As they pushed for the right to vote near the turn of the 20th century, St. Louis women were instrumental in bringing gender equality to a critical aspect of public life: access to restrooms.
"When they went to go to church, to worship or to shop, they wanted a place to go," said historian and Temple University professor Bryant Simon. "[The St. Louis Woman's Club] became really important and vocal advocates for public bathrooms in St. Louis and around the country."
Simon explores the history of public restrooms in the U.S. in his new book, "For Customers Only." It's a story marked by inequality — with several St. Louis ties through the centuries.
Early bathrooms in St. Louis
"In the late 19th and early 20th century, St. Louis was one of the largest and most important cities in the United States," Simon said. "It was attracting large numbers of immigrants, and [people] across the country, [and] this gave birth to a movement that historians would call the Progressive Era. … They were committed to uplifting society, and that meant making infrastructure better."
The movement led to the creation of some of the most ornate bathrooms in the country, including those located in the Grand Hall at St. Louis Union Station, where a gilded overhang and an intricately tiled corridor lead to restrooms.
Simon said he was awestruck when he first saw it.
"It didn't echo the public bathrooms that I had used as a kid or in the present. It echoed Versailles," he said. "The builders of those bathrooms … really honored the people who were using these spaces and wanted to show them they cared about them."
As impressive as those early facilities were, Simon is quick to point out that those bathrooms were never truly public. They were segregated from the beginning.
"Black people in the Jim Crow South — and to the extent that existed, the Jim Crow North — were always given less bathrooms and forced to go further to find them," he said. "There were very few bathrooms in Black neighborhoods or neighborhoods of other people of color."
Moral panic
Much like the debates over assigned bathrooms that exist today, fear and discrimination of homosexuality in the U.S. led to the disinvestment of public restrooms in the latter half of the 20th century.
"The builders of these public bathrooms anticipated that everyone from bakers to bankers would show up at these places, but what they didn't anticipate was a crowd of drinkers, the unhoused and sex seekers," Simon said.
In 1970, sociologist Laud Humphreys brought national attention to the practice of men seeking sexual encounters with other men in public bathrooms with the release of "Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places," a book based on his 1968 Ph.D. dissertation at Washington University.
During his research, Humphreys misrepresented his identity and intent to the men he studied, and he took photos of their license plates without their knowledge.
Many social scientists consider the study to be unethical. After his dissertation, members of WashU's sociology department petitioned the university president to rescind Humphreys' degree. Others left the university for positions elsewhere. Disagreements even turned physical when a fistfight broke out among Humphreys, a graduate student and a former chairman of the department.
Humphreys' research became part of a national discussion surrounding the use of public restrooms — discourse that ultimately led to fewer facilities.
"They deliberately pull back on spending. Then the places get dirtier, and middle class people abandon them," Simon said. "Eventually, these places become so dirty and gross that they're left for only the most marginal people in society. In an attempt to eliminate this crowd of drinkers, the unhoused and sex seekers — to make them unequal — we get to the rough equality of now, where nobody has access to a public bathroom unless you're a customer."
Gendered facilities
Around the time Humphreys' book was published, another flashpoint in the public restroom debate came from the Gateway City.
In her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, activist and St. Louis native Phyllis Schlafly repeatedly stoked fear that men would be in women's bathrooms if the ERA were to pass. Her speeches warned that, without separate facilities, some men might enter restrooms with no purpose other than to harm women and children.
Schlafly's campaign to defeat the ERA was successful, and the fears she stoked around gender-neutral facilities persist today, Simon said.
"This is a kind of trope, an idea that's been revisited by the anti-trans movement, which has also fought over access to bathrooms," he said.
In his book, Simon writes about a debate sparked in 2023 when the Francis Howell School District proposed a requirement that students either use restrooms based on their sex assigned at birth or use a single-occupancy, gender-neutral bathroom in a far corner of the building.
"The distance that people have to travel establishes who's most valued, and I think here, again, we're seeing how public bathrooms don't just reflect inequality; they help to create it," Simon said.
The Francis Howell School Board ultimately elected not to vote on the policy.
The future of public toilets
Simon said he hopes his book sparks new conversations about investment in public infrastructure in the U.S.
"There's very little federal policy about bathrooms," he said, "so I think [change] probably has to happen at the local level."
A more equitable future, he added, would likely be in the form of a public-private partnership that provides public facilities maintained by local authorities that are accessible to everyone at any time of day.
"Without that, we run into the situation we have now, where we're putting a lot of pressure on local businesses, libraries and other public entities, and they begin to retreat," he said. "It's hard to imagine a solution without some kind of robust investment in public bathrooms. I think we need to frame this as an issue of equality, as an issue of public health, and of fairness and decency."
To learn more about the history of public restrooms in the U.S., listen to "St. Louis on the Air" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
"St. Louis on the Air" brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha, Darrious Varner and Alex Heuer. Our production intern is Danny Osborn. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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