i r c u m s t a n c e s , t h e s m a l l f a r m e r , a n d t h e l a b o r i n g m a n g e n e r a l l y . T h i s

categorization of houses, people, and places reflected contemporaries'

understanding of the principles of architecture: ideally, the occupation

and income of the inhabitants, as well as the chosen site, determined

the size and style of a house. But the architectural "principle" itself

Fig. 2.3 A "gothic villa" from The House

46

constituted a subset of the broader mid-century principle of categoriza­

tion; and architectural writers were responding to on-going processes of

mid-nineteenth century material, social, and economic differentiation.

Material Differentiation and the Consumers of Convenience

To whom did the architectural plan books and domestic advice

manuals speak? The extremely wealthy obviously possessed the financial

wherewithal necessary to enjoy domestic ease and to purchase and main­

tain conveniences such as furnaces, running water, and water fixtures.

Moreover, as noted in Chapter One, in the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries some well-to-do Americans had constructed private

water systems and seemed willing to experiment with plumbing. But

beginning in the 1840s the group of American plumbing users expanded in

both size and diversity, as demonstrated by both the variety of con­

temporary published house plans that included plumbing and the number of

actual users. Not every American began to use plumbing, of course, but

the group of those that did now included much more than the very

wealthy.

One category of plumbing consumers can be identified by return­

ing once again to the principle of categorization outlined earlier. The

American antebellum pattern of residential and social differentiation

also manifested itself in a growing tendency toward what Stuart Blumin

has described as a "divergence of economic well-being and opportunity"

and a "bifurcation of work experiences and environments . . . . " among

American urbanités. This bifurcation fostered the appearance of two

increasingly distinct categories of people; "manuals," persons who

worked with their hands for wages, and "nonmanuals," people who did

"head," rather than hand work, for salaries, rather than wages, and

47

whose appearance, according to Blumin, marked the formation of an

American middle class.

During the antebellum years, "increasing economic special­

ization" fostered the separation of "work" from "home," at least for

urban nonmanuals.^^ Moreover, entrepreneurs and manufacturers con­

tributed to workplace differentiation by physically separating the

activities of sales and management from the activities of production.

More and more, nonmanuals spent their work days primarily with other

nonmanuals and often in relatively luxurious surroundings.^® Indeed,

some firms advertised the grandeur and modernity of their sales rooms

and offices more than the products themselves. A growing array of

consumer goods sold in sumptuous display rooms influenced not only the

employees who worked in them, but also those who shopped there: women

with the leisure and money necessary for recreational shopping enjoyed

this activity in commercial spaces designed to entice spending and make

them feel comfortable.^® White-collar workers spent their days in

modern "business buildings" outfitted with water fixtures, heating, and

lighting, and returned at night to domestic interiors increasingly

devoted to material comfort.19 Moreover, many nonmanuals lived in

hotels that featured the most up-to-date accoutrements such as water

fixtures, lighting, and heating; if nothing else these plush but often

temporary surroundings likely raised people's expectations about what a

decent home ought to look like.20 Even places like passenger steam­

boats, railroad cars, and photography studios provided members of the

domestically-oriented "nonmanual" class with a model of material comfort

which they could duplicate in their homes.These social, economic,

and material circumstances created "an axis of respectability, stretch­

48

ing from the parlors of upper- and middle-class homes to the interiors

of downtown retail stores, . . . ."22 In the mid-nineteenth century

the "setting of domestic life" became "distinctly different for manuals

and nonmanuals, if not by intention then at least because one group but

not the other was able to buy the domestic interiors and household loca­

tions that permitted the fulfillment of a mid-century domestic ideal."23

Blumin's study concentrated on urban dwellers, particularly

those in what were then the nation's largest cities, but clearly the

"nonmanual" group extended beyond the borders of New York and other

"great cities." Lawyers, bankers, clerks, and retailers could be found

anywhere and it seems reasonable to assume that people residing in the

hundreds of smaller cities, towns, and villages that dotted the American

landscape expressed an interest in both material "respectability" and in

national progress and domestic reform. But as evidenced by the number

of advice manuals and house plans devoted to rural and farm life, the

task of domestic improvement went well beyond the confines of cities and

urban dwellers who worked for wages large or small. Journals such as

The Horticulturalist and The Country Gentleman routinely touted domestic

improvement to their readers, many of whom, presumably, lived beyond the

great cities on farms, in small villages, and in the netherworld of mid-

century "suburbs." Finally, it seems equally reasonable to assume that

at least some "manuals" expressed an interest in—and possessed the

financial wherewithal to invest in—domestic reform at some level, even

if that investment consisted of nothing more than installing a pump next

to the kitchen sink. Certainly the diversity and range of advice

manuals published at mid-century suggests that reform writers perceived

49

their audience as a collection of varied types, rather than as a

homogeneous singular entity.

But respectability was bought, not given, and ultimately, of

course, the ability to purchase water fixtures depended less on where a

person worked than on how much he or she earned, and how much of those

earnings could be devoted to "non-necessities." People with small

incomes generally spend large portions of their earnings on necessities

such as food, fuel, and lodging. As incomes rise, the proportion

devoted to these necessities decreases and families can channel more

money into non-necessities. Statistician and later United States Com­

missioner of Labor Carroll D. Wright documented this tendency in an

investigation conducted in the mid-1870s, just after the period being

examined here. Wright studied the spending and saving habits of almost

four hundred "working class" families, a collection of wage earners

employed in skilled and unskilled labor, whose annual incomes ranged

from about four hundred to almost a thousand dollars. He discovered

that most of the families "spent 51 to 64 percent of their funds on food

alone and over nine out of every ten dollars on food, clothing, and

shelter. . . ."24 por the highest income families in the study,

however, the percentage devoted to subsistence decreased, the amount for

clothing and housing stayed about even, and the portion of income spent

for "sundries" increased. Defining sundries as anything that did not

fall into one of the other categories, such as liquor, tobacco, club

memberships, books, furniture, and, of course, items such as sinks,

washbasins, and water closets, Wright determined that families at the

bottom end of the study group spent as little as thirty-two dollars a

year for sundries, while one family at the top end spent two-hundred and

50

fifty dollars (much of it, according to the study, as servant's

wages.)25 In Wright' study, only the few families at the top end of the

scale could realistically contemplate adding plumbing and water fixtures

to their homes. These top earners found work as factory overseers and

as "high-income skilled workers in the building, shop, and metal-working

trades," and thus occupied a kind of limbo: they did not fit the pattern

suggested by Blumin's analysis of nonmanuals, but their income, and in

the case of the overseers, their jobs, made them eligible to participate

in some nonmanual experiences, and, should they chose, in the task of

progress through domestic improvement.

Although Wright conducted his study in the mid-1870s, or after

the middle decades of the century, his figures are not as problematic

for this study as they appear to be at first glance. The skilled

workers in his study earned between $560.00 and about eight hundred dol­

lars. 27 other studies have indicated that around 1850 a New York City

male working in skilled trades earned about three hundred dollars a

year, but Blumin argues that because that figure includes the lower wage

levels of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, a skilled worker in 1850

(in an urban setting) actually earned as much as five hundred dollars

annually.28 All other things being equal, in the middle decades of the

century, as in the mid-1870s, a wage-earning skilled worker was unlikely

to have the disposable income necessary to support an in-house plumbing

system. It appears, then, that mid-century plumbing users came

largely—although perhaps not exclusively—from the ranks of nonmanuals.

Even at the bottom end of the "nonmanual" category, people

earned more than their contemporaries who were skilled manual workers.

Blumin cites the example of one Edward Tailer, employed as a clerk by a

New York dry goods importer. According to Blumin, "entry level" non-

manuals such as Taller fully expected to pass beyond clerking and go

into business for themselves. Tailer probably viewed his starting wage

of fifty dollars a year as a token apprentice salary, and indeed, within

just a few years Tailer's earnings already totaled over a thousand dol­

lars a year, and by the age of twenty-five he had left employment to

start his own business. Other nonmanuals shared Taller's employment

history and salary: salaries of close to two thousand dollars were not

unusual for clerks, retailers of various stripes could expect to make

anywhere from three to six thousand dollars annually, and of course at

the top end of the nonmanual category bankers, investors, importers, and

others earned annual incomes in the tens of thousands of dollars.29

This assessment of incomes leads to an obvious conclusion: the

mid-nineteenth century's burgeoning "white collar" class constituted the

primary, although surely not the only, consumers of the convenience of

plumbing. Salaried workers—nonmanuals—enjoyed a "disposable" income,

in part because they could afford to live in outlying neighborhoods

where land and housing were cheaper. They lived in larger houses than

manuals, and, unlike manuals, they dedicated their houses to domestic

life.^® Finally, in their workday environments and their recreational

activities—such as shopping and steamboat excursions—nonmanuals

routinely confronted a model of modernity and convenience that

influenced their ideas of domestic comfort, ideas prompted and shaped by

the mid-century domestic reform effort. But given the broad nature of

the reform effort, it seems reasonable to assume that some "manuals"

also participated in the project of domestic improvement. Certainly, as

this and other chapters will show, the lack of uniformity in plumbing

52

fixtures and plumbing installations indicates that the group of mid-

century plumbing users was anything but homogeneous-

Categories and the Limits of Convenience

The dual processes of categorization and differentiation shaped

the limits of the reform effort, and, by extension, the use of con­

veniences, including who enjoyed plumbing and how they used it. Put

simply, the convenience of plumbing appeared in some but not all types

of houses. Americans expected the owner of a country "villa" or estate

to install bathing rooms, water closets, sinks, and other "appendages,"

but they did not expect to find these same conveniences in the modest

home of a "mechanic" or "laborer." Nor did mid-century Americans assume

all consumers of conveniences would use the same type and quantity of

fixtures. Instead, the diversity of fixtures and installations paral­

leled the diversity of people who used them.

For example, William Ranlett's 1847 collection of house plans

included a set of four "cottages" being built on Staten Island. The

architect assigned each cottage two "water closets," but placed them

inside a detached wood shed located behind the dwelling itself. But an

"Anglo Italian villa," an elaborate structure with numerous bedrooms and

dressing rooms as well as a grand staircase, a parlor, and a drawing

room, had two in-house cisterns as well as a second-floor combination

bathing room and water closet."Villas" shown in Samuel Sloan's 1852

Model Architect, several of which had actually been built, included

bathing rooms and water closets, but a "plain dwelling" for a "family of

six persons, including a servant" had a second floor bath room and two

one-seat "water closets" behind the kitchen, and a set of designs for a

"laborer's home" contained only a one-seat privy or water closet behind

53

the kitchen, but no bathing room.In Sloan's 1861 collection of

designs, plans for a cottage for a "mechanic or clerk" included neither

bathing room nor water closet (fig. 2.4). On the other hand, his design

for a farmer in "easy circumstances" boasted an attic cistern, kitchen

boiler, and second floor bathing room with hot and cold water.

Another architectural book included a "cheap cottage plan" and a "small

cottage" for a "mechanic or laborer" of "limited means"; neither one had

any plumbing, but more elaborate "cottages" of many rooms and several

floors and still-more elaborate villas included bathing rooms, water

closets, boilers, and other conveniences.^^ An 1846 New York real

estate advertisement offered a house with "water, range, boiler, bath,

w. c.'s . . . and every other improvement introduced into modern built

houses of the first class.Plans for a "plain and cheap" Mas­

sachusetts house and for three "cheap tenement houses" showed neither

Fig. 2.4 A home for a family of "moderate aims," shown in Cleaveland's Village emd Farm Cottages

54

bathing room nor water closet, while "city" houses designed for both the

"wealthy" and persons of "moderate" income included wash basins, bathing

rooms, and other conveniences (Fig. 2.5).^®

As these examples demonstrate, mid-nineteenth century Americans

treated plumbing as necessities for the few; they expected to find run­

ning water, bath tubs, and water closets only in certain types of

houses. This pattern of selective, rather than universal, use encour­

aged a second important consequence of categorization: since Americans

treated water fixtures as necessities for the few, they regarded it as

unnecessary to devise formal or legal standards, such as plumbing codes,

with which to govern their use.^? Moreover, while certain classes of

homes had water fixtures, the number, type, and arrangement of con­

veniences actually used in those homes depended entirely on individual

choice; a family's ability and willingness to pay defined the limits of

convenience. As a result, a "standard" plumbing installation simply did

not exist; indeed, writers used the noun "conveniences" to describe

water fixtures far more often than they used the word "plumbing," espe­

cially during the 1840s and 1850s. The people who used these con­

veniences did not install "plumbing systems"; instead, they bought and

used one or more discrete and specific objects—which belonged to a

larger category of things called conveniences—in order to perform

certain discrete and specific tasks. These conveniences included, but

were not limited to, supply and drainage technologies, such as attic

cisterns and cesspools, and "water fixtures," such as bath tubs, wash­

basins, and water closets. A homeowner selected these conveniences

after considering several factors; how many could the family afford?

55

Kiira

BASEMENT.0 CELLAR PLAN

Fig. 2.5 This "city house" for persona in "moderate circumstances had many conveniences, including a furnace, dumb waiter, and wash basins. From Sloan's City and Suburban Architecture

Which conveniences, and how many of each, did the family want or need?

Where would the water come from? What kinds of drainage facilities were

available? As a result, household water supply and disposal installa­

tions varied widely. And, as with houses, the type and number of fix­

tures used by people within a "class" tend to be similar; it is possible

to discern general tendencies within a class, although the typicality of

one class differed from that of another. This pattern is best

understood by looking at some specific water supply and fixture arrange­

ments .

The Beecher and Allen Arrangements

In her Treatise on Domestic Economy, Catherine Beecher included

a simple but practical water fixture-water supply arrangement for a cot­

tage residence, which she defined as a house in a suburb or village, or

in the "country," rather than in the "city." Designed to secure "water

with the least labor," Beecher's arrangement used water pumped from

either a well or an underground cistern (Fig. 2.6). A reservoir, to "be

filled once a day, ... by a man, or boy," stood next to the pump,

while a multi-branch supply pipe channeled the reservoir's water into

various fixtures. One branch carried cold water to a nearby sink, while

a second one conducted water into a boiler adjacent to the reservoir.

The main branch of the supply pipe ran through a wall and carried cold

water to a bath tub in an adjoining room, while a separate pipe carried

hot water from the boiler to the tub; family members used a stop-cock to

siphon off hot water as needed. "By this arrangement," explained

Beecher, "great quantities of hot and cold water can be used, with no

labor in carrying, and with very little in raising it." The household's

57

P, Pump. L, Steps to use when pumping. R, Reservoir. G, Brickwork to raise the Reservoir. B, A large Boiler. F, Furnace, beneath the Boiler. C, Conductor of cold water. H, Conductor of hot, water. K, Cock for letting cold water into the Boiler. 5, Pipe to conduct cold water to a cock over the kitchen sink. T, Bathing-tub, which receives cold water from the Conductor, C, and hot water from the Conductor, H. ÎF, Partition separating the Bathing-room from the Wash-room. F, Cock, to draw off hot water. Z, Mug to «et off the water from the Bathing-tub into a drain.'

Fig. 2.6 Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy urged women to "secure all these conveniences"

conveniences also included two privies, installed in small compartments

just off the bathing room (which was itself behind the kitchen and next

to the "woodpile").38 This single floor arrangement kept pipe work, and

thus cost, to a minimum, and Beecher further minimized costs by using

privies, rather than expensive mechanical water closets. In his

treatise on rural architecture, Lewis Allen included similar water

supply arrangements, which he regarded as especially suited to the needs

of people living on large tracts of land. Allen, too, distinguished

between "city" and "country" houses, and argued vehemently that dif­

ferences between the two types necessitated different arrangements of

water fixtures:

In city houses . . '. the bathing-rooms are usually placed in the second . . . story, and the water for their supply is drawn from cisterns still above them. This arrangement, in city houses, is m a d e c h i e f l y f r o m t h e w a n t o f r o o m o n t h e g r o u n d f l o o r . . . . In the farm ... or country house . . . such arrangement is

58

unnecessary, . . . because there is no want of room on the ground; expensive, because an upper cistern is always liable to leakages, . . . and inconvenient, from the continual up-and-down labor of those who occupy the house, . . .

The Bickford House

Not all homeowners had to or wanted to settle for such (rela­

tively) simple single floor arrangements. When William Bickford of Wor­

cester, Massachusetts, built his "Italian villa" in the late 1840s he

installed a more elaborate configuration of fixtures than the ones out­

lined by Beecher and Allen. Although Worcester, with a population of

about twelve thousand, already had a public water system, Bickford sup­

plied his fixtures with private water. Why he did is not clear: perhaps

he lacked access to a main, or resented paying for public water when he

had a usable well and ample rain water. In any case, two copper pumps

attached to the sink provided "hard" and "soft" water from both a well

and a brick and cement cellar cistern; the latter received its water

from roof conductors. Unlike Allen, Bickford apparently believed the

advantages of an upstairs bathing room and an elevated cistern out­

weighed the drawbacks, because his family used a force pump to transfer

water from the cellar to a five hundred gallon cistern located above the

bathing room. Pipes carried water from that cistern to the bathroom,

which housed a tub and a "small sink . . . with a pipe and faucet for

the purpose of drawing water from the upper cistern," and to other fix­

tures throughout the house, such as washbasins. Waste water flowed into

a cellar drain, "eight inches square, well stoned and covered; . . ."

and from there presumably to a cesspool. The family used a first floor

"water closet" located just outside the back door; the w. c. may have

been a simple privy, since there is no indication that any of the supply

59

pipes carried water to it.40

The Rogers House

Bickford's use of conveniences differed considerably from those

found in the Boston home of H. B. Rogers. In 1852 Rogers hired Daniel

Davies, a Boston "housewright," to remodel his Joy Street home, perhaps

in preparation for receiving "city" water from the Cochituate works,

since much of the work involved replacing or adding water fixtures,

pipes, and drains. Rogers apparently expected the Cochituate works to

provide good water pressure, because he dispensed with pumps and attic

cisterns. The house already had one third floor water closet, but

Davies' crew remodeled and enlarged that space to make room for new fix­

tures, including a "shower bath," a sunken tub with cover, a porcelain

wash basin with marble slab and "plated facets [sic]," and a new water

closet. The contractor installed sinks in the kitchen and washroom, and

outfitted both with lead pipes, brass fittings, and a "cesspool

strainer." A sixty gallon copper boiler and a water back located in the

kitchen supplied hot water to the third story bathing area, and to a new

bath room in the basement. In the basement bath, the workers installed

a pan water closet with a twenty-gallon cistern and "all the usual fix­

tures and apparatus," a lead-lined bathing tub with brass fixtures, and

a porcelain wash bowl. To prevent water damage caused by leaks, they

lined the closet floor with a "safe," a lead floor covering whose edges

ran up the wall a height of three inches. Below the basement, in the

cellar, Davies and his crew filled in an existing well and removed a

pump. Two-inch drain pipes carried basin, tub, and sink wastes to "the

main drain in the cellar," and a separate drain carried water closet

wastes to a cesspool.41

60

The Woodward Specifications

A final example comes from a set of plumbing specifications

included in an 1869 collection of house plans published by George E.

Woodward. "Design No. 1," a two-story frame house, used water from a

cistern, a well, and an attic tank to supply a number of water fixtures,

including a second floor copper bath tub, shower, pan water closet, and

marble washbasin, as well as two separate but adjacent water closets

located off the first floor washroom (Fig 2.7). Tin leaders carried

rain water into the ten-foot-by-ten-foot underground cistern, while two

sets of lead pipes, each 1 1/4-inches in diameter, channeled water from

the cistern and the well to a "combination lift and force pump" that

stood next to a cast-iron sink in the kitchen. A third lead pipe con­

nected this pump to the attic tank that supplied water to the upstairs

bath room. A forty-gallon copper boiler and a water back provided hot

water for the kitchen sinks and the bath room.42

For the upstairs water closet. Woodward recommended "a best

constructed pan closet, with white marble pattern basin, Wedgewood [sic]

ware, enameled receiver and silver plated cup and handle." A separate

cistern, twenty-four by fourteen by fourteen-inches, serviced the

closet. The two water closets located on the first floor, however, were

probably nothing more than wooden seats perched atop an eight foot deep

brick-lined vault that was flushed with overflow water from the attic

cistern: a 3 1/2-inch lead overflow pipe ran from the attic down to a

point where it joined with a four-inch cast iron soil pipe from the

upper water closet, and then continued down into the first floor water

closets' vault. An earthen drain pipe carried these wastes from the

vault to a cesspool.43

61

--J5'6"

Vx4Ji vtc

n WASH R. , _ ID' * ft'

BSEm

Kitchen 14'X 17* a

-.S'O" . "Akoti

g

| | I a

nam hall

paklor 15'* 20'

9' 0 .

Dining Room IV X IT

2S'0" :

- LO 0 — — 4# [

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k- • — — XS'O"* ~ - y

Fig. 2.7 The ground floor plans for George E. Woodward's Design No. 1, as shown in his 1869 National Architect

62

The Diverse Meanings of Convenience

These examples demonstrate the lack of uniformity in mid-

nineteenth century water fixture installations. Plumbing users lived in

small cities and large, in "suburbs" and villages, on farms and "country

estates." They all embraced the notion of domestic improvement, but the

kind and quality of material reform implemented varied from house to

house. Moreover, Americans perceived domestic reform as a project with

individual roots: personal desire for change, rather than national,

state, or local policies and mandates, propelled the task of domestic

improvement. As a result, diversity rather than uniformity marked the

technology and installation of mid-century plumbing. Beecher and Allen,

for example, maximized convenience by putting water fixtures on one

floor, and by using non-mechanical privies. Bickford, on the other

hand, weighed the disadvantages of second and third story water tanks

and fixtures against the advantages of "running" water and a bathing

room adjacent to the bedrooms, and decided in favor of the latter. The

Bickford and Woodward houses used a pump and an elevated cistern to

replicate the water supply convenience enjoyed by city dweller Rogers,

who had access to the Cochituate water works. Woodward and Rogers opted

to use mechanical water closets, despite the disadvantages these devices

posed in terms of breakdowns and cost; the Woodward house, however, com­

bined the best of both worlds by also using two non-flush privy-type

closets. In each case, the designer or owner created plumbing installa­

tions that reflected individual wants and needs; the owners' desires,

opinions, and income determined the limits of convenience. These exam­

ples also reiterate a claim made earlier: the appearance of mid-century

plumbing did not depend on a "technology system," such as a water works.

63

without which "it would have been useless to devote a room exclusively

to the bath."44 similarly, the use of mechanical water closets was not

"necessarily limited" to "cities which had a steady water supply."45 in

other words, a particular set of ideas about domestic life, rather than

an innovation in technology, spurred the appearance and use of household

plumbing.

The Costs of Convenience

For those who participated in the domestic reform effort, the

potential for achieving the domestic ideal and fulfilling the desire for

convenience ran aground only when ideal and desire collided with the

cost of convenience. Cost may have been a significant determinant in

the decision to purchase the convenience, but it was a determinant of

immense flexibility, in no small measure because of the lack of plumbing

codes, which would have required consumers to spend the minimum neces­

sary to "meet code." Instead, no two installations looked the same, and

both the quality and quantity of water fixtures varied widely from house

to house. Subsequent chapters will discuss the prices of specific fix­

tures in greater detail, but now it may be useful to look at both the

actual and the hidden costs associated with water fixtures.

The Price of Fixtures

In the late nineteenth century, one New York plumber recalled

that during the 1840s plumbing work for "an average house" cost six hun­

dred dollars, but that found in "a very fine house" cost closer to two

thousand dollars.46 The (probably) "very fine" houses of Henry Parish

and Trevor W. Parke demonstrate one extreme on the continuum of con­

venience: Parish's Manhattan house, built in the 1840s, had seven water

64

closets, eleven bathing tubs, and numerous wash basins.4? when Parke

built his North Bennington, Vermont, home in the mid-1860s, the con­

tractor installed twenty-five hundred dollars worth of plumbing, includ­

ing five bath tubs, one hip bath, five Bartholomew valve water closets,

and fourteen wash basins, as well as a copper boiler, wash trays, and a

copper butler's sink.The H. B. Rogers house described earlier

represented a more constrained interpretation of "convenience"; Rogers

paid close to four hundred dollars for fixtures and labor. He spent

seventy-five dollars for new water closets and tubs, and forty dollars

for two kitchen sinks and two marble basin slabs. For "plumber work"

Rogers paid $266.00, although it is unclear if that figure represented

the total cost of labor, or just the cost of installing the fixtures

mentioned above, since workers also installed a boiler, several sinks,

and a great deal of pipe.49

A plan book published in the late 1850s included plumbing and

water supply estimates for a house equipped with hot and cold water

throughout, a full bathroom (water closet, basin, and tub), several

cisterns, and numerous wash basins. The book's author estimated the

price for the bathing room, hot water system, and supply pipes at six

hundred dollars, and the cost of pumps, a well, and the several cisterns

at five hundred dollars.In his 1852 Model Architect Samuel Sloan

calculated the plumbing costs for a ten thousand dollar two-story house.

The fixtures, described as "of the very best quality," with prices "set

at the market cash price," included an enamelled iron tub and sink, hot

and cold shower, a lead-lined attic tank, two water closets, and two

wash basins. The tub and sink came to $29.50, and the brass shower

added another $17.50 to the price. Sloan estimated the price of "China

bowls" for the chambers, presumably washbasin bowls, at three dollars

each, and the two water closets at seventy-five dollars each, plus

another $11.90 for their attached soil pipes. The total: $214.90, a

figure that does not include the price of the attic tank or labor.51

Nor do any of these prices include two other costs that users of water

fixtures faced: paying for "public" water, when it was available, and

paying for both maintenance and for the damage that, by all accounts,

water fixtures were likely to cause.

The Price of Water

Generally speaking, municipal water boards assessed their

customers two different charges: an annual water "rent," typically based

on the size of the house and/or the number of occupants, and a separate

charge for each water fixture, a levy that hardly seems surprising con­

sidering the lack of uniformity among household installations, and the

lack of reliable metering devices. Of fourteen cities for which water

rates could be determined, all of them charged customers an extra fee

for water fixtures although Brooklyn permitted each customer one free

water closet or tub, charging two and three dollars, respectively, for

each additional fixture. In 1849 water users in the Moyamensing dis­

trict of Philadelphia paid anywhere from $2.50 to five dollars annually

for water, depending on size of the house and its location. On top of

that initial charge, customers paid three dollars for each bath tub and

one dollar for each water closet.5% At the same time, the base rate for

Boston water takers started at six dollars per house, depending on the

assessed value of the structure and the number of families living in it:

a family living in a house with an assessed tax rate of one thousand

dollars paid six dollars, while one living in a dwelling with an assess-

66

ment of between eleven and twelve thousand dollars paid seventeen dol­

lars annually. But regardless of the size of the house, each tub or

water closet cost an additional five dollars per year.53

These rates remained surprisingly stable over several decades,

and sometimes even dropped. For example, in 1854 the Baltimore water

board charged customers rates that started at six dollars per year, and

three dollars for each w. c. or tub, but by 1871 those rates had all

dropped by one dollar.5* The residents of Richmond, Virginia, paid the

same water rates in 1867 that they had in 1859: an initial rent of five

dollars and up, and an additional three dollars for each one-seat water

closet. (They paid two dollars for closets with two or more seats.)®®

In 1869 water takers in Peoria paid five dollars and up for water and

two dollars for each tub or water closet, rates comparable to those paid

in Moyamensing twenty years earlier.®® Water rents rose only slightly

in Detroit over a fifteen year period: in 1860 rates started at three

dollars, and customers paid from two to five dollars for each bath or

water closet. By 1875 the base rate had risen to five dollars annually,

and customers paid two dollars for tubs, twenty-five cents for each

wash-basin, and three to five dollars for pan closets. The Detroit

water board established rates on a case-by-case basis for customers who

persisted in using the wasteful hopper-style water closet.®?

The Price of Imperfection

People who relied on private water avoided these expenses, of

course, but all plumbing users faced the costs of maintenance and

repair. All the available evidence indicates that mid-century plumbing

could be a real domestic headache. Plumbing users struggled with every­

thing from leaky faucets and tubs and temperamental water closets, to

frozen and cracked pipes and the damaged ceilings and drenched carpeting

that they caused. According to one patent application, metal-lined tubs

"frequently" leaked because manufacturers placed the seam on the bottom

of the tub. Over time the seam gradually opened and the tub leaked

because of the "loosening of the joints, caused by the springing of the

sides of tub[, by] the shrinking of the wooden bottom, and also by the

weight of the person when stepping into the tub."®® Washbasins, sinks,

and faucets also caused problems because of the way plumbers attached

them to the wall, and because mid-century faucets were notoriously

leaky. Leaking faucets and loose joints caused moisture to build up in

the space between the back of the fixture and the wall, so that "in

houses where sinks and other vessels are fitted permanently in place,

and warm and cold water supplied to the same, it is found that roaches

and water bugs accumulate very fast around such articles."^9 The prac­

tice of encasing sinks in wooden frames caused still more problems

because, as one writer explained, "the shrinkage of the wood" created an

"opening . . . between the metal sink and the wood-work, into and

through which water splashes, . . . and from the moisture and drippings,

the floor below is constantly saturated, and frequently rots."GO Earth­

enware basin bowls usually leaked at the point where the faucet came

through the wall, or where the basin sat on the slab, causing "much

annoyance, decay of walls and ceilings and destruction of property . .

."61 Water closets caused similar problems; closet valves and pipe

joints tended to leak, producing wet floors and ceilings, as well as

obnoxious odors, and water closets' complicated mechanisms kept plumbers

busy with repairs.62 Home owners and plumbers tried to prevent the

inevitale water damage caused by faulty devices by lining the floor

68

under closets, tubs, and sinks with lead safes, but that practice did

little to alleviate the biggest headache plumbing users faced, namely

frozen and cracked pipes. This problem occurred because for much of the

mid-century period, Americans alleviated water closet odors by placing

these fixtures adjacent to an outside wall. Then, in order to conserve

space and economize on installation costs, they stacked all the other

fixtures and pipes above and below the water closet, a practice that

guaranteed that all of the household's pipes and fixtures met the same

fate in cold temperatures.

An anecdotal description in an 1868 essay by Philadelphia plum­

ber W. G. Rhoads illustrates the problems associated with water pipe

placement and installation. Rhoads invited his readers to examine a

comfortable house "pleasantly located near the centre of Philadelphia"

whose inhabitants enjoyed the convenience of a second-floor bath tub and

water closet. "Mr. Jones," the owner, lamented that, alas, the family

could only use the fixtures in the summer. "How so?," inquired Rhoads.

Jones explained that although he had insulated the pipes with sawdust

"by the cart-load," the installation of the pipes and fixtures conspired

against his efforts.

The bath-room is frame, you see, projecting from the brick build­ing; and the pipe runs up on one of the posts supporting it, where it is exposed to the weather; the hot-water pipe is also exposed, where it comes through the wall of the kitchen, to enter the bath­room. Then, the trap of the water-closet is in the floor; and, of course, freezes and bursts, the first cold weather; and, just when we begin to feel the advantage of having it in the house, we are obliged to abandon it for the winter. After patiently paying the plumber's bills, for mending leaks and thawing pipes, we turn off the water in despair, and close the entire arrangement until spring.63

Rhoads assured his readers that new house designs eliminated the prob­

lems of freezing and leaking because "the parts of the house which con­

tain the water-fixtures are mostly in the central portions of the build­

ing," but he urged persons living in older houses to protect their

investments by learning how to insulate, thaw, and repair pipes, and by

knowing the exact location of the shut-off valve. As a Poughkeepsie

plumber put it, if people "wish[ed] to have use of [their fixtures] in

winter," it behooved them to learn some simple survival strategies.

Advice included installing plumbing only on the south side of the struc­

ture, insulating pipes with boards and sawdust, running pipes near or

actually in a chimney flue, covering pipes with layers of "felting, such

as steam fitters use on steam pipes," and either shutting water off at

the main or leaving taps running on cold nights.64

The Limits and Intentions of Municipal Regulation

Plumbing users employed these tactics as a way to temper the

limitations of water technologies and installation methods inside the

home. Outside the house, municipal governments regulated household

drainage practice and the use of water fixtures as a way to mitigate the

impact of plumbing on expensive public utilities and to prevent plumbing

users from creating health hazards in the form of improperly disposed

wastes and pools of standing water. Municipal interference in domestic

sanitation practice was hardly new in the middle decades. For most of

the century municipal governments prohibited people from dumping wastes

on streets and other public property, and passed ordinances that

governed the use of privies on private property. For exeimple, cities

required people to keep privies in good order, and dictated where and

when households could empty privy vaults, and even how and where those

vaults were to be dug.65 These ordinances accomplished several ends.

Because cholera and other epidemic diseases most often appeared during

warm weather months, prohibitions against summer vault cleaning mini­

mized the likelihood of creating or contributing to the miasmas associ­

ated with disease. City officials required property owners to dig

vaults of a certain depth and to line them with stone in order to

prevent the contents from seeping into and soaking the ground (which

contributed to the formation of miasmas) and from contaminating wells

and cisterns. Some cities ordered residents to attach their privy

vaults to a drain, a requirement that encouraged careful waste removal

practice.66 ordinances of this type regulated privies, but cities used

water works and sewer ordinances as tools with which to regulate the use

of water fixtures and running water.

Water Works Ordinances

When a municipality constructed a water works, typically the

city council passed governing ordinances that spelled out the relation­

ship between the works and its customers. The regulations passed in

Philadelphia, a city generally regarded as having the first important

municipal American water works, typify those used in the United States

until after the Civil War. In that city municipal statutes admonished

water takers against waste and theft, prohibited the re-sale of water

for a profit, and empowered works employees to enter customers' premises

in order to determine the cause of "any unnecessary waste of water."

Ordinances mandated that pipes carrying water from public mains to pri­

vate supply pipes be "of sufficient strength" and required customers to

have an accessible stop-cock so that works employees could shut off the

water when necessary. In 1854 the city passed an ordinance that author­

ized water "inspectors" to enter premises in order to take "an account

of all connections and openings on the premises and their uses, such as

71

the number of hydrants, baths, water closets, fountains, &c."®^

Other cities followed Philadelphia's example. The 1850 Boston

water works ordinance required customers to "prevent all unnecessary

waste of water," to keep service pipes "in good repair, and protected

from frost," and authorized the water registrar to enter takers'

premises in order to "examine the quantity [of water] used, and the man­

ner of use," presumably so that the Cochituate Water Board could monitor

waste and calculate the number of fixtures in use.®® In Richmond, Vir­

ginia, the 1859 water ordinance included similar stipulations against

waste and required all potential customers to submit a written descrip­

tion of the purposes for which water was wanted and "a plan of the work

intended to be done" to the water superintendent. The ordinance

insisted that "practical and competent plumbers" make pipe connections

and install fixtures using materials of "the best quality and suffi­

ciently strong to withstand double the required pressure."^9 The Hart­

ford, Connecticut, ordinance in force in the early 1860s contained

virtually identical clauses, although that city required plumbers rather

than customers to report the numbers and type of fixtures installed to

the water registrar. The Hartford law also prohibited people from using

"continuous flow" as a way "to guard against frost" and charged the

city's police force with the task of monitoring and investigating any

"unnecessary profusion of flow and waste."70 Chicago's water ordinance

in force in the mid-1860s ordered customers to keep their "service

pipes, stop-cocks and apparatus in good repair, and protected from

frost," and to keep "taps at wash-basins, water-closets, baths and

urinals" closed except when in use.^l In an 1869 ordinance, the Peoria,

Illinois, water board protected its water supply by requiring plumbers

72

to use pipe "of the kind known as 'strong' lead" of at least one half-

inch in diameter.72

These water ordinances are significant for what they did not

do; none of them required residents to connect their houses to the water

mains, and none forbid the continued use of privies, in-house water

reservoirs, backyard wells, or cisterns. Moreover, aside from some gen­

eral stipulations, none demanded that customers install or use specific

types or quantities of water fixtures.73 The Richmond ordinance cited

above insisted that residents employ "practical and competent plumbers,"

and use materials of "the best quality," but those stipulations hardly

constituted a plumbing code; rather, residents remained free to make

broad choices about plumbing installation and use. In other words, even

when people had access to a public water supply, it did not matter where

they got their water, how they stored it, or what they did with it, so

long as they didn't waste it, steal it, give it away, or dispose of it

improperly in a public space.

Instead, water works ordinances served primarily as mechanisms

with which to prevent waste and health hazards, which is another way of

saying that cities used water works ordinances not as a way to monitor

plumbing itself, but as tools with which to protect an expensive public

works from damage that plumbing might cause to that works, to protect

others from any standing water or foul wastes that plumbing users might

generate, and to prevent unnecessary leakage and waste of costly pumped

water. The 1869 Peoria plumbers' ordinance mentioned earlier is a good

example of both. When Peoria voters approved plans to construct a

works, city officials first purchased pumping equipment from the Holly

Manufacturing Company, including two Holly rotary pumps; later, however.

the city added Worthington high pressure pumps. Once the city had

installed the Worthington pumps, plumbing users had to install their

pipes and water fixtures in a way that enabled the fixtures to withstand

the pressure. City officials passed an ordinance that stipulated mini­

mum weight standards for both the external lead pipes (those that con­

nected the house to the main), and internal lead service pipes (those

used inside the house). (The ordinance set no standards for iron pipes,

presumably because iron pipes could withstand the water pressure.)

Water customers had to use "stop-cocks and other appurtenances" "suffi­

ciently strong to resist the pressure and ram of the water." The city

also monitored plumbing installations by requiring all local plumbers to

obtain a license, and to submit a full application for "each and every

opening required" that stated "the size of the tap required, the size

and kind of service-pipe to be used, . . . the purpose or purposes for

which the water is to be used, and all other particulars pertaining to a

full understanding of the subject." Regulations of this type protected

the property belonging to the works, but they also ensured that plumbing

owners used pipes and pipe connections that would not leak and thereby

waste the city's water or cause standing water or pools of foul wastes.

But this otherwise detailed ordinance said nothing about the fixtures

themselves, or how people installed and used them.74

Sewer and Drain Ordinances

Municipalities also passed ordinances designed to monitor the

private use of public sewers and drains, and, as in the case of water

statutes, they used these ordinances to protect an expensive public

investment. Mid-century Americans used drains and sewers in a manner

that differed radically from the practice of the latter part of the

century. In the last two decades of the century, municipalities built

citywide unified sewer systems that carried both wastes and storm run­

off to a central depository. Prior to that time, however, Americans

constructed drainage trenches primarily to drain low-lying or wet

ground, rather than as conduits for carrying away household and indus­

trial wastes; whether above or below ground, whether open trenches or

buried pipes, these projects drained standing water and carried rain and

snow run-off from populated areas.75 A mid-century drain solved a par­

ticular, rather than a general, problem; as a result, urbanités built an

amalgam of public and private drains, troughs, and underground channels,

rather than large-scale, unified sewer systems.76 Historians have

faulted mid-century drainage practice as primitive and inadequate, but

in fact it represented a rational response to a set of beliefs. For

much of the nineteenth century Americans embraced the so-called mias­

matic theory of disease. According to this view, damp earth, stagnant

water, and putrefied or decayed animal and vegetable matter released

noxious and toxic fumes, which in turn contaminated the atmosphere and

generated disease.^7 Thus scattered small-scale drainage works served

an important function: they removed pockets of water and ground moisture

that would otherwise stagnate and produce miasmas.78

Americans recognized, and struggled with, the limits of their

drainage practice and its technologies. An 1857 Springfield, Illinois,

ordinance specifically forbid certain uses of the public lines: section

eleven ordered that "no privy or cesspool ... be drained or emptied

into any public sewer," under pain of a fifty dollar fine.79 Until the

mid-1840s New Yorkers faced a similar prohibition. A municipal statute

expressly forbid New Yorkers from using public drains and sewers "for

75

the purpose of carrying off the contents of any privy or water closet .

. . With the advent of Croton water service, however, some council

officials started a drive to permit residents to drain closets and

privies into sewers. This effort succeeded in 1845, but the new law

required persons using the drains to "have a sufficiency of Croton

water, to be so applied as to properly carry off such matters".®® A

Philadelphia ordinance passed in 1855 granted residents permission to

"make openings into the common sewers." Philadelphians interpreted this

act in the broadest terms possible and began connecting their privy

vaults, water closets, and cesspools to the sewers. The Board of Health

urged the City Council to end the "abuse of the privilege thus granted,"

arguing that "the system of connecting cesspools and privies with

sewers, [was] one of the most reprehensible allowed by law." Board mem­

bers argued, unsuccessfully, that since the sewers were not designed to

hold wastes—there was not enough water to flush thoroughly the lines—

the practice of connecting household drainage systems to the sewers only

invited a new health hazard into the community.®^ The Washington, D. C.

Board of Health made a similar plea after the 1857 outbreak of the so-

called National Hotel Disease. After an investigation into the inci­

dent, the Board concluded that the disease resulted from blood poisoning

produced by inhalations of miasma. The source of the miasma? Gases

from a faulty sewer connection, probably caused by built-up and stagnat­

ing wastes. The Board recommended that Council prohibit the connection

of privies to the sewers.

These examples demonstrate the limits of sewer and drain tech­

nologies, limits that also shaped the ordinances that governed their

use. Generally speaking, local statutes allowed residents to channel

76

their cellar and yard runoff into public drains, but required them to

obtain a permit before doing so; typical ordinances also ordered local

officials to supervise the work, and often dictated the manner in which

the work was to be performed. Beyond this, however, sewer ordinances

varied in specificity. During the 1840s and 1850s, for example, a

Detroit ordinance permitted residents to make connections with public

sewers, but by the mid-1860s the city had amended the ordinance to

enable the Committee on Health to require connections between private

lots and public sewers whenever that body deemed it necessary.83

Similar situations prevailed in the 1840s through the 1860s in such

cities as Portland, Maine, and Manchester, New Hampshire, as well as in

Lowell and New Bedford, Massachusetts.®^ In Boston, city officials also

reserved the right to require owners of property adjacent to common

sewers "to make a sufficient drain" from houses, yards, and lots when­

ever they deemed it necessary, and authorized the "superintendent of

sewers" to construct "sufficient passage ways or conduits under ground"

[sic] for the purpose of draining privy vaults. The city's health

ordinance also ordered all "waste water [to] be conveyed through suffi­

cient drains under ground, to a common sewer," or to a "reservoir, sunk

under ground" that had been approved by the same superintendent. In

Boston, as in other cities, local officials expected residents to dis­

pose of wastes properly, but offered few guidelines as to how that

should be done; and, as in other cities, the Boston statutes neither

prohibited nor required the use of specific waste fixtures or ces­

spools.®^ In Chicago, city taxpayers and municipal officials built an

atypical drainage system, one designed to hold both household wastes and

storm water. The city permitted persons to drain water closets and ces-

spools into public mains, but it did not require them to do so.. In

other words, even though the technology had been designed for both

drainage and waste disposal, and Chicagoans had the right to use sewers

for wastes of all type, the city did not require them to do so, nor did

it prohibit the continued use of privies and cesspools.86

The mid-century pattern is clear: local officials often

required connections in cases where yards and lots did not drain

thoroughly or properly, but few cities permitted residents to connect

plumbing fixtures, cesspools, and privies to available public drains,

for the simple reason that these conduits seldom contained sufficient

water to push wastes on through to a terminus. In other words,

Americans treated the disposal of household wastes as a private func­

tion, and as a result they did not build drainage facilities with waste

disposal in mind. It is hardly surprising, then, that even in cities

where existing plumbing fixtures numbered in the thousands, residents

made little effort to regulate the use of those fixtures. But water

ordinances also stopped short of imposing rigid restrictions upon plumb­

ing users: they seldom dictated how people should install or use water

fixtures, what kind of fixtures they should use, or how they should

attach their interior (private) pipes to the public pipes outside the

house. At mid-century Americans did not conceive of sewers and water

works as a single unified sanitation entity; instead, they used sewers

to drain swampy land and as conduits to collect and channel storm

runoff, and "public" water as a tool with which to fight fires and clean

streets. Many cities also provided water supplies in cisterns and wells

for citizens' use, but very few municipalities regarded it as a

governmental responsibility to pipe water directly into homes. Put

78

another way, mid-century ordinances left citizens free to construct pri­

vate self-contained household sanitation systems. Even if Americana had

used water fixtures in larger numbers than they did, plumbing codes

probably would not have appeared at this time: people found little to

fear from plumbing, and their perception of it as a tool of

convenience—and reform as a matter of self-improvement rather than pub­

lic policy—meant there was little pressure, legal or social, to require

all houses to have this technology.

Plumbing Technoloav and the Idea of Convenience

This analysis of the mid-century relationship between water-

based technologies, municipal regulation, and the concept of convenience

reinforces a point made earlier: Americans treated mechanical water

closets, attic cisterns, washbasins, and tubs as conveniences used by a

few, rather than as tools with which to achieve a universal sanitary

standard. Indeed, mid-century commentators rarely treated water fix­

tures and running water as tools of health, hygiene, or sanitation,

except insofar as they eliminated health-sapping labor. No doubt

Americans recognized the potential health benefits of water fixtures,

but they clearly did not believe that running water and a full component

of water fixtures ought to be included in every house. Instead, con­

temporary observers typically stressed the categorical and limited uses

of plumbing's health benefits. Writing in the mid-1840s one writer

opined that the "domestic bathing room [was] a matter of luxury, which

few families can afford," and one that he did "not expect to see . . .

adopted, in themajority or even in a great minority" of American

houses.87 A decade later one housekeeping manual urged the installation

of bathing rooms only "as often and as much as the budget will let."®®

79

A physician discussing the importance of public water supplies for

cleanliness and health argued that it was "not necessary" to "put water

in every house" as long as it could be "place[d] . . . near to the hand

of every person," such as in a public hydrant in the street.®®

In the middle decades of the century, a desire for convenience

prompted the appearance of household plumbing, and the limits of con­

venience determined its form and use in the American home. This chapter

has discussed the factors that imposed those limits: the American

propensity for classification and categorization, the limited appeal of

domestic reform, the monetary costs of plumbing, and the technology

itself. These factors combined to impose a kind of natural limit on

plumbing's growth, without which the use of plumbing in the home could

have created chaos outside the house; in theory at any rate, too many

water closets, too many washbasins, attic tanks, and cesspools could

have rendered cities awash with polluted wastes. Late-century com­

plaints about just that problem and the appearance of plumbing codes at

the end of the nineteenth century indicate that by that time American

attitudes toward plumbing had undergone a dramatic shift. But between

1840 and 1870 a particular set of ideas about domesticity and national

progress combined both to shape and constrain the use of water fixtures

and running water.

80

Endnotes

^Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages. A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution in the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), 47; Henry Hudson Holly, Holly's Country Seats (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1863), 99, 52.

Zpor two provocative, but quite different discussions of this phenomenon contrast Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), esp. 230-57, with Alan I Marcus, Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincinnati, 1819-1870 (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1991), esp. 38-39 and 72-73. Marcus argued that the American passion for categoriza­tion emerged beginning in the late 1830s as a result of a shift in "ideas of society's nature," in this case a "shift from the individual to the group." (38, 40) Blumin, on the other hand, argued that in the antebellum decades "social definition" became easier because of what he called the increasing "bifurcation" of American society, a process created by and enhanced by a "realignment of work, workplace relations, incomes, and opportunities." (191)

^The health and urban reformers sometimes posited that larger water supplies would help alleviate the urban crisis, as noted in Chap­ter One. But providing public water with which to flush streets, and public hydrants for the use of the poor was quite a different matter from constructing in-house running water systems of the type that sup­ported water fixtures.

4jan Cohn, The Palace or the Poorhouse: The American House as a Cultural Symbol (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1979), 51.

^Virtually all mid-nineteenth century architectural plan books categorized house designs by both type and style. Many of these texts also contained discussions of the traits, both aesthetic and practical, of each type and who would be expected to live in them. See William H. Ranlett, The Architect, A Series of Original Designs for Domestic and Ornamental Cottages and Villas, vol. 1 (New York: William H. Graham, 1847), 21; Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses; Including Designs for Cottages, Farm Houses and Villas (New York: D. Appleton, 1850), 39-44, 135-44, 257-70; John Bullock, The American Cot­tage Builder: A Series of Designs, Plans, and Specifications from $200 to $20,000 (New York; Stringer and Townsend, 1854), 33; Gervase Wheeler, Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country (New York: Charles Scribner, 1855), 1-2, 25-25, 94-95, 121-22, passim; Minard Lafever, The Architec­tural Instructor (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1856), 3:449; J. H. Hammond, The Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect; and Guide in Rural Economy (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1858), 86-90; Samuel Sloan, Sloan's Homestead Architecture, Containing Forty Designs for Villas, Cottages, and Farm Houses (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1861), 57, 65, 149, 286.

81

^Henry D. Cleaveland, William Backus, and Samuel D. Backus, Village and Farm Cottages. The Requirements of American Village Homes Considered and Suggested; With Designs for Such Houses of Moderate Cost (New York; D. Appleton and Co., 1856), 70, 82, 110.

^Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 109, 119, 135, passim.

®Wheeler, Homes for the People, 1, 24, 302, 321, passim.

Spor example see Sloan, Homestead Architecture, 149; George E. Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes (New York: George E. Woodward, [1865]), 28-29, passim. For other examples see Ranlett, The Architect, 1:21; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses, 73; C. L. A., "Houses in Town," Scientific American 7 (1851-52): 174; "Workingmen's Cottages," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs, for 1861, ed. J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Son, 1861), 21-27; "Homes for Men of Moderate Incomes," Scientific American n. s. 8 (1863): 26-27; "Cottages for Laboring Classes," Scientific American n. s. 20 (1869): 84; Daniel T. Atwood, Atwoofi's Country and Suburban Houses (New York: Orange Judd and Co., [1871]), 144.

l^Zebulon Baker, The Cottage Builder's Manual (Worcester, Mass.: Z. Baker and Co., 1856), 9, 10; T. Thomas, Jr., The Working-Man's Cottage Architecture, Containing Plans, Elevations, and Details, for the Erection of Cheap, Comfortable, and Neat Cottages (New York: R. Martin, 1848), 5.

l^William H. Ranlett, The City Architect (New York: DeWitt and Davenport, 1856), 12.

l^Lewis Allen, Rural Architecture: Being a Complete Description of Farmhouses, Cottages and Outbuildings . . . (New York: C. M. Saxton, 1852), ix, 17.

l^Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, iii. Often, of course, members of the "working class" would not be able to buy a home, especially those living in the nation's large cities. Thus it is not at all surprising, given the contemporary interest in both categorization and in homes, that the 1840s and 1850s saw the first national interest in creating adequate living spaces for "the working classes." Con­temporary journals are filled with articles on the subject, and most plan books contained a few homes for this class. James Ford's 1936 investigation of "slums" still provides one of the best sources of information about the mid-nineteenth century interest in one solution to the problem, the tenement. See James Ford, Slums and Housing with Spe­cial Reference to New York City: History, Conditions, Policy, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 1:102-40. But a full understanding of the housing "problem" is not possible without a reading of Elizabeth Blackmar's superb study of early nineteenth century rental and housing patterns in New York City. See Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhat­tan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 183-212. Our understanding of contemporary perceptions of the problem will likely be enhanced by Henry Binford's current research into the changing ways in which Americans have defined the slum. Also see

82

Cynthia Zaitzevsky, "Housing Boston's Poor: The First Philanthropic Experiments," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983): 157-167; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983; Pantheon Books, 1981), 58-72 (page references are to paperback edition); Marcus, Plague of Strangers, 141-43.

l^Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 121.

ISlbid., 84.

IGlbid., 68-98.

17lbid., 83-107.

l^The best discussion of this is in Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery, 1850-1930 (Rochester, N. Y.: The Strong Museum, 1988), esp. 19-28, but also see Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 100-07.

^^Contemporary architectural manuals document the emergence of this new type of building, one devoted specifically to retail and cleri­cal activities, rather than to the production processes associated with those types of enterprises; plans show that these buildings often had plumbing systems, a feature that quite likely influenced the white col­lar employees who spent their days there. For example, in an 1859 col­lection of building and house plans, Samuel Sloan included a design for a "private banking house" with seven "self-acting" water closets, each "fitted up with wash-rooms adjoining." The wash—rooms housed washbasins with china bowls, marble slabs, and "plated fixtures." Samuel Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture; Containing Numerous Designs and Details for Public Edifices, Private Residences, and Mercantile Buildings (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1859), Plate 3; Design 3; also see Design 1, Plate 13 and Design 21, Plate 103. For other examples see Marcus. F. Cummings and Charles Crosby Miller, Modern American Architec­ture . Designs and Plans for Villas, Farm-houses, Cottages, City Residences, Churches, School-Houses, Sc., Sc. (Troy, New York; by the authors, 1868), Plate 44; G. B. Croff, Progressive American Architec­ture, Presenting in Illustration an Extensive Collection of Original Studies for Dwellings, Bank, School, and Office Buildings, Costing From One Thousand to One Hundred Thousand Dollars, Also Details of Every Fea­ture, Exterior and Interior of Every Character and Class, for Town and Country Buildings (New York: Orange Judd, 1875), Plate 9 and Plate 77.

20For hotels see Jefferson Williamson, The American Hotel: An Anecdotal History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930); for amenities in general see pp. 39-72, and for plumbing in particular see 55-62. One of the earliest hotels with extensive plumbing was Boston's Tremont House; a description of its water supply and plumbing system is in William Har­vard Eliot, Description of Tremont House, with Architectural Illustra­tions (Boston: Gray and Bown, 1830), 13-16. An excellent discussion of hotels as emblematic of middle class material aspirations and domesticity is in Grier, Culture and Comfort, 28-38. For good discus­sions of hotel living see Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in

83

1860î American Consumption Levels on the Eve of the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 148-160; Elizabeth Collins Crotnley, Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 18-26; Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 137-38; Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 150.

21see the discussion in Grier, Culture and Comfort, 38-58. Plumbing for ships and boats was especially important in the first half of the nineteenth century, as evidenced by the patents devoted to ships' water closets. One "old plumber" reported that ship plumbing was an extensive and lucrative business in early nineteenth century New York, and one in which many plumbers got their start. See Felix, "A Talk with An Old Plumber," Sanitary Engineer 4 (1881-82): 498.

Z^Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 238.

23lbid., 189. The best discussions of domestic material life, especially for comparison of consumption behavior of the middle and working classes, are in ibid., 138-63; Martin, Standard of Living, 83-123; and Grier, Culture and Comfort, esp. 3-17; but also see Wright, Building the Dream, 77-78; Richard B. Stott, Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 168-74.

Z^Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 14. For a discussion of the study itself and Wright's role in it see Jeffrey G. Williamson, "Consumer Behavior in the Nineteenth Century; Carroll D. Wright's Massachusetts Workers in 1875," Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., 4 (1967): 100-06.

Z^Horowitz, The Morality of Spending, 14-15.

26ibid., 14.

Z^The skilled workers, employed as "skilled mill operatives and skilled boot, shoe, and leather workers," as well as in the "building, shop, and metal-working trades," earned from $561 to $795. But their earnings were topped by another category in the study, "factory 'over­seers,'" who earned, on average, $985 annually. See Ibid., 14.

Z^An assessment of other studies, as well as Blumin's conclu­sions, are in Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 109-10.

Z^Ibid., 112-14, passim.

30lbid., 238-40; Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 168-74, 192-94, 270-71; Clifford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill, N. C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 40-46.

3lRanlett, The Architect, 1: Designs 14-17 and Design 26.

32samuel Sloan, The Model Architect; A Series of Original Designs for Cottages, Villas, Suburban Residences, etc., 2 vols.

84

(Philadelphia: E. S. Jones and Co., [1852]), 1: Designs 1 and 9, passim, 2: Designs 30 and 34.

33sioan, Homestead Architecture, 149, 217, passim.

S^D. H. Jacques, The House: A Pocket Manual of Rural Architec­ture (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1859), 51, 57, and passim.

35charles Lockwood, Bricks and Brownstone: The New York Row House, 1783-1929. An Architectural and Social History (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972), 183-84. For other examples see Thomas, Working-Man's Cottage Architecture; Downing, Architecture of Country Houses} Baker, Cottage Builder's Manual; Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages; Charles P. Dwyer, The Economic Cottage Builder: or Cot­tages for Men of Small Means (Buffalo: Wanzer, McKim and Co., 1856); John Riddell, Architectural Designs for Model Country Residences (Philadelphia: John Riddell; Lindsay and Blakiston,1861); Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes,

^^These examples are in Cummings and Miller, Modern American Architecture, text for Plate 19 and text for Plate 40; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, Design 19, Plate 90.

later section of this chapter discusses the regulations imposed on conveniences, but the lack of mid-century plumbing codes implies that the Americans who used water fixtures, who were also the same kinds of people who might be expected to sit on city councils, regarded themselves as responsible users. They needed housekeeping and other advice manuals to learn how to use water fixtures, but beyond that basic instruction they were intelligent enough to use fixtures without some type of external oversight.

38catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, or School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon and Webb, 1841), 292-94.

S^Allen, Rural Architecture, 122.

40william Brown, The Carpenter's Assistant (Worcester, Mass.: Edward Livermore, 1848), 127, 132.

41contract and Specifications, H. B. Rogers house, Boston, 1852, Box 3, Folder lOA, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

^^George E. Woodward and Edward G. Thompson, Woodward's National Architect (New York: George E. Woodward, [1869]), Specifica­tions for Design No. 1, pp. 11, 13-15.

43lbid., 10-15. For other published examples of plumbing con­figurations used in houses actually built see: John Hall, A Series of Select and Original Modern Designs for Dwelling Houses, for the Use of Carpenters and Builders, 2d ed. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1840), 18; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:52, 2:97; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's

85

National Architect, Specifications for Design No. 6, pp. 1-4 and 8-9; Atwood, Country and Suburban Homes, 217, 222-23, 235-37.

^^Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949; repint. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1969), 686 (references are to reprint edition).

^^Martin, Standard of Living, 90.

46pelix, "Talk With An Old Plumber," 525. Prices of specific fixtures are discussed in a later chapter. A good way to examine prices throughout the period is by comparing two virtually identical price books, one published in 1833, the other in 1855. In 1833 James Gallier published a "price book and estimator," which includes prices for a variety of plumbing items including pumps, pipes, water closets, and bath tubs. In 1855 a New York architect, A. Bryant Clough, reissued Gallier's text under his own name, with only minor changes to Gallier's original text. Taken as a whole, these two books indicate that the costs of plumbing parts changed relatively little over the twenty-two year period. Costs for some things, like pipe and traps, rose a few cents, while prices for larger items like bathing tubs and water closets actually decreased. Interestingly, one of the biggest price hikes was for the price of labor: Gallier lists a plumber's cost at two dollars a day, and labor (presumably unskilled help) at $1.00 to $1.25 a day. Clough listed the same items at $3.50 and $1.25 to $1.75 per day, respectively. See James Gallier, The American Builder's General Price Book and Estimator (New York: Stanley and Co., 1833), and A. Bryant Clough, The Contractor's Manual and Builder's Price-Book (New York: Stephen Hallet, 1855).

47charles Lockwood, Manhattan Moves Uptown (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976), 169.

48photocopy of building statements for Trevor W. Parke house. I am grateful to Anne Grady of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities for sharing this document with me.

49contract and Specifications, H. B. Rogers house.

S^Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 121. Although many of the architectural plan books included price estimates, it is all but impossible to determine if those prices were for material or whether the writers intended them to include labor. If the actual finished cost of a house is known, one way to determine the costs of labor and material is by using the formula suggested by Donald R. Adams, Jr. in his essay on nineteenth century residential construction costs. He suggests that "cost structure," the proportion of cost devoted to material and to labor has changed little since the early nineteenth century. According to him, "direct labor costs (including overhead and profit)" accounts for about 52 percent of the total, and materials about 47 percent. In the late 1850s he estimates that plumbing-related labor accounted for 9 percent of the total construction cost, so that if the actual construction costs of a mid-nineteenth century house with plumb­ing are known, the plumbing labor should come to about nine percent of

86

the total. See Donald R. Adams, Jr., "Residential Construction Industry in the Early Nineteenth Century," Journal of Economic History 35 (1975): 796-98.

S^Sloan, Model Architect, 1:44. The water closet prices seem odd, since seventy-five dollars is higher than any prices quoted in the catalogs available for this study, or for any other figures found in estimates. That figure either included labor, or Sloan was describing a costly imported porcelain or earthenware fixture.

S^City of Moyamensing, "Water and Water Rents," A Digest of the Acts of Assembly and Ordinances of the District of Moyamensing, With the Rules of Order (Moyamensing: Bernard J. M'Cann, 1848), 267.

S^City of Boston, "[Water]: Ordinance of the City," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Boston, Together With the Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City: Collated and Revised Pursuant to An Order of the City Council, Peleg Chandler, rev. (Boston: John H. East-burn, 1850), 575-76.

S^city of Baltimore, Baltimore Water Commission, Report of the Commissioners Appointed By Authority of the Mayor and City Council to Examine the Sources From Which a Supply of Pure Water May be Obtained for the City of Baltimore (Baltimore: James Lucas, 1854), 17; City of Baltimore, Water Department, Report of the Water Department to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, for the Year Ending 1870 (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet and Co., 1871), 28.

S^City of Richmond, Va., "An Ordinance Concerning the Water Works," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Richmond, With the Declaration of Rights, and Constitution of Virginia (Richmond: Ellyson's Steam Presses, 1859), 138-39; "Concerning the Water Works," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Richmond, With the Amendments to the Charter (Richmond: V. L. Fore, 1867), 123.

S^city of Peoria, 111., "An Ordinance Fixing the Rates of Water from the Peoria Water Works, in the City of Peoria," Ordinances for the Government of Water Takers, Plumbers, &c. (Peoria: Transcript Printing and Blank Book Co., 1869), 3.

S^City of Detroit, Board of Water Commissioners, Annual Report of the Board of Water Commissioners to the Common Council of the City of Detroit; Together With the Reports of the Superintendent and Engineer, and Secretary, For the Year Ending December 31, 1859 (Detroit; Free Press Book and Job Printing House, 1860), 66; Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Board of Water Commissioners to the Common Council of the City of Detroit Together With the Reports of the Officers of the Board for the Year 1876 (Detroit: J. F. Hadger, 1877), 47.

®®U. S. Patent 80,441, Charles Albert Blessing, "Improvement in Sheet-Metal Lining for Bath-Tubs," 28 July 1868.

59u. S. Patent 27,545, James Ingram, "Fitting Sinks," 20 March 1860. Calvert Vaux recommended solving the bug problem by encasing all

pipe work in a metal "envelope." Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 161.

GOy. S. Patent 88,219, William Seaman and George A. Banta, "Improved Sink," 23 March 1869.

S. Patent 19,964, C. Gies, "Water-Tight Washstand," 23 March 1858.

G^Two good discussions of the use of "safes" are in William G. Rhoads, "Plumbing: Water Supply and Waste Pipes," Architectural Review and Builder's Journal 1 (1868-69); 333; and T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumb­ing. VI. Wash-basins.-Pantry Sinks.-Filters-Bath-tubs," American Architect and Building News 4 (1878): 40.

G^Rhoads, "Plumbing," 331.

®^James Mulrein, Facts and Hints in Regard to Plumbing Respect­fully Presented to the Citizens of Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie, N. Y.: n. p., 1873), 22; [Robert McAvoy,] Instructions on Plumbing, By a Practical Plumber (Boston: Robert McAvoy, 1877), 8; Rhoads, "Plumbing: Water Supply and Waste Pipes," 332-33; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 176; Wheeler, Homes for the People, 423; George E. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, II (New York: George E. Woodward, 1868), 100; George E. Woodward and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture, Landscape Gardening, and Rural Art-No. 1-1867 (New York: George E. and F. W. Woodward, 1867), 88; Holly, Holly's Country Seats, 112; Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 427; James C. Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service (New York; David Williams, 1878), 127-34.

For other discussions of the problems plumbing users faced see McAvoy, Instructions on Plumbing, 3-11; Mulrein, Facts and Hints in Regard to Plumbing, 22-23; W. L. D. O'Grady, Hints to Plumbers and Householders (New York: The American News Co., 1878), esp. 27-31; G. S. Davenport, Plumbing Practically Considered. Sanitary Hints and Sugges­tions (Providence, R. I.; by the author, 1881), 7 and 29, passim; Thomas Read, Interesting Facts About Plumbing ([Brooklyn]: n. p., 1883), 9-16.

- GSoozens of municipal ordinances were surveyed for this study. For representative examples see City of Covington, Kentucky, "An Ordinance to abate Nuisances in City of Covington," Charter of the City of Covington, and Amendments Thereto Op to the Year 1864, and Ordinances of Said City, and Amendments Up to the Same Date (Covington, Ky.: n. p., 1864), 11; City of Macon, Ga., "Nuisances," Charter and Ordinances of the City of Macon (Macon: Georgia Telegraph Office, 1853), 37; City of Cincinnati, "An Ordinance for the prevention of nuisances in the city of Cincinnati," Charter, Amendments, and General Ordinances, of the City of Cincinnati (Cincinnati: Day and Co., 1850), 317; City of Hannibal, Mo., "An Ordinance in Relation to Nuisances," The Revised Ordinances of the City of Hannibal, Revised and Digested in the Year 1858, by the City Council , . . (Hannibal; William T. League and Co., 1858), 145; City of Burlington, la., "Nuisances," Ordinances of the City of Burlington, Chas. Ben. Darwin, rev. (Burlington: Thompson and Co., 1856), 101; City of Boston, "Health. Ordinance of the City," Charter and Ordinances (1850), 205; City of Columbus, Ohio, "Nuisances. For the Prevention and Removal of Nuisances, in the City of Columbus," Statutes for the Organi-

88

zatlon of Cities and Villages, and General Ordinances of the City of Columbus, in force Jan. 1, 1858, James A. Wilcox, comp. (Columbus: R. Nevlns, 1858), 180-81; City of Davenport, Iowa, "An Ordinance regulating the construction of Privies within the City of Davenport," The Revised Ordinances of the City of Davenport, Digested by Order of the City Coun­cil (Davenport: Luse, Lane, and Co., 1857), 68; City of Dover, N. H., "An Ordinance for the abatement of nuisances and the preservation of health," The Charter, With Its Amendments and the Revised Ordinances, of the City of Dover (Dover: George Wadleigh, 1857), 41; City of Keokuk, Iowa, "Nuisances. An Ordinance Concerning Nuisances," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Keokuk (Keokuk: J. B. Howell and Co., 1860), 168; City of Bangor, Maine, "An Ordinance additional relating to nuisances and sources of sickness," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Bangor, with the Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City (Bangor: Smith and Sayward, 1851), 149; City of Worcester, Mass., "An Ordinance of Health," Ordinances of the City of Worcester; With the City Charter, and Other City Laws (Worcester: Chas. Hamilton, 1854), 77-78; City of Louisville, "An Ordinance as to Privies," Charter of the City of Louisville (Louisville: L. A. Civill, 1862), 109; City of Chicago, "Nuisances," Laws and Ordinances Governing the City of Chicago, January 1, 1866, Joseph E. Gary, comp. (Chicago: E. B. Myers and Chandler, 1866), 293; City of Brooklyn, "Certain Offenses Against the Public Health," Laws and Ordinances of the City of Brooklyn Together With Such General Laws of the State as Affect the City in Its Corporate Capacity (New York; Bergen and Tripp, 1865), 351-52; City of Philadelphia, "Privies," A Digest of the Acts of Assembly Relating to the City of Philadelphia and the (Late) Incorporated Districts of the County of Philadelphia, and of the Ordinances of the Said City and Districts, Wil­liam Duane, William B. Hood, and Leonard Myers, comp. (Philadelphia: J. H. Jones, 1856), 492-501; City of Newburgh, N. Y., "An Ordinance for the Preservation of Public Health," Amended Charter, Ordinances of the Com­mon Council and Board of Health (Newburgh: Cyrus B. Martin, 1867), 76; City of Aurora, 111., "Nuisances. Amendment to Ordinance Concerning Nuisances," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Aurora, (To June I, 1863, Inclusive) A. G. M'Dole, comp. (Aurora: Bangs and Knicker­bocker, 1863), 167.

G^City of Lowell, Mass., "Of Health," The Charter with Its Amendments, and the Revised Ordinances of the City of Lowell: Together with Sundry Laws of the Commonwealth (Lowell: Joel Taylor, 1846), 62; City of Worcester, Massachusetts, "An Ordinance of Health," Ordinances (1854), 77; City of Belleville, Illinois, "Nuisances," Revised Ordinances of the City of Belleville (Belleville: Edward H. Fleming, 1855), 102; City of St. Louis, "Nuisances," The Revised Ordinances of the City of St. Louis, Revised and Digested by the City Council, in the Year 1850, John M. Krum, rev., (St. Louis: Chambers and Knapp, 1850), 305-06; City of Boston, "Health," Charter and Ordinances (1850), 202-03.

For other cities see City of Lawrence, Kans., "Ordinance No. 2," Charter and Ordinances of the City of Lawrence, Together With An Act Amending the Charter, Passed by the Legislature of 1858 (Lawrence, Kans.: Republican Book and Job Office, 1858), 7; City of Springfield, 111., "Nuisances," The Revised Ordinances of the City of Springfield, Revised and Registered by the City Council, in the Year 1851, John Cal­houn, rev., (Springfield: Illinois Organ Office, 1851), 115; City of

89

Peoria, 111., "Public Health - Nuisances. An Ordinance in Relation to Nuisances Affecting the Public Health," The City Charter, With the Several Laws Amendatory Thereto, and the Revised Ordinances of the City of Peoria, 111. (Peoria: Nason and Hill, 1857), 160; City of Atchison, Kans., "Nuisances. An Ordinance Relating to Nuisances," Charter of the City of Atchison, With the Amendments Thereto, Together With the Ordinances of the City of Atchison (Atchison: The Champion and Press, 1869), 182; City of Lynn, Mass., [Annual Report of the Board of Health of Lynn,] in "Appendix to Sanitary Report," in Massachusetts Sanitary Commission, Report of a General Plan for the Promotion of Public and Personal Health, ed., Lemuel Shattuck (Boston: Button and Wentworth, 1850), 499; City of Lawrence, Mass., "Report on Lawrence, Mas­sachusetts," in ibid., 452; City of Aurora, 111, "Nuisances. Amendment to Ordinance Concerning Nuisances," Charter and Ordinances (1863), 167.

^^A compilation of the relevant ordinances, with dates of pas­sage, is in City of Philadelphia, "Water, Water Rents and Water Works," A Digest of the Acts (1856), 664-667.

®®Boston, Charter and Ordinances (1850), 429.

G^City of Richmond, "Water Works," Charters and Ordinances (1859), 132-44.

70city of Hartford, Conn., "Rules and Regulations Made By the Board of Water Commissioners of the City of Hartford, Under a Resolution of the General Assembly of the State, Passed May Session, 1861, Amending the Charter of the City of Hartford," (n.p., [1861]).

71city of Chicago, "Water Works," Laws and Ordinances (1866), 360-63.

72city of Peoria, "An Ordinance Fixing the Rates of Water from the Peoria Water Works, in the City of Peoria," and "An Ordinance for the Government of Plumbers in the City of Peoria," Ordinances for the Government of Water Takers (1869), 5-13. Also see City of Detroit, "Relative to Supplying the City of Detroit With Water," The Revised Charter and Ordinances of the City of Detroit (Detroit: Rawson, Duncklee and Co., 1848), 78-85; City of Cincinnati, "An Ordinance Confirming the By-laws for the Management of the City Water-works," Charter, Amend­ments, and General Ordinances (1850), 401-10; City of Newburgh, "The City Water Works," "Regulations for Plumbers," and "Water Works," Amended Charter, Ordinances (1867), 60-64.

^^At least one exception stands out against this otherwise standard pattern of minimal regulation. The 1860 Brooklyn water works ordinance required the owners of "tenement houses" to "cause all proper and necessary water and sewerage fixtures (water-closets included) to be permanently placed in each and every story of such house, for the use of all the occupants thereof". This stipulation ensured that people living in multiple-family dwellings had access to a water faucet as well as drain pipes to carry wastes out of the building. How stringently the city enforced the law is not certain, but it seems clear that city offi­cials intended to use the law to cope with the health hazards of over­

90

crowding, rather, than as an all-purpose plumbing code. See City of Brooklyn, "In Relation to Ridgewood Water for the Government of the Water Board, &c.," and "Scale of Water Rates," Laws and Ordinances (1865), 369-70, 379-80.

The Brooklyn act followed a period of intense concern about the appearance of a "new" and uniquely urban problem, namely overcrowding. A typical statement of the problem and the role cities played in it is in James M. Newman, "Report on the Sanitary Police of Cities," Transactions of the American Medical Association 9 (1856), esp. 433-35. An excellent summary of the investigations into the "tenent" problem and efforts at legal action in the New York area during the 1850s and 1860s is in James Ford, et al. Slums and Housing, 1:124-55.

74city of Peoria, 111., "An Ordinance for the Government of Plumbers in the City of Peoria, " Ordinances for the Government of Water Takers (1869), 9-13. A brief description of the Peoria works is in M. N. Baker, ed.. The Manual of American Water-Works, 1st issue (New York: Engineering News, 1889), 384. A discussion of the Worthington pump is in Louis Hunter, A History of Industrial Power In the United States, 1780-1930: Steam Power (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Vir­ginia for the Hagley Museum and Library, 1985), 548-49, 551.

^^There were exceptions: during the 1850s Chicago, Brooklyn, and Jersey City built unified multi-purpose systems. Brief descriptions are in Jon A. Peterson, "The Impact of Sanitary Reform Upon American Urban Planning, 1840-1890," Journal of Social History 13 (1979): 87-88.

^®The time for a good history of American sewer practice and technology is long overdue. Generally speaking historians have dis­missed pre-1870 sewerage practice as inefficient, inadequate, or primi­tive, so that virtually no research exists on these important urban technologies. But even the late-century sewers have received scant attention: by the end of the century even quite small cities had built unified sewer networks; surely a story is there to be told. For des­criptions of drainage practice in mid-century cities see Martin, Standard of Living, 242-43; Stuart Galishoff, Newark: The Nation's Unhealthlest City, 1832-1895 (New Brunswick, N. J. : Rutgers University Press, 1988), 37-42; John Duffy, A History of Public Health In New York City, 1625-1866 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968), 199-202 and 405-08; Geoffrey Giglierano, "The City and the System: Developing a Municipal Service, 1800-1915," Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 35 (1977): 223-25; Charlotte Cannon Rhines, "A City and Its Social Prob­lems: Poverty, Health, and Crime in Baltimore, 1865-1875," (Ph.D. dis­sertation, University of Maryland, 1975), 281-82. For discussions of late-century sewers see Galishoff, The Unhealthlest City, 117-130; Giglierano, "The City and the System," esp. 231; Stanley K.Schultz, Con­structing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 167-75; Joel A. Tarr, James McCurley, and Terry F. Yosie, "The Development and Impact of Wastewater Technology: Changing Concepts of Water Quality Control, 1850-1930," in Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930, ed., Martin V. Melosi (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1980), esp. 64-69.

91

77succinct but useful discussions of the miasmatic theory are in John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 20-22, and Phyllis Allen, "Etiological Theory in America Prior to the Civil War," Journal of the History of Medicine 2 (1947): 492-94.

^®This view explains why cities often constructed open sewer and drain trenches: runoff exposed to the air and sun putrefied less quickly and evaporated faster than that trapped inside a pipe. Indeed, people often opposed the construction of underground or enclosed drains: during wet seasons water pushed accumulated matter, such as dead animals or illegally-disposed household leavings, on through the pipe, but dur­ing dry spells these wastes sat inside the pipe and putrefied, creating deadly miasmas. For instances of opposition to enclosed drains see Duffy, Public Health in New York City, 405-06, and Rhines, "A City and Its Social Problems," 282-83.

For some contemporary descriptions of sewerage, drainage, and waste disposal in several American cities see Charles P. Gage, "Sanitary Report of Concord, N. H.," Transactions of the American Medical Associa­tion 2 (1849), 446 (hereafter cited as Transactions AMA)} J. T. Oilman, "Replies to Circular Letter," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 451-52; Isaac Parrish, "Report on the Sanitary Condition of Philadelphia," Transac­tions AMA 2 (1849): 471-73; J. Curtis, "Public Hygiene of Massachusetts; But More Particularly of the Cities of Boston and Lowell," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 499-501; James Wynne, "Sanitary Report of Baltimore," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 557, 559-60; P. C. Gaillard, "Report on the Sanitary Condition of Charleston, South Carolina," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 583-85, 587; Edward H. Barton, "Sanitary Report of New Orleans, La.," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 595-96; J. P. Harrison, "Letter on the Sanitary Condition of Cincinnati," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 619-20.

79city of Springfield, 111., "Sewers. An Ordinance in relation to Sewers, and establishing the first Sewerage District," The Charter, with Amendments Thereto, and Revised Ordinances of the City of Spring­field, 111., Wm. J. Black, rev. (Springfield: Bailhache and Baker, 1858), 199; and "Misdemeanors. Miscellaneous," The Charter, With the Several Amendments Thereto; Various State Laws Relating to the City, and the Revised Ordinances of Springfield, 111., E. L. Gross, rev. (Spring­field; Steam Press, 1865), 159.

®®City of New York, "Of Sewers," By-laws and Ordinances of the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonalty of the City of New York (New York; Wil­liam B. Townsend, 1839), 224; "Extracts from Revised Ordinances, 1859: Of Sewers, Drains, Sc.," Laws and Ordinances Relative to the Preserva­tion of Public Safety in the City of New York, George W. Morton, comp., (New York: Edmund Jones and Co., 1860), 162. A discussion of this episode is in Duffy, Public Health in New York City, 409-11.

^^Philadelphia, Board of Health, Report on the Subject of Con­necting Privies and Water Closets with Privies (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1865), 3, 5. The report contains the full text of two reports sent by the Board to the City Council. A good summary of this issue as it played out in Philadelphia is in Edward T. Morman, "Scientific Medi­cine Comes to Philadelphia: Public Health Transformed, 1854-1899,"

92

(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1986), 50-51. Morman argues that the Board resisted this plan because it feared that the use of water closets would spread to the lower classes; thus, says Morman, the episode signalled yet another way in which local health officials used sanitation measures as a form of social control.

S^Betty L. Plummer, "A History of Public Health in Washington, D. C., 1800-1890," (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Maryland, 1984), 78-79.

®^City of Detroit, "Relative to public Drains and Sewers," Revised Charter and Ordinances (1848), 95-98; "Public and Private Drains and Sewers, " The Revised Ordinances of the City of Detroit for the Year 1871, Revised and Published by Order of the Common Council (Detroit: Free Press Book and Job, 1871), 134.

B^City of Portland, Maine, "Drains and Sewers," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Portland, Together With the Acts of the Legis­lature Relating to the City (Portland; Benjamin D. Peck, 1856), 84-85; City of Manchester, N. H., "Sewers and Drains," The Charter With Its Amendments, and the Revised Ordinances of the City of Manchester (Man­chester: Steam Printing Works, 1854), 56-57; City of Lowell, Mass., "Sewers and Drains," The Charter and Ordinances of the City of Lowell, Together With the Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City (Boston: J. E. Farwell and Co., 1863), 93-95; City of New Bedford, Mass., Ordinances of the City of New Bedford, With the Charter and Amendments, and Special Laws; Together With the Rules and Orders of the City Council (New Bedford: E. Anthony, 1860), 91-94. Also see Jacob Judd, "Brook­lyn's Health and Sanitation, 1834-1855," Journal of Long Island History 7 (1967): 50.

®^City of Boston, "Sewers," and "Health. Ordinance of the City," Charter and Ordinances (1850), 203, 205, 357.

8®For a description of the system as envisioned and built see Louis P. Cain, Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (DeKalb, 111.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978), esp. 25-28. For the ordinances see City of Chicago, "Sewers and Drains," Laws and Ordinances (1866), 330-332.

S^Review of Human Health, by Robley Dunglison, American Journal of Medical Sciences n. s. 17 (1845): 390.

®®Mrs. [Elizabeth] Ellet, ed.. The Practical Housekeeper; A Cyclopaedia of Domestic Economy (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1857), 19.

®®Newman, "Report on the Sanitary Police of Cities," 451.

93

CHAPTER 3

CONSTRUCTING HOUSEHOLD WATER SUPPLY AND DRAINAGE SYSTEMS

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the successful

use of conveniences such as bathing tubs, water closets, and washbasins

depended on the availability of an adequate supply of household running

water as well as ready access to some sort of drainage and waste facil­

ity. Some people enjoyed the readymade running water provided by water

works. But most Americans did not have that luxury. Instead, those who

sought to improve domestic life combined a variety of technologies, such

as cisterns and pumps, in order to create household systems that pro­

vided the convenience of running water. Similarly, people constructed

self-contained private drainage systems in order to efficiently manage

household wastes. This chapter examines the supply and drainage tech­

nologies employed by the mid-century household.

Public and Private Water Supplies

Between 1840 and 1870 some American municipalities boasted

water works, defined here as a publicly- or privately-owned centrally-

located works that distributed water to residents through mains and

supply pipes, or open hydrants.! Large works such as the Croton

Aqueduct and Boston's Cochituate system stand as testimony to the skill

of mid-century engineers. But not every municipality or chartered water

company built such enormous or elaborate works; instead, many cities and

towns financed, constructed, and maintained public wells, or cisterns

94

fed by water piped from springs and rivers, or local entrepreneurs built

small aqueduct systems that supplied water to a limited number of

customers. According to Edgar Martin's study of mid-nineteenth century

American living standards, cities such as Sandusky, Ohio, and Char­

leston, South Carolina, constructed wells and cisterns, while other

municipalities relied on "an 'aqueduct' and a few water mains; . . . .

In Dedham, Massachusetts; Danbury, Connecticut; Burlington, New Jersey;

Amherst, New Hampshire; and Reading, Pennsylvania, residents obtained

water piped from local springs.3 In some places water sellers carted

water through the streets to customers.* Relatively simple arrangements

such as these at least brought water into the general neighborhood, even

if not into the house itself.

Determining the extent to which Americans relied on Individual

wells, cisterns, springs, or other private arrangements presents greater

problems. It seems unlikely that every backyard had a well, especially

in cities where population densities, groundwater pollution, and over­

building discouraged the use of private wells by the middle of the

century. However, in small cities and towns, where houses often sat on

larger plots of land and population densities were low, household wells

were probably commonplace.5 An 1852 essay published in the Transactions

of the American Medical Association described several examples of pri­

vate water supplies based on wells and pipes, such as a Lowell, Mas­

sachusetts, family that channeled well water through forty feet of lead

pipe to the house, and a Waltham, Massachusetts, man who piped water

from his backyard well to a kitchen pump. In Manchester, New Hampshire,

one of the local factories supplied well water to workers living in com­

pany housing: one well fed ten households, through ten separate lead

pipes.6 Lead pipe also connected the well to the kitchen sink in the

Sarah D. Bird house, built at Brookline, Massachusetts, in the late

1850s. Mid-century architectural plan books often assumed that a

household would obtain water for fixtures from private wells.? Mid-

century Americans also obtained private water supplies from creeks,

springs, brooks, and rivers. A western New Jersey man used one inch-

lead pipe to channel water to his house from a spring one mile away.B

In Shelbyville, Tennessee, residents used water from springs as well as

from wells and cisterns.9 When a New Hampshire man failed to find water

on his own property, he laid wrought iron pipe from his house to a

nearby river, where he built a penstock as a way to create a small fall,

and then pumped the water to his house; eventually he expanded this pri­

vate works so that it would supply the entire village.10 In the early

1800s a few households in Washington, D. C. banded together to construct

a quasi-private water supply, piping water into their houses from a

neighborhood spring; other families continued to rely on public wells

and private cisterns.^

Rain and snow also provided household water. Both had the

virtue of being relatively pure and "soft," essentially free, and,

depending on the region, relatively abundant. One writer estimated that

the roof of a twenty square foot house presented four hundred square

feet of "plane surface" with which to capture water, or almost five

thousand gallons each year. Such a supply, he and others argued, was

too valuable to waste needlessly.12 To guarantee the water's purity,

advice manuals suggested that builders construct the roof of a smooth

material, and edge its perimeter with "leaders" that channeled the water

to a storage tank. Most writers recommended using tin and slate.

96

although one writer urged people to use "plastic slate roofing," an

asphalt-like, tar-based material that he described as "the cheapest,

[and] the most durable ... of any material that can be employed for

covering buildings." Its only drawback, he noted, was that the coal tar

used in its manufacture would initially "color the water, and injure it

for culinary purposes."13 Tin served as the material of choice for

fashioning the "leaders" that ran along the roof edge and carried the

rain water off the roof. Builders used two methods to connect a leader

to a storage tank. They simply ran the pipe down to a point just above

the tank itself, or, if the storage vessel sat underground, ran the

leader to an underground drain tile and then connected it with the

cistern where the water was stored.

These examples demonstrate the diversity and scope of mid-

century water supply arrangements. In some sense these water arrange­

ments were hardly new or revolutionary. What was new at mid-century,

however, was the intense interest in improving and perfecting water

supply systems. The provision of water could be, and often was, a

municipal responsibility, but those who sought to improve household

water supplies, and thus their domestic environments, need not wait for

public policy. Instead, people living in both town and country obtained

advice from a host of manuals and magazines that acted as conduits of

information about domestic betterment and promoters of national pro­

gress. Inventors contributed to the project by obtaining dozens of

patents for improved methods of well and cistern construction.15

Americans then connected their water sources to a variety of tech­

nologies in order to increase water's utility, and the same guides that

promoted improved water supplies provided would-be reformers with the

97

information they needed to select and install those technologies wisely.

Cisterns

Cisterns proved to be especially important in mid-century in

mid-century household water systems. Mid-century magazines and books,

especially those devoted to "country" homes and "rural" life, routinely

published instructions for building underground cisterns, and the

architectural plan books treated cisterns as common elements of a

household water system.New York City real estate advertisements pub­

lished in the 1820s and 1830s listed cisterns as part of the property,

and in his 1845 essay on the "laboring classes," sanitary reformer John

Griscom noted that, with the arrival of Croton water. New Yorkers had

turned their cisterns into cesspools for waste storage.1? Americans

living in smaller cities and towns, as well as rural areas also used

them. In Washington, Texas, and Shelbyville, Tennessee, cisterns were

"coming into general use" in the early 1850s, although in Shelbyville

they had "been too recently installed" to determine whether the water

stored therein was any healthier than the spring water used by most

residents. In Covington, Kentucky, a city with "many springs of

excellent limestone water" and "a few good wells," citizens stored

household water in cisterns, but in the Charleston area, one writer

lamented that on nearby Sullivan's Island cisterns were "scarce and

valuable as diamonds from Golcanda. Few of the houses have them, . . .

[and] a cistern is an exception to the general rule."18

Generally speaking, people used two types of cisterns; ones

built outside the house, usually, but not always, underground, and ones

installed inside the house, either in the cellar or in an attic (Fig.

98

3.1). A cellar cistern held water piped to it from the roof, an outside

cistern, or a well, or it received the overflow from another interior

cistern. An attached pump and pipe enabled household members to move

the cistern's contents up out of the cellar and into other areas of the

house.19 Exterior cisterns sometimes stood on legs above the ground,

but more often people located them underground, near the house and con­

nected to it by one or more pipes: tin leaders channeled rainwater from

the roof to the tank, and one or more other pipes carried the water into

the house.20 some people made "prefabricated" cisterns by setting a

large cask or barrel, from which one end had been removed, into a hole

slightly larger than the barrel itself, filling in the space around the

barrel with some sort of "mortar" or "hydraulic cement. "^1 More typi­

cally, however, people dug a large hole and lined it with brick, stone,

or mortar, thus using the earth itself as the cistern. One writer

advised that the

most satisfactory way to make a large cistern of bricks, is to make a circular excavation, say twelve feet deep, and seven or eight feet in diameter. Carry up the wall perpendicularly, the width of one brick-or four inches-thick. Lay the bricks with care in water-lime cement. When within five feet of the surface of the ground, commence drawing the wall in ... to such an extent that a stone, or plank, a yard square will cover the top. Cement the bottom and sides thoroughly with excellent cement mortar, and you will have a cistern that will never fail.22

The size of these tanks obviously varied from household to household

depending on need. In one of his plan books, William Ranlett included

plans for a brick cistern ten feet deep and ten feet in diameter, which

he claimed would hold 4800 gallons. In The Economic Cottage Builder,

Charles Dwyer suggested a cistern seven feet deep with an eight foot

diameter, while the rainwater cistern built at the Henry Bowen house in

the late 1840s was seven feet in diameter and eight feet deep.23 An

99

HALL LIBRARY

DRWYINQ ROOM

PARLOR

balcony

PISBT FLOOR.

TP=F.~

VECnABLCCCL

MtXCUUR

WASH ROOM STORE MOH

MTCHEN PBCSS

BCD ROOM

NURSERY, RECEPTION R

VESTIBUI

ATTIU.

SECOND FI .OOR.

Fig. 3.1 A Troy, New York, house with a cellar cistern and other conveniences. From Bullock's American Cottage Builder

100

inexpensive cottage included in one of George Woodward's books had a ten

foot diameter cistern at the back, a vessel Woodward claimed would hold

six thousand gallons of water.2*

People purified cistern water intended for consumption by trap­

ping impurities in filters made of layered gravel, sand, charcoal, and,

sometimes, flannel.25 They installed such filters inside the cistern,

or in a smaller separate vessel attached to the main cistern.26 in the

case of the first type, the filter lay at the base of a divider wall

that split the cistern's interior space in two. A supply pipe carried

water in one side of the cistern, but the discharge pipe sat on the

other side of the divider, so that the water ran through the filter

before exiting. The disadvantage of this type of filter was that it

could only be cleaned or replaced after all the water had been pumped

out of the cistern. As a more practical alternative, then, people

divided the two functions—supply and filter—between two different con­

tainers. Rainwater fell into a regular supply cistern, whose only out­

let lay through a pipe that ran to a second adjacent cistern which con­

tained both the filter and the discharge pipe. The pipe connecting the

two vessels usually had a spigot, or cock, which allowed the user to

shut off the water from the supply side when the filter needed to be

replaced (Fig. 3.2).27

Regardless of where it was located or how it was made, the

cistern played an important part in household water systems. A cistern

enabled any family, even one that did not have access to a water works,

to store the large quantities of water necessary to operate water fix­

tures, and thereby duplicate, on a small private scale, the convenience

of a large external water works. In other words, cisterns and private

101

CISTERN

iissï"*:

Fiy» 3.2 Typical cisterns, three with filtering devices

102

water sources functioned as tools that enabled American families to max­

imize their opportunities to create quality domestic environments.

Moving Water Into and Throughout the House

Water obtained from a variety of sources and stored in wells

and cisterns served as the core of a domestic plumbing system, but the

actual use of water fixtures inside the house depended on the solution

to two other technological problems. First, once a supply had been

located and acquired, it had to be moved from its source to the house

itself. Second, the water had to move easily throughout the house, and

into plumbing fixtures. These two problems are not necessarily related,

and indeed, each requires a separate discussion if their final role in a

functioning plumbing system is to be understood.

Pumping and Transfer Devices

The first problem, moving water from its source into or at

least nearby the house, could be solved in a number of ways. A water

supply located uphill from the house provided both supply and moving

force in one; a homeowner only needed to lay pipe to carry it to the

house. But when the supply came from a nearby but unelevated spring, a

well, or a cistern, or from a water works which, lacking a steam pump,

offered little in the way of pressure, moving it near to or inside the

house posed a more serious problem. Magazines and advice manuals served

as clearing houses for information about how to build or improve water

transfer devices, but mid-century inventors also contributed to the

effort by patenting hundreds of devices designed to simplify the chore

of moving water up out of wells, cisterns, and springs, and to buildings

and lots. For example, a Scotland, Pennsylvania, inventor obtained an

103

1849 patent for what he called a "telegraph water carrier," a contrap­

tion using telegraph-like poles and wires plus a pulley system to move

buckets of water from one point to another. The inventor explained that

his improvement enabled users to "surmount houses, or elevated portions

of the ground, and to cross roads or streams lying between the house and

well . . . ,"28 An Aurora, Illinois, inventor obtained an 1860 patent

for another "water elevator," this one using multiple buckets, a wind­

lass, and weights. By manipulating the windlass, the user moved a full

bucket up out of a well or other body of water. As the full bucket rose

to the surface, an empty one began to descend. When the full bucket

reached the top it automatically tipped into an adjacent conduit that

carried the water away to where it was needed. This device, explained

the patentee, was "designed for domestic use, and to facilitate the

work, that females and children may draw the water without the least

difficulty."29 These inventors, and hundreds of other like-minded

souls, understood that water, of course, was only as convenient as it

was accessible. Given the patent interest in devices like these, it

seems possible that Americans all over the nation used any number of

individual arrangements similar to those described above to transfer

water to their houses. But mid-century Americans also used two other

noteworthy devices to move water: the hydraulic ram and the simple hand

pump.

The ram had several virtues; it had few working parts, so that,

once set in motion, it needed little or no attention or maintenance (Fig

3.3). Moreover, the device pumped water uphill with little mechanical

effort, no manual labor, and no complicated mechanism, so that with its

104

Fig. 3.3 A hydraulic reun

use "water [could] be thrown into every room in the dwelling house, as

well into various buildings, and yards, and fields . . . wherever it may

be required.It operated "by taking advantage of the impulse or

momentum of a current of water suddenly stopped in its course and made

to act in another direction."31 A ram had two valves, one a hinged flap

valve and the other a spindle valve that bobbed freely in the water.

The hinged valved stood between the main water pipe and an oval-shaped

chamber. The discharge pipe, which carried water to the house, branched

off from this chamber. As water entered the ram's main pipe it pushed

the ball up against an outlet through which water would otherwise flow.

As the ball closed the opening, the water stopped abruptly. The water's

jolt pushed against the second valve and opened it; water poured through

the opening, into the oval chamber, and out the discharge pipe. As the

water poured out, its momentum gradually decreased and eventually the

hinged valve snapped shut. For a brief moment, both valves were closed,

the water stood motionless, and the ball valve dropped back down into

105

the water. This action created an opening into which water once again

flowed. Once the water was in motion, it pushed the ball valve against

the opening, its closing compressed the water, and forced open the

hinged valve. The cycle began again.3%

The ram proved particularly useful in rural or semi-rural set­

tings where a household had access to a natural supply of water such as

a spring or brook, as in the case of the a Virginia "mansion" whose

owner used a ram to pump water four hundred feet from a spring to his

house; pipes then carried the water throughout the dwelling.33 But city

dwellers also used the ram. For example, throughout the 1850s and 1860s

Boston's Cochituate Water Board consistently listed hydraulic rams in

its tabulation of water fixtures supplied by the Board, and a correspon­

dent to The Country Gentleman noted that his Philadelphia household

enjoyed running water in bathroom, water closet, and kitchen, thanks to

a ram he installed in the late 1840s.3* gut the ram may not have been

as common used as other pumping devices: in 1850 a Philadelphia inventor

claimed to have sold and installed about a thousand of the devices, but

in 1852 Scientific American printed an essay describing the device on

the front page, a space traditionally reserved for discussions of new

inventions and patents. The editor justified his decision by claiming

that an earlier article on the subject had prompted a large number of

reader requests for- more information, suggesting that the ram's use in

the early 1850s may not have been widespread.35 what is clear, however,

is that beginning the 1840s and 1850s the ram, which had been available

since the eighteenth century, enjoyed a new popularity among Americans

seeking the most advanced and useful technologies with which to fuel

domestic and national progress.

106

Nationwide interest in improvement sparked a similar interest

in pumps, and, like the ram, the utility of pumps rested both in their

simplicity and in the fact that they facilitated the task of creating

household running water systems. Households used hand pumps to transfer

water into and around the house. Pumps stationed outside enabled people

to move water out of an outside well or subterranean cistern, but a pump

installed inside the house and connected by pipes to an external water

source eliminated trips outside and thereby increased the convenience of

the water supply. In many mid-nineteenth century houses, a pump stood

a d j a c e n t t o a k i t c h e n s i n k , o r i n a " p u m p r o o m " o f f t h e k i t c h e n . T h e

forcing, or "garden," pump consisted of two valves and a piston. Pump­

ing the handle moved the piston up and down. When the piston was

raised, the valve located below it rose, allowing water to fill the

piston chamber and exit pipe. Pushing the handle down lowered the

piston and closed that valve, but a second one, located in the exit

pipe, opened, freeing the trapped water which then flowed out through

the spout. One writer remarked that people placed this device in their

yards, with "the suction pipe extending into a well, and the ascending

[discharge] one to a cistern in the upper parts of the building."3? The

lifting pump, however, better served the purpose of raising water up

several floors. Thomas Ewbank, who published several editions of his

exhaustive mid-century study of "hydraulic" machines, described the

"modern" lifting pump as "one of the most useful forms of the pump for

household purposes; it may be placed in the kitchen, cellar or yard, and

will not only draw water from a well, but will force it up to every

floor of a dwelling".38 This device differed from the force pump in

that it lifted, rather than pushed water, into the discharge pipe. The

107

cylinder was immersed in water, so that as the piston moved up and down,

water was always above it, waiting to be pushed out of the discharge

pipe. The valve was in the piston itself; pulling up on the handle

pushed the piston down, forcing the valve open so that water flowed

through and above the piston. Pushing down on the handle forced the

piston up against the head of water above it, closing the valve and

lifting the water up and out of the discharge pipe.39

The Elevated Interior Cistern

In theory, it was possible to run pipes from an inside pump to

water fixtures, such as sinks, bathing tubs, and basins, and thereby

solve the second water delivery problem, moving water throughout the

house and into plumbing fixtures. As a way to deliver water, however,

the interior pump had drawbacks. It worked well in houses where the

water fixtures had been stationed on the ground floor, but proved less

useful in houses where the homeowner installed water fixtures on upper

floors: anytime someone wanted to use an upstairs sink or bathing tub,

he or she had to pump water up from below. Instead, the convenient use

of water fixtures demanded some other type of water storage device, one

that would hold a large quantity of water, yet allow that water to move

freely throughout the house. A cellar cistern held plenty of water, but

it shared the same limitations as the sink pump: the only way to dis­

tribute water throughout the house was by pumping. At mid-century,

then, the attic cistern served as the key to using water fixtures; it

held large quantities of water inside the house, and its elevated posi­

tion enabled the water to flow easily throughout the house.

The idea of placing a water tank in the attic seems so fool­

hardy, that it would be easy to conclude that such an act would be the

108

aberration rather than the norm.40 Based on the frequency with which

attic tanks are mentioned in house plans, magazines, and architectural

books, however, it seems safe to conclude that they were rather common.

A Staten Island home, probably built in the very late 1860s, had an 8-

by-12-by-4 foot copper-lined attic tank. Orson Fowler installed several

elevated cisterns throughout his house. A Boston house remodeled in

1860 had an attic tank, presumably to hold Cochituate water. The owner

of a Canton, Massachusetts, dwelling built in the late 1840s pumped well

water into his attic reservoir. A New Haven house used an attic tank as

did houses at West Troy, New York, Baltimore, suburban Philadelphia, and

Orange, New Jersey, all of them built in the 1850s or early 1860s (Fig.

3.4).41

Plans for proposed houses published in magazines and books also

included attic tanks. For example, Calvert Vaux's Villas and Cottages

included plans for a "suburban cottage on a small scale" that used tin

pipes to channel rain water into the attic cistern. Architect Samuel

Sloan included attic tanks in several of his house plans published in

the 1850s as did George Woodward in his collections published during the

following decade. Sloan's plans tended to be for large ornate villas of

brick and stone, while Woodward's were for two story frame houses of

good but not enormous size, but both men emphasized the use of water

fixtures and running water based on attic cisterns.42 in large cities

and small towns, in country and in suburb, the attic tank served as the

tool with which homeowners joined the convenience of running water with

the convenience of water fixtures. When installed properly and used

wisely, the elevated cistern enabled anyone to use water fixtures any­

where in the house.

109

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A T T I C S

B A S E M E N T

Fig. 3.4 Vaux's Villas and Cottages showed this "suburban cottage" with an attic cistern

110

Plumbers fabricated attic tanks by lining a square or rec­

tangular wooden frame with slate, lead, or zinc; oddly enough, lead was

probably the most popular of the three, although opinion certainly

varied.43 For example, in his 1853 Rudiments of the Art of Building,

John Bullock noted that while the "common material for the cistern . . .

is wood lined with sheet lead . . . slate cisterns have been much used

of late." However in his 1854 publication entitled The American Cottage

Builder, he omitted any mention of lead for cisterns, noting instead

that the "material used [was] commonly slate, . . . ." Writing during

the same decade, architect Lafever claimed that "sheet lead" was good

for cisterns, but added that "of late years" zinc had also been used to

line cisterns.44 However, a look at the specifications for houses

either proposed or actually built indicates that the use of lead con­

tinued throughout the period. For a block of "city houses" (attached

dwellings built in rows), Ranlett specified the use of a lead-lined four

hundred gallon attic reservoir. In an 1852 publication, Sloan included

a five-hundred gallon attic tank made of "two inch plank" and lined with

lead. George Woodward specified an attic tank of lead in an 1869 col­

lection of house plans, and in his 1872 Village Builder, A.J. Bicknell

included a three hundred gallon capacity lead-lined cistern in the attic

of one house plan.45

The attic tank increased the convenience of a household water

supply. In cities with water works, for example, customers used the

tanks in conjunction with water received through the public mains. When

cities pumped water into elevated storage reservoirs and stand-pipes,

gravity, rather than a massive pumping engine, provided the motive force

for water traveling through mains and supply pipes.46 By the time water

I l l

reached the house, it often lacked the momentum necessary to carry it to

upper floors. To compensate, customers pumped the water to an attic

cistern; the elevation provided the fall necessary to move the water on

through the house. In addition, some cities supplied water inter­

mittently; the attic tank stored water in preparation for the days when

the mains did not "run."*? In houses that relied on private water sup­

plies, the attic tank served as an in-house storage tank. For example,

in the Bickford house described in Chapter Two, a "force pump" connected

to the cellar cistern allowed the family to pump water to a second

cistern located above the bathing room. A Hudson River estate designed

by Vaux used multiple cisterns, one situated above the bathing room, the

others located underground but near the house. Leaders conducted rain

water to the upper one, with the overflow being channeled to the sub­

surface tanks. John Hammond created a similar arrangement for one of

the houses in his collection of plans published in 1858: pipes carried

rain water to an attic cistern and the overflow to a cellar reservoir.

A force pump in the kitchen transferred water to the upper tank as

needed.48

The attic cistern had drawbacks; its enormous weight placed a

tremendous strain on the structure's framing members, and leaks quickly

caused damage to ceilings.*9 Despite these disadvantages, Philadelphia

architect Sloan approved; a roof tank "filled by a force-pump at weekly

or semi-weekly intervals, is highly recommended," he wrote.50 Fowler

argued that "cisterns in the tops of houses [were] most desirable"

because they saved inhabitants the labor of carrying water up stairs,

and promoted cleanliness. "The water from every house should be carried

into cisterns, constructed in its top, to be used in chambers . . .

112

he urged. In order to avoid the cracked joists and leaky ceilings that

large cisterns often caused. Fowler built smaller separate ones in the

upper reaches of bedroom closets.Another writer regarded an

elevated cistern as a necessity, especially "in the country" where there

was no water works, even though its use required "the most severe labor

of any performed in a house, requiring a man to perform it and being

always a source of expense, trouble and anxiety."^2 Even those who dis­

liked the tanks recognized their usefulness. One writer declared it to

be "always more or less an evil; it takes up a great deal of space,

costs a great deal of money . . . , and often causes inconvenience, from

leakage, . . . bursting of the service pipes . . . , and from the

liability of the self-acting cock to get out of order." He conceded,

however, that in some cases this evil was a necessary one, and supplied

the reader with detailed instructions for constructing and operating an

attic tank.53 Architect Gervase Wheeler expressed the same ambivalence

toward the attic cistern, noting that the "large cistern in the roof is

not always desirable, and as a constantly filled reservoir is scarcely

ever so." As an alternative he recommended installing a smaller single-

purpose cistern above the bathroom only, and using a force pump located

on a lower floor to supply the tank.54 As noted earlier, Lewis Allen

detested the attic cistern, and avoided its use by placing water fix­

tures on the first floor. But even he conceded that "the convenience

and privacy" of the household's female occupants sometimes justified the

use of upstairs fixtures and cisterns.55

113

The Convenience of Running Water

At mid-century, then, Americans used a wide variety of tech­

nologies to both obtain and store water, technologies that, when linked

together, enabled people to improve their daily lives through access to

that most wonderful of conveniences, running water. Indeed, one thing

mid-century observers agreed about, albeit with varying degrees of

enthusiasm, was the value of running water inside the house, even if it

extended no further than one sink in the kitchen. Those who have never

had water piped into the house, remarked one writer, "often look with

astonishment upon what they consider the extravagant expenditures made

by their neighbors to accomplish this object" but "a proper estimate" of

the labor saved in carrying pails and drawing from wells "would show

that their own course is less thrifty."56 one architectural plan book

declared piped water an "unspeakable privilege," which, once enjoyed,

caused users to "wonder at the indifference with which this matter is

regarded by many. . . . What folly to be digging deep wells, and daily

to labor at clumsy sweeps and wheezing pumps, . . . when they might have

the soft, pure, sparkling lymph laid on their houses to the very top, .

. . ."57 Catharine Beecher concurred; when people erred by locating

wells and cisterns outside and away from the house, "the mode of drawing

and carrying [water] is excessively laborious!" How much simpler, she

remarked, to arrange matters so that "by simply turning a cock, or work­

ing a small pump, the water will flow directly into the place where it

is needed for use."5® If nothing else, noted George Woodward, water

inside the house saved the health of the inhabitants since with it there

would be "no running out in bad weather . . . [to] carry it back slop­

ping to the house; .... "^9 A mid-century housekeeping manual

114

averred that "the saving of time, strength, patience, life itself, by

having an abundant and unfailing supply of water brought into the house,

is incalculable."GO Another writer agreed, observing that

at the present day, a contrivance by which water may be conveyed directly into the kitchen, if into no other rooms, is considered indispensable. In the country, people are apt to set too low a value on the importance of these labor-saving accommodations. It is no small task to go out several yards from the back door to a pump or a well, . . . especially in bad weather. . . . The time saved by a good pump in the kitchen is a matter of no mean con­sideration, . . . .61

Fowler stated flatly, that "to have plenty of hot and cold water all

through the house is a luxury too great to be wanting in any complete

house."62 He repeatedly emphasized the labor-saving attributes of the

cistern-based running water arrangements in his house: such a supply

saved the effort of hauling water up stairs, and it was "much more handy

to turn a faucet and draw water direct into a pail, than to raise it

from the well or from a cistern under-ground, . . . ."63

Three significant points emerge from these comments. First,

these observers conceived of running water as something any household

could have, regardless of whether the dwelling was in the city or

country. In other words, they did not perceive "running water" as some­

thing that flowed strictly from the mains of a large-scale water works;

a municipal water works was neither a necessary nor a first requirement

for the enjoyment of running water. If this was the case, it followed,

then, that while the use of plumbing depended on a supply of water, that

supply did not have to come from a water works.Second, these observ­

ers viewed running water primarily as a labor-saving tool, one that made

household life more convenient and pleasant, rather than as a tool of

hygiene or sanitation. That is, none of these commentators argued in

favor of running water solely on the basis of hygienic demands. The

115

health benefits of running water stemmed less from the achievement of a

higher standard of sanitation and cleanliness than from the fact that

running water saved people, and women in particular, from back-breaking

drudgery that sapped their strength and broke their health. Cleanliness

was surely a part of convenience, but it was not the only, or even the

main part. Third, these remarks attest again to the new interest in

what was, after all, a rather old idea. Technologically speaking, none

of the devices that Americans used to create running water systems were

especially new in the mid-nineteenth century. What was new, of course,

was the nationwide interest in improving the quality of American life

and in demonstrating to the world at large the potential for progress

inherent in American civilization.

In the period 1840 to 1870, Americans used a number of tools to

establish the household water systems that enabled them to create a bet­

ter domestic environment. The variety of these tools—which ranged from

hydraulic rams to hand pumps to attic tanks—served the needs of the

equally diverse group of people united by their common interest in

domestic reform. Domestic advice manuals offered guidance to the people

who developed these water systems; those same manuals also taught

American families how to manage the wastes that resulted from the use of

water fixtures.

Domestic Drainage Technologies

"In cities and villages where no general system of drainage is

carried out," remarked Scientific American in 1859, "it is not uncommon

to find a cesspool built alongside of almost every house, . . . ."65 in

his exhaustive treatise on American sanitation practice, James C. Bayles

also noted the ubiquity of the cesspool, describing it as the "common

116

method" of disposal used in "country houses of the better class . . .

[and] a majority of villages and unsewered towns . . . ."66 For

Americans living in small towns, in rural or semi-rural areas, and in

"suburbs," the cesspool provided what public policy often did not: a

repository into which people could deposit accumulated private wastes

Cesspools proved useful for any household beyond the reach of a public

sewer, of course, but for those that enjoyed water fixtures and in-house

running water, the cesspool, when coupled with a network of household

drainage pipes, served as the core of the household drainage system.

Despite its apparent ubiquity and necessity, the cesspool met

with almost universal condemnation. One critic denounced cesspools as

"magazines of filth and storehouses of disease. They generate

pestiferous vapors, and should never be allowed near dwelling-houses."6?

Bayles, who described the tanks as "indispensably necessary under a

great variety of conditions," nonetheless found fault with them. He

pronounced so-called leaching cesspools—ones built loosely of stone or

brick and designed to permit liquids to flow into the surrounding

ground—as "wholly bad [and] a fruitful source of disease and death . .

. ." "Sewers are bad enough," he wrote, "but leaching cesspools at their

best are liable to be worse than sewers at their worst . . . ."68

Others ranked the leaching cesspool as an even greater evil than the

practice of tossing wastes out the back door or into an open drainage

ditch, where at least they dried up after exposure to the air and sun.

However, even the most vehement critics regarded the cesspool as a

necessary evil, and hoped that wisdom would guide its use. Indeed,

critics based their objections not on the cesspool itself, but on the

way people built and used them. Loosely-structured leaching cesspools.

117

for example, allowed all manner of household liquid wastes, human and

otherwise, to drain into the yard. The emanations from this swampy mass

fouled the air or, worse yet, tainted water supplies stored in wells and

cisterns. Loose pipe joints and badly-designed traps enabled gases and

odors to drift back into the house itself. In addition greasy kitchen

wastes coagulated on the inside walls of pipes, thereby blocking the

free flow of wastes into the tank.69

Advice manuals addressed the task of proper cesspool use and

construction. A cesspool-based household drainage system consisted of

two parts: the cesspool itself, and the pipe network that connected it

to the house, the water supply, and the water closet or privy vault.

The use of a water-tight impervious tank rendered the cesspool less

harmful, although it also had to be cleaned frequently, since all of the

wastes, not just solids, accumulated in its depths. In form, cesspools

resembled exterior cisterns: they consisted of pits lined with brick,

stone, or cement. Architect Minard Lafever recommended that people

build cesspools of "rubble or brick-work, with the top either arched or

domed, or covered with flat stones," and cover them with a twenty-inch

manhole that allowed access to the interior.^0 The contract for a Wood­

stock, Connecticut, house erected in the late 1840s directed the builder

to use "rough stone without mortar," while the contract for another

house specified only that the reservoir be three feet square and topped

with "mica slate stone.Descriptions found in Woodward's pub­

lications varied. His specifications for a New Jersey house ordered the

contractor to build a cesspool six feet in diameter and six feet deep of

"good building stone, laid dry, and covered with strong flagstone,"

while another set of specifications described a cesspool ten feet by ten

feet, with eight-inch thick walls of stone or brick topped with cement.

A flag-stone and manhole covered the top.72 Even the imperfect leaching

cesspool could be used safely, however, when people placed them at least

one hundred feet from the house and its water supplies, and used drain

tiles to channel seepage away from the house and water supply. Some

manuals recommended channeling liquid privy wastes into a separate "liq­

uid manure tank" rather than into the cesspool.^3 Builders fabricated

cesspool drain pipes of various materials. An 1850 publication recom­

mended using white pine coated with "pitch laid on boiling hot," but

writers more typically recommended brick, stone, or wood for drainage

pipes.74 By the end of the 1850s glazed or "vitrified" earthenware pipe

had become popular; unlike rough-surfaced iron, brick, and stone, glazed

pipe's smooth but impervious surface facilitated the passage of greasy,

soft wastes that would otherwise cling and putrefy.75

Although people used the cesspool to capture most of the

household's wastes, the installation of a privy or a water closet posed

a separate problem in waste disposal design, one that mid-century

Americans solved in one of two ways. In the first, people eliminated

the vault completely, and instead drained wastes directly into a soil

pipe attached to a drainage pipe that lead to the cesspool. Ranlett,

writing in the late 1840s, described this method when he argued that

whether the water closet was located indoors or out, it was "better not

to be constructed over a sink, but with a basin in the seat, from which

a soil-pipe extends to the drain, that conveys the sediment to a ses-

spool [sic] at a distance from the house." Flushing all of the

household's waste water through this drain, he continued, ensured that

it would always remain clear.^6 xhe contractor who built a Nahant, Mas­

119

sachusetts, house in the mid-1850s used this method (Fig. 3.5). Wastes

from a second floor water closet flowed into a soil pipe that ran down

to the cellar where it eventually joined a second drain that conveyed

the wastes from a set of wash trays. The second drain, along with

wastes from the first floor privy (and the kitchen sink), drained into a

"main drain" that apparently terminated in a cesspool. This drainage

plan thus eliminated the vault and instead used all of the household

liquid runoff to flush water closet wastes out of the house.??

In the second method, people constructed a brick or stone vault

beneath the closet or privy, and connected it directly to a cesspool,

usually by means of a glazed earthenware drain pipe. This arrangement

allowed a vault's liquid contents to trickle continuously into the

water-tight drain pipe, and guaranteed that as long as a water supply

also flushed the vault, all of the closet wastes would eventually be

removed from the vault. The success of this method depended on the

quality of the vault; at a minimum it needed to be "sufficiently deep"

and walled, typically with brick.For example, the building specifi­

cations for a Germantown, Pennsylvania, house constructed around 1861

called for the "well of water closet to be walled with brick a suffi­

cient depth . . . ." The specifications for Woodward's New Jersey house

specified a vault five feet deep, with walls eight inches thick and

"laid in best cement.Once the vault was in place, a water tight

drain pipe conveyed the wastes to a cesspool, or, less typically, to a

sewer: in two houses built in Philadelphia, Sloan used iron soil pipes

to connect upstairs water closets to underground vaults, one of which

was twenty feet from the house.®® In one of his house plans. Woodward

also used an iron soil pipe to connect a second-floor pan water closet

120

tit*.

Miià nui

• r

, . . • _a _ _ *3 _ a •r

Basement S lory.

Fig. 3.5 Drainage plan. Soil pipe (dotted line running across stair) drained a second floor water closet, then connected with drain running parallel to back of house. "Main drain" runs parallel to wood room. T. Dwight house, Nahant, Mass. Basement story. Luther Briggs, Jr., Architect. Collection of the Society for the Preservation for New England Antiquities

to its "privy sink. An earthenware drainage pipe connected the vault to

the cesspool. A branch of the soil pipe extended on above the ater

closet itself to the attic cistern in order to utilize that tank's over­

flow in flushing the soil pipe. In another Woodward house, two three-

inch leaders channeled rain water into the shared vault of two first

floor water closets; a six-inch drain pipe connected the vault to a ces­

spool.®^ As these examples indicate, water from roofs and cisterns

flushed closets and privies, and pipes carried wastes into vaults or

cesspools. Even where no public sewer or water supply was available,

there was no reason a well-drained, solidly constructed, and diligently

maintained water closet or privy could not add to the convenience and

ease of the household.

Homeowners and builders connected cesspools, vaults, pipes, and

drains in a variety of ways. Downing described the drainage system for

a "suburban cottage": a brick drain in the kitchen ran to a second

larger drain "some distance away," or to a "filtering reservoir" thirty

or fifty feet distant. He suggested constructing the latter by digging

a hole the size of "a cistern of ordinary capacity," cementing the

sides, covering the top with stones and soil, and adding a "smell-trap"

as a barrier between the house and the reservoir.Lafever offered

similar advice. He suggested that for draining both ground water and

household wastes

one main drain will be amply sufficient, leading either to a ces­spool in the yard, or what is better, to a brook or other outlet in the neighborhood. Into this may flow the refuse matters from the kitchen, or other parts of the house, and also the rain from the roof, if it is not wanted in the cistern. The best form for . . . a drain is with a concave bottom, and a top which can be removed in case of obstruction, .... It should have a smooth inner surface, and a fall of at least two or three inches to a hundred feet. To prevent the foul air which is generated in the drain from return­ing, diptraps are indispensably necessary; these are also an effec-

122

tuai barrier against the passage of rats.83

The builder's contract for a Brookline, Massachusetts, house built in

1858 followed such a plan. The contract ordered the builder to "lay a

suitable drain of the best glazed drain pipe in cement," and run it from

the house to the "saveall." A separate glazed "stone ware drain"

carried water from the privy vault, slop sink, and rain gutters into the

first drain.84

Regardless of whether they lived in city, village, farm, or

suburb, Americans interested in improving household efficiency and com­

fort could use the information provided in magazines and books to create

convenient water supply and waste removal systems. They constructed

them by using a variety of technologies such as cisterns, cesspools,

pumps. Americans treated these devices, none of which were particularly

new or novel, as objects that could be improved if not redesigned in

order to meet American needs, and then utilized in the home in order to

better domestic life. The project of domestic improvement of course

contributed to national progress, and helped ensure a safe and vital

future for the American people and their social and civil institutions.

Supply and waste systems proved most useful, however, when united with a

variety of water fixtures. The next two chapters examine mid-century

fixtures in detail.

123

Endnotes

Ipor surveys see Nelson Blake, Water for the Cities (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1956); Stuart Galishoff, "Triumph and Failure: The American Response to the Urban Water Supply Problem, 1860-1923," in Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930, ed. Martin V. Melosi (Austin, Texas.: University of Texas Press, 1980), 35-57; Joel A. Tarr, "Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure in the Nine­teenth and Twentieth Centuries," in Perspectives on Urban Infrastruc­ture, ed. Royce Hauser (Washington, D. C. : National Academy Press, 1984), 12-15. The best discussion of urban water supply technologies is in Louis Hunter, Steam Power: A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780-1930 (Charlottesville, Va.; University Press of Vir­ginia, for the Hagley Museum and Library, 1985), 509-93.

Other useful studies include John Ellis and Stuart Galishoff, "Atlanta's Water Supply, 1865-1918," Maryland Historian 8 (1977): 5-22; Louis P. Cain, Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (Chicago: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978), 37-58; Bruce Jordan, "Origins of the Milwaukee Water Works," Milwaukee History 9 (1986): 2-16; Terry S. Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires: Shreveport, Louisiana, as a Case Study of the Emergence of Public Water Supply Systems in the South," Louisiana History 22 (1981): 337-67; Gary A. Donaldson, "Bringing Water to the Crescent City: Benjamin Latrobe and the New Orleans Water Works System," Louisiana History 28 (1987): 381-396; Bruce W. Jordan, "The Allegheny City Water Works, 1840-1907," Western Pennsylvania History Magazine 70 (1987): 29-52; Letty Donaldson Anderson, "The Diffusion of Technology in the Nineteenth Century American City: Water Supply Investments," (Ph.D. diss. Northwestern University, 1980).

^Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860: American Con­sumption Levels on the Eve of the Civil \iar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 41. The important large municipal water works have absorbed historians' research energies, so that little is known about the technology and structure of less sophisticated municipal systems, nor is much known about how people who lived beyond the reach of a public system obtained their water.Martin's assessment is one of the best available but it is tantalizingly vague; he deemed the use of source citations "unnecessary," noting only that he had relied on city water department reports, local histories, and "various other materials." (39) An excellent starting point for an overview of nine­teenth century water works construction, large and small, is M. N. Baker, ed.. The Manual of American Water-Works, 4 vols. (New York; Engineering News Publishing Co., 1889-1897). Baker's compilation is especially useful because it provides a great deal of information about the kinds of water supply arrangements constructed by municipalities and private corporations in the first half of the nineteenth century, before the onset of the late century spate of water works construction.

Two essays that examine water systems in smaller municipalities are Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires," 338-46; and Maureen Ogle, "Redefin­ing 'Public' Water Supplies; A Study of Three Iowa Cities," Annals of Iowa 50 (1990); 510-21.

124

^Horatio Adams, "On the Action of Water on Lead Pipes, and the Diseases Proceeding from It," Transactions of the American Medical Asso­ciation 5 (1852): 187, 230 (hereafter cited as Transactions AHA); M. N. Baker, ed., Manual of Timerican Water-Works, first issue (New York: Engineering News, 1889), 78 and 150.

Other useful descriptions of lesser-known mid-century municipal water supplies are in Charles P. Gage, "Sanitary Report of Concord, N. H.," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 446; J. Curtis, "Public Hygiene of Mas­sachusetts; but more particularly of the Cities of Boston and Lowell," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 519; J. T. Oilman, "Replies to Circular Let­ter," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 453; James Wynne, "Sanitary Report of Baltimore," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 561-62; P. C. Gaillard, "Report on the Sanitary Condition of Charleston, South Carolina," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 586; Edward H. Barton, "Sanitary Report of New Orleans, La.," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 597; L. P. Yandell, "Letter on the Sanitary Condition of Louisville, Ky.," Transactions AMA 2 (1849): 615-16; J. C. Simonds, "Report on the Hygienic Characteristics of New Orleans," Transactions AMA 3 (1850): 269-271; "Report on the Epidemic Diseases which prevailed in 1851, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland," Transactions AMA 5 (1852): 342; "Report on the Epidemic Diseases of Tennessee and Kentucky," Transactions AMA 5 (1852): 535-36; "Report on the Epidemic Diseases of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas," Transactions AMA 5 (1852): 681; "Report of the Epidemics of Tennessee and Kentucky," Transactions AMA 6 (1853): 323; John B. Porter, "On the Climate and Salubrity of Fort Moultrie and Sullivan's Island, Charleston Harbour, South Carolina, with Incidental Remarks on the Yel­low Fever of the City of Charleston," American Journal of the Medical Sciences n. s. 28 (1854): 362-63; "Report on the Epidemics of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, for the Years 1852 and 1853," Transactions AMA 7 (1854): 297; "Report on the Medical Topography and Epidemics of California," Transactions AMA 12 (1859): 102; Charles W. Parsons, "Report on the Medical Topography and Epidemic Diseases of the State of Rhode Island," Transactions AMA 15 (1864): 211; E. A. Hildreth, "Report on the Topography, Climatology, and Epidemic Disease of West Virginia," Transactions AMA 19 (1868): 235; Blake McKelvey, Rochester the Water-Power City, 1812-1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), 112, 177-78; William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City, 2d ed., (Ohio: The Kent State University Press, in cooperation with the Western Reserve Historical Society, 1990), 93, 178, 197; Edmund H. Chapman, Cleveland: Village to Metropolis: A Case Study of Problems of Urban Development in Nineteenth-Century America (Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1981, 1964), 59; Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires," 342-43, 345-47; Joseph W. Barnes, "Water Works History: A Comparison of Albany, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester," Rochester History 39, no. 3 (1977): 1-22.

^Historians have not explored the role of water sellers and water carters. Terry Reynolds asserts that in mid-nineteenth century Shreveport this was an especially expensive way to obtain water: a bucket sold for five cents, a barrel for fifty cents. See his "Cisterns and Fires," 341. But after a municipal works had been built in Peoria, Illinois, city ordinance prohibited cartmen from charging more than fif­teen cents for each barrel of city water (the sellers paid three cents per one hundred gallons of water.) See the city of Peoria, Peoria Water

125

Works, "An Ordinance Fixing the Rates of Water from the Peoria Water Works, in the City of Peoria," Ordinances for the Government of Water Takers, Plumbers, &c. (Peoria: Transcript Printing and Blank Book Co., 1869), 4. According to one source, Chicago water carters continued to peddle their wares through the early 1850s, even after a fairly good piped water supply was available. See Industrial Chicago: The Building Interests (Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1891), 307.

Water sellers are also mentioned in Simonds, "Report on the Hygienic Characteristics of New Orleans," 271; David Whiteford, "Plumb­ing of To-day as Compared with That of the Past, I" Sanitary News 3 (1883-84): 52; Jacqueline K. Corn, "Municipal Organization for Public Health in Pittsburgh, 1851-1895," (Ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1971), 14; Jordan, "Origins of the Milwaukee Water Works," 3; Rose, Cleveland, 55; McKelvey, Rochester the Water-Power City, 112; Blake, Water for the Cities, 134.

^In Milwaukee, for example, one historian has estimated that in 1870 citizens used over thirty thousand wells. See Jordan, "Origins of the Milwaukee Water Works," 3. A discussion of wells and well digging is in Sereno Edwards Todd, Todd's Country Homes and How to Save Money (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Publishing Co., 1870), 215-25.

®Adams, "On the Action of Water on Lead Pipes," 203-4, 208, 212-13.

^Contract, Sarah D. Bird house, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1858, Box 3, Folder 13A, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiq­uities. Also see Specifications and Contract for the Salem Griggs house, Grafton, Massachusetts, 1849, Box 3, Folder 18, SPNEA.

For examples in the plan books see J. H. Hammond, The Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect; and Guide in Rural Economy (Boston; John P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland: Henry P. B. Jewett, 1858), 23-4, 46-8, 55-8, 83-4, 121; William H. Ranlett, The Architect, vol. 1 (New York: William H. Graham, 1847), 68-9; John Bullock, The American Cottage Builder: A Series of Designs, Plans, and Specifications from $200 to $20,000 (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1854), 191, 235; Edward Shaw, The Modern Architect, or Every Carpenter His Own Master. . . (Boston: Dayton & Wentworth, 1854), 90; George Barrett, The Poor Man's House, and Rich Man's Palace. Or, the Application of the Gravel Wall Cement to the Purposes of Building (Cincinnati; Applegate and Co., 1854), 55-56; C. P. Dwyer, The Immigrant Builder (Philadelphia; Claxton, Remsen and Haffel-finger, 1872), 19-20; Todd, Todd's Country Homes, 218-251.

Also see Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and At School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon and Webb, 1841), 29; "Report on the Epidemic Diseases of Tennessee and Kentucky," 535-36; George R. Grant, "The Meteorology, Sanitary Condition, Prevailing Diseases, and Mortuary Statistics of Memphis, Tennessee, in 1852," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, n.s. 26 (1853): 99; "Report of the Epidemics of Tennessee and Kentucky," 323; "Boring for Water," Scientific American, n. s. 7 (1862): 380; McKelvey, Rochester the Water-Power City, 249.

®Adams, "On the Action of Water on Lead Pipes," 198.

126

^"Report of the Epidemics of Tennessee and Kentucky," 323.

lOjohn Moulton, "How to Elevate Water From Rivers," Scientific American 8 (1852-53); 99.

Inconstance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 41, 93, 202-03. Also see E.A. Anderson, "Cases of Lead Poisoning," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, n.s. 26 (1853): 379; Barrett, Poor Man's House, 55-56; "Report on the Epidemic Diseases of Tennessee and Kentucky," 535-36; "Report of the Epidemics of Tennessee and Kentucky," 323. A general discussion of types of water is in Ranlett, The Architect, 1:68-9.

l^Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 197. Other discussions of the value of rain water are in James Gallier, American Builder's General Price Book and Estimator (New York: Stanley and Co. 1833), 113; Ranlett, The Architect, 1:68; "Cisterns for Houses and Cattle Yards," Rural New-Yorker 1 (1850): 34; "Cisterns for Rain Water," Scientific American 9 (1853-54): 252; Orson Fowler, A Home for All; or. The Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, rev. and enl. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1856), 147; Minard Lafever, The Architectural Instructor (New York: G. P. Putnam and Co., 1856), 426; Henry W. Cleaveland, William Backus, and Samuel D. Backus, Village and Farm Cottages (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1856), 35 and 164; [Samuel D. Backus], "Hints Upon Farm Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 3; "Rain Water Cisterns," Rural Register 4 (1862-63): 280; "Area of Roofing to Supply Tanks of Given Dimensions with Rain Water," Scientific American n.s. 12 (1865): 305; George E. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, II (New York: Geo. E. Woodward, 1868), 102-04; "Water," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 399.

l^Todd, Todd's Country Homes, 139-141. Other discussions of appropriate roofing materials are in Ranlett, The Architect, 1:68; George E. and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, (New York: George E. Woodward, 1865), 73; "Water," 399; A. J. Bicknell, Blcknell's Village Builder, rev. ed. (New York: A. J. Bicknell and Co., 1872), n.p., specifications for Design on Plate 2.

l^For leaders see Samuel Sloan, The Model Architect, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: E. G. Jones & Co. [1852], 1:52; Fowler, A Home for All, 111; Ranlett, The City Architect (New York; De Witt and Davenport, 1856), 28; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 121; Bicknell, Blcknell's Village Builder, specifications for design on Plate Two; William T. Hallett, Specifications for Frame Houses, Ranging In Cost from Two Thousand to Twenty Thousand Dollars, Carefully Written (New York: A. J. Bicknell, 1873), 5.

l^For patents see M. D. Leggett, comp., Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the United States Patent Office From 1790-1873, Inclusive, 3 vols. (Washington, D. C. : Government Printing Office, 1874; reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1976.)

l^The footnotes that follow cite many examples from the popular press, but for other general discussions see Thomas Webster and Mrs.

127

Parkes, An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, notes and improvements for the American edition by 0. Meredith Reese (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845), 545-47; John Bullock, ed.. The Rudiments of the Art of Building (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1853), 78-9; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 195-7; Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 411-12; "Water," 399-401.

Two recent books have discussed mid-nineteenth century concepts of the "rural" experience. See Tamara Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and John R. Stilgoe, Border­land: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), esp. 78-120. Two other useful studies are Ken­neth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), esp. 73-86; and Henry C. Binford, The First Suburbs: Residential Communities on the Boston Periphery, 1815-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

l^Gallier, General Price Book and Estimator, 113; Charles Lock-wood, Bricks and Brownstone: The New York Row House, 1783-1929 (New York: McGraw and Hill Book Co., 1972), 42, 45; John Griscom, The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York. With Sugges­tions for Its Improvement (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1845; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1970), 52 (page references are from reprint edi­tion) .

18"Epidemics of Tennessee and Kentucky," 323; "Epidemic Dis­eases of Tennessee and Kentucky," 535-36; "Epidemics of Louisiana, Mis­sissippi, Arkansas, and Texas," 681; Porter, "On the Climate and Salubrity of Fort Moultrie," 363. Also see Grant, "Meteorology," 99. An excellent description of cistern usage in Shreveport, along with a photograph, is in Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires," 339-40, 367.

l^The specifications for a cellar cistern directed that it "be bedded 4 inches deep with fine rubble, and water-lime cement . . . poured on and tamped while soft, . . . ." Layers of brick, "water lime," and cement covered both the base and sides. See Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 125.

Other descriptions of the construction and placement of cellar cisterns are in William Brown, Carpenter's Assistant (Worcester, Mass.: Edward Livermore, 1848), 132; Gervase Wheeler, Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country (New York: Charles Scribner, 1855), 124; Fowler, A Home for All, 119, 168-9; "A Complete Country Residence," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1858, No. 4, ed., J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Son, 1858), 24; "Country Dwellings," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1859, No. 5, ed. J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Son, 1858), 143; George E. Woodward and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture, Landscape Gardening, and Rural Art-No. 1-1867 (New York: George E. and F. W. Woodward, 1867), 88-9.

^^Contemporary advice manuals and magazines almost never men­tioned elevated exterior cisterns, but surely some people used them. For a photograph of one see Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires," 367.

128

Zlpor general discussions of the rain water cistern see Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 546; Cleaveland et al.. Village and Farm Cot­tages, 164-67; "Cisterns for Houses and Cattle Yards," 34; "A Cheap Cistern," Valley Farmer 2 (1850): 291; "Cistern Building," Rural New-Yorker 6 (1855): 230; "Editor's Table," Hortlculturallst 10 (1855): 523; "Building Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 9 (1858): 286; D. H. Jacques, The House: A Pocket Manual of Rural Architecture (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1859), 171-75; "Water Cisterns," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 164; "Water," 399-401; Todd, Todd's Country Homes, 227-231.

22Todd, Todd's Country Homes, 228-29.

Z^Ranlett, The Architect, 1:73 and Plate 54; Charles P. Dwyer, The Economic Cottage Builder: or. Cottages for Men of Small Means (Buf­falo: Wanzer, McKim & Co., 1855), pp. 51-52; Specifications, Henry C. Bowen house, Woodstock, Conn., 1848, Box 3, Folder 6B, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

^^Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, 72-73. For other discus­sions of cisterns see "Wooden Cistern," Rural New-Yorker 5 (1854): 373; "Rain-Water Cistern," Rural New-Yorker 5 (1854): 406; A. E., "About Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 6 (1855): 302; "Cisterns and Cistern Build­ing," Valley Farmer 8 (1856): 210; George Bowler, Chapel and Church Architecture (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1856), n.p.; Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 164, 166; M. S. Carr, "Construction of Cisterns," Country Gentleman 9 (1857): 241; "Measuring and Building Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 11 (1860): 133-134; "Egg-shaped Cisterns," Scientific American 13 (1857-1858): 318; J. Vance, "Building Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 9 (1858): 205; "Building Cisterns," 286; S. Cox, "About Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 13 (1862): 190; J. S. Williams, "How to Make Cisterns," Colman's Rural World and Valley Farmer 18 (1866): 227; Daniel T. Atwood, Atwood's Country and Suburban Houses (New York: Orange Judd and Co., 1871), 33-34; George E. Woodward and Edward G. Thompson, Woodward's National Architect (New York: Korff Bros., 1869), 85-86.

Descriptions of actual homes that used cisterns are in Shaw, Modern Architect, 90; Brown, Carpenter's Assistant, 132; Barret, Poor Man's House, 55-56; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 191, 236; Fowler, A Home for All, 119,132, passim; Charles Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 39; Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, 35; Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, 89; Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, new ed., George E. Harney, ed., (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1873), 202; Atwood, Country and Suburban Houses, 217, 223-24. At the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Cellar Plan, Augustus Clarke house, 1842, William F. Pratt collection. Drawer 2, File 2; Contract, Freeman Foster house. Providence, 1850, Box 3, Folder 35; Cellar Plan, Court Street house, 1848, Luther Briggs Architect, Drawer 5, Sheet 4.

25people piped water into a house for two purposes: cooking and drinking, or as "fuel" for various plumbing technologies. For the sec­ond purpose, any water would serve, although most observers agreed that soft water (meaning usually rain, as opposed to spring or river, water)

129

was less problematic, since it was less likely to leave "encrustations" of lime on the surfaces of objects.

Discussions of "hard" and "soft" water are in "Water," Journal of Health 1 (1829): 72; "To Make Hard Water Soft," Scientific American 1 (1851-52); 346; "The Water of Ohio," Scientific American 10 (1854-55); 267; "Purifying and Filtering Water," Scientific American 13 (1857-58); 237; "Hard and Soft Water," Scientific American 21 (1869): 217; Ranlett, The Architect 1:68.

Sôpor other filtering methods see "Of the Different Methods of Purifying Water," Journal of Health 1 (1829); 103-05; H. A. S., "Purify­ing Water," Scientific American 6 (1850-51); 330; "To Render Water Wholesome," Scientific American 7 (1851-52); 266; "Purifying and Fil­tering Water," 237; Edward L. Youmans, The Hand-book of Household Science. A Popular Account of Heat, Light, Air, Aliment, and Cleansing, in Their Scientific Principles and Domestic Applications (New York; D. Appleton and Co., 1857), 423-24; "Water for Drinking," Scientific American, n. s. 5 (1861): 102; "Simple Mode of Purifying Water," Scientific American 11 (1864): 128; "Purifying Water," Scientific American 21 (1869): 98; R. d'Heureuse, "Purifying Drinking Water," Scientific American 21 (1869); 134.

Z^For discussions of the fabrication and installation of cisterns see Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 530-31, 540-42; Ranlett, The Architect, 1:69; "Filtering Rain Water," Rural New-Yorker 1 (1850); 21; "Simple Water Filter," Scientific American 6 (1850-51): 357; "Cheap Mode of Filtering Water," Rural New-Yorker 4 (1853): 135; "Wooden Cistern," 373; "Rain-Water Cistern," 406; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 196-7; Dwyer, Economic Cottage Builder, 51-52; "Cisterns and Cistern Building," 210; Fowler, A Home for All, 133-134; "Filtering Cisterns and Cistern Building," Country Gentleman 7 (1856): 235; Bowler, Chapel and Church Architecture, n.p.; Cleaveland, et al., Village and Farm Cottages, 164-167; Youmans, Hand-book of Household Science, 422-24; "Architecture for the West," Rural New-Yorker 8 (1857): 77; "Filtering Cisterns," Rural New-Yorker 8 (1857): 184; E. G. Storke, ed.. The Family and Householder's Guide (Auburn, N. Y.: Auburn Publishing Co., 1859): 98-9; "Filters and Filtering Cisterns," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1861, No. 7, ed., J. J. Thomas (Albany; Luther Tucker and Son, 1861), 106-09; H. Ives, "A Good Filter Cistern," Rural New-Yorker 13 (1862): 197; Cox, "About Cisterns," 190; "Cisterns and Filters vs. Wells," Rural Register 3 (1861-62); 222; "Keeping Cistern Water Sweet," Scientific American, n. s. 13 (1865): 39; Williams, "How to Make Cisterns," 227; "Improved Water Filter and Cooler," Scientific American 21 (1869): 36; Todd S. Goodholme, A Domestic Cyclopaedia of Practical Information (New York; Henry Holt and Co., 1878), s. v., "Water," 580-82.

28u. S. Patent 6,857, Jas. D. Willoughby, "Apparatus for Rais­ing and Carrying Water," 6 November 1849.

S. Patent 30,490, John McArthur, "Method of Elevating Water From Wells, &c.," 23 October 1860. The Leggett patent compilation lists over two hundred other water elevating devices patented between 1840 and 1873.

130

2®Lewis Alien, Rural Architecture: Being A Complete Description of Farmhouses, Cottages and Outbuildings (New York; C. M. Saxton, 1852), 342.

31james J. Lawler, Lawler's American Sanitary Plumbing. A Practical \fork on the Best Methods of Modern Plumbing, rev. ed. (New York: Excelsior Publishing, 1896), 85-86.

32por descriptions of the ram see Thomas Ewbank, A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic and Other Machines for Raising Water, Ancient and Modern, 14th ed., revised (New York: J. C. Derby, 1856), 367-72.

33«Domestic Notices," Hortlculturalist 4 (1849-1850): 480. For other examples see Samuel Sloan, Sloan's Homestead Architecture, Con­taining Forty Designs for Villas, Cottages, and Farm Houses (Philadel­phia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1861), 20; William Ranlett, The Architect, vol. 2 (New York: Dewitt and Davenport, 1849,) 10; Letter from "Experience," "Water Supply for Country Residences," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 467-69.

34see "The Hydraulic Ram," Country Gentleman 10 (1853): 211; and Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochltuate Water board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1853 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, 1854), 53; Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1860 (Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1861), 29; and Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board to the City Council of Boston, for the Year Ending April 30, 1871 (n. p., 1871, 66. The registrar counted 9 in 1853, 10 in 1860, and 13 in 1870.

35"Report on H. P. M. Birkinbine's Hydraulic Rams," Journal of the Franklin Institute 50 (1850): 355; "The Hydraulic Ram," Scientific American 8 (1852): 97-98. For other contemporary descriptions and dis­cussions of the ram see Allen, Rural Architecture, 337-42; "The Hydraulic Ram," Valley Farmer 3 (1851): 51-53 and 109-111; "Hydraulics," Scientific American 6 (1850-1851): 360; "Hydraulic Rams," Scientific American 8 (1852-1853): 13, 53, 130; "Eight Years Experience With the Ram," Country Gentleman 9 (1857): 315; "Water Rams Again," Country Gen­tleman 10 (1857): 224; Sloan, Homestead Architecture, 20. Also see U. S. Patent 4,296, E. W. Ellsworth, "Water-ram," 6 December 1845; Patent 4,328, B. S. Benson, "Hydraulic Ram," 26 December 1845.

36por houses actually built that included an interior pump see Brown, Carpenter's Assistant, 132; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 191; Fowler, A Home for All, 168-69; Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, 42; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, specifications for Design No. 6, p. 11. Plans, contracts, and specifications held at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Specifica­tions, D. and L. Bowman house, c. 1840, Box 3, Folder 15; Contract, Reed and Curtis, 1848, Drawer 4, File 7; Contract, Salem Griggs house, Grafton, Mass., 1849, Box 3, Folder 18; Principal Story Plan, Ehpm. Mer-riam house, Jamaica Plain, Mass., 1856, Drawer 5, File 7, sheet 3; Prin­cipal Story Plan, James F. Bigelow house. East Abington, Mass., 1857,

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Drawer 5, File 4, sheet 4; Chamber Story Plan, Asahel Glover single house, Dorchester, Mass., 1857, Drawer 5, File 4; Contract, Sarah D. Bird house, Brookline, Mass., 1858, Box 3, Folder 13A; Principal Story Plan, B. T. Hanson house, Harrison Square [Boston], 1859, Drawer 5, File 6, sheet 4.

Other houses, not built, but whose designs included interior pumps are in Allen, Rural Architecture, 123, 140; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:15; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 124; "A Complete Country Residence," 24; "Country Houses," Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1858, No. 4, ed., J. J. Thomas (Albany: Luther Tucker and Son, 1858), 50; Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, 35, 73; Woodward and Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, No. 1, 76; Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home (New York; J. B. Ford and Co., 1869), 35; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, Plates 14 and 71, specifi­cations for Design No. 1, p. 15 and Design No. 17, p. 44.

^^Ewbank, Hydraulic Machines, 263.

3®Ibid., 277.

^®For more discussions of pumps see ibid., 262-63, 277-79; Web­ster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 847-49; "Burnap's Improved Pump," Scientific American 12 (1856-57): 268; "Improved Pump," Scientific American 12 (1856-57): 380; "Hewit's Direct Motion Pump," Scientific American 12 (1856-57): 412; Gervase Wheeler, Rural Homes: or. Sketches of Houses Suited to American Country Life, rev. ed. (New York: George E. Woodward, 1867), 187; Goodholme, Domestic Cyclopaedia, s.v. "Pumps," 436-37.

^®A cistern 6'6" by 5'4" by 3' would weight approximately three and a quarter tons. The cistern dimensions are mentioned in Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 10. My thanks to Professor Robert E. Schofield for the tonnage calculation.

^^Ranlett, The Architect, 2:10, 32; Fowler, A Home for All, 132. The second Staten Island house is described in Atwood, Country and Suburban Houses, 236, 237. The Boston and Canton houses are shown on plans held at the SPNEA: Emerson alterations, Boston, 1860, Drawer 5, File 2; Contract, Gideon F. Thayer Reed house. Canton, Massachusetts, 1848, Box 3, Folder 14; also see Leonard Blanchard house. East Abington, Massachusetts, 1859, Drawer 5, File 4. The other examples are in Henry Hudson Holly, Holly's Country Seats: Containing Lithographic Designs for Cottages, villas. Mansions, Etc., with Their Accompanying Outbuildings; Also, Country Churches, City Buildings, Railway Stations, etc., etc. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1863), 110, 145; Marcus F. Cummings and Charles C. Miller, Modern American Architecture (Toledo, Ohio: by the authors and S. Bailey & Co., 1868), text following Plate 13; Thomas Dixon and J.M. Dixon, "Hints on Rural Homes," Rural Register 1 (1860): 79; Chas. Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860): 39; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:52.

Other built houses that included attic tanks are in Brown, Car­penter's Assistant, 132; "Frontispiece," Horticulturalist 11 (1856): 25-27; Charles Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Horticulturalist

132

14 (1859): 167, 407; Charles Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Hortlculturalxst 17 (1862): 29; Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, 33; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, specifications for Design No. 1, p. 14; "Lake Shore Villa," American Builder 1 (1868): 107.

42calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages. A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution in the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), 123-24; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:15, 43, 52; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 15; "Plans for a Kitchen," Rural New-Yorker 21 (1870): 235; "A First-Class Farm House," Rural New-Yorker 22 (1870): 121.

Other published house plans with elevated interior tanks are in John Hall, A Series of Select and Original Modern Designs for Dwelling Houses, for the Use of Carpenters and Builders, 2d ed., (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1840), 27; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 220, 241; "An Italian Cottage," Rural New-Yorker 6 (1855): 5; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 119; Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," 167; Sloan, Homestead Architecture, 217.

^^Despite the possible dangers of lead, it remained one of the more popular materials for lining cisterns and tubs and for fabricating pipes. According to one plumber, the "plumbing of an ordinary house" in 1840 New York City included lead-lined sinks, tubs, showers, and water tanks; see Felix, "A Talk With An Old Plumber," Sanitary Engineer 4 (1880-81), 525. Indeed, for most of the mid-century period Americans continued to define the work of a plumber as one who specialized in lead work, which included fabricating lead cistern linings. A good descrip­tion of the fabrication of lead linings is in Shaw, Civil Architecture; or a Complete Theoretical and Practical System of Building, 3rd ed., rev. and enl. (Boston: Marsh, Capen, and Lyon, 1834), 167. A variety of works described the work of plumbers, many of them English in origin but widely reprinted in the United States. See Gallier, Builder's General Price Book, 113-114; Shaw, Civil Architecture, 165-67; Edward Hazen, Popular Technology; or Professions and Trades, 2 vols. (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1846), 2:240; A.C. Smeaton, The Builder's Pocket Companion (Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1850; London, 1825), p. 138; Bullock, Rudiments, 142-143; Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 426.

^^Bullock, Rudiments, 78; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 196; Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 408.

45sioan, Model Architect, 1:14; Ranlett, City Architect, 16; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 15; Bicknell, Vil­lage Builder, specifications for Plate Two.

^^Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 195-6; James Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service (New York: David Williams, 1878), 104; "Automatic House Tank Pump," Technologist 2 (1871): 62; George W. Ful­ler, "Water-works," in "Historic Review of the Development of Sanitary Engineering in the United States During the Past One Hundred and Fifty Years," Proceedings, American Society of Civil Engineers 53 (1927), part 2, 1587. In Chicago, according to one source, the water works could only move water up three stories; occupants of taller buildings had to

133

store their water in roof-top tanks. See Industrial Chicago, 310-311. So-called high duty, direct acting pumping engines, powerful machines that pumped water directly into mains rather than just into a large reservoir, first appeared in the United States in the 1860s, and reached an advanced stage of design in the 1870s and 1880s. See Hunter, Steam Power, 521, 548-61, passim.

^^Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 195-6; Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 104.

^®Brown, Carpenter's Assistant, 132; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 253; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 15; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 124-25. Also see Beecher and Stowe, American Woman's Home, 35; Wheeler, Homes for the People, 124, 139; Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, 35, 42, 72-3; Woodward and Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art-No. 1, 76.

^^Architects George Woodward and Daniel Atwood recommended careful construction techniques in order to avoid the dangers of attic cisterns. Woodward dictated that a 6'6" by 5'4" by 3' cistern sit on fourteen by four inch beams, "bearing upon main partition . . . and framed with headers of the same size. ..." In one set of his con­tract specifications, Daniel Atwood ordered the builder to "[s]trengthen the floors of the tank room, by doubling the number of the beams, 2 to 1" for the ones otherwise specified for the framing of the structure. See Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 10; Atwood, Country and Suburban Houses, 236.

SOsioan, Homestead Architecture, 154.

Slpowler, A Home for All, 132, 147.

52"Automatic House Tank Pump," 62.

S^Bullock, Rudiments, 78-79.

S^Wheeler, Rural Homes, 186.

®®Allen, Rural Architecture, 122-23.

56"Hints Upon Farm Houses," 3.

S^cieaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 35.

®®Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy, 270.

S^Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, 104.

GOjoseph B. Lyman and Laura E. Lyman, The Philosophy of House-Keeping: A Scientific and Practical Manual for the Preparation of all Kinds of Food, the Making Up of All Articles of Dress, the Preservation of Health, and the Intelligent and Skilful Performance of Every Household Office [sic] (Hartford: Goodwin and Betts, 1867), 455, also 447, ff. Also see [Backus,] "Hints Upon Farm Houses," 3.

134

^^Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 115.

Fowler, A Home for All, 147.

63ibid., 120, also 132, 147.

^^Grand water works like the Croton Aqueduct offered people a new way of organizing water supplies, rather than an entirely new com­modity. It may have been more convenient, cheaper, or more pure, but beyond that what distinguished the central public water works from its predecessor was scale and organization. Americans promoted large-scale centrally-organized water works as a tool with which to accomplish more efficiently certain specific tasks, and only secondarily as a way to improve household convenience. City officials urged the construction of works in order to improve fire fighting, or to promote commerce and industry, by providing local businesses with abundant water for produc­tion processes. As importantly, "city water" enabled residents to enjoy pure water, since its use eliminated the need to rely on polluted wells. Indeed, the most immediate domestic health benefit (as opposed to com­mercial advantage) of "public" water was that it could replaced befouled wells: as Edwin Snow's investigations in the late 1840s showed, tainted water caused illnesses that could quickly reach epidemic proportions, bringing chaos and disorder to communities. But the drive to provide acceptable drinking water (or even to provide water for public baths) should not be confused with a desire to provide household convenience in the form of running water. City leaders or water company officials certainly expected residents to buy water; indeed, they literally counted on them doing so, since water rents constituted a large part of a works' revenue. Moreover, once a works had been built cities passed ordinances that established rules for household use as well as rates customers could expect to pay. But as water department reports indi­cate, officials were rarely prepared for the extent to which households both used and wasted water. Household running water was, if not an afterthought, an incidental side benefit to the more central one of com­munity stability and well-being.

Discussions of nineteenth century Americans' attitudes toward and the purposes of public water supplies are in Reynolds, "Cisterns and Fires," esp. 346-47; Blake, Water for the Cities, 37, 133, 172-73, pas­sim; Galishoff, "Triumph and Failure," 36-37; Tarr, "Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure," 12-13; Sam Bass Warner, The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), 109; Ogle, "Redefining 'Public' Water Sup­plies," 526-27. Two good discussions about the extent of waste are in James Slade, "Report Made to the Water Commissioners of the City of Baltimore, June 18, 1853, on the Subject of Supplying the City with Water," in Report of the Commissioners Appointed by Authority of the Mayor and City Council to Examine the Sources From Which A Supply of Pure Water May Be Obtained for the City of Baltimore (Baltimore: James Lucas, 1854), 121, 130-33; and Minority Report of Mr. Ross Winans, one of the Water Commissioners, Appointed by Authority of the Mayor and City Council to Examine the Sources From Which A Supply of Pure Water May Be Obtained for the City of Baltimore, and A Supplementary Thereto (Baltimore: American Times Office, 1853), 18-23. Both reports contain considerable comparative information about per capita water usage in

135

other cities.

fiStiDrains and Cesspools," Scientific American n. s. 1 (1859): 50.

®®Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 275. Other discus­sions of the cesspool are in Gallier, General Price Book and Estimator, 124; Ranlett, The Architect, 1:69; J. C. Sidney, American Cottage and Villa Architecture; A Series of Views and Plans of Residences Actually Built (New York: Appleton and Co., 1850), 16-17; Vaux, Villas and Cot­tages, 46; Catharine E. Beecher, "The American People Starved and Poisoned," Harper's Magazine 32 (1866): 765.

67"Drains and Cesspools," 50.

®®Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 275.

^^Recitations of the cesspool's failings are in Sidney, American Cottage and Villa Architecture, 16-17; Vaux, Villas and Cot­tages, 46-7; David Reid, Ventilation In American Dwellings (New York: Wiley and Halsted, 1858), 118-120; Cleaveland, et al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 163; Goodholme, Domestic Cyclopaedia, s. v., "Drainage," 166.

^^Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 111:411.

^^Specifications and plans held at the Society for the Preser­vation of New England Antiquities: Specifications, Bowen house; Specifi­cations, John P. Cushing house, Watertown, Mass., 1840, Box 3, Folder 28.

72woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, speci­fications for Design No. 6, p. 2, and specifications for Design No. 1, p. 11; in the same work see specifications for Design No. 10, pp. 28 and 35. Also see Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas (New York: Putnam and Wiley, 1842), 37; Fowler, A Home for All, 114; Dwyer, Immigrant Builder, 2 2 .

^^The best description of a manure vat is in William Brown and Lewis E. Joy, The Carpenter's Assistant, rev. ed., (Boston: Edward Livermore, 1853), 48, 50, but also see "Model Cottages," Godey's Lady's Book 38 (1849): 262-63; Reid, Ventilation In American Buildings, 118-19; Cleaveland, et al. Village and Farm Cottages, 163; Wheeler, Rural Homes, 233; Dwyer, Immigrant Builder, 22.

74sidney, American Cottage and Villa Architecture, 16.

75webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 55; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:59; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 46; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 2, 11, passim; Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 276. Also at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; Specifications, Cushing house; Specifications, Adams Daniels house, Boston, c. 1872-73, Box 3, Folder 8.

British experience may have influenced the popularity of earth­

136

enware pipe: Edwin Chadwick's famous 1842 "sanitary inquiry" recommended using small earthenware pipes for sewage conduits, and, according to one source, Henry Doulton established a Lambeth factory in 1846 in order to manufacture these pipes. See Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: the Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closet (New York: Viking Press, 1960), 151; Roy Palmer, The Water Closet: A New History (Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1973), 56-57; Joel A. Tarr, et al., "Water and Wastes: A Retrospective Assessment of Wastewater Technology in the United States, 1800-1932," Technology and Culture 25 (1984): 233; Joel Arthur Tarr and Francis Clay McMichael, "The Evolution of Wastewater Technology and the Development of State Regulation: A Retrospective Analysis," in Retrospective Technology Asse33ment~1976, ed. Joel A. Tarr (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1977), 173.

^®Ranlett, The Architect, 1:69. Similar advice is in Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 204-05.

77society for the Preservation of England Antiquities: Basement Story, T. Dwight house, Nahant, Mass., 1856, Drawer 5, File 3.

^®Dwyer, Economic Cottage Builder, 51.

79john Riddell, Architectural Designs for Model Country Residences (Philadelphia: John Riddell, Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861), specifications for Villa No. 11; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, specifications for Design No. 6, p. 3.

®®Sloan, Model Architect, 1:52, 2:97.

Blwoodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, speci­fications for Design No. 1, pp. 11, 13, 14, specifications for Design No. 6, pp. 2, 3, 8. 14. Also see specifications for Design No. 10. An especially graphic example of the vault-to-cesspool drainage connection is in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; Mer-riam house; but also see Specifications, Gushing house; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 47; and Fowler, A Home for All, 137.

SZoowning, Cottage Residences, 37. Similar advice is in Ran-lett. The Architect, 1:69.

®^Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 411.

B^Contract, Bird house, 1858. Other SPNEA holdings with espe­cially good drawings or contract descriptions are Daniels house; Gushing house; Merriam house; Dwight house. Other descriptions of drainage practice are in Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 201-04; Wheeler, Rural Homes, 234; Cleaveland, et. al.. Village and Farm Cottages, 163; Goodholme, Cyclopaedia, s. v. "Drainage," 166-67.

137

CHAPTER 4

HOUSEHOLD WATER FIXTURES IN FORM AND FUNCTION: SINKS, TUBS, BASINS, SHOWERS, FAUCETS, AND BOILERS

Running water improved the domestic environment by adding con­

venience and ease to daily life, but families maximized the utility of a

water supply, and thus its convenience, with the addition of one or more

water fixtures to the household. As noted in Chapter Two, mid-century

plumbing installations ranged from the very simple to the complex and

expensive. Plumbing supply houses obliged consumers by selling a wide

range of products from which customers could pick and choose in order to

create the best water fixture systems for their particular needs. This

chapter examines the fixtures available to mid-century Americans.

Sinks and Washbasins

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Americans

treated two of the most common water fixtures, washbasins and sinks, as

two separate objects, used for separate and different functions. At

mid-century the word "sink" denoted a place for drainage or wastes, such

as a privy vault. "Slop sinks" were small closets with hoppers into

which household wastes could be tossed, rather than places that held

water used for personal hygiene.^ Contemporary house plans usually

showed the "sink" in or near the kitchen, sink-room, or pump-room, and

"washbasins" in bedrooms and bathrooms (Fig. 4.1).2 In houses without

bathing rooms or washbasins, people may have used the sink for bathing,

although it seems more likely they used washstands; as a rule, however,

138

FEBBFBCTITE VIEW.

SINK

ROOM

KITCHEN 19J<I6

imilDLS

LiaSARY. IM.d/lie.O

Bogu II 6X16 e HALL

DflAwms mm* 20.;% 18.0

PanCH VERANOKH

PLAN OF PBISCIPAL FLOOE.

Fig. 4.1 This Long Island villa had a sink room o f f the kitchen. Notice the water closet at the back of the wood room. Also see the wash room and sink in fig. 2.7

139

contemporary writers rarely associated sinks with personal hygiene.^

For example, a domestic "encyclopedia" published in the 1840s defined

the sink as a place "to wash dishes in, or other articles, and likewise

to receive and convey away the dirty water."4 Under the heading

"sink," another domestic encyclopedia, this one published in the late

1870s, noted that "every kitchen should have a sink," but the discussion

that followed said nothing about using that object for bathing.

Instead, the same encyclopedia described the "sink room" as "the place

where are performed the ungraceful operations incident to care of food

and the person." The writer did not enumerate those "ungraceful opera­

tions," but presumably they included dish washing and pan scouring, as

well as the cleaning and preparation of food.® Catharine Beecher

defined the "sinkroom" as the place in which "the washing, baking, and

sink-work may be done; so as to withdraw all the most soiling employ­

ments from the [kitchen]."®

The materials used for fabricating sinks varied during the

period. The 1845 American edition of the British Webster-Parkes

domestic encyclopedia pronounced "hoilowed-out" stone as the best

material for sinks, but conceded that many people used what are some­

times referred to as "drysinks," wooden cabinets whose surfaces con­

sisted of a metal-lined trough (usually lead or zinc).? A few house

plans and specifications from the 1840s and 1850s mention such sinks. A

house built in 1849 boasted a "good sink" made of "eastern lumber," and

a Brookline, Massachusetts, house built in the late 1850s had a kitchen

sink of "hard pine."® John Ritch's American Architect, published in the

early 1850s, specified a sink "made of stout plans, put together with

white lead in the joints," and Ranlett's 1856 City Architect called for

140

a "lead-lined water sink."9 But beginning in the early 1850s architects

and advice manuals routinely suggested using sinks made of other

materials. When H. B. Rogers remodeled his Boston house, he installed

two new sinks, a soapstone one in the kitchen, and an iron one in the

washroom. Samuel Sloan used a variety of sinks, including ones made of

iron, "enamelled iron," and soapstone, and some that were copper-lined

(the latter may have been drysinks.) In the late 1860s George Woodward

called for iron or cast-iron sinks in his house plans, as did Amos Bick-

nell in his Village Builder.10

Manufacturers and plumbing supply houses carried these ready-

made sinks.The William Schoener Company, a New York City company

with a "manufactory" in Bridgeport, sold rectangular iron sinks in a

range of sizes. The company's 1860 catalog showed some that ranged in

size and price from eighteen-by-twelve-by-four-inches for seventy-five

cents, to a model seventy-eight-by-twenty-eight-by ten-inches that sold

for twelve dollars. In the 1860s the Eagle Iron Works, also of New

York, sold iron sinks for the same price as that of the Schoener Com­

pany, but Eagle also carried a line of "enameled" iron sinks for prices

about double those of the plain iron models.1% Despite what seems like

a wide range of choice, sinks were probably the most uniform of all mid-

century water fixtures. A potential buyer could have a drysink made to

order, but purchasers of ready-made items found their options limited

primarily to iron and enamelled iron. But plumbing supply houses found

other ways to accomodate a diverse group of users. For example, for

fifty cents more. Eagle Iron Works customers could buy a sink with an

overflow, or a set of ornately carved legs that fit any of the sinks

(Fig. 4.2). (The sinks featured in the catalog had two legs, indicating

141

the company expected them to be permanently attached to a wall.) In

addition, the company sold, for $1.25, a portable sink stand; two pedes­

tal legs supported the sink at either end, allowing the user to install

it "in any part of a room" and save the expense of "boxing up the

sink."^3

Washbasins, on the other hand, came in a greater variety of

styles and materials, perhaps in part because unlike sinks, washbasins

often appeared in the front of the house in wash closets used by guests.

A commentator writing slightly after the mid-century period described

the washbasin as "the distinctive luxury of the Northern States ....

There are thousands of modest dwellings, destitute of any other plumbing

work, which display their one set basin, either in the best chamber, or,

. . . parlor, for greater effect upon visitors; and Americans generally

of all classes take great pleasure in marble slabs and running water.

Certainly the diversity of basins sold at mid-century attests to this

fixture's popularity with those who used plumbing. Basin bowls typi­

cally were round, rather than rectangular, and made of iron, enamelled

iron, marble, or earthenware. Samuel Sloan, working in the 1850s, and

George E. Woodward in the late 1860s, both favored marble and earthen­

ware basins. Sloan's plumbing specifications routinely called for

"china" basins, and Woodward sometimes used "white marble pattern basin,

Wedgewood [sic] ware," in his house plans.The Rogers remodeling job

in Boston called for "porcelain wash bowls with marble slabs and plated

facets [sic]."16 The Trevor Parke house built in the mid 1860s boasted

no less than fourteen washbasins, most of them "fancy" and "marble.

But the same observer who remarked on the ubiquity of wash­

basins in America also noted that while "while the combined bowl and

142

IF2 AIJKNDUOTII inWTilERS,

#####

SINKS WITH liEGS. Sinks of same jiricc and sizes .is on page 1. Legs for the same, (each leg,) 60 cents. They make a very neat finish, and save tlie necessity of boxing.

SINKS WITH IKON HACKS. Sinks same price and sizes as on page 1. Legs for the same, cach 00 cents. Iron Backs for same made to order.

&

Fig. 4.2 The Abendroth Brothers catalog showed sinks with these ornate legs

143

slab in one piece of porcelain" was "most agreeable," Americans found

little use for it: this type of basin, he explained, was "common in

England but rarely seen here," primarily because of its fragile

nature.18

Instead, plumbing supply houses met American needs by selling a

wide variety of durable basins. For example, the Abendroth Brothers

sold iron washbasins in three sizes—fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-

inch diameter—and in three finishes— plain, painted, and enameled.

Prices for the fourteen- inch basin in the three finishes were, respec­

tively, seventy-five, cents, eighty-eight cents, and $1.75. In addition

the company also carried portable washstands that had waste pipes

attached to the basins.19 The Jones Company of New York sold iron,

earthenware, and marble basins, some of which had overflow mechanisms.

The company's catalog also featured a selection of basin and slab com­

binations, in either marble or "white," which may have been either

enameled iron, marble, or soapstone (Fig. 4.3). The slabs were either

square or triangular (for corner installation) and some included soap

cups, brush trays, and overflow devices. Jones also sold elegant port­

able iron wash stands that looked very much like built-in sinks, com­

plete with faucets, overflow, and swinging soap trays, as well as a line

of iron products manufactured by the J. L. Mott Company, such as a cast

iron corner sink with an iron frame that surrounded and concealed the

pipework (Fig. 4.4). The catalog described its "half circle wash

stand," also a Mott product, as being especially "superior over all

others" because of the "Slab and Bowl being made separate, so that for

shipping purposes each part can be nested and packed securely in a small

144

J. & II. JONES & CO.'s ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE. 141

SLABS AND BASINS.—(Concluded.

Fiff. 281. No. 3. Square Slab, Basin, and

two Soap Cups, corn-Lined with Pat. Over­flow.

Slab, 17ixl7i. Basin, 13 in. inside.

Wliitc. Sriirbied.

rtff. 2S2.

Fiff. 283.

Fiff. 284.

No. 4. Slab, Basin, Soap and Jirush Trays, combined with Patent Overflow.

Slab, 17x24. Basin, 13 in. inside.

White. Marbled.

Same as No. 4, without Soap and Brush Trays.

White. Marbled.

No. 5. Comer Slab and Basin, with Overflow.

Slab, 20 in. Basin, 12^ in. inside.

White. Alarbled.

No. 6. Square SJab and Basin, combined with Patent Overflow.

Slab, 14 in. square. Bnpiii, 12 in. inside.

White. Marbled.

Fig. 4.3 Jones and Co. sold a variety of washbasins

145

J. & 11. .1 UN 1:8 iV co. 's ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE. 1C9

Fig. ;t:}2.

Moll's Palenl Half Circle Wash Stand, with Overflow.

New Pallern, 1867.

No. 33.

fcjcc next imgo.

!

Fig. 4.4 One of the Mott washstands sold by Jones and Co.

146

space." The catalog claimed that, when enameled, the iron rivaled mar­

ble in durability and beauty and at a lower price. The 1859 catalog

published by Naylor and Willard, another New York plumbing supply house,

showed one marble "corner slab," a single piece with the basin carved

out, which sold for $1.12 per foot.20 Looking back at mid-century

plumbing practice and fixtures, a Chicago plumber remarked that as a

"'class of goods,'" both earthenware and enameled basins had drawbacks.

The former broke easily and thus could not be fitted readily into tight

spaces, while the latter met with disfavor because of the ease with

which the enamel chipped off the iron surface.21 This wide range of

products and prices attested not only to Americans' interest in domestic

improvement, but also to the scope of that interest; the items described

here suited the needs of people living in large ostentatious villas, in

modest "city" houses, and in suburban cottages. But these products also

indicate that by the 1850s and 1860s Americans had developed a complete

line of water fixtures; there was little need for anyone interested in

installing plumbing to purchase goods made abroad.

During the 1840s and 1850s, Americans installed washbasins

primarily in their "chambers," or sleeping rooms; ones located in

bathing rooms or in main floor "wash closets" were not unknown, but they

became more popular in the 1860s and after. During the earlier decades

it made sense to install the basins in bedrooms because the newly-

installed and permanently-affixed washstands connected to supply and

waste pipes simply replaced the portable objects—table, ewer, and

basin—used before.^2 indeed, the water fixtures sold in catalogs

replicated the portable washstands they replaced. The Webster-Parkes

Domestic Encyclopedia included illustrations of numerous portable wash-

147

stands, most of which were small tables with one or more shelves,

although one included its own water cistern, a stop-cock to release the

water, and a basin with plug so that wastes could fall to a collecting

basin below. The water basins fit into a cut-out on the surface of the

stand so that the basin's rim lay flush with the shelf surface; a lower

shelf held the water pitcher. These portable stands generally had

wooden frames but marble slab shelving, which proved more resistant to

water and soap than a wood surface.23 It was but a short step to attach

these portable stands to supply and waste pipes, and the basins designed

for permanent installation shown in catalogs and described in architec­

tural plan books were almost identical to their portable counterparts.

In the 1850s, the author of The Economic Cottage Builder advised his

readers that "every bedroom ought to be supplied with a corner wash-

stand, formed as a shelf, either of marble, porcelain, marbleized iron

or slate, with basin, escape-pipe, and supply, the latter conveying . .

. water from the cistern, and the former letting off dirty water."24 &

decade later an architectural journal noted that the "plan of movable

pitcher and basin, with attendant slop-bucket for chamber service, is

giving way to the superior claims of permanent wash-basins with marble

tops, and cold and hot-water supply and waste-pipes."25 These descrip­

tions of permanent fixtures indicate that they closely resembled their

predecessors: the "shelf" and basin described in the The Economic Cot­

tage Builder sound very like the washstands shown in the Webster-Parkes

encyclopedia. The decision to attach fixtures permanently to the wall

and to supply them with running water merely increased the convenience

of familiar household objects.

148

Bathing Tubs and Showers

Among contemporaries, sinks and washbasins typically provoked

little comment, which is hardly surprising since those fixtures merely

duplicated items that had long existed in the household, albeit with the

added convenience of running, rather than hand-poured, water. People

generally described these fixtures as objects that contributed to con­

venience. 6 Bathing tubs, on the other hand, prompted somewhat dif­

ferent commentary, in part because of Americans' mixed feelings about

bathing's utility and safety, but also because people tended to treat

the bath, more so than other water fixtures, as a convenience particu­

larly related to health.2? For example, one writer complained that the

bathing room "was not very usual in country dwellings," but urged its

inclusion in homes because of "the contribution which it would afford to

. . . health and physical enjoyment" by the occupants.^8 Andrew Jackson

Downing concurred, noting that a bathing room "requires little space, .

. . and its great importance to health renders it a most desirable fea­

ture in all our houses."29 An 1855 publication also treated the bath

as a household item associated especially with health, albeit one

dependent upon class, when it argued that "no well arranged cottage of

the better class should be without a bath-room in the neighborhood of

the bed-chambers" used by invalids, presumably so that the ill could

take advantage of the bath's curative powers.30 Lafever expressed

similar sentiments when he argued that bathing equipment "should be pro­

vided if possible in every house, and in large houses on every story in

which there are sleeping apartments, for the better preservation of the

inmates."31 Since mid-century Americans often used bathing as a medical

treatment, the identification of the bath as a tool of health, rather

149

than one of simple convenience, comes as little surprise.32 However,

these comments reinforce a claim made earlier: these observers linked

the bath specifically to health, but they did so conditionally.

Among those who bought and installed water fixtures, however,

the bathing tub proved to be almost as popular as other water con­

veniences. In Boston, for example, the installation of bathing tubs

lagged behind that of washbasins and water closets, which is not sur­

prising considering that a house with fixtures often had more than one

water closet or basin, but usually only one bath. Nonetheless, by 1853,

Boston water takers already owned over eighteen hundred tubs, as com­

pared with almost twenty-five hundred w. c.'s and over three thousand

wash basins. In 1860, those numbers stood at 3,334, 7,345, and 7,729,

respectively.33 In Cambridge, by the end of 1871 the number of bath

tubs owned by water customers hovered around one thousand, while closets

and basins stood at about fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred, respec­

tively. In Baltimore, on the other hand, in 1863 there were more than

twice as many bathtubs as water closets, a pattern which held true in

1870.34 Moreover, beginning with John Hall's 1840 architectural plan

book, virtually every collection of plans published at mid-century

included many houses with bathing rooms, and the frequency with which

published house plans included a bathing room increased toward the end

of the period.35

At mid-century the tub itself was hardly a novelty, but the

fixed or permanent bathing tub, installed in a room devoted specifically

to its use and attached via pipes to a water supply, was new.36

Architect Lafever described such an arrangement in his 1856 Architec­

tural Instructon

150

A bath-tub may be made of wood lined with lead or zinc, or of tin painted, or of copper tinned over, or of cast-iron painted, or of marble. Pipes for cold water from the cistern above, and for hot water from the boiler in the kitchen, may be fitted to discharge into it, and a waste-pipe to carry off refuse water into the soil pipe.37

In the 1840s and 1850s Americans placed the tub in a room devoted to its

use, usually, but not always, on the second floor, near bedrooms.38 The

practice of separating the bathing tub (and its partner, the shower)

from the water closet and washbasin was not as inconvenient or illogical

as it may seem: people did not immerse themselves in water every day or

even every week, but they probably washed their hands and face, or took

sponge baths more often. As a result, it made sense to put the wash­

basin in the bedroom, and the less frequently used tub in a separate

room.39

As Lafever's comment indicates, Americans used tubs fabricated

of a variety of materials. A few mid-century manufacturers produced

cast iron ones. T. M. Clark described enamelled cast iron tubs as "much

the best," but noted that, when filled with hot water, a cast iron tub's

expansion and contraction caused the enamel to chip and scale.40 The

mid-century home more likely contained a tub that consisted of a wooden

frame lined with zinc, lead, or copper. For example, in his 1852 Model

Architect Sloan included an enamelled iron tub in the specifications for

one house plan, but other plans called for tubs "made of boards, paneled

in front, and lined with lead."41 William Ranlett's 1856 City Architect

listed a zinc-lined tub as part of the cost of one house plan, and the

specifications for a Germantown, Pennsylvania, house shown in Riddell's

1861 Architectural Designs described the tub as "6 feet long, and 2 feet

wide, 2 feet 2 inches deep, and . . . made of 2 inch plank, grooved and

tongued at the angles, and put together with white lead, and lined with

151

z i n c ."42 Many house plans called for tubs lined with "planished cop­

per," a material one plumbing manufacturer described as "the favorite

bath for many years."43 According to a Chicago plumber, in the 1840s

and 1850s his colleagues in that city fabricated tub linings from sheet

lead and zinc, but "chiefly zinc," although in his view "the lead-lined

wood bathtub was the best ever used. It would last ages on ages" when

properly made.44 Plumbing supply houses obliged consumers by selling

tubs in a variety of models, sizes, and prices. The Naylor Company sold

a zinc-lined tub, priced at eight dollars, as compared to $20.67 for one

with a copper lining. The rectangular copper tubs sat on the floor, but

cast iron tubs stood on the four claw feet usually associated with the

Victorian bath tub.45 Presumably cast iron, being sturdier than copper,

could stand alone without the benefit of a surrounding frame. Certainly

an iron tub was cheaper: the Abendroth Brothers sold a six-foot cast

iron tub for thirteen dollars, but the Naylor Company sold a six-foot

copper-lined tub for just over twenty dollars (Fig. 4.5).46

Learning about the design and use of showers is more difficult.

A Chicago plumber claimed that in the 1840s and 1850s "no bath tub was

complete" without a then-handmade shower, and another plumber claimed

that in 1840 New York, the average plumbed house had a "shower con­

structed of sheet lead, with a valve and pull."4? However these claims

are almost impossible to verify, and architectural books rarely men­

tioned, and house plans never showed, showers. For example, in the

otherwise detailed plumbing specifications included in their books,

Sloan mentioned showers just twice, and Woodward once.48 There is a

logical explanations for the omission of showers from house plans: since

152

CAST luorv OVEKTLOW IIATII TUBS.

LENGTH. WIDTH. DEPTH. PRICE.

No. 1, (56 in. 25A in. 18.4 in. $12 00 u 0 -, . 72 in. 25.1 in. 18Â in. 13 00

" 1, with ovei-riow, GO in. 25,V in. 18.4 in. 12 50 ( C ( ) i l

—t 72 in. 2 5 i n . 18 i in. 13 50

Fig. 4.5 Cast iron tub prices listed in the Abendroth catalog

people often attached the shower to the the bathing tub, or used a port­

able one that folded away when not in use, architects had no reason to

indicate its presence on the house plan. But it may be the case that

people used fewer showers: they did not treat the shower bath as a medi­

cinal tool they way they did the immersion bath; so that it may be

simply Americans used showers in much smaller numbers than they did

baths.49 in its 1871 annual report the Cambridge, Massachusetts, water

board enumerated the use of water closets, tubs, and wash basins, but no

showers.50 That does not necessarily mean that none existed in the

city, since the neighboring Cochituate Water Board had enumerated

showers in that city in previous decades. In 1853, for example, the

153

Cochituate water registrar claimed that customers used 1,838 bathing

tubs, "most of [which had] shower baths attached," and fourteen "Shower

Baths" in "houses where there [was] no tub."51 By 1858 the number of

tubs with "attached" showers had risen to 3,334; the number of free­

standing showers stood at twelve.5%

But patent applications, which provide virtually the only sub­

stantive information about shower technology, indicate that American use

of the shower may have been greater than these numbers show. All during

the mid-century decades inventors applied for patents on a wide assort­

ment of showering devices. For example, H. H. King obtained an 1847

patent for a shower that used an attached force pump to push water up

into a storage tank (Fig. 4.6). To shower, the user pulled a handle

that moved one or both of two valves that released water through an

overhead shower rose, or through vertical perforated members that aimed

the spray at the lower body. An 1846 patent also included a pumping

mechanism, this one powered by user-operated foot pedals. Another

device, patented in 1845, combined tub, shower, and heating element in

one fixture; the heating element was built into the tub, and the bather

used an attached force pump to pump the hot water out of the tub and

into the shower's overhead reservoir. The "Niagara Bath," patented in

1849, gave bathers complete control over the direction and height of the

spray, which, according to the inventor, made the Niagara medically

superior to showers "of the common construction, as it is avoidable to

wet the head or any other part which it might be desirable to keep dry,

for the same reason also warm water can be used, which would be

altogether inadmissible if it fell directly on the head." Scientific

154

Fig. 4.6 H. H. King patented this shower in 1847

155

American called Joseph Mansfield's 1858 patent "one of the most econom­

ical and portable shower baths." Mansfield's shower consisted of a tall

column divided into separate water chambers, two of which were connected

by an air pipe (Fig. 4.7). When the bather opened the cock of the

shower head, a layer of air in one of the chambers pushed water out of

the head, setting up a repeated vacuum that set an air-pressure-

propelled water flow in motion.^3

It would be easy to dismiss these devices as the products of

eccentric minds, but it makes more sense to see them as the products of

inventors seeking to claim their share of a perceived market. In one

form or another, these showers provided consumers with greater bathing

convenience and flexibility; for the most part they could be used with

or without a bathing tub, and filled by hand or with piped water.

Shower prices are difficult to determine, since plumbers' catalogs

generally sold only shower heads, rather than complete shower pack­

ages.54 The lack of complete showers may mean that people who used

showers simply installed a cistern above or near their bathing tubs and

piped water from it to a shower head above the tub, an arrangement that

any plumber could easily construct.But the fact that plumbing supply

houses sold shower parts, and that inventors created such a variety of

shower types, reinforces the notion that Americans treated these fix­

tures as devices that served the final goal of achieving convenience:

each individual, and each family, defined convenience convenience dif­

ferently, and manufacturers served the market beat by providing fixtures

in as wide a variety as possible.56 Moreover the large number of

patents granted for not just for showers but other fixtures as well is

indicative of the nationwide interest in plumbing as part of national

156

J 2:?.298, FaîenîôcWecM. /SJS

Fig. 4.7 Patent application illustration for the Mansfield shower bath, 1858

157

improvement: at mid-century Americans flexed their inventive muscle and

ingenuity in search of technologies that met the needs of a progressive

and modern people. Plumbing had not yet become a matter of mandated

public policy, as it would by the end of the century, but citizen inter­

est in progress demanded—and got—a host of fixtures with which to

increase domestic comfort and ease.

Boilers and Hot Water Systems

A hot water system added to the convenience derived from bath

tubs, showers, and other fixtures. Plan books published during the mid-

century decades routinely mentioned hot water boilers.5? One of the

first, John Hall's 1840 collection of house plans, included several

references to hot water technology, and by 1878 James Bayles felt no

obligation to devote much space to the subject in his survey of plumbing

and drainage practice. Its principles, he noted, were "generally well

understood," and its practice "present[ed] few difficulties".®®

The manner of providing hot water changed somewhat during the

period. In 1840 Hall described a hot water supply that depended on

heated coils. He explained that in a

hot water cistern at the back of the kitchen fire-place ... is a coil of leaden pipe, one end of the pipe communicating with the cold water cistern above, and the other with the bath. By turning a cock in the bath room the water descends from the cistern under the roof, is heated in passing through the coil of pipes behind the kitchen fire, and ascends, by the pressure of the atmosphere on the [attic] cistern, to the bath.59

The boiler and water back circulating hot water system became more com­

mon later in the period. It had three parts: a set of pipes to carry

the water, a water back, and a boiler. The inaptly-named boiler only

stored water; all the actual heating took place in the water back, an

iron container attached to a cooking range whose fire provided the

158

heat.60 The process of generating hot water began in a cold water

supply pipe that entered at the top of the boiler and ran down to within

a few inches of the boiler bottom.A second pipe inserted at the base

of the boiler carried the cold water to the adjacent water back for

heating. As the water heated, it sought an outlet which it found in a

third pipe, located at the top of the back, that carried it back into

the boiler, but at a point higher than where it had entered as cold

water. Finally, a discharge pipe atop the boiler carried the water

throughout the house to the fixtures—tubs, sinks, and basins—where it

was needed. Turning a handle at a washbasin released hot water, and as

the water flowed out of the boiler, through the pipes, and into the

basin, more cold water replenished the boiler's supply, pushing a new

supply of cold water into the water back, which in turn pushed hot water

into the boiler and on through the pipe.62 The circulating system had

two advantages. First, the water began cooling as soon as it left the

water back, but the constant circulation continually pushed very hot

water on into the pipes, and forced tepid water back into the boiler

where it could be reheated. Second, the steady circulation of water

ensured that hot water always stood ready in the pipe; the user did not

have to turn the faucet and let cold water drain out first.

The system's drawbacks balanced these advantages: during winter

months, water pipes often froze, shutting off the flow of water. When

that happened, the hot water no longer had an outlet and the boiler

sometimes exploded. Blocked lines also contributed to boiler collapse.

When anything blocked the cold water line, the boiler stayed hot as long

as the water back continued to supply hot water. But when the line was

unclogged, cold water poured into the boiler, turning the hot water to

159

steam, and causing the boiler walls to collapse. The water back also

presented problems. If ice or accumulated ash or soot clogged its

pipelines, a head of hot water built up and eventually ruptured the

back, the boiler, or both.64

Connecting the Parts; Pipes and Faucets

In 1869 a Scientific American article lamented that "a material

for water pipes, cheap, durable, and capable of resisting the chemical

action of all waters fit for household use is a long sought for

desideratum. Until it is found we must do the best we can with such

materials as we possess."65 in the middle decades of the century, those

materials were lead, iron, and copper, each of which had specific

qualities that made it suitable for some, but not all, uses.

Lead proved to be the most popular of the three, largely

because of its low cost and malleability, rather than because of any

inherent superiority.6® Plumbers used lead pipes to carry water from

wells and cisterns to pumps, basins, and other water fixtures, and to

convey sink and bath wastes to drains and cesspools. At mid-century

many Americans recognized the health risks associated with lead, but

plumbers appreciated its low cost, and lead's malleability facilitated

the task of fabricating pipes.But the advantage of malleability had

its price: as one writer noted, "with the exception of ease of working,

lead cannot be said to possess qualities which adapt it for use as a material for service pipes. Lead pipe is heavy and weak; it readily stretches and sags or buckles when exposed to variations of temperature; it is easily crushed; rats can cut it without diffi­culty, . . . and many kinds of water attack, corrode and are poisoned by it.®®

Plumbers used a variety of installation techniques to counteract these

disadvantages. Because lead reacted to temperature changes, advice

160

manuals recommended using loose fitting fasteners that allowed lead to

expand and contract without having the fastener dig into the pipe.

Lead's softness caused pipes to sag unless they were well supported, so

manuals urged people to hang pipes vertically rather than horizontally,

or to to lay them on some sort of shelf, rather than hang them from

brackets.69

Iron offered greater strength than lead, but it was less malle­

able, and therefore harder to work with, and like lead, it, too, cor­

roded and leaked.70 Plumbers typically used iron pipes to convey water

closet wastes, calling the conduits "soil pipes" to distinguish them

from other drain pipes. Even before the dangers of so-called sewer gas

caused near-universal hysteria among plumbing users, Americans believed

that human wastes from the water closet or privy should travel through

the most secure material possible in order to prevent the release of

odors and gases. In many cases, then, water closet soil pipes were made

of iron, which was less likely to expand, sag, or crack than pipes made

of lead.71 Copper cost more than either lead or iron, but it held up to

hot water much better than lead, so plumbers used that material in the

pipes attached to hot water boilers and water backs.

In practice, however, plumbers and architects used these three

materials in a variety of combinations. For example, in a house built

in 1840 cistern water traveled to the house through a "water trunk of

zink" [sic], but lead pipes connected the well with the sinks.^2 sioan

sometimes specified only that "suitable" pipes or ones "extra strong,

and of sufficient size" be used, but in one set of plans he specifically

directed that lead pipes carry water from the cistern to all fixtures,

ad in another set he used iron for the soil pipe.73 George Woodward

161

used a wide variety of pipe materials in specifications attached to his

published plans. In one house, for example, h created a soil pipe

network that combined pipes made of iron, cast iron, and lead, but else­

where in the house he used lead for the supply and waste pipes, and

brass and copper for the hot water pipe system.

Pipes connected fixtures to each other and to a water supply,

but the faucet made the water available and the fixtures useful. The

faucet served two purposes: it channeled liquid into a receptacle, such

as water into a sink, and it allowed users to turn a liquid's flow on

and off.75 in the mid-nineteenth century, Americans generally used two

types of faucets, the difference between them being the mechanism

inside, one the so-called "ground cock," and the other the "compression

cock." One inventor summarized the difference between the two when he

described the latter as a "class of cocks in which a valve and seat take

the place of the more customary taper chamber and perforated plug, . .

found in the former.

Indeed, ground cocks, which some patents referred to as the

"customary" or "common" faucet, functioned by virtue of having parts

that "ground" together in a close fit (Fig. 4.8).^^ The ground cock

typically consisted of a metal stem with a hole bored through its cen­

ter; this stem was attached to the faucet handle and sat perpendicular

to the faucet's pipe and the flowing water. Turning the handle one way

aligned the stem's hole with the water passageway; turning the handle

the other direction moved the hole out of alignment and shut off the

flow of water. The ground cock had few moving parts, but its design had

drawbacks. First, the bored stem was often cone-shaped and the tip

nested in a similarly shaped seat in the faucet body. Unless these two

162

ft

Fig. 4.8 A simple ground cock, patented 1841 (patent 2,596)

parte had been ground to a perfect fit, the faucet leaked constantly.

Second, leaks also developed when grit, dirt, or metal particles col­

lected between the seat and the stem and destroyed the requisite tight

fit; when that happened, as one writer noted, "there [was] no remedy but

to get a new faucet."^®

The compression cock had drawbacks of a different sort. Unlike

the relatively simple ground cock, the compression cock consisted of

many working parts. The different types of compression cocks on the

market shared the same general working principle: a turn of the handle

moved a valve up and down off its seat and thereby either released or

stopped the flow of water. These faucets varied in detail, but they

shared a multiplicity of moving parts, including handles, screws, valve

stems, gaskets and flanges to prevent leakage within the valve case,

163

cams, lift pins, and of course valves, which ranged from little more

than a metal plate that acted as a stopper in the water pipe, to rubber

plugs or valves propelled by an "eccentric" cam. Packing fabricated of

leather, "india rubber," or felt ensured a tight fit among all the

parts, and absorbed the shock of water hammer, the phenomenon that

occurred when the entire force of an abruptly-halted water column

slammed into the cock and pipe. A column of water, noted one inventor,

"strikes with almost as much force as would a solid column, of the same

specific gravity and length," adding that "such blows will in a short

time burst pipes that would otherwise last for years."79 Indeed, the

compression cock offered one distinct advantage over its rival; thanks

to the valves, the compression cock stopped the flow of water gradually,

allowing its users to establish a water flow somewhere between merely

"on" or "off." Gradual closure eliminated, or at least alleviated,

water hammer.®®

Inventors of both types of faucets produced devices specifi­

cally designed to compensate for plumbing problems such as water hammer

and the chronic problem of frozen and cracked pipes. In 1854 Bostonian

O. C. Phelps patented a simple ground cock; turning the handle aligned a

hole in the plug with the flow of water through the pipe. Phelps noted

that during exposure to "extreme cold" a faucet plug was "liable to be

forced too far into its socket and become jammed therein". He tackled

this problem, and that of water hammer, by designing the faucet so that

the plug landed on a small flange or ledge that prevented it from sink­

ing completely into its socket or seat. At the base of the seat he

placed a small rubber plug, thereby creating an air pocket that absorbed

the shock produced by water hammer.®^

164

Plumbing users also had to contend with the adverse effects of

hot water on faucet mechanisms. John Sheriff noted in his 1849 patent

application that "the erosive action of hot water very soon renders the

. . . stopper, and its seat, irregular," causing leaks and water waste.

Sheriff claimed that his patent not only solved that problem, but also

eliminated expensive machining. His compression cock used a wooden

valve, which, he argued, had the advantage that when it wore out "any

ordinary workman [could] readily cut out from a board another piece to

replace it."82 Albert Fuller's patents for compression cocks with rub­

ber plug valves were perhaps more typical. He obtained an 1855 patent

for a faucet in which turning the handle pushed the plug away from its

seat, allowing water to pass freely; another turn of the handle pulled

the plug back tight against the seat closing the passageway. In 1859

Fuller modified this design by sheathing the rubber plug in a metal

casing, conceding that an exposed plug held up badly in a hot water

faucet.83

In 1860 James Flattery patented a faucet designed to alleviate

both water hammer and boiler problems (Fig. 4.9). He attached a

diaphragm of "india rubber, or other suitable substance" to the top of

the valve stem, so that the handle's base butted directly against the

diaphragm rather than the valve stem itself. Screwing the handle

downward pushed against the diaphragm and stem and opened the valve,

letting water flow through. Turning the handle the opposite direction

immediately removed any downward pressure on diaphragm, stem, and valve,

so that the pressure of water pushing upward closed the valve; the flex­

ible diaphragm absorbed the shock. In addition. Flattery claimed that

his design alleviated the dangers associated with boilers. If the

165

W

Fig. 4.9 James Flattery's 1860 patent (no. 29,263) for a "self-closing safety faucet"

boiler collapsed at any time, the faucet valve opened automatically: the

air pressure at the outside of the faucet's mouth would be greater than

the pressure on the inside of the water pipe. With no water or air

pressure to hold the valve shut, it would fall open and allow the pipe

to fill with air, and thereby, in theory at any rate, relieve the pres­

sure on the boiler and prevent its collapse.8*

As these examples show, the faucet improved the convenience of

water fixtures: these inventors designed the faucet's internal mechanism

to meet its primary purpose—regulating the flow of water—as well as a

secondary one—compensating for some of the flaws of other water fix­

tures. The faucet's external form—its design—is also revealing; it

can tell us something about the way people used plumbing and running

water.85 pgr example, on many mid-nineteenth century basin cocks the

"bib" or water spout doubled as the on-off handle, a less than desirable

design feature if the faucet conveyed hot water. As noted earlier, when

166

Fig. 4.10 A basin cock with swing handle (patent 17,511)

Americans first began to use permanently-attached washbasins, they

regarded them as replicas of the portable objects they replaced: a

permanent wash basin complete with cold running water and faucet

replaced the portable washstand with its ewer of cold water. For a

cold-water basin, a faucet handle that doubled as a spout seemed both

logical and efficient: the handle never became hot, and after filling

the basin, the user turned the water off by pushing the handle to one

side (fig. 4.10). Presumably the addition of hot water to the plumbing

system highlighted the design's drawbacks, but in an 1878 survey of

plumbing fixtures, writer T. M. Clark claimed that because of the con-

167

venlence of the movable handle, Americans still "very generally used"

what he called "swing cocks," which may mean that many people did not

use hot water in their basins.®®

Unlike basin faucets whose curved spouts extended out over the

bowl, some faucets had a straight pipe-like body that terminated in a

threaded end to which hose could be attached. An attached hose

increased kitchen convenience: large households meant larger meals, and

large pots and pans that may not have fit easily into a sink. Trying to

scrub a large pot in a sink is, as anyone who washes dishes knows, an

awkward and messy task; a hose attached to a faucet made the job easier.

A length of flexible hose certainly facilitated the task of filling

buckets, ewers, pots, and portable wash tubs, and alleviated on "the

toil of lifting heavy weights, and the annoyance of drenched floors."8?

Bathing tub faucets, unlike basin faucets, had very short

curved bibs. Plumbers usually attached the faucet handles above the

tub, but placed the bibs near to the bottom. What purpose could be

served by putting the faucet down in the tub itself, near the bottom?

According to an 1853 patent application

It is desirable that the cold and hot water be introduced horizon­tally or nearly so, at or near the bottom of the tub and near to each other not only to insure the proper admixture of the cold and hot water, . . . but, what is also very desirable to avoid splash­ing and noise.®®

Moreover, it is possible that people only ran a few inches of water into

the tub, which would go a long way to explaining why so many regarded

bathing as cruel to the system. Finally, if filling a copper or tin-

lined tub was a noisy activity, it may have been modesty that led people

to conceal their activities. By the 18608, bath tubs often included an

overflow mechanism, which could mean that people expected to fill tubs

168

to the top, but as late as 1878, T. M. Clark noted that people still

preferred the faucets near the bottom, since this diminished the noise

made while filling the tub, so as not to disturb people in adjacent

bedrooms.

As this chapter has shown, mid-century houses could and did

contain a variety of water fixtures. The nationwide interest in plumb­

ing fixtures as a part of convenience and domestic improvement spurred a

wave of inventive productivity as demonstrated by the large number of

fixture patents issued after 1840. For the most part these patents con­

stituted "improvements" on some existing or common device: patents

offered "improved" showers, or "improved" on the "usual" faucet or

bathing tub. Inventors rarely patented anything startingly new or

original in totality. Instead, they treated the existing form of water

fixtures, both permanent and portable, as a collection of objects to be

altered and made better, to be made more "American." The ones discussed

here were supply fixtures; people put water in them in order to perform

a specific task. Whey they were finished, they drained the water, which

was now waste. The water closet, one of the most useful, if not

troublesome and controversial, fixtures in the house should more

properly be seen as a waste fixture; its sole purpose was to capture and

contain wastes. For that reason, and because they are so different from

the fixtures discussed here, water closets deserve their own chapter.

169

Endnotes

^Brief discussions of slop sinks, or "housemaid's closets," are in D. H. Jacques, The House: A Manual of Rural Architecture (New York: George E. Woodward, 1859), 70; Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages. A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution in the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), 88, 260-61; Gervase Wheeler, Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country (New York: Charles Scribner, 1855), 288; George E. Woodward and Edward G. Thompson, Woodward's National Architect (New York: George E. Woodward, [1869]), 31.

^See (Webster] An American Dictionary of the English Language, rev. ed. (1854), s. v. "sink"; George O. Garnsey, The American Glossary of Architectural Terms (Chicago: [The Clark and Langely Co., 1887]), s. v. "cesspool". For an example see John W. Ritch, The American Architect (New York: C. M. Saxton, 1848), specifications for Design 3.

People used the term "sink" to label the place in the kitchen or pumproom into which they pumped water; they called the troughs in the washroom, used for laundry, "washtrays." For some representative samples see William Brown, The Carpenter's Assistant (Worcester: Edward Livermore, 1848), Design III; William Brown and Lewis E. Joy, The Car­penter's Assistant, rev. ed. (Boston: Edward Livermore, 1853), 34; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 148, 186, 290; Jacques, The House, 60; Samuel Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture; Containing Numerous Designs and Details for Public Edifices, Private Residences, and Mercantile Build­ings (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1859), Design X, Plate 50; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, Plates 7, 14, 19, 63. Also see plans held at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Basement Story Plan, T. Dwight house, Nahant, Mass., 1856, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5, File 3, Sheet 3; Prin­cipal Story Plan, James F. Bigelow house. East Abington, Mass., 1857, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5 File 4, Sheet 4; Principal Story Plan, house, Gloucester, Mass., Asahel H. Glover, Architect, 1857, Drawer 5, File 4, Sheet 1; Principal Story Plan, B. T. Manson house, Harrison Square [Boston], 1859, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5, File 6, Sheet 4.

^For personal bathing it seems most likely that people without any other sinks, dry sinks, or permanent washbasins, would use a small portable washstand with pitcher and bowl.

^Thomas U. Webster and Mrs. Parkes, An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, American edition, ed., D. Meredith Reese (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845), 837.

®Todd S. Goodholme, A Domestic Cyclopaedia of Practical Information (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1878), s. v., "Sinks," "House," Kitchen."

^Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and At School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1841), 282.

170

^Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 837. For drysinks see J. Randall Cotton, Sinks," The Old-House Journal 14 (1986): 271.

Bpians held at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Contract, Salem Griggs house, Grafton, Mass., 1849, Box 3, Folder 18; contract, Sarah D. Bird house, Brookline, Mass., 1858, Box 3, Folder 13A.

®Ritch, American Architect, specifications for Design 22; Wil­liam Ranlett, The City Architect (New York: De Witt and Davenport, 1856), 15.

l^William Ranlett, The City Architect (New York: De Witt and Davenport, 1856), 15; Samuel Sloan, The Model Architect: A Series of Original Designs for Cottages, Villas, Suburban Residences, etc., 2 vols., (Philadelphia: E. S. Jones and Co., [1852]), 1:43; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27, 47; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 30, 44; [A. J. Bicknell], Blcknell's Village Builder, rev. ed., (New York: A. J. Bicknell, 1872), n. p.. Specifica­tions for Plates 2-4.

For other sinks see John Riddell, Architectural Designs for Model Country Residences (Philadelphia: John Riddell; Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861), specifications for Cottages 13, 15, 16; William T. Hallett, Specifications for Frame Houses, Ranging In Cost from Two Thou­sand to Twenty Thousand Dollars, Carefully Written (New York: A. J. Bicknell & Co., 1873), 20; Goodholme, Domestic Cyclopaedia, s. v. "Sinks."

l^Catalogs used in this study came from either the Library of Congress or the Trade Catalogs at Wlnterthur microfiche collection. The latter includes few catalogs for the &re-1870 period and at the Library only a five catalogs for the period could be located.

l^William L. Schoener and Co., Illustrated Catalogue and Price List of Plumbers' Brass Work (New York: Sackett and Cobb, 1860), 62; Abendroth Brothers, Plumbers' Price List (New York; Nesbitt and Co., [186-]), 2, 7, 11, 48; J. and H. Jones and Co., [Brass Cock Manufac­turers, and Importers of Plumbers' Earthenware, Illustrated Catalogue] (n.p, [1867]), 140, 145. Jones Company sold a variety of plumbers' hardware, including iron sinks, as well as imported "plumbers' earthen­ware" sinks, sold with or without "patent overflows." Unfortunately its 1867 catalog did not list prices, although it is safe to assume that these items would have been more costly than domestically made cast iron sinks.

^^Abendroth Brothers, Price List, 5, 7. Similar items are shown in Jones and Co., Catalogue, 140, 147.

l^T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing. V. Wash-basins," American Architect and Building News 4 (1878): 11.

ISgee Sloan, Model Architect, 52; and Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27, 47; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 14.

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IGcontract, Rogers house.

l^Building statement, Trevor W. Parke house, supplied by Anne Grady, Society for the Preservation of New England Antitquities.

^®T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing. VI. Wash-basins.-Pantry Sinks.-Filters-Bath-tubs," American Architect and Building News 4 (1878); 38.

^^Abendroth Brothers, Price List, 17-18.

20jones and Co., Catalogue, 135, 141, 1551-162; Naylor and Wil-lard. Illustrative and Descriptive Catalogue and Price List of Plumbers' Brass Vtork, (n. p., 1859), 68.

^^Industrial Chicago: The Building Interests (Chicago: The Goodspeed Press, 1891), 53. This section of the book's text is in quote marks, and may be part of an 1888 paper by Chicago plumber David Whiteford entitled "A Quarter Century of Plumbing in Chicago."

Z^Most house plans show rooms labelled "chamber," which, in light of the lack of any other appropriately labelled rooms, were apparently the "bedrooms." However, some plans, (see Ranlett), show bed rooms inside of chambers. Perhaps, then, the chamber was a multi­purpose room. If so, then it does not seem so odd that the wash-stand would be located there, rather than in another separate room. The shift of the wash basin out of the bedroom occurred later; house plans showing the basin and bathing tub in the same room did not appear in any great numbers until the 1870s and later, although some plans did show the com­bination earlier. Discussions of the appearance of the permanent wash-stand in the bedroom and its subsequent movement to the bathroom are in Bainbridge Bunting, Houses of Boston's Back Bay (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1867), 137, 277; Charles Lockwood, Bricks & Brownstone: The New York Row House, 1738-1929. An Architectural and Social History (New York; McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1972), 186, 188.

Some plans that show the washstand located in the bathing room are Sloan, Model Architect, 1:52 and Plate XL; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, Plates 33, 51, 75, 81, and 112; Sanford E. Loring and W. L. B. Jenney, Principles and Practice of Architecture (Chicago: Cobb, Pritchard and Co., 1869), Example C-Plate 2; Example D-Plate 2; Example E-Plate 2; Example K-Plate 1, Example Q-Plate 3; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architecture, Plate 3 and p. 14; Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, new ed., ed., George E. Harney (New York; John Wiley and Sons, 1873), 194; Bicknell, Bicknell's Village Builder, Plate 2 and specifications, Plate 4 and specifications. Plates 19 and 22.

Plans that showed washstands in the "chambers" or bedrooms are Sloan, Model Architect, 1:43; Orson Fowler, A Home for All or the Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, rev. and enl. (New York; Fowler and Wells, 1856), 132; J. H. Hammond, The Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect; and Guide in Rural Economy (Boston; John P. Jewett and Co., 1858), 124; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27 and 47; Loring and Jenney, Principles and Practice of Architecture, Example C-Plate 2; Example D-Plate 2; Example E-Plate 2; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's

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National Architecture, Plate 28.

^^Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 301-303.

^^Charles P. Dwyer, The Economic Cottage Builder; or, Cottages for Men of Small Means (Buffalo: Wanzer, McKim and Co., 1855), 116.

25william G. Rhoads, "Plumbing," Architectural Review and American Builder's Journal 1 (1868-69); 144. Other descriptions of washbasins are in Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 124; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 14; Hallett, Specifications for Frame Houses, 29-30.

Z^As noted in Chapters One and Two, people generally applied the label "convenience" when referring to these fixtures. For typical remarks see Henry Hudson Holly, Holly's Country Seats: Containing Lithographic Designs for Cottages, Villas, Mansions, Etc., with Their Accompanying Outbuildings; Also, Country Churches, City Buildings, Rail­way Stations, etc., etc. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1863), 111; Jacques, The House, 70; Catharine E. Beecher, "The American People Starved and Poisoned," Harper's Magazine 32 (1866): 768; George E. Wood­ward, Woodward's Country Homes (New York: George E. Woodward, [1865]), 143; George E. Woodward and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Architecture, Landscape Gardening, and Rural Art-No. 1-1867 (New York: George E. and F. W. Woodward, 1867), 76, 88; "Two Adjoining City Dwellings," Architec­tural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 301; Wheeler, Homes for the People, 137; John Bullock, The American Cottage Builder: A Series of Designs, Plans, and Specifications from $200 to $20,000 (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1854), 223; Chas. M. Windship, "Our Modern Household Conveniences-Mineral Poisons," Scientific American n. s. 2 (1860): 372; Chas. Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 39.

^^Probably everyone agreed that cleanliness was better than filth; beyond that, however, there appears to have been considerable disagreement about what "clean" meant, how, and how often, people should bathe, and what constituted a "proper" bath": full immersion? A cold water sponge bath? A torso-only, dry-head shower bath? The best way to appreciate the extent to which Americans disagreed about bathing is to read any one of a number of journals that regularly discussed the sub­ject, especially those associated with various health fads.

For a representative sampling of opinions about baths and bathing see Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy, 103-04; Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies At Home, and At School, rev. ed. (Harper and Brothers, 1848), 120-22; "Bathing-Its Utility," Harper's Magazine 1 (1850): 215-218; "Bathing and Its Effects," Scientific American 6 (1850-51): 56; "Bathing," Scientific American 7 (1851-52): 371; "Preserving and Maintaining Health — Bathing," Homestead 1 (1855-56): 12; "Bathing in Winter — Cause & Cure of Colds," Homestead 1 (1855-56): 378-79; "The Use of the Bath," United States Magazine 3 (1856): 253-54; Edward L. Youmans, The Hand-Book of Household Science. A Popular Account of Heat, Light, Air, Aliment, and Cleansing, in Their Scientific Principles and Domestic Applications.

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(New York; D. Appleton and Co., 1857), 433-34; E. G. Storke, ed.. The Family and Householder's Guide; or How to Keep House; How to Provide; How to Cook; How to Wash; How to Dye; How to Paint; How to Preserve Health; How to Cure Disease; etc., etc,: A Manual of Household Manage­ment, from the Latest Authorities (Auburn, N. Y.: Auburn Publishing Co., 1859), 174-79; R. D. Hussey, Health: Its Friends and Its Foes (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1862), 54-57; "Suggestions on Health," Colman's Rural World 19 (1867): 27; R. T. Trail, "Bathing Processes Applicable to Home Treatment," Colman's Rural World 19 (1867): 43; Joseph B. Lyman and Laura B. Lyman, The Philosophy of House-Keeping: Scientific and Practi­cal Manual for the Preparation of All Kinds of Food, the Making Up of All Articles of Dress, the Preservation of Health, and the Intelligent and Skilful Performance of Every Household Office [sic] (Hartford: Good­win and Betts, 1867), 402-03; Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher St owe. The American Woman's Home (New York: J. B. Ford and Co., 1869), 156-57; E. P. Miller, "Rules for Bathing," Scientific American 21 (1869): 3; "Rules for Bathing," Rural New-Yorker 22 (1870): 287.

2®Ritch, American Architect, text for Design No. 12.

^^Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage-Villas (New York; Wiley and Put­nam, 1842), 13.

^^Dwyer, Economic Cottage Builder, 115.

^^Minard Lafever, The Architectural Instructor (New York: G. P. Putnam and Co., 1856), 427.

32ln the nineteenth century Americans often associated bathing with various health fads, and with medical treatments, rather than with cleanliness per se. See Chapter One, as well as Jane B. Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health: Women and Water Cure in Antebellum America (New York; Greenwood Press, 1986), 4-6, passim; Susan E. Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia; Temple University Press, 1987), 35-39. Two useful sur­veys of bathing fads and practices, albeit primarily from a European and British perspective, are in Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Com­mand (New York; Oxford University Press, 1948; reprint. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1969), 659-76 (page references are from reprint edi­tion); and Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closet (New York: The Viking Press, 1960), 157-86.

For cleanliness, see Richard L. Bushman and Claudia L. Bushman, "The Early History of Cleanliness in America," Journal of American His­tory 74 (1987-88): 1213-38; Harold Donaldson Eberlein, "When Society First Took a Bath," in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, eds. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), esp. 338-40; Jacqueline S. Wilkie, "Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Per­ceptions of Bathing," Journal of Social History 19 (1985-86); 649-64. Suellen Hoy is currently working on a history of American cleanliness tentatively entitled Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (forthcoming. The Free Press.)

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33city of Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1853 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, 1854), 52; Report of the Cochituate Water Board to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1860 (Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1861), 29; Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year Ending April 30, 1871 (n. p., n. d. ), 66.

^^Cambridge, Mass., Water Board, The Seventh Annual Report of the Cambridge Water Board to the City Council, Together With the Reports of the Registrar and Superintendent, and Other Documents, for the Year 1871 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1872), 18; Baltimore, Water Depart­ment, Annual Report of the Water Department of the City of Baltimore, to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (Baltimore: James Young, 1863), 11; Annual Report of the Water Department of the City of Baltimore, for the Year Ending December 31st, 1869 (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet, and Co., 1870), 28.

^®John Hall, A Series of Select and Modern Designs for Dwelling Houses, for the Ose of Carpenters and Builders, 2d ed. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1840), Plates 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 21, 22; descrip­tions of the hot and cold water supply arrangements are on pp. 10, 12, 18, 27.

The number of published house plans which included bathing rooms is too large to include here. For representative arrangements in houses actually built see Brown, Carpenter's Assistant, 132, Plate 19; William Ranlett, The Architect, vol. 2 (New York: Dewitt and Davenport, 1849), 2:10, 36; Sloan, Model Architect, 1: Design 10, 2: Design 56, Plate 53; Brown and Joy, Carpenter's Assistant, 106; Edward Shaw, The Modern Architect (Boston: Dayton and Wentworth, 1854), 90; Bullock, American Cottage Builder, 190, 237; Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 159, 165, 172, 181, 187, 193, 199, 212, 221, 234, 240, 246, 259, 291, 282, 271, 297, 300, 314; "Plans of Houses," Country Gentleman 10 (1857): 83; J. C. Sidney, American Cottages and Villa Architecture; A Series of Views and Plans of Residences Actually Built (New York: Appleton and Co., 1850): Plans 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12; Chas. Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 38; Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cot­tages, 2d. ed., (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1864), 188, 189, 190, 192, 294, 296; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, Plate 112; Wood­ward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art-No. 1, 89; Marcus F. Cum-mings and Charles C. Miller, Modern American Architecture (Toledo, Ohio; by the authors and S. Bailey and Co., 1868), Plates 1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 18, 25, 36, 42; Loring and Jenney, Principles and Practice of Architecture, Examples C, D, E, F, I, J, K, O, Q, R, S; Woodward and Thompson, Wood­ward's National Architect, Plate 25; Holly, Holly's Country Seats, Designs 10, 16, 19, 22; Thomas Dixon and J. M. Dixon, "Hints on Rural Homes," Rural Register 1 (1860): 15, 79; Riddell, Architectural Designs, Villas No. 4, 6, 7, 13; Woodward, Woodward's Country Homes, Design 30; "Country Villa," Technologist 1 (1870): 144-45; Downing, Cottage Residences, new edition, 200-204; "Ornate Cottage," Technologist 1 (1870): 296-97; "Suburban Residence," Technologist 1 (1870): 80; "A Framed Villa Residence," Technologist 2 (1871): 13; Bicknell, Bicknell's Village Builder, Plates 14, 19, 21, 22, 28.

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^®Good descriptions of early nineteenth century portable tubs are in Bushman and Bushman, "Early History of Cleanliness," 1215 and 1225.

^^Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 427.

3®It is possible that Americans favored second floor bathing rooms that held a tub only because of their perceptions of "public" and "private" spaces within the home. People may have expected guests to use a washbasin, but no one expected the afternoon visitor or casual caller to use a bathing tub, an object reserved for the family alone; thus it made sense to put a basin in a small closet or "lobby" on the first floor, but the bathing tub in a quite separate, and private, room. For a discussion of public and private household spaces see Clifford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill; The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 40, 42-43. Clark also notes the mid-century obsession, which extended to the home, of assigning specific rooms to specific purposes; see p. 40.

At any rate, during these two decades, few of the house plans surveyed had a first floor bathing room: a Toledo, Ohio, house of two stories and numerous bedrooms had a bathing room located off of and accessible only through a first floor bedroom. A Troy, New York, house also included a first floor bathing room, as did the water supply plan included in Catharine Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy. The sec­ond floor "bathroom" containing a tub, basin, and water closet appeared more frequently beginning in the 1860s. For first floor bathing rooms see Cummings and Miller, Modern American Architecture, text following Plate 3, text preceding Plate 4, text following Plate 13; Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), 292-93.

39During the 1840s and 1850s, Americans separated the tub and the water closet; by all accounts the water closet tended to smell, so for that reason alone it made sense to isolate it from other fixtures. The house plans that show the two together tend to be ones published later in the mid-century period, but see Vaux, Villas and Cottages, 189, 193, 212, 246, 259, 290. Also see Riddell, Architectural Designs, Villa 4; Woodward and Thompson, 'Woodward's National Architect, Plate 43; "A Suburban Villa," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69); 750; "A Model Cottage," Architectural Review and Builders' Journal 1 (1868-69): 749; Chamber Story Plan, H. Abercombie house, Braintree, Mass., 1859-60, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5, File 7, Sheet 4, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

40ciark, "Modern Plumbing. VI. Wash-Basins—Pantry Sinks— Filters—Bath-tubs," American Architect and Building News 4 (1878): 39.

Sloan, Model Architect, 1:15; also see 1:14, 43, 52, 2:97.

^^Ranlett, City Architect, 16; Riddell, Architectural Designs, General Directions for Design No. 11, but also see Designs 13, 15, 16.

'^^Jordan L. Mott, "Plumbers' and Steam-Fitters' Supplies, "in One Hundred Years of American Commerce, ed. Chauncey M. Depew (New York; D. O. Haynes and Co., 1895), 365. According to W. P. Gerhard, a noted

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late ninteteenth century mechanical and sanitary engineer, German immigrants introduced the planished copper-lined tub to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. See W. P. Gerhard, The Water Supply, Sewerage, and Plumbing of Modern City Buildings, 1st ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1910), 446.

For specifications that called for copper-lined tubs see Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27, 47; Woodward and Thompson, Wood­ward's National Architecture, 14, 31, 44; Bicknell, Bicknell's Village Builder, Specifications for Plates 2, 3 and 4; Hallett, Specifications for Frame Houses, 30; Bicknell, Supplement to Bicknell's Village Builder (New York: A. J. Bicknell and Co., [1871]), n. p., specifications for Design No. 1.

^^Industrial Chicago, 55.

^^Based on the text and illustrations in these catalogs it is difficult to make out just what the houses offered in the way of copper tubs. The pictures show a rectangular frame, but it is not clear if the item being sold was merely a copper tub-shaped object to be set into a wooden frame during installation, or the copper tub shape plus a copper rectangular frame; typically catalog texts described the item only as a "copper tub."

^^Naylor and Willard, Catalogue, 76; Abendroth Brothers, Price List, 20; Jones and Company, Catalogue, 132, 150.

Industrial Chicago, 50; Felix, "A Talk with An Old Plumber," Sanitary Engineer 4 (1880-81): 525.

^®Sloan, Model Architect, 1:43; Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 47; Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, specifications for Design No. 1, p. 14. Also see Contract, Rogers house, 1852.

^^According to one source, the shower bath "was never used in water-cure processes." See Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed, 37.

^^Céunbridge, Mass., Water Board, Report (1871), 18.

^^Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report (1853), 53.

^^Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report (1858), 43. It is not clear what the water board meant by an "attached" shower, but such a device may have been nothing more than a shower head attached to one of the tub faucets. 1858 was the last year in which the Board included the notation about attached shower baths; thereafter the Registrar merely counted the showers in tubless houses, a number which stood at 736 in 1869. See Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board to the City Council of Boston for the Year Ending April 30, 1870 (n. p., 1870), 57.

S. Patent 4,949, H. H. King, "Shower-Bath," 1 February 1847; Patent 4,836, Horace Wells, "Shower-Bath," 4 November 1846; Patent 4,309, W. G. Young, "Improvement in Bathing Apparatus," 16 December

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1845; Patent 5,993, Ephraim Larrabee, "Shower-Bath," 2 January 1849; Patent 22,298, Joseph Mansfield, 14 December 1858; "Mansfield's Shower Bath," Scientific American 14 (1858-59): 168.

Also see U. S. Patent 3,213, Nathaniel Waterman, "Portable Shower-Bath, 11 August 1843; Patent 5,414, George Woods, "Folding Shower-Bath," 18 January 1845; Patent 4,067, John Cutts Smith, "Portable Shower-Bath," 2 June 1845; Patent 4,930, Henry Blodgett, "Fountain for Shower Bath," 14 January 1847; Patent 6,047, James Cortlan, "Shower-Bath," 23 January 1849; Patent 6,746, Jeremiah Essex, "Shower-Bath," 25 September 1849; Patent 8,421, William H. Brown, "Suspension Shower Bath," 14 October 1851; Patent 8,723, Ferdinand Holm, "Portable Shower-Bath," 10 February 1852; Patent 9,873, Cyrus C. Bisbee, "Shower-Bath Table," 26 July 1853; Patent 18,101, William Meyer, "Shower-Bath Apparatus," 1 September 1857.

^'^See for example, Jones and Co., Catalogue, 71, 129. Willard and Naylor sold "plain" shower heads, copper or brass, for $13.33 per dozen, and "fancy" heads at $20.00 per dozen. See Willard and Naylor, Catalogue, 77.

S^Minard Lafever claimed that a shower could be "easily arranged above the bathing-tub, receiving its water from the small cistern provided for the water-closet," but since the w. c. in most houses was situated far from the bathing room, his was a suggestion of dubious practicality. Lafever, Architectural Instructor, 427.

®®There is some evidence that plumbers made showers to order; according to one source, mid-century plumbers fabricated "artistically designed 'showers'" in the shop. "This shower was considered a master­piece of work, and on it the older apprentices were selected to try their hands. Great pride was taken by the workmen to make the joints of solder look bright and clean." See Industrial Chicago, 50.

®^A house could have two boilers, one for hot water, and another "wash boiler" used for washing clothes. The discussion here focuses on the former, rather than the latter.

^®Hall, Modern Designs, 20; James Bayles, House Drainage and I/ater Service (New York; David Williams, 1878), 122. For some built houses that had hot water see Hall, Modern Designs, 18; Brown, Car­penter's Assistant, 132; Sloan, Modern Architect, 1:52; Fowler, A Home for All, 132; Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," 38; Riddell, Architectural Designs, specifications for Design No. 11; Holly, Holly's Country Seats, 52, 98; Woodward and Woodward, Woodward's Architecture and Rural Art, No. 1 , 88; "Lake Shore Villa," American Builder 1 (1868): 107; Lockwood, Bricks and Brownstone, 183-84.

Contracts, specifications, and drawings held at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Specifications, D. and L. Bowman house, c. 1840, Box 3, Folder 15; First Story Plan, 4 Court St. house, [Boston], 1848, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5, sheet 5; Specifications and Contract, Gideon F. Thayer Reed house. Canton, Mass., 1848, Charles E. Parker, Architect, Box 3, Folder 14; Contract, Rogers house, 1852; Plan, James H. Beals house, Boston, 1852, Gridley Bryant, Architect, Drawer 4, File 6; Principal Story Plan, Bigelow house; Prin­

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cipal Story Plan, Glover house; Plan, Leonard Blanchard house. East Abington, Mass., 1859, Luther Briggs, Architect, Drawer 5, File 4; Prin­cipal Story Plan, H. Abercombie house. Drawer 5, File 7, Sheet 6; Speci­fications, Adams Daniels house, Boston, c. 1872-73, Box 3, Folder 8.

S^Hall, Modern Designs, 27. An "old plumber" also described this type of coil heating system as being typical in New York houses in 1840. See Felix, "Talk With An Old Plumber," 525.

^^A discussion of the water back and problems associated with it is in Goodholme, Domestic Cyclopaedia, s. v. "Water-back." Also see U. S. Patent 19,368, J. Ingram, "Water-back for Ranges," 16 February 1858.

^^For a view of a boiler see Bunting, Houses of Boston's Back Bay, 278; [Gardner Chilson], Gardner Chilson, Inventor and Manufacturer of, and Dealer In Heating, Cooking, and Ventilating Apparatus of Every Description (Boston: Damrell and Moore, [1851]; Winterthur Trade Catalogs, microfiche collection. Item 1516, card 1), 40.

^^The best description of the hot water system is the brief one included in Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 123-24, but also see discussions in U. S. Patent 5,377, R. H. Hobbes, "Machine for Rais­ing and Heating Water," 27 November 1847; Patent 4,311, W. Beebe, "Apparatus for the Circulation of Hot Water," 16 December 1845; Patent 19,013, W. S. Carr, "Supply-Cock," 5 January 1858.

®^Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 123-24; Charles W. Elliott, Cottages and Cottage Life (Cincinnati: H. W. Derby and Co., 1848), 213.

®^Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 125-26; James Mul-rein. Facts and Hints In Regard to Plumbing Respectfully Presented to the Citizens of Poughkeepsie (n. p.: James Mulrein, [1873]), 29-30; "Explosions in Kitchen Boilers," Rural Register 2 (1860-61), 295.

65"Galvanized Iron Water Pipes," Scientific American n. s. 20 (1869): 282.

66in the 1840s and 1850s Americans debated the use of lead for water storage and water pipes, some arguing that the combined action of water and air created a possibly dangerous reaction on and near a lead surface. The debate over the affect of lead upon water focused on the so-called "doctrine of protective power"—the belief that water con­tained impurities that would, over time, create an "insoluble, impervious coat" on any lead surface such as the inside of a pipe or cistern. This coating, proponents argued, prevented the lead from tainting the water. Quotation is from Horatio Adams, "On the Action of Water on Lead Pipes," Transactions of the American Medical Association 5 (1852); 169. The debate about the safety of lead for the conveyance of water continued throughout the mid-century period; for a formulation of the issue in the early 1870s see "Iron versus Lead Pipes," Technologist 2 (1871): 277-78.

For other discussions see Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia,

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545, 547; Lead Disease," New York Journal of Medicine, n.s. 1 (1848): 340-346; [E. N. Horsford Rumford], ["Report on the Horsford Investiga­tion on Lead Poisoning and Pipes,]" Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2 (1852), 62-99; James Wynne, "Sanitary Report of Baltimore," Transactions of the American Medical Association 2 (1849); 563-564; E.A. Anderson, "Cases of Lead Poisoning," American Journal of Medical Sciences, n.s. 26 (1853): 374-381; "Action of Water on Lead Pipes," Scientific American, n.s. 1 (1859): 178; Windship, "Our Modern Household Conveniences," 372; "Lead and Water," Scientific American, n.s. 9 (1863); 330.

67in the early nineteenth century plumbers formed pipes by wrapping and beating lead sheets around iron or wooden cores, and soldering the joint. But during the first half of the century inventors began mechanizing the process of pipe production pipes by forcing softened lead through the space between two concentrically arranged cylinders, drawing out pipe lengths much as wire was drawn.

For descriptions of the round core method of pipe formation see Edward Shaw, Civil Architecture (Boston: Marsh, Capen, and Lyon, 1834), 167; and Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 549. Descriptions of the drawn method are in Webster and Parkes, Encyclopedia, 549; Thomas Ewbanks, A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic and Other Machines for Raising Water, Ancient and Modern, 14th ed. (New York; J. C. Derby, 1856), 554; "Samuel Cornell's Lead-Pipe Machine," Appleton's Mechanics' Magazine and Engineers' Journal 1 (1851): 335-339. A discus­sion of the problems faced in making pipe by the drawn method is in "Plumbing and Soldering Lead Pipe," Scientific American n. s. 6 (1862): 199. A good description of iron pipe fabrication is in "Hollow Iron Moulding," Scientific American 5 (1849-1850): 40, 48, 56.

®®Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 105.

^^Good discussions of guidelines for pipe installation are in Wheeler, Homes for the People, 423; Rhoads, "Plumbing," 333; T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing-II: Laying Pipes," American Architect and Build­ing News 3 (1878): 109-110; Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 112-14.

^®As an alternative to lead and iron pipes, people experimented with ways to line pipes with either tin or zinc. It proved difficult to spread the lining evenly and thoroughly over the pipe's surface, and even when the coating was applied perfectly, some types of water still "attacked" and destroyed the pipe.

The two best and certainly most complete discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of various pipe manufacturing methods are Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 105-111; and T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing-I," American Architect and Building News 3 (1878): 102. Other useful discussions are in "Galvanized Iron Water Pipes," Scientific American n. s. 20 (1869): 282; "Tin Lined Water Pipe," Scientific American n. s. 16 (1867): 381; P. M., "Galvanized Iron Water Pipes," Scientific /American n. s. 20 (1869): 327; and Sereno Edwards Todd, Todd's Country Homes and How to Save Money (Hartford, Connecticut: Hartford Publishing Co., 1870), 225-26, 233-38.

180

^^Mid-nineteenth century Americans found the odors associated with water closets and privy vaults as distasteful as one might expect; they did not, however, find them especially fearsome, certainly not to the extent that Americans did in the late 1870s and 1880s. For example, the "trap" would eventually become an object of great importance in preventing the deadly sewer gas, but at mid-century Americans referred to this device as a "stench-trap" because its job was to hold back offense odors, which were of far greater concern to them than deadly gases. See, for example, Ranlett, The Architect, 2:39; "Keep the Premises Clean," Valley Farmer 3 (1851): 276; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:58-59; Jacques, The House, 55; Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Prac­tical Architect, 151; Henry W. Cleaveland, William Backus, and Samuel D. Backus, Village and Farm Cottages. The Requirements of American Village Homes Considered and Suggested; With Designs for Such Houses of Moderate Cost (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1856), 144-45.

^^Specifications, D. and L. Bowman house.

^^Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture, 27, 47; Sloan, Model Architect, 1:43, 2:97.

^^Woodward and Thompson, Woodward's National Architect, 30, but also see Designs 1, 6, and 17. For other descriptions of pipe material used see Fowler, A Home for All, 132, 147; and at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Specifications and Contract, Griggs house; Contract, Rogers house; Contract, Sarah D. Bird house, Brookline, Mass., 1858, Box 3, Folder 13A; Specifications, Adams Daniels house.

^®The terminology of mid-nineteenth century faucet technology is confusing. Patent applications used the terms "faucet," "stop-cock," and "globe valve." "Faucet" referred to the general category of devices that regulated the flow of a liquid, whether it was beer, molasses, or water; "stop-cock" usually referred to a device that regulated the flow of liquid within and between two pieces of pipe. For example, people used a "stop-cock" to regulate the flow of water between a street main and the branch pipe through which that water entered the house. "Basin faucet," on the other hand, referred to an object screwed or soldered at one end to a supply pipe, whose other end connected to nothing; water poured out of it into a basin or sink. Finally, some inventors used the term "globe valve" to describe their patents, but this term referred not to the faucet itself, but to what was inside, namely the faucet mechanism, or valve, encased inside a globe-shaped section of the faucet. Mid-century patentees used these terms interchangeably and simultaneously. For example, Edward Sterry used faucet, globe valve, and stop-cock to describe his 1855 patent, a device with a turn-key handle that used a lifting valve to shut water on and off. Similarly, Isaac Tate referred to his 1860 patent as both globe valve and faucet, and John Griffiths used globe valve, valve-cock, and stop cock to des­cribe his 1854 patent. Tate's invention used a leather diaphragm, spring, and lift valve, while Griffiths patented a lift valve that regu­lated water flow between two sections of pipe. All three, however, were designed to be used on a sink or basin. See U. S. Patent 4,022, Edward A. Sterry, "Faucet," 122 June 1855; Patent 28,699, Isaac C. Tate,

181

"Faucet," 12 June 1860; Patent 10,516, John Griffiths, "Valve-cock," 14 February 1854.

United States Patent 22,402, M. Robbins and J. Powell, "Faucet," 21 December 1858.

^^In fact it is quite difficult to determine just how widely it was used. Illustrations of the merchandise in plumbers' catalogs did not show the inside mechanisms, so that from diagrams alone it is impossible to tell what kind of cocks were sold. See Naylor and Wil-lard. Catalogue, 6, 11, 15, 38; Schoener and Co., Catalogue, 18-20; Jones and Co., Catalogue, 12, 72-74, 80, 90-91, 101. According to one source, in mid-century Chicago the "cock in use . . . was of the ground-in pattern." See Industrial Chicago, 49.

Devices of this type are United States Patents 2,304, J. L. Chapman, "Construction of Cocks for Hydraulic and Pneumatic Purposes," 11 October 1841; 2,596, U. West and G. Dobbs, "Stop-cock," 30 April 1842; 4,440, J. F. Ostrander, "Improvement in Filtering-cocks," 4 April 1845; 10,640, O. C. Phelps, "Stop-cock," 14 March 1854; 12,817, W. Fowler, "Faucet," 8 May 1855.

^®T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing: IV. Faucets," American Architect and Building News 3 (1878), 180.

79u. S. Patent 10,733, Benjamin Eakins, "Valve-cock," 4 April 1854.

S^For some typical examples see U. S. Patent 6,032, J. Sheriff, "Stop-cock for Hot Water, &c.," 16 January 1849; Patent 10,733, B. Eakins, "Valve-cock," 4 April 1854; Patent 13,047, E. A. Sterry, "Faucet," 12 June 1855; Patent 16,736, R. Leitch, "Basin-cock," 3 March 1857; Patent 17,342, E. Stebbins, "Basin-faucet," 19 May 1857; Patent 23,721, E. Stebbins, "Stop-cock," 19 April 1859; Patent 25,253, A. Ful­ler, "Faucet," 30 August 1859; Patent 25,349, J. Powell, "Improved Faucet," 6 September 1859; Patent 29,263, "Faucet," J. Flattery, 24 July 1860.

®^U. S. Patent 2,304, J. L. Chapman, "Construction of cocks for Hydraulic and Pneumatic Purposes," 11 October 1841; Patent 10,640, O. C. Phelps, "Stop-cock," 14 March 1854.

82u. s. Patent 6032, John Sheriff, "Stop-cock for Hot Water, etc.," 16 January 1849.

®^U. S. Patent 13,677, Albert Fuller, "Faucet," 16 October 1855; Patent 25,253, Albert Fuller, "Faucet," 30 August 1859.

84u. s. Patent 29,263, J. Flattery, "Faucet," 24 July 1860. Also see "Flattery's Improved Faucet," Scientific American n. s. 3 (1860); 136.

®^For a good survey of the various types of faucets see Clark, "Faucets," 180.

182

®®Ibid., 180. Clark also noted that plumbers preferred faucets with a fixed handle that was separate from the spout.

®^Lyman and Lyman, Philosophy of House-keeping, 447. For other descriptions of flexible hose see Gervase Wheeler, Rural Homes; or, Sketches of Houses Suited to American Country Life (New York: Charles Scribner, 1851), 187; Dwyer, Economic Cottage Builder, 117.

®®U. S. Patent 10,049, Jordan L. Mott, "Bathing-Tub, 27 Septem­ber 1853. Often a sheet of lead covered the floor beneath tubs, basins, and water closets, but it is not clear that any of the rest of the room was protected against water. See Clark, "Wash-basins.-Pantry Sinks.-Filters-Bath-tubs," 40; Specifications, H. B. Rogers house.

®®Clark, "Faucets, 180; Clark, "Wash-basins.-Pantry Sinks.-Filters.-Bath-tubs," 39.

183

CHAPTER 5

HOUSEHOLD WATER FIXTURES IN FORM AND FUNCTION: WATER CLOSETS

Before 1850 the United States patent office issued just three

water closet patents. Americans had certainly known about and used

mechanical closets before the 1850s, albeit in small numbers, but they

apparently used either simple devices for which no patent had been

obtained, or one of the many British and French closets that were avail­

able. The British patent office in particular issued numerous patents

for closets during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and

there was no shortage of models from which to choose.^ Indeed, starting

in the 1850s American inventors produced a flood of mechanical and port­

able water closets, as well as improvements in the privy.^ During the

1850s and 1860s American inventors and plumbing supply houses all but

ignored existing European and British devices, preferring instead to

produce and sell models invented and manufactured in America. This wave

of invention should not be seen as simply a random burst of American

ingenuity; instead, it seems to indicate, first, an acknowledgement of

specifically "American" needs, and thus, second, a rejection of British

and other European water closets as unsuitable for American use. By the

late nineteenth century, when the "modern" "sanitary" flush toilet

appeared on the scene, these mid-century devices were brushed aside,

regarded now as primitive technological deadends hardly worthy of dis­

cussion.^ But the business of designing, making, and using water

184

closets was alive and well in America by the 1850s, well before the

advent of mass-produced porcelain sanitary ware and the introduction of

the porcelain flush toilet. This chapter examines mid-century mechan­

ical water closets, as well as the other devices contemporaries used to

dispose of human wastes.

Water Closets and Privies

During the middle nineteenth century, Americans used three

kinds of technologies for human waste disposal, two of which they

referred to as "water closets": the "dry" privy, the simple outhouse

over a pit; a non-mechanical but water-based "privy," in which wastes

fell into a vault and water flushed them into a drain; and the water-

based mechanical flushing device most commonly associated with the

phrase "water closet." That "modest mansion of retirement," the dry

privy, requires little discussion; it was simplicity itself, and pos­

sibly the most numerous of the three.^ The non-mechanical water closet

was more complicated. It consisted of an enclosure—a closet—with one

or more seats atop a brick- or stone-walled vault. Wastes fell directly

into the vault, but unlike the simple dry privy, a water supply of some

type regularly flushed the vault clean. Pipes attached to the vault

carried wastes away to a cesspool or other receptacle (such as a public

sewer when that was available.) In other words, in a privy, wastes

accumulated until removed by excavation, but in the water-based privy,

water regularly washed or "flushed" the vault free of its accumulations.

This type can best be illustrated by looking at two examples.

In the Rutherfurd [sic] Park, New Jersey, house shown in one of

George Woodward's plan books, the "water closets" sat side-by-side at

the back of the house (Fig. 5.1). Under them the contractor dug a five

185

15 U

* 2 w à » » « »» » » 5 ë " mm • i

(JVUnD

Fig. 5.1 Plans for the D. L. Evans house, Rutherfurd Park, New Jersey, as shown in Woodward's National Architect

186

foot deep vault, which he finished off with an eight-inch thick brick

wall. A six-inch pipe connected this vault to the household cesspool,

located some distance away. Two tin leaders channeled roof runoff and

rain water into the vault, providing the water necessary to flush the

wastes out of the vault and into the drain pipe leading to the cesspool.

Unfortunately the specifications are less clear about the closets them­

selves, since they only ordered the builder to "fit up the two W. C.'s

with risers, seats and hinged flaps, the seats and flaps of hard wood."5

Since the other builder's specifications included in Woodward's book

specifically designated the type of water closet to be installed, it

seems reasonable to conclude that in this house the "water closets" con­

sisted simply of seats perched above a vault flushed by a stream of

water.

The second example comes from an 1856 publication by Calvert

Vaux. As noted in Chapter Two, Vaux regarded the water closet "or its

equivalent, [as] an absolute necessity" in any "convenient and agreeable

house." To alleviate the "difficulty" and expense associated with a

"regular water-closet," he designed, and installed in some of his

clients' houses, an alternative waste-disposal arrangement that used

running water but no mechanical flushing mechanism (Fig. 5.2). Vaux's

"necessary" either abutted or sat next to the house and consisted of a

small closet-like space with a seat inside. Wastes fell into a small

enclosure or "receiver" located under the seat. A supply pipe attached

to the roof eaves funneled rain and snow runoff into one side of the

receiver; a second pipe on the receiver's opposite side carried wastes

away connected to a drain and cesspool. Vaux noted that a device like

this provided the convenience of flushing, as opposed to manual removal

187

1 • p^-' : jg

SEAT

OUTLET

Fig. 5.2 This "necessary" designed by Calvert Vaux had no mechanical parts

of wastes, without the bother and expense of mechanical water closets

(which are described later in this chapter); this non-mechanical alter­

native, he noted, was

applicable to any house in any situation, and can hardly get out of order . . . for . . . there is nothing to burst, and no evaporation takes place in very cold weather; while ... if a long drought occurs . . . , a few pails of water poured in . . . will set mat­ters right till a shower comes."®

These examples suggest two ideas. First, mid-nineteenth

century Americans regarded the presence of water, rather than a mechan­

ical flushing device, as the factor that defined some privies as water

closets; as one advice manual explained, a water closet was "a privy,

supplied with a stream of water, or water pipe, to keep it clean.

188

Americans defined a "water closet" as any one of a number of devices

that used water to flush human wastes, but all water closets fell into

the category of "privies" or "necessaries." This manner of defining the

water closet explains why Americans sometimes used the terms water

closet and privy interchangeably. Second, and perhaps more importantly,

during the mid-nineteenth century Americans demonstrated an interest in

improving upon, reforming if you will, the traditional outhouse or

privy. Both of the arrangements described above offered people inter­

ested in domestic improvement a way to eliminate the unpleasant trip to

the outhouse by using instead a decidedly low-cost and low-maintenance

alternative. Both of these points can be seen by looking at some con­

temporary house plans.

William Ranlett used the label "water closet" to describe a

variety of spaces from outbuildings to closets on the second floor. For

example, the plans for a group of four houses built on Staten Island

showed that an outbuilding located behind each dwelling housed wood

storage, a wash house, and two "water closets." The plans for a New

York City "villa" showed a similar arrangement: a "wood house" located

fifty feet behind the villa contained two compartments marked "water

closet." At "Waldwic Cottage" near Paramus, New Jersey, a shed attached

to the rear of the house, but accessible only from the outside, housed

two water closets, while a third water closet was inside the house on

the second floor. None of Ranlett's accompanying text described the

contents of these spaces, but it seems unlikely, although not

impossible, that each one held a mechanical water closet, especially

since most of the plans showed not one but two adjacent closets, each

with at least one, but often two, holes. But in each case the "water

189

closets" had been placed either inside the house or inside an adjacent

or adjoining building, where it was sheltered from the elements and con­

cealed from onlookers, a decided improvement over the solitary privy

stationed a long (especially in cold months) distance from the house.®

Ranlett's house plans were not unusual. In his 1856 Cottage

Builder's Manual, Zebulon Baker included the plans for his Dudley, Mas­

sachusetts, house and grounds. The property's outbuildings included a

barn which contained a "wood room," inside of which were two "water

closets. On the other hand, the home of a "young mechanic," shown in

WOOD

F=q

HITCHEH II X IS

OININGKOOm

HALL

fARLOK isxia

timna Mom

iix'it

Fig. 5.3 "Water closets" in the wood shed. The Benjamin Butman house in Worcester, Mass., as shown in Brown and Joy's Carpenter's Assistant

190

i>ood iiooiit /t'méé

Ull.l-V

iKila

I itifu t

Itril IliMim /#-A/*

HMtlO /*

Siltui(* UtMHii. iït«v ^ i iWIur tS'^kO

luil»l

KiphI Slorv .

Fig. 5.4 A Manchester, Vermont, house with water closet in the wood shed. From Cummings and Miller, Hodexn ^Bricdin Architecture

191

the same book, also had w. c.'s inside a wood room, but in this case the

structure was attached to the rear of the house.® Other mid-century

publications show variations on these arrangements. One house built in

the early 1850s at Worcester, Massachusetts, and two built in the early

1860s at Manchester, Vermont, each had water closets located in wood

houses behind the kitchen; the one shown on the plans for the Worcester

dwelling multiple holes (Figs. 5.3 and 5.4).^® A Cold Spring, New York,

house designed by architect George Harney had a two-seat water closet

situated on a "private veranda" just outside the kitchen door.A New

Jersey house built in the very late 1850s had three areas labelled

"water closet." Two of them, each with two seats, sat back-to-back at

the rear of the first floor. Users entered one of these, labelled "ser­

vant's water closet," from an entryway off the washroom behind the

kitchen, and the other through a door located on an outside veranda. A

third floor bathing room housed the third "water closet."^2

Some architects used both terms on the same plan, which may

have been their way of differentiating between privies that used water

and privies that used water and mechanical flushing. Architect Luther

Briggs labelled closets built just off the kitchens of his houses

"privies," but reserved "water closet" for spaces situated inside the

house. The plans he drew for one client included a three-hole "privy"

inside the "wash room" attached to kitchen. The dwelling's foundation

plans showed a "vault" just below the privy; a drain pipe connected the

vault to the cesspool (Figs. 5.5 and 5.6). In another Briggs house, the

second floor water closet wastes flushed into a drain, but a first floor

privy inside the wood house drained into a vault (see Fig. 3.5). Briggs

apparently regarded the privy and the water closet as two separate

192

FonnrintUm Plan.

Fig. 5.5 A self-contained drainage system with privy, water closet, and cesspool. Ephm. Merfiam house, Jamaica Plain, Mass. Foundation Plan. Luther Briggs, Jr., Architect. 1856. Collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston

193

Yfash Boom fHj( Mi

KUehtn, f»nf-¥

Parlor.

enuaot

* Si'fttnt/ Bêêm

/i*/4

— C7 fl 1 / /' / ( / [

1 riaua .

Prinripai SToru.

Fig. 5.6 First floor privy. Nate kitchen sink and pump and compare with foundation plan (fig. 5.5). Ephm. Merriam House, Jamaica Plain Mass. Principal Story. Luther Briggs, Jr., Architect. Collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston

194

K i t c h e n

Panlrv I PmnlfsUin Pnv\ E

Dining Room

V e s t i b u l e

Verandah

Servant 3 R

SUm WCltirt

Chamber C h a m b e r

Chamber C h a m b e r

Bed Roo

FIRST STORr.

S c a l e 1 0 f e e t c t h e i s r h

S E C 0 X D S T 0 n Y .

Fig. 5.7 An Italian villa from Sloan's Model Architect with water closet and privy

objects: a privy sat at the back of the house, and the water closet

inside, but both could be connected to a drain.^3 Samuel Sloan made the

same distinction. In the plans for an "Italian villa," Sloan included a

"privy" inside the house, in front of, rather than behind, the kitchen,

and at the end of the main entry hallway. He placed a "water closet" on

the second floor directly above that privy (presumably they shared the

same drainage system) (figs. 5.7 and 5.8).1* For a thirty thousand dol­

lar "villa" built near Philadelphia, Sloan placed most of the water fix­

tures in an octagonal bay located at one corner of the house; fixtures

195

Verandah

1 2 « 3 2 .

Drawing Room

1 7 » 3 2

Carr iage dr ive , tt < 12.

F I R S T S T O R Y .

Fig. 5.8 Another Sloan design. Note the water closets on the gallery

drained into a brick-lined "well" located beneath the tower. The tub

and cistern sat on the tower's second and attic floors, respectively;

the first and basement levels held two-seat water closets with "china

bowls and a soil pipe connecting with the well beneath." Clearly, then,

these two closets that drained into a vault were more than just wooden

benches, although it is not clear that Sloan intended the closet spaces

to house mechanical flushing devices.

196

Terminology from these house plans indicate that mid-nineteenth

century Americans defined water closet and privy more flexibly than has

perhaps been realized. Architects labelled spaces inside of barns and

woodsheds as "water closets," and rooms actually inside of or attached

to houses as "privies." Moreover, the closets shown on house plans

often had multiple seats, a feature not normally associated with a

flushing "water closet." Finally, all of these plans show this space

nearby, attached to, or inside the house, indicating the general inter­

est in making privy or closet use easier and more agreeable. Precisely

where people put a water closet seemed to depend primarily on personal

preference and on personal definitions of convenience. By all accounts,

mid-century water closets, with or without a mechanical flushing

mechanism, smelled, so not everyone enjoyed having them centrally

located inside the house. On the other hand, a mechanical water closet

installed next to an outside wall or in a small leanto attached to the

house did not stand up well to cold weather. Advice manuals and

architectural plan books weighed the advantages and disadvantages of

privies versus water closets, and indoor versus outdoor water closet

installation, and suggested ways for readers to maximize the convenience

that a water closet of either type offered.

For example, Ranlett explained that in many households the

water closet, "an important appendage to a dwelling," was "very fre­

quently a 'privy'. . . placed in the yard or garden, separate from all

other buildings, [and] sometimes ornamented with a screen, or con­

secrated by a miniature steeple, as if it were feared that the public

eye might not recognize its use," Ranlett objected to this "most

egregious lack of good taste," and offered suggestions for an improved

197

arrangement. Install the water closet in "a room in the main edifice or

in an out building," he advised readers, but instead of a vault, place

"a basin in the seat, from which a soil-pipe extends to the drain, that

conveys the sediment to a sesspool [sic] . . . ."16 Orson Fowler urged

his readers to install an "in-door 'water-closet'" for the benefit of

the invalid and the aged. "And under the stairs is just the place for

one, its contents passing down . . . into a receiving box in the cellar,

made tight and easily cleaned, . . . and both [it] and the closet itself

ventilated into an adjoining chimney." He suggested that water from a

nearby cistern be used to flush the ventilating pipe in order to cut

down on odors.

The author of another advice manual argued that readers ought

to place that "diminutive house," the privy, outside the main house but

concealed from view; "It is strange," he mused, "that a house which

every one is ashamed to be seen to enter, should be so often paraded in

one of the most conspicuous positions that could be found, . . . ." The

practice of concealing it with a trellis or behind another outbuilding

hardly constituted an improvement:

the unfortunate person who was obliged to retire to it might skulk round the shed, and allow it to be conjectured that he might pos­sibly be gone on some less ignoble errand. . . . There was no actual proof that he entered the temple ... ; and a modest female after having occupied it without being seen to enter it, might on coming out return to the dwelling-house with a feeling of compara­tive innocence.IB

This author pronounced the inside of the shed "the best possible loca­

tion for the common privy" because "one need not expose himself to sun,

wind, rain, or snow, in making his retreat thither." On the other hand,

he advised readers to install the water closet in the middle of the

house, "so long as it [was] in mechanical order and well supplied with a

198

stream of clear water."19 Lewis Allen disagreed. He regarded "privies,

or water-closets as they are genteely called" as "an effeminacy only and

introduced by city life," and strongly denounced the "fashion ... of

thrusting these noisome things into the midst of sleeping chambers and

living rooms—pandering to effeminacy, . . . ." He urged his readers to

attach their "outbuildings" to the house in some way, rather than sepa­

rate them completely. The inconvenience of detached outbuildings

situated some distance away from the house, he explained, tempted people

to put inside the house "some things, which in a country establishment,

ought never to be there," namely water closets.20 The authors of Vil­

lage and Farm Cottages disagreed; "Every dwelling," they wrote, "however

humble, should have a water-closet under its roof, accessible with ease

and without exposure to the external air." The alternative required

"the necessity of greater care, and perhaps cost, in the construction of

vaults, etc," although a vault proved necessary when no sewer was avail­

able. But the authors warned their readers that imperfect installation

of a water closet negated its advantages. The "right precautions,"

including "running water and facilities for drainage" and adequate

ventilation, removed "all causes of offence" associated with the water

closet. A "manual of rural architecture" also assessed the advantages

and disadvantages of the water closet, and concluded that unless the

household enjoyed running water and "facilities for complete drainage,

the balance fell in favor of the latter.21 Another writer lamented that

it was "a pity" that more people did not install indoor water closets

because even with their flaws they were cheaper and certainly less

obtrusive than an "unsightly outbuilding."^2 An architectural plan book

promised its readers that an interior water closet would be of "no

199

annoyance to any part of the house," when the closet was "entirely iso­

lated," by being "surrounded by brick walls" and well-ventilated by both

a window and a ventilation shaft connected to the adjacent chimney

flue.23

Catharine Beecher's first housekeeping manual omitted any men­

tion of water closets, but by the late 1860s she had weighed the merits

of both dry privies and water closets, and decided the advantage fell on

the side of the latter. In 1841 her ideal house included a privy with

"two apartments," a weighted door that closed easily, and a window. She

placed the privy behind the kitchen next to the woodpile.24 gy the

1860s, however, she had come to see the water closet as a tool of real

convenience: when properly installed, she announced in an 1866 essay,

"no other household improvement so much promotes health, neatness, and

economy of labor."^5 she modified that stance slightly a few years

later in The American Woman's Hornet Beecher and her co-author Harriet

Beecher Stowe instructed readers that water closets equipped with the

"latest improvements" were as cheap as outdoor privies and far more con­

venient because the former eliminated "the most disagreeable house

labor," by which they presumably meant emptying chamber pots. But, they

added, when all the costs were weighed, the earth closet offered even

greater advantages because unlike its water-using counterpart, the earth

closet eliminated the costs of pipework and repairs.26

As these examples indicate, during the 1850s and 1860s in par­

ticular, Americans demonstrated an active interest in improving and

reforming this "necessary" part of the home. They seemed to reject the

traditional privy as being unworthy of American families, choosing

instead to explore various practical and often low-cost alternatives.

200

They now claimed that the convenience provided by a water closet or

privy depended upon proper placement and installation, which included

adequate water, drainage, and ventilation. But both architectural draw­

ings and texts should serve as caution signs, reminding us that the dis­

tinction between a privy and a water closet was not as well-defined in

the mid-nineteenth century as it is now. The arrangements described

thus far indicate that a "water closet" may have been nothing more than

a seat, a vault, and a drain pipe; put another way, water, regardless of

where it came from, rather than a flushing mechanism, served as a neces­

sary first requirement for a water closet. Sometimes, of course, people

used water closets that flushed mechanically, and those devices require

a closer look.

Mechanical Water Closets

In the late nineteenth century writers distinguished among four

or five different categories of water closets, but at mid-century,

despite the variety of forms being produced by French and British

inventors, Americans generally used just two types, the pan and the hop­

per (Fig. 5.9).27 in its simplest form, the hopper was little more than

a funnel-shaped extension of a soil pipe. Gravity and a stream of water

carried wastes through the funnel to the pipe, and on out of the house

to a waste receptacle. Sometimes users manipulated an attached valve in

order to regulate the flow of water into the hopper, although turning a

simple faucet on and off worked just as well.The pan closet differed

in both form and function. It consisted of a hopper funnel with a bowl-

shaped seat and a catch-pan fastened atop it. The user manipulated

valves, levers, and other parts in order to move water in and out, and

to tip the catch pan that dumped wastes into the soil pipe. Unlike the

201

closet

Fig. 5.9 Top left, a long, or Philadelphia, hopper; top right, a short hopper; bottom, a simple pan closet. Hopper diagrams from W. P. Gerhard's Hints on the Drainage and Sewerage of Dwellings; pan diagram from T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing"

202

hopper, whose funnel shape was integral to its function, the pan closet

depended less on the shape of the vessel and more on the efficiency and

reliability of the mechanisms that synchronized the actions of the water

valve and catch-pan.

Neither device was brand-new in mid-nineteenth century America,

but inventors treated them as objects whose older and original (and

usually British or French) form was unsatisfactory and which could be

improved upon in order to better serve the needs of a rapidly progres­

sing modern American nation. Inventors tinkered with closet valves,

bowls, floats, tanks, pipe attachments, and the like in order to create

water closets that worked well, conserved water, required little mainte­

nance, and smelled as "cleanly" as possible. Only the most modern of

devices would suit the needs of the American family. But the distinc­

tion between the two types of closets, the pan and the hopper, had

important consequences for the designers who tried to improve them.

Inventors of pan closets concentrated on designing valves, flaps,

levers, and the like, and on synchronizing them with each other and with

the flow of water in and out of the pan. Designers of hopper closets,

on the other hand, were interested less in creating complex mechanical

devices, and more in using the bowl as an intermediary between water

supply and water disposal. They focused their attentions on the shape

and form of the bowl, rather than on any mechanical additions to it. As

a result, the pan closet became more and more complex, and moved grad­

ually toward a technological dead-end, while the hopper's path lead

toward the flush toilet produced by the end of the century. That

process can be seen by taking a closer look at the technology of these

two devices.

203

The Hopper Closet

Low price and simple operation accounted for the hopper's popu­

larity at mid-century; according to one observer, both traits made it

"suitable for the use of persons who cannot be trusted with the better

kinds of water-closet; . . . by which he presumably meant the more

complex, and more costly, pan closet.^9 in its simplest form, the hop­

per consisted of funnel that rose up out of the floor.30 Wastes fell

straight into the funnel, or "hopper," and down into the trap and pipe

attached to the base of the hopper. Plumbers connected the hopper leg

to the trap by sliding the former into the latter; then they either

puttied the joint or bolted the hopper to the trap by means of a flange.

In the United States, manufacturers fabricated the hoppers of iron, and

sold them plain, painted, or enamelled.31

Hopper funnels generally had either straight or slightly bulg­

ing sides that tapered to a straight pipe-like formation at the base.

Some people favored the straight sides because these provided a more

direct path for wastes to follow on their way into the soil pipe.

Others, however, argued that "the action of the flushing water, entering

at the side and descending spirally, is more uniform if the sides of the

hopper are curved .... "32 The choice of one over the other may

have depended upon how the user supplied water to the closet: people who

purchased a straight hopper probably planned to attach it to a pipe that

provided just enough water to wet the sides of the hopper so that wastes

would slide down into the pipe; anything more than a trickle, such as

water piped under pressure, would be more likely to splash out of a

straight-sided vessel than it would out of one with curved sides. Mid-

century consumers could also choose from "short" and "long" hoppers.

204

Plumbers installed the long, or Philadelphia, hopper directly on the

•floor, placing its attached soil pipe and trap under the floorboards.

The long hopper took up less space than the so-called short hopper, but

the concealed pipe work proved harder to clean and service. In a short

hopper, on the other hand, the hopper, soil pipe, and trap all sat on

the floor, exposed to view. This style took up more space but its pipe

work was readily accessible (see Fig. 5.9).^^

The hopper had its virtues and its failings. In a comparison

of water closet designs written in the early 1880s, one writer noted

that the "great merit of hoppers lies in their simplicity and in the

total absence of any mechanical parts, which sooner or later, fail to

work properly . . . ."34 Another observer believed that the hopper's

advantage lay in its "strength, simplicity and the impossibility of con­

cealing filth within . . . ." Its open design and simple lines exposed

accumulated filth to both eye and nose and thus facilitated the task of

cleaning, which was not the case with the rival pan closet where decay­

ing wastes lay "beyond . . . reach, and out of . . . sight".35 Indeed,

the hopper's lack of moving parts and resulting simplicity made it a

good choice for a household water closet, especially in northern

climates where winter weather took its toll on delicate mechanisms. It

also proved beneficial in households where servants and other less

"responsible" and capable people might be using the device.

These advantages had their downside. The hopper's simple open

shape provided no barrier between the contents of the soil pipe and

trap, and the surrounding air, and as a result "the contents of the trap

float[ed] directly under the orifice of the bowl for hours or often days

at a time so that there [was] usually more or less smell from it".

205

Moreover, the device had to be flushed as thoroughly as possible to

ensure that wastes fell into the pipe, rather than cling to the sides.

But mid-century hoppers rarely had a flushing rim that channeled water

all the way around the rim and sides; instead, water entered the hopper

at a single point and, as noted above, in a trickle since a powerful

spurt would splash out over the straight sides.This trickle kept the

sides only marginally clean, and in order to keep the sides as slick as

possible, people often left the water running constantly. As a con­

sequence, the hopper had a notorious reputation for wasting water, a

problem Boston's Cochituate Water Board studied in the early 1850s.

The Board reported to the City Council that the

hopper closet is so constructed that a person using it must turn on a 5/8-inch stream of water, which is kept running during the time that the closet is used, and as in many instances the stream is not shut off, the water runs until a person familiar with the construc­tion closes it. Doubtless in about one case of four it is forgot­ten, and the water is thus left to run to waste. This closet takes about nine times as much water to do the same service as a pan closet.37

The Board asked Council for permission to charge twelve dollars per year

for hopper closets, and six for pan closets. This report had little

impact, and in 1862 the Water Board re-opened the issue, noting with

dismay that as a result of the Council's failure to adopt the earlier

recommendat ion,

the hopper . . . closets . . . have increased about 160 per cent. The only reason that can be assigned for the great increase of the hopper over the pan closet is that they can be procured at a much less price, (and their] peculiar construction . . . will allow of their being placed in situations exposed to the cold weather, . . . in which case a stream of water can readily be allowed to run in them to prevent their freezing; whereas, the pan closet . .. is such that it must necessarily be situated in some place where they can partake of the general warmth of the house . . . .[sic]

Some inventors directed their energies to the task of making

the hopper closet more agreeable to municipal water boards and

206

homeowners. They did so by designing devices that automatically regu­

lated the flow of water into and out of the hopper, thus preventing

waste, but which also minimized user intervention, thus decreasing the

damage that careless users might do. They accomplished both ends by

designing closets in which the water shut off automatically after a

specified amount of time, and water, had passed. Thus what dif­

ferentiated one hopper closet from another was the way in which

inventors attached additional parts to it in order to regulate water

flow. For example, in 1854 New Yorker Frederick Bartholomew patented a

valve-based hopper closet designed to eliminate the type of waste

denounced by the Boston Water Board. "Careless persons," he noted in

his patent application, neglected to turn the water on, making the

closet noisome; worse yet, others failed to shut off the water so that

in cities like New York "large quantities of water is [sic] discharged

through water closets directly in to the sewers, and thus wasted

unnoticed and almost undiscoverable by the persons having charge of the

water works department . . . ."39 Bartholomew solved this problem by

creating a self-acting closet that combined a hopper, a valve, and a

small water tank or reservoir. When someone sat on the seat, his or her

weight forced open the intake valve, and water filled a small tank.

When the user stood up, the water poured out of this tank and into the

hopper, flushing wastes down into the soil pipe. Bartholomew explained

that no matter how long the closet was in use—several minutes or an

hour—the size of the reservoir limited the amount of water used, and

when the user had finished, more water flowed automatically into the

hopper. There were no levers, plungers, or valves to be manipulated.^®

207

S

Fig. 5.10 The Henry and Campbell hopper closet, 1857

Bartholomew's design, like other valve—based hoppers, introduced water

into the basin only when it was needed for flushing, and all of the

water fell into the soil pipe where, hopefully, some remained to fill

the trap. James Henry and William Campbell of Philadelphia based their

1857 hopper patent on a different principle (fig. 5.10). The Henry-

Campbell design used a bowl-shaped hopper whose slightly flattened bot­

tom held a small quantity of water. Wastes fell directly into water in

the bowl, which, when filled with water, doubled as a trap, rather than

into the soil pipe. To operate the closet, the user pulled up on a

handle, thereby opening a passageway through which the bowl's wastes and

208

water flowed into the soil pipe. Pushing down on the handle closed the

passage. At the same time, fresh water stored in an attached tank

poured into the bowl and valve chamber, preparing them for the next

user. A float valve regulated the amount of water held in the tank.

This design required more user intervention than the Bartholomew patent,

and its proper functioning depended on the the float inside the tank: if

it failed, too much water would be released, flooding the bowl.

However, the most significant feature of this patent was the fact that

wastes fell into a basin of water, rather than into a soil pipe; the

water not only flushed the wastes, but it also served as a trap, making

this closet less odorous than others. In this respect, the Henry-

Campbell patent anticipated the so-called sanitary closets that began to

appear in the 1870s. In any case hopper closets like these provided a

broad range of Americans with the opportunity to use a modern and

improved device. By automating the process of flushing as much as pos­

sible, inventors enabled reform-minded Americans to introduce these

devices into their homes even when untrained children or careless ser­

vants might be using them.41

The Pan Closet

The pan closet, on the other hand, posed a different problem.

As the above examples show, the hopper could be and sometimes was more

than just an extension of a soil pipe, but even with valves and plungers

attached to it, the hopper remained little more than a one piece waste

receptacle. In contrast, however, the pan closet was a multi-component

object laden with working parts, making it more prone to mechanical

failure and easier for careless people to damage. Pan closets probably

found their greatest use in private homes, rather than public places.

209

and especially in homes where servants had their own (hopper) water

closet. The typical pan w. c. consisted of at least three pieces. The

topmost part was a bowl, often but not always earthenware, with a hole

in its base. The bowl's base nested in the second piece, a copper

hinged pan that covered the hole. Both of these sat atop the third

part, variously called the trunk, hopper, or receiver (here referred to

as the receiver in order to distinguish it from the hopper style

closet), which was usually made of iron. As on the hopper, a valve

regulated the flow of water into and out of the bowl, pan, and receiver,

but in the case of the pan, the valve operated in conjunction with a

collection of levers, handles, and cams used to manipulate the pan.

Designers synchronized the closet's parts so that flushing water would

push wastes out of the pan, but continue to stream into the pan after it

had been tipped back up into place; the pan and its water served both as

a receptacle for the wastes and as a barrier against the odors and gases

that collected in the receiver and soil pipe. The addition of these

parts differentiated the pan from the much simpler hopper, and the

arrangement of the valves and pan mechanism distinguished one pan closet

from another.

For example, in 1847 James Ingram and James Steuart patented a

water closet with two pans but a single handle with which to tip them.

Ingram and Steuart jointed the handle so that when the top pan, into

which wastes fell directly, was opened, the bottom one, which covered

the entry to the soil pipe, was closed. The user dumped wastes into the

soil pipe by opening and closing the two pans in order, and the stag­

gered openings prevented foul odors from entering the room.42 Compared

to other pan closets patented during the period, the Ingram-Steuart

210

design was simple. Indeed, during the 1850s the hallmark of the

American pan closet was its complexity, which contributed to its reputa­

tion as a high maintenance and rather unsatisfactory device. Inventors

attempted to overcome these shortcomings by automating the device's

operation and by linking all its parts together so that they would work

in one continuous and smooth motion. The patents of William Carr best

illustrate this effort.

His 1852 closet used two separate valve systems: one regulated

the flow of water from the supply pipe, the other regulated the flow of

water into the bowl itself. When someone sat on the closet's seat, the

supply valve opened and water poured into a supply tank located above

the seat. Removing the pressure from the seat set in motion a series of

mechanical events that both flushed the bowl and tipped the catch-pan

downward. Carr designed these operations so that the pan returned to

its original upright position in time to capture and hold the last bit

of water that poured from the tank.43 in an 1856 patent Carr improved

the valve by designing it to close gradually to ensure a good supply of

water in the catch-pan.44 Throughout the 1850s Carr continued to tinker

with his water closet designs, but in an 1859 patent application he

noted that the process of regulating the water supply in the average

water closet still posed problems (Fig. 5.11). Even if the w. c.

included a valve that closed gradually, he explained, when the water

came "from the supply pipe in one of the lower stories, . . . there is

no water rises sufficiently high until after the valve or cock has

closed" leaving the pan or bowl dry, odorous, and "unfit for use the

next time from this lack of water in the pan." To counteract this, Carr

tied the closing of the pan itself to the weight of water in it. Unlike

211

Fig. 5.11 William Carr's 1859 pan closet

212

his other designs, this one was operated by hand, rather than by pres­

sure on the seat. The user pulled up on a handle, opening up the

closet's supply valve, simultaneously admitting water to the bowl and

engaging a cam that tipped the pan downward. Releasing the handle moved

the pan back into place, but it also tripped a second cam that held the

intake valve open. Thus water continued to flow into the pan until a

sufficient weight of water offset the balance of the valve and closed

it.45

Other pan closet patents issued at mid-century repeated these

basic design elements, constituting variations on a common theme. By

and large these devices linked the mechanism for opening and closing the

pan to the mechanism that regulated the flow of water, but this com­

plexity had distinct disadvantages.46 pan closets consisted of compli­

cated and often delicate parts, the failure of any one of which could

throw the entire closet out of working order. Tipping the pan dumped

the wastes into the hopper below and down into the soil pipe, but unless

the pan tipped quickly and sharply downward, wastes spilled onto the

sides of the receiver, rather than directly into the pipe. Worse yet,

the pan's tipping mechanism and hinge broke easily, and the pan itself

tended to corrode; the only way to get inside for repairs was by break­

ing the puttied seals and unscrewing the plates that held the pieces of

the closet together.4? But despite these problems, mid-century

inventors continued to design pan closets, concentrating on perfecting a

device in which each part worked in synchronism. The problem, of

course, was that the more parts there were, the more parts there were to

break down and go awry. In that sense, then, the process could never be

anything more than a dead end, because it would only lead to more com­

213

plicated devices that would be more likely to break down.*8

The Use of Mechanical Closets

The extent to which Americans used each type of closet is dif­

ficult to determine, since city water boards did not always dif­

ferentiate among types of fixtures. For example, the water boards in

Baltimore and Cambridge recorded the number of water closets used in

those cities, but not the number of each type. Boston's Cochituate

Water Board, on the other hand, recorded both the number and type of

closets. In that city pan closets predominated in the early 1850s, but

by the end of the decade hopper closets had surpassed them. For exam­

ple, in 1853 water takers used 1,622 pan closets, 698 hopper closets and

159 "self-acting" closets. By 1857, however, hoppers outnumbered pans

3,215 to 2,765. In 1870 the registrar recorded 11,319 pan closets, but

13,741 hoppers of various types.49 In his 1878 survey, T. M. Clark

described the pan closet as "the variety most extensively used" by

Americans, but he added that they proved satisfactory only when made in

a superior manner; otherwise their drawbacks made them a household hor­

ror.50 When he wrote that, however, in 1878, other kinds of closets

were crowding the American market, and it is doubtful that either the

pan or the hopper in their mid-century forms dominated as they had ear­

lier.51

As was true of other water fixtures, plumbers' supply houses

met the needs of a diverse audience by selling a wide range of closets.

A customer could buy a basic hopper, which generally had a short arm

formed in the rim for the purposes of attaching it to a water pipe, or a

hopper with an attached valve. The William Schoener Company's 1860

catalog offered customers four models of iron hoppers; enameled, plain,

214

double-, and single-valved. A plain hopper with single valve cost

$5.50; with double valve $7.00. A hopper with "Water Waste Preventer"

sold for $10.00 plain, and $12.50 enameled. The Jones Company's 1867

catalog offered customers a choice of plain and enameled short and long

hoppers, an enameled hopper with an attached "Patent Excelsior Valve,"

and a hopper "with earthen strainer in bottom" (Fig. 5.12).52 Some com­

panies sold a basic hopper with an attached earthenware bowl, a combina­

tion that, in theory at any rate, combined the hygienic superiority of

earthenware with the simplicity and low cost of the iron funnel.53

Jones and Company, which sold imported earthenware as well as plumbers'

tools and hardware, featured two such bowls in its catalog, while the

Schoener Company sold a cast iron stand, complete with valve, designed

to hold a closet bowl.54

These same catalogs offered a smaller selection of pan closets.

The 1859 Naylor catalog included just two types of pan closets, one

"plain" and one with a valve. Prices for the former ranged from eight

to eleven dollars, depending on whether the pull handle was pearl,

plated, enameled, or ivory. The same closet with valve attached started

at $10.75. Only the valve distinguished the two devices, so it is pos­

sible that the company intended the "plain" closet to be flushed either

manually by dumping water into the pan, or by attaching the device to a

stop cock or faucet. The Schoener Company sold three types of Carr pan

closets: a "self-acting" model, and two other manually operated ones

with valves. The self-acting model sold for as little as $9.00. With a

basin attached it cost just over two dollars more. The manually-

operated devices cost between nine and twelve dollars, depending upon

the finish and type of pull.55

215

.1. & II. JONICS & CJO.'S ILLUSTKATEU CATALOGUE. 03

JFig. 132.

Plain Water Closet.

li-iy. ia:i.

Enameled Hopper, with

Patent Excelsior Valve

atlached.

Fig. 5.12 Water closets from Jones and Co.

216

Plumbing supply houses also sold valves, basin joints, basins,

hoppers, stands, pans, traps, and pipes separately, so that plumbers

could design a unique closet for every customer. Indeed, patent appli­

cations indicate that installing a water closet was a peculiarly per­

sonal experience. For example, valve patents typically directed that

the devices could be attached to any "common" water closet. Similarly,

patent applications for some other part of the closet, such as the

receiver, or for a specific arrangement of valves, pipes, and bowl,

usually noted that the user could employ them with any type of valve or

devise any kind of water hook-up. Inventors generally patented a part,

rather than a complete device, leaving consumers plenty of leeway to

design the water closet of their choice, a necessity at a time when per­

sonal preference rather than public policy established the form of the

technology used in the home.®®

This lack of standardization is hardly surprising. As this

chapter has shown, in the middle of the nineteenth century, human waste

disposal technologies encompassed a wide array of devices; when properly

employed or appropriately situated, both the privy and the water closet

added to domestic convenience, but each household had to define con­

venience for itself. Families maximized convenience and improved their

domestic environments by arranging water fixtures in a manner best

suited to individual sets of circumstances; the family that installed

its water closet next to an outside wall needed a device that withstood

the elements, while those who installed it in the middle of the house

may have found the more delicate pan more to their liking. A rich fam­

ily could afford the larger expense of the temperamental pan closet, but

a family less well off found its convenience in a simpler device that

217

was less likely to break down. As with showers, bath tubs, and wash­

basins, manufacturers obliged consumers by providing numerous choices.

In any case, all of the technologies outlined here, and in the preceding

chapters, indicate that in the middle nineteenth century Americans took

seriously the task of progress and reform. On the large scale they

tackled slavery and the problem of alcohol, but on the personal level,

they examined—and found wanting—the household arrangements and tech­

nologies used in everyday life. This examination prompted a three

decade effort to define, invent, and implement a host of conveniences

that would improve the quality of American domestic life. Beginning in

the early 1870s, however, Americans began to re-examine one set of those

conveniences, plumbing fixtures. As a result they also began to

redesign and rename their household water fixtures so that these devices

might better meet the new task assigned to them. The final chapter

examines briefly some of the ideas and activities that contributed to

the next phase of American plumbing history.

218

Endnotes

^The best discussion of British and French late eighteenth and early nineteenth century water closets is in Glenn Brown, Water-closets. A Historical, Mechanical, and Sanitary Treatise (New York: The Indus­trial Publication Co., 1884; also published as "Water-closets," American Architect and Building News 12 (1882); 287-89, 299-300; vol. 13 (1883): 30, 75-76, 111, 135-36, 147, 171, 183-84, 195, 222-23, 234-35, 383-85; and vol. 14 (1883): 15, 27, 64, 75, 92, 138, 177, 183, hereafter cited as AABN), 20-27 and ff. Less useful is Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and Water Closet (New York: Viking Press, 1960), 104, 106-07.

^The best way to see this tendency in American closet and privy patents is by looking at the patent index. See M. D. Leggett, comp., Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the United States Patent Office From 1790-1873, Inclusive, 3 vols. (Washington, D. C. : Government Printing Office, 1874; reprint. New York; Arno Press, 1976).

^By the 1870s the term "sanitary ware" had come into use as a way to describe water fixtures and the so-called "sanitary" flush toilet had appeared in the United States and elsewhere. At that point, American commentators began to write about foreign closets almost exclu­sively. Indeed, the appearance of the "modern" flush toilets in the late nineteenth century seemed to overshadow completely the mid-century predecessors, relegating them to a status of insignificant fourth cousins, hardly worthy of consideration. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century surveyors of water closet technology all but ignored American patents prior to 1870. Glenn Brown's otherwise exhaustive his­torical survey of water closets, first published in the early 1880s, only mentioned four of the fifty-three American patents issued before 1870. (See Brown, Water-closets, 45, 72, 88. That number is from the Leggett index, and I counted only devices called "water closet," thereby excluding portable devices, seats, and small accessories to water closets.) Another survey of closets informed the reader that the Henry and Campbell water closets (patented in 1857 and discussed later in this chapter) was "the first United States patent for a water closet," thus ignoring the other ten patents issued either the same year or earlier. See Pottery: A History of the Pottery Industry and Its Evolution as Applied to Sanitation with Unique Specimens and Facsimile Marks from Ancient to Modern Foreign and American Wares (n. p.: Thomas Haddock's Sons Company, 1910), 80-86. The Leggett index listed ten devices called "water-closet" patented between 1835 and 1858. I did not count portable closets or privies.

^Charles P. Dwyer, The Economic Cottage Builder: or. Cottages for Men of Small Means (Buffalo; Wanzer, McKim and Co, 1856), 51. It should be noted, however, that the U. S. Patent Office issued no less than seventeen patents for improvements to privies between 1820 and 1873.

219

^George E. Woodward and Edward 6. Thompson, Woodward's National Architect (New York: George E. Woodward, [1869]), 2-3, 14 and Plate 25.

^Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages. A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution in the United States (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1857), 47-48. Also see Thomas Webster and Mrs. Parkes, Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, American edition, ed., D. Meredith Reese (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1845), 83, 303.

'sereno Edwards Todd, Todd's Country Homes and How to Save Money (Hartford, Conn.; Hartford Publishing Co., 1870), 29.

^William Ranlett, The Architect, A Series of Original Designs for Domestic and Ornamental Cottages and Villas, vol. 1 (New York; Wil­liam H. Graham, 1847), Designs 2-4, 14-18, and p. 32. It is not clear how important privacy or concealment was at this time. In his study of the American home, Clifford Clark noted that servants often had their own porch, so it is possible that one of a set of closets may have been intended for the exclusive use of servants. See Clifford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill, N. C.; University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 43. However, according to Daniel Boorstin, "old-fashioned privies . . . were often designed so that their users could enjoy the company and conversation of fellow-users. The early American outhouses . . . commonly had more than one seat, to facilitate use by more than one person at a time." See Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York; Random House, 1973), 354.

^Zebulon Baker, The Cottage Builder's Manual (Worcester: Z. Baker and Co., 1856), 135, 142-43.

lOwilliam Brown and Lewis E. Joy, The Carpenter's Assistant, rev. ed. (New York; Edward Livermore, 1853), 44; Marcus F. Cummings and Charles c. Miller, Modern American Architecture (Toledo, Ohio: by the authors and S. Bailey and Co., 1868), Plates 29-32.

l^George E. Woodward and F. W. Woodward, Woodward's Architec­ture, Landscape Gardening, and Rural Art-No. 1-1867 (New York; George E. and F. W. Woodward, 1867), 86, 88

lâchas. Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61); 38.

l^Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Luther Briggs Architect; Principal Story Plan and Foundation Plan, Ephm. Merriam house, Jamaica Plain, Mass., 1856, Drawer 5, File Number 7, Sheets 3 and 7; Basement Story Plan and Second Story Plan, T. Dwight House, Nahant, Mass., 1856, Drawer 5, File 3, Sheets 3 and 5.

l^Samuel Sloan, The Model Architect; A Series of Original Designs for Cottages, Villas, Suburban Residences, etc. (Philadelphia; E. S. Jones, [1852]), Design 6, Plate 22.

ISgioan, Model Architect, 1: Design 10, plate 40, pp. 49-50, 52. A similar arrangement is described in John Riddell, Architectural

220

Designs for Model Country Residences (Philadelphia: John Riddell; Lind­say, Blakiston, 1861), specifications for Design 11.

l^Ranlett, The Architect, 1:69.

l^Orson Fowler, A Home for All; or, The Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, rev. and enl. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1856), 111.

IBj. H. Hammond, The Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect; and Guide in Rural Economy (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1858), 150-51. Also see Sloan, Model Architect, 1:58; Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home (New York: J. B. Ford and Co., 1869), 38.

^®Hammond, Farmer's and Mechanic's Practical Architect, 151-52.

Z^Lewis Allen, Rural Architecture: Being A Complete Description of Farmhouses, Cottages, and Outbuildings (New York: C. M. Saxton, 1852), 111, 123.

H. Jacques, The House: A Manual of Rural Architecture: or. How to Build Houses and Out-Buildings (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1859), 55.

22charles Duggin, "How to Build Your Country Houses," Rural Register 2 (1860-61): 14.

23(3ervase Wheeler, Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country (New York: Charles Scribner, 1855), 125, plan p. 122.

24catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and At School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1841), 294.

25catharine E. Beecher, "The American People Starved and Poisoned," Harper's Magazine 32 (1866): 771.

2®Beecher and Stowe, American Woman's Home, 38, 403. By the time Beecher and Stowe published this text, George E. Waring, Jr. had already published a book touting the advantages of the earth closet over the water closet (a work Beecher and Stowe quoted at length in American Woman's Home). But the earth closet's great American heyday did not begin until the sewer gas fad of the 1870s and 1880s encouraged Americans to seek an alternative to the water closet. For a brief his­tory of the earth closet see Brian M. Sipe, "Earth Closets and the Dry Earth System of Sanitation in Victorian America," Material Culture 20 (1988): 27-37. Also see Moule's Patent Earth System (n. p.: Moule's Patent Earth-Closet Co., Ltd., n. d.); Beecher and Stowe, American Woman's Home, 403; "Earth Closets," Scientific American 20 (1869): 313; "Earth Closets," Technologist 2 (1871): 79; Todd S. Goodholme, ed., A Domestic Cyclopaedia (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1878), s. v., "Earth-closet"; George E. Waring, Jr., Earth-Closets: How to Make Them and How to Use Them (New York: Tribune Association, 1868).

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^^Brown's Water-closets provides the best look at non-American closets. Many of the types that only began to show up on the U. S. in the very late 1860s had been patented abroad decades earlier. By the late 1870s and 1880s, when a flood of surveys of plumbing technology began to appear, writers routinely differentiated among pan, valve, hop­per, plunger, and washout closets, and plumbers' catalogs published after 1875 did display more kinds of closets than are found in the catalogs published before 1870. These later surveys say little about closets used and manufactured in the United States before 1870, but see T. M. Clark, "Modern Plumbing: VII; Water-closets, I" AABN 4 (1878): 73-75; and "Modern Plumbing: VIII: Water-Closets, II," AABN: 90-92; "Sanitary Plumbing.-IV: The Pan-Closet," AABN 14 (1883): 148-40; "Sanitary Plumbing.-VII: Hopper-Closets," AABN 14 (1883): 198-200; and Glenn Brown, Water-Closets. A Historical, Mechanical, and Sanitary Treatise (New York: The Industrial Publication Company, 1884): esp. 20-27, 61-74, 98-99.

Also see William P. Gerhard, "House Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing," Fourth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Rhode Island (Providence: E. L. Freeman and Co., 1882): 318-19, 324-25; James C. Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service (New York: David William, 1878), 90-91; "Sanitary Plumbing.-Ill: The Water-Closet," AABN 14 (1883): 136-37; Pottery, 80-83.

The best surveys of late century water closet technology are Brown, Water-Closets; and "Sanitary Plumbing.-V; The Valve and Plunger Closets," AABN (14 (1883): 172-74; "Sanitary Plumbing.-VI: The Plunger-Closet," AABN 14 (1883): 189-90; "Sanitary Plumbing.-VII: 'Siphon'-Closet," AABN 14 (1883): 224-25; "Sanitary Plumbing.-IX: The 'Self-Sealing' Closet.-General Considerations," AABN 14 (1883): 234-35; "Sanitary Plumbing.-: The 'Self-Sealing' Closet.-Description," AABN 14 (1882): 247-48; "Sanitary Plumbing.-XI," AABN 14 (1883): 271-72; J. Pickering Putnam, Improved Plumbing Appliances (New York: William T. Comstock, 1887), 103-17.

2®Valves attached to water closets for the purpose of regulat­ing water intake and output should not be confused with the flap valves found on so-called "valve" water closets. This type of closet did not become common in the United States until the late 1870s and 1880s. A "valve closet" had a flap or other hinged opening (the valve) in the base of the bowl. The user flushed the closet by pulling on a lever or handle that opened flap and released the wastes and water trapped in the bowl. The best descriptions of these are in Brown, Water-closets, 29-50, and Clark, "Water Closets, I," 74; "Sanitary Plumbing.-V: The Valve and Plunger Closets," AABN 14 (1883): 172-74;.

Valves intended for manipulating water flow generally had mul­tiple chambers; manipulating a handle or lever opened and closed the chambers in order to release water into the bowl or soil pipe. Some valves merely released water, while others closed gradually in order to minimize the impact of water hammer or to allow the bowl or pan to refill. Designers usually fabricated the valves of brass and used wire springs, air chambers, and leather, rubber, or other "elastic" packing.

For example, see the patented valve mechanisms in William L. Schoener and Co., Illustrated Catalogue and Price List of Plumbers' Brass Work (New York: Sackett and Cobb, 1860), 65 and 67; J. and H. Jones and Co., Brass Cock Manufacturers, and Importers of Plumbers'

222

Earthenware, Catalogue (n. p., n. d., [1867]), 62-63. Some of the valve patents issued are U. S. Patent 15,474, W. S. Carr, "Water-Closet," 5 August 1856; Patent 25,092, W. S. Carr, "Water-closet," 16 August 1859; Patent 21,734, F. H. Bartholomew, "Water-closet," 12 October 1858; Patent 22,543, T. Birch and L. Bradley, "Water-Closet," 24 January 1860; Patent 84,262, H. H. Craigie, "Improvements in Water-closets," 24 Novem­ber 1868; Patent 107,178, J. Keane, "Improvement in Water-closet," 6 September 1870; Patent 114,238, D. Wellington, "Improvement in Water-closets," 25 April 1871.

2®Clark, "Water Closets, I," 73.

^^One of the better descriptions of the hopper was written in the late 1870s, but it likely represents a fairly accurate picture of the device as used during the mid-century years. See Clark, "Water Closets, I," 73-74. See also Gerhard, "House Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing," 324-28; Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service, 94-95.

31pottery, 85. At mid-century a hopper made of the entirely of earthenware probably would have been both expensive and uncommon, since, according to Pottery (pp. 20-25), American manufacturers did not begin manufacturing earthenware hoppers until the 1870s. Before that date, earthenware hoppers were probably imported from England, and it seems unlikely that the reputed low cost of the hopper would have been based on a costly imported object.

32ciark, "Water Closets, I," 73.

^^William Paul Gerhard, Hints on the Drainage and Sewerage of Buildings, 2d ed. (William T. Comstock, 1884), 227-28.

34Gerhard, "House Drainage," 325-26.

SSgayles, House Drainage, 94.

^®The flushing rim was a relatively late addition to the water closet. In the middle years of the century designers sometimes included a "fan" or "spreader" at the mouth of the supply pipe that forced the water into a spray formation, and at least one inventor designed a bowl that channeled water down the entire surface of the bowl. However, those were unusual, and a flushing rim did not become standard equipment on a closet bowl until later. For patents with spreaders see U. S. Patent 14,902, E. Bookhout and C. H. Hewlett, "Water-closet," 20 May 1856; and Patent 55,967, D. Wellington, "Improvement in Water-closets," 26 June 1866. For inventions designed to push water all around a bowl see U. S. Patent 10,620, D. Ryan and J. Flanagan, "Water-closet," 7 March 1854; and Patent 102,738, D. Wellington, "Improvement in Water-closet Bowls," 3 May 1870. A flushing rim was patented in 1859; see Patent 26,243, W. Boch, Sr., "Water-closet Basin," 29 November 1859.

^^The text of the 1854 report is reprinted in Boston, City Document No. 11, 1862, "Report of the Water Registrar on Waste of Water by Hopper Closets," 5-7.

223

38ibid., 7.

s. Patent 10,531, F. H. Bartholomew, "Water-closet," 14 February 1854.

^Opor another description of this patent see "Bartholomew's Improvement in Water Closets," Scientific American 9 (1853-54): 240. Two other patents that operated in similar fashion are Patent 18,550, Francis McGhan, "Water-closet," 3 November 1857; Patent 97,639, John B. Hobson and John Middleton, Jr., "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 Decem­ber 1869.

S. Patent 18,972, Jas. T. Henry and W. P. Campbell, "Water-closet," 29 December 1857.

42u. S. Patent 4,926, James Ingram and James Steuart, "Water-closet," 13 January 1847.

43u. S. Patent 9,480, William S. Carr, "Water-closet," 21 December 1852.

44u. S. Patent 15,474, William S. Carr, "Water-closet Valve," 5 August 1856.

s. Patent 25,092, William S. Carr, "Water-Closet Valve," 16 August 1859.

^®For other pan closets see U. S. Patent 6,862, C. C. Bier, "Portable Water-closet," 13 November 1849; Patent 19,375, F. McGhan, "Water-closet," 16 February 1858; Patent 28,853, Thomas Grundy, "Water-closet," 26 June 1860; Patent 33,070, W. S. Carr, "Water-closet," 20 August 1861; Patent 76,398, W. S. Carr, "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 April 1868; Patent 76,403, H. H. Craigie, "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 April 1868; Patent 78,148, W. Sprague, "Improvement in Water-closets," 19 May 1868; Patent 85,192, D. Wellington, "Improvement in Water-closets," 22 December 1868; Patent 90,502, B. R. Cole, "Improvement in Water-closets," 25 May 1868; Patent 108,378, D. Morrison and J. D. Smith, "Improvements in Water-closets," 18 October 1870; Patent 124,003, F. McGhan, "Improvement in Water-closets," 27 February 1872; Patent 127,307, W. S. Carr, "Improvement in Water-closets," 28 May 1872.

^^Brief, but useful, discussions of these problems can be found in U. S. Patent 76,398, W. S. Carr, "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 April 1868; Patent 76,403, H. H. Craigie, Improvement in Water-closets," 7 April 1868; Patent 79,728, W. S. Carr, "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 July 1868; Patent 80,708, W. S. Carr, "Improvement in Water-closets," 4 August 1868.

^®In the mid- to late-1860s, American inventors began moving away from this dead end and down a different path which ultimately cul­minated in the "flush" toilet. The history of this trend is properly the subject of another and different study, but here it should be noted that American inventors gradually turned away from the complicated

224

devices, most clearly embodied in the pan closet, and toward closets in which the shape of the bowl, rather than valves and levers, was the key component. It was from those efforts that the "washout," "washdown," and "syphon" closets eventually emerged. The late century porcelain closets should be seen not as the products of a unique phase of develop­ment, but as variations on themes well-developed by the middle part of the century. Indeed, the late nineteenth century water closet represents the tail end of a long period of tinkering which culminated in the smooth porcelain toilet still in use today.

^^Baltimore, Water Department, "Annual Report of the Water Department of the City of Baltimore, to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore," in Annual Reports of the City epartments- Baltimore, 1861 (n. p., 1861), 380; Baltimore, Water Department, Annual Report of the Water Department, of the City of Baltimore, for the Year Ending December 3l3t, 1869 (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet and Co., 1870), 28; Cambridge, Mass., Water Board, The Seventh Annual Report of the Cambridge Water Borad to the City Council, Together With Reports of the Registrar and Superinten­dent , and Other Documents, for the Year 1871 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871), 18; Boston, Cochituate Water Board, Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1853 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, 1854), 53; Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year 1857 (Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1858), 45; Report of the Cochituate Water Board, to the City Council of Boston, for the Year Ending April 30, 1871 (n. p., n. d.), 66.

SOciark, "Water Closets, II," 90.

^^Clark's 1878 discussion of closets is especially useful because he wrote at a time when American water closets were going through a period of intense transformation, and types of closets long used in England and Europe were finally coming to the United States. Compare Clark to Brown, writing just a few years later: Brown's catalog of closets and closet mechanisms indicates that the field of water closet technology had changed dramatically in less than a decade. See Clark, "Water Closets, I," 73-75 and Clark, "Water Closets, II," 90-92; Brown, Water-closets, 28-156.

S^Schoener and Co., Catalogue, 66-67; Jones and Co., Catalogue, 154-55. See also Abendroth Brothers, Plumbers's Price List (New York: Nesbitt & Co., [186-]), 13-15.

^^Clark, "Water Closets, I," 73.

^'^Jones and Co., Catalogue, 136; Schoener and Co., Catalogue, 66 .

^^Naylor and Willard, Illustrative and Descriptive Catalogue and Price List of Plumber's Brass Work (n. p., 1859), 86; Schoener and Co., Catalogue, 65, 67; Jones and Co., Catalogue, 61-63.

SSpor comments on this flexibility see U. S. Patent 33,070, W. S. Carr, "Water-closet," 20 August 1861; Patent 33,632, F. H.

225

Bartholomew, "Improved Water-closet," 5 November 1861; Patent 55,967, Darius Wellington, "Improvement in Water-closets," 26 June 1866; Patent 76,403, H. H. Craigie, "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 April 1868; Patent 78,148, W. Sprague, "Improvement in Water-closets," 19 May 1868; Patent 97,639, J. B. Hobson and J. Middleton, Jr., "Improvement in Water-closets," 7 December 1869.

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CHAPTER 6

EPILOGUE

Beginning in the very late 1860s and early 1870s, Americans'

attitudes toward and their use of plumbing underwent an intense trans­

formation. By the mid-1890s almost every American city, regardless of

size, used detailed plumbing codes and licensing regulations to monitor

the installation and use of plumbing, and plumbing fixtures themselves

had a new name: "sanitary ware." The era of convenience had ended; the

age of sanitation and regulation had begun.

At first glance the sources of change seem obvious. In the

1870s and 1880s hundreds of American municipalities constructed cen­

tralized water works that brought pressurized water into increasingly

large numbers of homes.^ The availability of "city" water facilitated

the use of plumbing fixtures, especially water closets, but the

increasingly large numbers of fixtures in use generated household wastes

that overwhelmed available drainage conduits, creating an apparently new

health hazard in the form of sewer gas. Public health officials,

municipal leaders, plumbers, and concerned citizens lobbied for relief

in the form of better sewers and safer plumbing installations.^

Municipalities responded with citywide unified water-carriage sewer

systems as well as plumbing codes that established minimum standards for

installation. At the same time, inventors perfected the "modern" flush

toilet and manufacturers began producing low cost porcelain fixtures

227

that enabled even more Americans to install water fixtures in their

homes.

This scenario includes the salient features of the late-century

transformation: concerned citizens, the sewer gas craze, newly organized

"professional" plumbers, sanitary engineers, and public health offi­

cials, and the appearance of water-carriage sewer systems. Missing from

this picture, however, are the late-century ideas and attitudes that

linked these outward manifestations of change. During the mid-century

decades a particular view of the family and the nation combined to shape

the use of household conveniences, but in the late century decades, a

different set of values emerged; as a result, Americans reassessed their

domestic environments and the technologies used in them. It may be use­

ful to end this study of mid-century plumbing by looking, albeit

briefly, at an especially potent manifestation and catalyst of new atti­

tudes toward the domestic environment and household plumbing, namely the

views articulated by members of the newly-organized American Public

Health Association in the first half of the 1870s.

"Sanitarians," as they will be called here, a group that

included physicians, engineers, college and university professors, and

others, asserted the existence of a body of knowledge, called sanitary

science, as well as the expertise to apply that knowledge. By 1872 they

had already created a national professional organization, the American

Public Health Association, which they used as a forum for espousing a

particular view of public health and the relationship between individu­

als and communities.3 During the 1870s in particular, the sanitarians'

work and the view they articulated played a leading role in shaping a

new attitude toward household plumbing.

228

Put simply, sanitarians claimed the existence of a body of

irrefutable facts that, taken together, constituted the laws and princi­

ples of sanitary science. They coopted the scientific and medical

research that demonstrated the important roles that both air and water

played in disease causation and transmission, and "devised a new

category of diseases-'zymotic disease,'. . . to denote illnesses caused

by impure air and water."* These facts about air, water, and disease

constituted the body of knowledge that formed the heart of sanitary

science. Sanitary science, explained one observer, "gathers into one

the teachings of all other sciences, so far as they bear upon private

and public health," with the goal of "mak[ing] these teachings practi­

cally operative in the promotion of human welfare . . . ."® "Sanitary

science," Joseph Toner remarked in his 1875 presidential address to the

APHA, "constitutes one of the most important advances and reforms of

this or of any age." "Our mission," he reminded his colleagues "is to

impart and encourage throughout the United states correct views on all

that relates to man's physical well-being."® Sanitarians claimed to

understand the laws of sanitary science, and, more importantly, to have

the expertise necessary to manage and manipulate the laws in order to

create healthy cities and healthy homes. "We have only to look about

us," commented civil engineer and APHA member Egbert Viele, "to see on

every hand individuals constructing edifices, and communities construct­

ing cities and towns ... in utter violation of those laws and princi­

ples upon which depends life itself." The responsibility for curbing

this recklessness and eliminating sanitary ignorance rested with the

experts.?

Sanitarians linked the laws of sanitary science to a particular

229

view of society: they argued that the laws of science and sanitation

operated in all places and at all times, regardless of locale, climate,

or income, and consequently, science, universal and timeless, superseded

individual rights. Public authorities ought to acknowledge the sanctity

of sanitary science by outlawing practices that violated its principles,

even at the risk of invading private spaces and negating individual

rights. Sanitarians also linked the universality of science to the idea

that society constituted an interconnected whole; the actions of an

individual affected others, and no one had the right to engage in unsafe

behavior because that behavior affected the whole community. This con­

ception of society had important implications for the idea of public

health. During the 1870s and after, American sanitary experts argued

that public health laws and reforms ought to encompass everyone, not

just the poor in tenements, and that all of the people, rich or poor,

immigrant or native, city dweller or suburbanite, contributed to and

detracted from the public health.® Everyone, explained one APHA member,

is "forced sooner or later to bear witness, willingly or unwillingly, to

the fact that he is not a unit in the scheme of creation, but is so con­

nected with the other members of his race that what is detrimental to

them will be detrimental to him, . . . ."®

I am my brother's keeper, then, because the health of myself and household is directly involved in the sanitary conditions that prevail throughout his house and grounds, and is to a certain extent dependent upon his recognition or rejection of the laws of health. Thus personal considerations bid me consider his sanitary condition as one of prime importance to myself directly and per­sonally, and the law of self-preservation intensifies the interest I should take in his welfare.

When individuals neglected to honor and adhere to the laws of sanita­

tion,. their sanitary shortcomings brought affliction not only upon them­

selves but, because humans lived in society, upon others as well.

230

Because the laws and facts of sanitary science were operative every­

where, the work and interests of sanitarians encompassed a wide range of

human activities and events. At their meetings, members of the APHA

discussed everything from municipal waste removal to epidemic diseases,

from the "sanitary requirements" of factories to quarantines and the

impact of heredity on disease and longevity.

"Domestic sanitarians," as one historian has called them,

formed a particularly active branch of the late century sanitary and

public health effort.H Domestic sanitarians regarded the home as their

special provenance and treated it as "an important vector of disease

among all classes of the citizenry. They coopted the group of facts

that mid-century Americans had regarded as principles of architecture,

such as the importance of correct site selection, good soil, and ade­

quate light and air, and then linked those facts to the principles and

laws of sanitary science. By linking the two, sanitarians were able to

argue that the "laws" of sanitary science, rather than personal prefer­

ence or architectural necessity, ought to govern the construction of

houses and management of household air, water supply, and waste removal

systems. To the notion of science as supreme, the domestic sanitarians

added the idea of interconnectedness : no man, woman, or individual home

was an island unto itself. Stephen Smith, a New York physician long

active in the American public health movement and first president of the

APHA, labelled "pernicious" "the legal principle which recognizes the

right in general of every citizen to mange his household affairs as he

pleases, debarring the right of the State to inquire into and regulate

them, so far as they affect the public health . . . ." Each and every

family, he explained, by virtue of its intake of material and output of

231

wastes, "is a perpetual source of unhealthfulness to itself and to the

neighborhood . . . . " Smith argued for a "radical reform in the treat­

ment of private and other residences by municipal boards of health, - in

other words, to enforce the cardinal principle, 'the house Is the unit

of sanitary administration.'"^^ His colleague Toner concurred; many

people, he observed, entertain "a false conception of personal and

domiciliary rights." They assume the right "to do, to neglect, and to

maintain-upon their own premises-whatever their cupidity, their

ignorance and . . . laziness may elect, without molestation and without

question, by neighbors or the municipal authorities . . . . " This view,

he added, "has greatly retarded the progress and efficiency of State

Medicine.

Domestic sanitarians lamented the fact that so few people

understood the scientific principles of domestic architecture and con­

struction, or the fact that every house constituted an unnatural element

on the landscape. From "the very moment a spot comes to be builded

[sic] upon, it is by necessity placed in abnormal conditions."

The building clears the ground of that herbage which had no unimportant sanitary office [and] covers it from sunlight and sun-heat, and necessarily makes its condition as to moisture quite dif­ferent. It interferes with the range of winds, and modifies the immediate thermometric and hygrométrie conditions of the atmos­phere. It throws the rain-fall into streams upon the ground . . . instead of allowing it to diffuse itself in drops. ... It alters the course of water, making . . . the cellar, the well, the cistern, the cesspool, the privy vault, and the sewer, parts of its underground drainage. In a word, it alters the whole relation of the ground occupied and of its immediate surroundings.^^

In order to restore the balance between the unnatural man-made structure

and the natural environment upon which it intruded, domestic sanitarians

argued that homes should be built under "the direction of competent

sanitary authority," because only the expert could "fully protect the

232

household and the community from the dangers to health and life incident

to domiciliation," explained one APHA member.16

The construction of dwellings of every description must come under the supervision of that branch of sanitary authority which represents expert knowledge in architecture and engineering. The plans of every proposed dwelling should receive the approval of such authority, in all their essential details relating to drainage, ventilation, heating, and lighting, before the work is done. It is not necessary that every architect should be an expert, . . . only [that he] be required to conform to prescribed r u l e s . . . .

In domestic architecture, "taste and convenience . . . should be sub­

sidiary to sanitary considerations. The true function of a dwelling is

to assist rather than to supersede nature . . . ."18 Every aspect of

the house, domestic sanitarians asserted, functioned best when installed

and built according to sanitary principles.

But domestic sanitarians also regarded the house itself as an

interconnected system; the house constituted an organic whole akin to

the human body whose parts had to be arranged in a way that ensured the

proper functioning of the whole. In this respect, the domestic

sanitarians echoed the arguments of the mid-century architects and

domestic mavens, but unlike their predecessors, the late century experts

touted science, rather than the demands of national progress, as the

justification for their assertions. This view of the house as an inter­

connected system meant that no feature of the dwelling, whether it be

the application of wallpaper or the arrangement of the nursery, proved

insignificant or escaped scientific scrutiny. Water supply and waste

removal, however, received special attention from the sanitarians.

These late century experts argued for scientifically constructed and

installed household water supply systems, water fixtures, and waste

removal technologies. They explained to their countrymen that

233

heretofore water closets, bathing tubs, water and waste pipes, and traps

had not been installed correctly; that is, plumbers, builders, and

homeowners had neither understood nor adhered to the laws of sanitary

science, and the resulting improperly installed fixtures caused much

household illness. "The introduction of the water-closet marked a real

advance in . . . civilization, and . . . 'all the modern conveniences'

have made life easier and more luxurious," explained George E. Waring,

Jr. in a paper read before the APHA. "But ... in gaining these marked

benefits, we have exposed ourselves to dangers which are all the more

grave because of their hidden and almost universally unsuspected charac­

ter." "So little is known of the sanitary requirements which should

govern [plumbing] work, . . . that in securing comforts and convenience,

we have, in almost every instance, introduced a real element of

danger.

Domestic sanitarians found the water closet to be especially

troublesome, but because they regarded supply, waste, and fixture

arrangements—plumbing—as a whole and interconnected system, they

argued that the closet constituted only one part of a larger system.

Connected to supply and waste pipes, to other fixtures, and, in some

cases, to outside sewers, the water closet's shortcomings—inadequate

traps and poorly made pipes—posed a threat to an entire house as

noxious gases, especially sewer gas, wafted through other pipes and,

eventually, into the structure's many rooms. But sanitarians recognized

the larger implications of this domestic problem. In a private dwell­

ing, improperly installed fixtures harmed the occupants, but because

each person and each household constituted only one unit of a larger

body, improper installation also posed a potential danger to the whole

234

community. The house's connections to sewers and cesspools provided

conduits for potentially poisonous gases: as wastes putrefied inside

poorly drained sewers, for example, gases built up and, seeking an out­

let, eventually leaked up into the house through bad pipe joints and

inadequate traps. The house may have been a "unit of sanitary adminis­

tration," but it was a unit attached to a larger whole, and sanitarians

argued that both the parts and the whole were safe only when organized

according to correct scientific sanitary principles.21

The domestic sanitarians' views found fertile ground in late

nineteenth century America. A veritable flood of books, pamphlets, and

journals explored every conceivable aspect of the scientifically

sanitary house in general and plumbing in particular. Professional

journals like The Plumber and Sanitary Engineer, American Architect and

Building News, and The Sanitarian as well as popular publications such

as Atlantic, Harper's, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and

Forum routinely published essays that explored all aspects of scientific

and "correct" plumbing.22 Late century architectural plan books often

included sections on the importance of proper plumbing installations,

but American builders, plumbers, architects, and home owners also bene­

fited from the publication of a number of specialty texts during the

1870s. Several British treatises had their first U. S. printing during

that decade, but American domestic sanitarians, sanitary engineers, and

plumbers also published numerous texts designed to educate readers on

the methods and science of good plumbing practice.23 city and state

public health boards and departments, which became firmly established in

the United States beginning in the 1870s, as well as medical journals

regularly published essays on the subjects of good drainage practice.

235

correct water closet installation, and the dangers of sewer gas.24

Manufacturers, sanitarians, and inventors proclaimed the virtues of a

number of inventions and improvements designed to overcome the perceived

shortcomings of conventional water fixtures. The Rochedale pail system

of waste disposal, the earth closet, the Durham system of house

drainage, the Liernur pneumatic system of drainage, "odorless excava­

tion" methods of waste removal, and the glass water closet each had its

moment in the 1870s and 1880s.^5 By the mid-1880s the idea of the

scientifically-arranged house as "a unit of sanitary administration" had

become commonplace, and municipal governments responded by formalizing

the laws of correct plumbing installation in the form of municipal

plumbing codes and licensing regulations for plumbers.^6

Science was not the only motivating force behind this drive.

During the 1880s sanitary science continued to receive attention, but

now other factors contributed to the transformation of plumbing's role

in the home: Americans dramatically reorganized the structure of

municipal administrative machinery in order to ensure greater efficiency

in urban systems. Plumbing codes and housing inspectors, along with

routinized waste removal, centralized unified sewer systems, and spe­

cialized hierarchical bureaucracies enabled city officials to manage

increasingly complex urban systems with efficiency and ease.27 More­

over, "domestic reformers" of a type different than their mid-century

counterparts campaigned for more efficient, scientifically managed

homes; as a labor-saving device, plumbing helped improve domestic

efficiency.28 Regardless of the impetus for changes in attitudes toward

and use of plumbing, however, it is clear that by the turn of the

century Americans had dramatically altered their relationship with this

236

household technology. By 1900 Americans regarded plumbing less as a

convenience and a necessity for the few, and more as an integral part of

and necessity for a successful public health program, a smoothly

functioning urban system, and an efficiently managed domestic environ­

ment. True, even then not every American home boasted a full complement

of "conveniences," but plumbing had become an increasingly commonplace

item in the American home, especially as the price of fixtures continued

to drop and as real estate developers built housing developments fully

equipped with access to sewer and water lines—and, of course, homes

with plumbing.29 All the modern conveniences had found a permanent

place in the American home.

237

Endnotes

Ipor data on late-nineteenth century water works construction is M. N. Baker, ed.. The Manual of American Water-Works, 4 vols. (New York: Engineering News Publishing Co., 1889-1897).

^The classic account of the adoption of water-carriage sewer systems is in Joel A. Tarr and Francis Clay McMichael, "The Evolution of Wastewater Technology and the Development of State Regulation: A Retrospective Analysis," in Retrospective Technology Assessment-1976, ed. Joel A. Tarr (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, Inc., 1977), 165-90; but also see Joel A. Tarr, "The Separate vs. Combined Sewer Problem: A Case Study in Urban Technology Design Choice," Journal of Urban His­tory 5 (1979): 308-39; Jon A. Peterson, "The Impact of Sanitary Reform Upon American Urban Planning, 1840-1890," Journal of Social History 13 (1979): 84-89; Stanley K. Schultz and Clay McShane, "To Engineer the Metropolis: Sewers, Sanitation, and City Planning in Late-Nineteenth Century America," Journal of American History 65 (1978): 392-99.

3john Duffy, The Sanitarians : A History of American Public Health (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 129-33; Stanley K. Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 146-48; Harold M. Cavins, "The National Quarantine and Sanitary Conventions of 1857 to 1860 and the Beginnings of the American Public Health Association," Bul­letin of the History of Medicine 13 (1943): 414-25; Howard D. Kramer, "Agitation for Public Health Reform in the 1870's," Journal of the His­tory of Medicine 3 (1948): 485-88; Samuel Haber, The Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 326-28, 356-57.

'^Nancy Tomes, "The Private Side of Public Health: Sanitary Science, Domestic Hygiene, and the Germ Theory, 1870-1900," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 517-18. For contemporaries' discus­sions of science and sanitation see Ezra M. Hunt, "The Need of Sanitary Organization in Villages and Rural Districts," Public Health Reports and Papers 1 (1873): 491-93 (hereafter cited as Reports and Papers); E. N. Horsford, "A New Profession in the Service of Hygiene," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 206; Albert R. Leeds, "Sanitary Science in the United States - Its Present and It Future," Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine 20 (1879): 6-7; Joseph M. Toner, "A View of Some of the Leading Public Health Questions in the United States," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 2-3; F. A. P. Barnard, "The Germ Theory of Disease and Its Relations to Hygiene," Reports and Papers 1 (1873): 86-87.

^Leeds, "Sanitary Science," 6.

®Toner, "A View of Some of the Leading Public Health Ques­tions," 2.

^Egbert Viele, "A Discourse on the Principles and Practice in Drainage and Sewerage, in Connection with Water-Supplies," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 333. Also see Hunt, "Need of Sanitary Organiza­tion," 491-93.

238

Spor a discussion of the impact of the germ theory on this view see Alan I. [sic] Marcus, "Disease Prevention in America: From a Local to a National Outlook, 1880-1910," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 53 (1979): 184-203.

®Lewis H. Steiner, "A Sanitary View of the Question, - 'Am I My Brother's Keeper?'" Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75); 516.

lOlbid., 518. For similar expressions see Hunt, "Need of Sanitary Organization," 494; John S. Billings, "The Rights, Duties and Privileges of the Community in Relation to Those of the Individual in Regard to Public Health," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 48-52; Edward H. Janes, "Health of Tenement Populations and the Sanitary Requirements of Their Dwellings," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 117, 123; Viele, "A Discourse," 340; Stephen Smith, "The Influence of Private Dwellings and Other Habitations on Public Hygiene: The Relations of Sanitary Authority to Them," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 57, 61.

l^Tomes, "The Private Side of Public Health," 510.

Ibid. Tomes argued that "between 1860 and 1880, changes in both the scientific understanding of disease and the material circum­stances of middle-class home life elevated domestic prevention of dis­ease to a new importance." Tomes, p. 517.

l^Smith, "The Influence of Private Dwellings," 54-55.

l^Toner, "A View of Some of the Leading Public Health Ques­tions," 2-3.

l^Ezra M. Hunt, "Building Ground in Its Relation to Health," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 306.

IGgmith, "The Influence of Private Dwellings," 60.

l^Ibid., 61. Also see Horsford, "A New Profession," 205-07; Carl Pfeiffer, "A Report Upon 'Sanitary Relations to Health Principles of Architecture'," Reports and Papers 1 (1873): 147-56; F. H. Hambleton, "A Plea for Sanitary Engineering. - A Report on Efficient House Connec­tions with Sewers and the Protection of Houses Against Sewer Gases," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 368-73; Ezra Hunt, "Dwellings-Houses in Their Relations to Health," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 316-23; Hunt, "Building Ground In Its Relation to Health," 306-16; Ezra M. Hunt, "The Sanitary Appointments and Outfitting of Dwelling-Houses, Regarded as Essential and Obligatory," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 120-29; Viele, "A Discourse," 331-30; Henry W. Dean, "Sanitary Principles in Home Architecture," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 324-30.

l^Hunt, "Dwelling-Houses in Their Relations to Health," 316.

l^For a good general discussion of the domestic sanitarians' interests see Tomes, "The Private Side of Public Health," 522-28; for a typical scientific discussion of the whole house see Hunt, "Dwelling-Houses in Their Relations to Health," 316-23.

239

ZOceorge E. Waring, Jr., "The Sanitary Condition of Country Houses and Grounds," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 132.

21see, for example, H. R. Noel, "Sewer-Gas As A Cause of Diphtheria, Membranous Croup, and Typho-Malarial Diseases," Reports and Papers 2 (1874-75): 362-67; Waring, "The Sanitary Condition of Country Houses and Grounds," 130-39; William H. Brewer, "The Gases of Decay and the Harm They Cause in Dwellings and Populous Places," Reports and Papers 3 (1875-76): 199-204; Dean, "Sanitary Principles in Home Architecture," 329-30; Hunt, "Sanitary Appointments and Outfitting of Dwelling-Houses," esp. 124-29; Hambleton, "A Plea for Sanitary Engineer­ing," 368-73.

^^Plumber and Sanitary Engineer in particular provided both professionals and lay people with detailed information about plumbing, but also other features of sanitation and domestic health, such as gas and ventilation. The editors also promoted sanitary legislation, including plumbing codes. For an anecdotal account of the journal's founding see Henry C. Meyer, The Story of The "Sanitary Engineer," Later the "Engineering Record" (New York: privately printed, 1928), 2-10.

Z^For the British texts see William Eassie, Healthy Houses. A Handbook to the History, Defects, and Remedies of Drainage, Ventilation, Warming, and Kindred Subjects (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1872; London, 1872); and Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin, Healthy Houses, American edition, ed. George E. Waring, Jr. (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1879). American texts include James C. Bayles, House Drainage and Water Service (New York: David Williams, 1878); W. L. D. O'Grady, Hints to Plumbers and Householders (New York: The American News Co., 1878); William Corfield, Duelling Houses, Their Sanitary Construction (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1880); William P. Gerhard, Hints on the Drainage and Sewerage of Dwellings, 2d ed. (New York: William T. Corn-stock, 1884); Roger S. Tracy, Hand-book of Sanitary Information for Householders, Containing Facts and Suggestions About Ventilation, Drainage, Care of Contagious Disease, Disinfection, Food, and Water. With Appendices on Disinfectants and Plumbers' Materials (New York: D. Appleton, 1884), esp. 21-66 and 100-02; J. Pickering Putnam, Lectures on the Principles of House Drainage (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1886); J. Pickering Putnam, Improved Plumbing Appliances (New York: William T. Comstock, 1887).

Z^The Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States is the best source of citations for the hundreds of essays published in medical journals and health board reports. Typi­cal essays include Thomas S. Logan, "Drainage of Building Sites - Sub­soil and House Drainage, Etc.," Third Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, for the Years 1874 and 1875 (Sacramento: G. H. Springer, 1875), 157-62; Henry A. LaFetra, "House Drainage: How It Is and How It Should Be Constructed in Brooklyn," Report of the Board of Health of the City of Brooklyn. 1875-1876 (Brooklyn: Union-Argus Book and Job, 1877), 143-55; George A. Kimball, "House Drainage," First Annual Report of the Board of Health of the City of Somerville, for the Term Beginning February 4, and ending December 31, 1878 (Somerville, Mass.: Somerville Journal Press, 1879), 41-48; Orville Fisher, "Sewerage

240

of the Dwelling," Second Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Rhode Island, for the Year Ending December 31, 1879 (Providence: E. L. Freeman, 1880), 275-81; E. N. Dickerson, "Sewer-Gas in Houses: Its Origins and Prevention," New York Medical Journal 29 (1879); 364-71; D. E. Chace, "How Shall We Render Our Homes Healthy?" Proceedings of the Medical Society of the County of Kings, 1882; 27-33; William P. Gerhard, "House Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing," Fourth Annual Report of the State Board of Health, of the State of Rhode Island, for the Year Ending December 31, 1881 (Providence: E. L. Freeman, 1882), 257-343; G. Frank Lydston, "Modern Sanitation. Some of Its Fallacies and Relations to the Zymotic Diseases, With Especial Reference to the Defects of Our So-Called 'Modern Improvements,'" Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner 48 (1884): 337-57.

25QQod discussions of the Rochedale pail system are in James J. Waring, "A Communication to the City Council on the Privy System of Savannah," in Supplement to the Mayor's Report, January 1st, 1879. The Epidemic at Savannah, 1876, by James J. Waring (Savannah: Morning News Steam Printing, 1879), 170-81; and Hunt, "The Sanitary Appointments and Outfitting of Dwelling-Houses," 127-28. For the Liernur system see Adam Scott, "The Pneumatic System. Captain Liernur's Improved System of House Drainage," Third Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, for the Years 1874 and 1875 (Sacramento; G. H. Springer, 1875; reprinted from The Sanitary Record (London), 1874), 170-93. The best discussion of late century improvements in water closets is in Glenn Brown, Water-Closets. A Historical, Mechanical, and Sanitary Treatise (New York: The Industrial Publication Co., 1884), but also see the Hartford Sanitary Plumbing Co., "The Hartford Glass Water-Closet," pamphlet held at the Historical Division, National Library of Medicine, n. d. Also see C. W. Durham, Specialties in Domestic Sanitary Engineer­ing for the Promotion of Health By Pure Air (Chicago; Knight and Leonard, 1879). For excavation methods as an alternative to water-carriage see U. S. Patent 96,385, J. G. Berger, "Improvement in Apparatus for Emptying Privy-Vaults," 2 November 1869; Patent 141,410, F. J. Wildenthaler, "Improvement in Apparatus for Emptying Sinks and Cesspools," 29 July 1873; "Improvement in Vacuum Tanks," Scientific American n. s. 8 (1863): 189; William Worthington, Jr., "The Privy and the Pump; The Matthewman & Johnson Excavating Device," Technology and Culture 31 (1990); 451-55; Betty L. Plummer, "A History of Public Health in Washington, D. C., 1800-1390," (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Maryland, 1984), 172-73; Edward T. Morman, "Scientific Medicine Comes to Philadelphia; Public Health Transformed, 1854-1899," (Ph.D. disserta­tion, University of Pennsylvania, 1986), 51-53; Philip D. Jordan, The People's Health: A History of Public Health in Minnesota to 1948 (St. Paul; Minnesota Historical Society, 1953), 131-32; but for another per­spective on the problem of urban waste removal see Joel A. Tarr, "From City to Farm; Urban Wastes and the American Farmer," Agricultural His­tory 49 (1975); 598-612.

Z^The best single survey of late century plumbing codes is in Charles V. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation in the United States (Providence, R. I.; Snow and Farnham, 1901), 220-61; but also see Indus­trial Chicago (Chicago; The Goodspeed Press, 1891), 87-97 and 180-83; Morman, "Scientific Medicine Comes to Philadelphia," 56-57; J. Worth

241

Estes and David M. Goodman, The Changing Humors of Portsmouth: The Medi­cal Biography of an American Town, 1623-1983 (Boston: The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, 1986), 136; William Travis Howard, Public Health Administration and the Natural History of Disease in Baltimore, Maryland, 1797-1920 (Washington, D. C. : Carnegie Institution of Washing­ton, 1924), 73-74, 144-45, 164-65; J. Pickering Putnam, Improved Plumb­ing Appliances (New York: William T. Comstock, 1887), 52-57; "Circular LXV of the New Jersey State Board of Health. Construction, Plumbing, Ventilation and Drainage of Buildings and Outside Connections Thereof, As Regulated by Local Boards of Health," Twelfth Annual Report of the Board of Health of the State of tfew Jersey, and Report of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1888 (Trenton: John L. Murphy, 1889), 371-79; "The Examination of Plumbers, Plumbing, and House Drains," Sixteenth Report of the State Board of Health of the State of New Hampshire (n. p., 1900), 104-27. Journals such as Plumber and Sanitary Engineer and Hydraulic and Sanitary Engineer often reported on the content of various plumbing codes when individuals cities passed such laws.

27see Schultz, Constructing Urban Culture, 183-94 and 200-05; Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age, 1860-1920 (Arlington Heights, 111.; Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1985), 108-22; Kenneth Fox, Better City Government: Innovations in American Urban Politics, 1850-1937 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), 42-62; and Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: The Conspicuous Failure, 1870-1900 (New York: Praeger Press for the National Municipal League, 1974), 97-115 and 148-77.

2®a good discussion of this home economics movement is in Clif­ford E. Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill, N. C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 157, 158-162; but also see Gwendolyn Wright, "Sweet and Clean: The Domestic Landscape in the Progressive Era," Landscape 20 (1975): 38-43; Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 150-70.

29see the discussions in Clark, American Family Home, 155-57; Ann Durkin Keating, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Crea­tion of a Divided Metropolis (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1988), 51-51, 54-60; Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Micro­wave (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 154-55, 160-62; Susan Stras-ser. Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 97-103; Marc Jeffrey Stern, "The Potters of Trenton, New Jersey, 1850-1902: A Study in the Industrialization of Skilled Trades," (Ph.D. dissertation. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1986), 153-57, 574-77, and 607-08. Stern says that in 1890 sanitary ware manufacturers formed an association "with a view to raising prices and standardizing sizes." Between 1890 and 1891 "prices rose as much as 20 percent." (Stern, 577.) It seems likely, however, that prices dropped during the decade, especially as companies like Sears, Roebuck began selling fixtures in catalogs.

242

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