October, 1920 
51 
The bathroom in the New York home oj 
Judge Gary has marble panels and gold 
trimmings on the glass hand rails 
times it is octagonal, with a radiating tiled floor 
and the various functioning fixtures in the far 
sectors. One room which we have investigated 
has in one corner a sunken marble tub and in 
the center the radiator. The gold work in this 
room is beautiful, but practical, of a design that 
takes plumbing into the arts. 
The thoroughly equipped woman’s bathroom 
must have the usual tub, showers, lavatory, 
watercloset seat, a closet or two in the walls, a 
table, towel racks, brackets for soap and sponge, 
hooks for hanging things, scales, rugs, a chair 
or stool, toilet paper receptacle, mirrors and til¬ 
ing for floors and wall. 
In the men’s bathrooms is added the bidet, 
sometimes a shaving 
chair and other shaving 
necessities such as a spe¬ 
cial lamp for fine work. 
To both these rooms can 
be added various things, 
more or less necessary 
according to different 
people’s taste, such as 
the sitz bath, which is 
luxurious for bathing the 
feet after a hard walk or 
a game of golf. 
This article in no way 
intends to be a plumbing 
article. All it means to 
do is to tell the reader 
what there is new in the 
development of the bath¬ 
room and leave the choice 
to him. In a recent is¬ 
sue, House & Garden 
took up plumbing very 
carefully and all we need 
to tell you here is to buy 
your fixtures at the best 
possible shop and then 
get the best plumber ob¬ 
tainable to install them. 
The installation of all 
good plumbing work 
should be in the begin¬ 
ning, in the plans of the 
architect, for it is diffi¬ 
cult and quite complicated to put in 
plumbing installation after the house 
is well advanced. There is nothing 
quite so important to the successful 
builder as the early consideration of 
pipe requirements. The plumber is 
equipped with the sanitary code, which, 
of course, the architect knows too, and 
any householder can get one to read 
and digest. However, with a licensed 
plumber, a good architect and a faith¬ 
ful builder, this is unnecessary. 
The Bathtub 
The most interesting fixture in the 
bathroom, to Americans and Britons, 
at least, is the bathtub. Aside from 
the kitchen stove, this is the nucleus 
about which our content is generated. 
Civilization has been kind enough 
.1 bathroom in the residence oj Mr. 
Felix Warburg shows an ideal 
shower arrangement for the shower 
In the home oj the late Theodore N. Vail, 
Morristown, N. one oj the bathrooms 
is equipped with this shower 
to leave us two generally used types of bathtubs 
the solid porcelain and the enamel over iron 
(enamel lined or porcelain over iron) tub. The 
tin tub has gone out, the glass tub is too perilous, 
and the porcelain or porcelain lined proves 
about the most satisfactory w’hen we can’t have 
marble or old Italian basins for our bathing. 
Recent advances in methods of manufacture 
and design have made the choice between solid 
porcelain or enamel iron baths a matter of per¬ 
sonal liking as influenced by their fitness for 
positions assigned to them in a room. On ac¬ 
count of the losses sustained for the manufac¬ 
ture of clay products, selected grades of porce¬ 
lain baths are of necessity higher in cost than 
the porcelain lined or 
enameled iron. The 
porcelain bath is fine in 
appearance, but it is not 
reasonable to expect the 
same perfection in shape 
and uniformity of glaze. 
This is due to the dif¬ 
ference in methods of 
manufacture, and allow¬ 
ance should be made for 
the irregularities occa¬ 
sioned by the baking of 
glazed clay products. In 
the past when English 
porcelain baths were be¬ 
ing imported it was per¬ 
haps considered distinc¬ 
tion to have a solid 
porcelain bath. With the 
present extensive manu¬ 
facture of these products 
in this country, this con¬ 
dition has, of course, 
changed. The porcelain 
lined bath is preferred 
by some on account of its 
requiring less hot water 
to hold the desired tem¬ 
perature. Against this 
is the fact that cheap 
porcelain lined baths 
should be avoided. 
(Continued on page 72) 
Tiled walls and floors are prime essentials in the modern bathroom. The tub is built 
in, the rails and shelves are of heavy glass and the toilet seat is beautifully camouflaged 
to fit in with the scheme. The illustrations of these two pages are by courtesy of 
Meyer & Sniffen 
