NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

THE ERA of the casual bathhouse in facilitation of swimming within publicly owned parks is passing. This more or less unsupervised building of the past, now giving place to the controlled bathhouse, is within the memory of all of us. As we dwell fondly on the summer holidays of youth, we perhaps find it difficult to recall clearly that dingy, ill-arranged, ill-maintained, and unhygienic building. It was one of those pioneer structures in recreation that, after worthy apprenticeship cherished in memory, has since moved on to a more orderly and complete fulfilment of function. To cling in nostalgic recall to the bathhouse of horse and carry-all days is as illogical in present day park recreation as to insist upon that means of transportation, or bathing apparel of the same period.

Progress has overtaken the primitive bathhouse, just as it has forced more positive and more complex systems of sanitation within parks grown beyond the safe limits of that lack of sanitation tolerable only in the little-patronized area. Beyond doubt the ever-increasing use of public park facilities by people of widely different social strata is responsible for this trend, and its effects are beneficial and many.

Supervisory control of the bathhouse or bathing pavilion has brought with it higher standards generally in all details of the structure and its accessories. It has been subjected to tests for efficiency and hygiene and emerges very much in step with this year of grace. Whether operated directly or as a concession, a bathhouse in a public area should be so efficiently arranged and constructed that the greatest number of people are suitably accommodated at the lowest possible capital cost. This means, or should mean, the lowest possible charge for use. Here is no place for unnecessary spaciousness, or luxury, or operating system that does not fulfil this requirement, nor is there place for private dressing booths only, claimable under one rental for periods of many hours, and leading to vastness of structure if the use demand is to be met.

Large and spacious buildings can only lead to an exorbitant use-fee if the investment is to be served, or to an inadequate financial return if the public is to be served as it has the right to expect—at a moderate charge. A system that provides for a checking of possessions while a patron is not actually occupying the dressing booth multiplies the capacity and at the same time curbs the size of the building, and should lead to subsequent scaling down, theoretical at least, of the fee. The adoption of such a system is therefore an obligatory demand upon any park authority charged with determining the operating method of a bathhouse on public property, and not unaware of his responsibility.

To meet the need for efficient conservation of space, the old practice of issuing keys for private dressing booths is replaced with open dressing space, or with booths that are only claimable during actual occupancy. Various arrangements for the safe keeping of the bather's possessions while he is on the beach have developed. With the locker system, the bather is issued a key to a small compartment in which his effects may be locked up. With the basket system, he is furnished a basket or tray in which his possessions may be placed and checked with the attendant. The Westchester County Park Commission has given up the use of bathhouse lockers in favor of basket checking, for the reason that baskets can be sterilized more thoroughly and readily than lockers. This Commission prefers aluminum trays to wire baskets, because buttons and clothing are apt to catch and tear in wire mesh.

The number of lockers or baskets provided should be nicely scaled to the capacity of the available dressing space, with due regard for whether the bathing is done in an artificial pool where the time in the water is limited, or in a large body of water where the time element is not a factor. For a given number of people, fewer lockers need be provided in connection with a pool than with a larger swimming beach where many of the bathers hold lockers or baskets for several hours.

Dressing space may be arranged in any one of several ways, or in combinations of these. For men and boys, one general open dressing room with benches and clothes racks is usual. Dressing booths, each equipped with seat and clothes hooks, either open-front, curtained, or with doors, are sometimes provided. There is, however, hardly sufficient reason for providing these exclusively. It seems more reasonable to provide a limited number of dressing booths for the older generation, and a general dressing space for those younger patrons bred in the gymnasium-equipped public schools.

A general dressing space is less acceptable to women. Booths with curtains or doors are probably preferred by them, and if not provided to the exclusion of all open dressing space, should utilize the greater portion of the space available. The younger woman of today, with her increasing participation in sports, probably does not demand the private booth as generally as her elders.

Showers are not only a desirable facility in all bathhouses, but are absolutely essential, and desirable in greater numbers whenever the swimming is done in an artificial pool and bathing with soap before entering the pool is obligatory. Showers for men may be in one general open area. For women they should be individual. It is illogical in bathhouse planning to make provision for women to dress in privacy in booths, and at the same time make necessary their traversing a public aisle to and from the showers. It would seem reasonable, if modesty is to be served, that it be served consistently. In a proper proportion, some few showers might well be provided in direct communication with groups of two or three booths, if available funds permit. Particularly is this true if the swimming is to be done in an artificial pool, with its compulsory preliminary bath.

If the swimming is in an artificial pool, a foot-bath containing disinfectant to minimize the spread of foot infections should be provided in the passage from the dressing room to the pool so that its use cannot be avoided.

Toilets should be conveniently and conspicuously placed where they must be passed on the way to beach or pool.

An understanding of hygiene has brought other changes to the construction and operation of the bathhouse. Almost always when swimming is in an artificial pool, bathers are required for sanitary reasons to use suits, caps, and towels provided by the management. In connection with some swimming pools in metropolitan park areas, a physical examination is compulsory before entrance to the pool is permitted. This is a sensible precautionary measure in the instance of a heavily used facility.

The value of sunlight and ventilation is lately more fully understood. One bathhouse dressing room arrangement that reflects in maximum this enlightenment is roofed only over the booths and toilets, leaving the aisles and any general dressing space open to the sky. What is more logical than this casting off of the frayed tradition that dressing space must be entirely sheltered? When the weather is too cold for dressing in semishelter, it is likewise too cold for outdoor swimming.

Almost without exception a charge is made for the use of the bathhouse. The income is applied to operation and maintenance. The attendants' station or room, where fees are collected, where suits, towels, baskets, or keys are issued to patrons, and possessions are checked, should be adroitly and compactly laid out in relation to entrance lobby and to passages leading to the men's and women's dressing rooms, so that complete supervision is had with the fewest possible attendants. This is important for the curbing of operating cost.

ALL THE FOREGOING is by way of outlining the basic essentials of the modern bathhouse in a park. There are supplementary appurtenances that are often desirable but not exactly requisite, such as lavatories, drinking fountains, wringers for bathing suits, hair driers, and public telephones. There are dependencies, the incorporation of which will be determined by the operating policy or the funds available, such as office, rest rooms, first aid room, and lifeguards' retiring and locker room. If suits and towels are rented, a laundry and drying room are necessary, unless the laundering is done off the premises.

There are also unrelated features which policy, expediency, and economic and other considerations may make it reasonable to incorporate, and which forthwith transform the bathhouse into a pavilion, community, or combination structure. Police or employes' retiring and locker rooms, employes' living quarters, winter storage space, concessions for the sale of food, drink, candy, tobacco, and toys, and for the rental of beach gear, with all the necessary dependencies of these, may make the bathhouse a large and complex structure.

In connection with a swimming beach, a pier or a float for the bathers' use is a needed accessory. Both these facilities are usually equipped with one or more diving boards, and sometimes include an elevated diving platform and benches for the swimmers.

The float is a level platform built on solid foundations, preferably, or carried on pontoons and anchored where the water is of suitable depth. The latter arrangement is an especially practical feature where the water level is not constant, and where there is real benefit from the offered possibility of mooring at different locations. The pier sometimes takes the form of an enclosure to limit the range of children, nonswimmers, and beginners. So built, it helps greatly to regulate use and promote safety.

Those persons not bathing but wishing admission to the shore are often required to pay a nominal fee for this privilege if the beach area is limited and can be enclosed. This practice regulates crowding, and a turnstile entrance with change booth nearby is the usual and businesslike means of control. Park regulations against taking food onto the beach and against persons in bathing suits leaving the immediate beach area may be most easily enforced at the turnstile. Many parks see fit to prohibit the changing of clothes in automobiles or places other than the bathhouse provided for this purpose.

To back-track from the features that are only auxiliary to bathhouses to a concluding consideration of the bathhouse proper, it cannot be too forcefully urged that in the choosing of materials and equipment entering into such a structure, the readiness with which these can be maintained in whole and clean condition should be carefully weighed. Just as for park toilets, the standard of maintenance is geared to the durability and cleanability of the materials used. Maintenance funds are too often insufficient, yet a wise choice of materials can offset this lack within a reasonable limit. Failure to maintain bathhouse and toilet facilities in sanitary condition is a fair target for complaint by a public that will be apathetic to equivalent lack of maintenance in the case of almost every other park facility.

The diagrams and illustrations of specific successful examples which follow seek to convey typical groupings and relationships of the several component parts, as well as the dependencies, of the bathhouse that has place in public parks.

Diving Platform, Crowley's Ridge State Park, Arkansas

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