I was recently downloading in the nearest men’s room when I looked at the stall walls and wondered why it was that for almost every bathroom I’ve ever been in the stalls were almost never flush with the ground. I can think of many excuses for this but I’m wondering if there’s an overriding industry code that governs it.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, we all know about the toll disease took on Native Americans once they were exposed to the White Man. Everything I’ve read blames this on the fact that the Native Americans had no natural immunity for the diseases brought over. But if that’s the case then shouldn’t it apply equally true to the Europeans and shouldn’t there have been a reciprocal massive loss of life?
I think the walls not being flush with the floors is an expense consideration. I’ve seen washrooms that have stalls with proper walls, all individually tucked away.
I can think of a few problems with real walls in a public bathroom stall: (1) they’re harder to clean if there’s a really bad mess on the floor, (2) if a toilet overflows you could get standing water pooling up and not rushing away, (3) if someone gets locked in, like a little kid or someone having a medical emergency, you can’t crawl under to save them.
Europeans had already been inter-mingling with other populations in East Europe, Asia, Africa, etc before coming to the New World. So they had already been exposed to much more variety than the native Americans had.
There is always splash and it will rust any metal it hits.
Stalls are strictly for privacy concerns and serve no other purpose. You can find trough type urinals in many places, especially state fairgrounds and such.
Women’s stalls get particularly nasty as there is a tendancy not to sit on the stool and this creates a situation where later visitors want to keep even farther away.
There is good research in the architectural community on these issues.