Sarah Lerner | Sanitary Acculturation: The Social History of Progressive Era Public Bath Houses in Philadelphia

Sarah Lerner (MSHP '20) won the Anthony Nicholas Brady Garvan Award for an Outstanding Thesis. 

Abstract: In 1895 the Public Bath Association of Philadelphia (PBA) was formed for the purpose of, “establishing and maintaining public baths and affording the poor facilities for bathing and the promotion of cleanliness.” In 1898 the PBA opened America’s first plic bath house that offered both bathing and laundry facilities. This thesis illustrates how the organizational structure, geographic location, architectural aesthetics, function of space and technology, and advertising of Philadelphia’s public bathhouse embodies the social, cultural, economic, and political of environment of the city at the turn of the century. To properly understand the formation of the Public Bath Association of Philadelphia, this study also includes an exploration of how the morality of cleanliness, and the habituation of hygienic bathing became part of the national American identity.

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