VICTORIAN BATHS
Inspiring rooms vintage and new offer a design vocabulary for unique old-house bathrooms.
Victorian- inspired is more likely our intention! In the 19th century, many were still using outhouses and pulling a tin tub in front of the fire to fill with stove-heated water for the weekly bath. By the 1880s, wealthy homes did have indoor bathrooms, some downright posh with tubs and sitz baths and ribcage showers, the commode and wash- basin sunk into lavish cabinets. But for most people, the advent of indoor plumbing meant a water closet (toilet) squeezed into the end of a hall, or in a closet. The three- piece bathroom— tub, toilet, sink— most often was a utilitarian affair.
If your house dates to about 1900 or earlier, a Victorian-style bathroom is an appropriate option. It was during the height of the Victorian era that plumbing came indoors, first to the upper classes and in urban areas. That’s when a bedroom in an earlier Federal or Greek Revival house might have been converted to a bath. The basin and pitcher familiar from the old days was now a sink bowl set into a plumbed dresser or vanity.
The bathrooms of the earliest adopters were, not surprisingly, large and lavishly furnished. Layout and decoration followed the conventions of other rooms: The walls had a wainscot (of wood or tile), fill, and frieze sections. Sinks and toilets were set in Elizabethan or neoclassical cabinets sold by J.L. Mott Iron Works and other plumbing-fixture suppliers. A small rug, a chandelier, and paintings hung on the wall completed the outfitting of the room. By the late Teens, however, a general acceptance of germ theory had turned the bathroom into a sanitary white chamber of glossy surfaces and exposed plumbing.
From the 1890s through the 1920s, the look was inconsistent. Many rooms were plain, white, and sanitary. Others were ornate. Often both were found in the same house: a tiled bath with marble sink for the master, but varnished or painted wood wainscot in the maid’s room. Middle-class bathrooms were ordinary: a cast-iron tub, a freestanding sink, a toilet—and perhaps a bidet or sitz bath. Some bathrooms included a separate shower bath.
Bathtubs were often entirely encased in cabinetwork or enclosed behind a beadboard skirt. Then again, we see tubs on plinths and, soon enough, set on ball-and-claw feet. Both freestanding and built-in are treatments to consider. [ cont. on page 29]