I’m reading Jeffrey Archer’s book Paths of Glory (fiction based on the life of the mountaineer George Mallory).
On visiting Venice in 1914, it’s mentioned that the Baedeker guide says:
1914 seems late for Europe to have discovered the delights of en-suite. How true is this?
I stayed in German hotels in the 1990’s that did not have en-suite shower, bath or toilet facilities. It seemed fairly rare at the time, but all my older travel guides mentioned that not all hotels provided “American” facilities, and I have stayed mostly at hotels that advertise to American tourists.
edit: And Aus “Hotels”, and at the YMCA, bot those are different categories.
I don’t think it’s all that out of line. I worked in a hospital where the original wing was built in 1923 (and still in use 50 years later) and none of its patient rooms even had a sink, much less a private bath.
The White House had plumbing on the first floor in the 1850s, but it didn’t have bathrooms in the living quarters until 1902.
In the 1980s there were still (usually older) hotels in England which didn’t have them.
It’s still common for British hotels (although it’s the cheaper ones that are closer to being bed and breakfasts) to have bedrooms that are not en-suite.
I stayed at hotels in the 1980s in the U.S. that didn’t have them.
Indoor plumbing did not become ubiquitous until after World War II.
Me, too. But they were a particular sort of hotel-they were all in the Catskills (although I assume they existed elsewhere as well) and they were low budget “resorts”. By that, I mean they weren’t the big resorts with lots of activities, but they had more to do than a hotel. And what they almost always had was a “main house” or “main lodge” where there were multiple bedrooms sharing the bathroom on each floor. The last time I stayed at this sort of place was last year- and for at least the last 10 years, they’ve been using the main house for employees (who have to be housed because they come from Europe on visas) rather than guests. But in the 80’s and earlier, when this type of vacation was more popular and the staff could be hired locally, those rooms were rented to guests
Same here about some US hotels not having them in the 70’s 80’s, hell I stayed at one in 2013 that didn’t have them.
What seemed to really start them was the motel (‘motor hotel’) which came about when people started using cars instead of other means to travel for vacations. And smaller travel destinations and stops really started to take off. As as people now arrived on their own and can explore the sites on their own, the communal feel to vacations vanished and people wanted their own room and bathroom and their own entrance directly to their own car.
That quote doesn’t imply that this didn’t happen until 1914. It just says that the Firenze was the first. How true that is, I don’t know, but the hotel is much older than that. It was built in the 16th century and then comprehensively remodelled in 1853, so maybe the ensuites were added then?
I stayed at a really cheap hotel in south London (converted hospital) where rooms did not have private toilets. Looking across the street you could see in the old buildings that sewer pipes were an afterthought installed on the outside and pushed through holes cut in the brick. So full indoor plumbing was a luxury. I remember seeing the British movie the “All In The Family” series was based on, IIRC one of the jokes was that tight British urban row housing still had outhouses out back in WWII. (He falls in during a blitz).
Many of the cheaper hotels in Europe were “no private facilities”. Mid-scale ones would have a sink in the room but not separate room or a toilet. You get what you pay for. My father was a cheap …uh… fellow and I remember staying at the YMCA in Manhattan as a kid (before Village People) where the toilets were a separate room.
Which is not surprising, I worked with people in the 1980’s who were about 40 or so, still remembered when their old Canadian farmhouses got indoor plumbing. We take a lot for granted nowadays.
Yes, indoor plumbing was, and still is, very much an add-on to older (19th c.) British housing stock, of which there is still a great deal.
When I was a student in the 1980s in rented student housing, the outhouse was still there in the back yard (though disused) and the neighbor next door was still using hers.
The rooms at Old Faithful Lodge at Yellowstone include rooms that share a communal bath: the rooms have sinks (with cold AND hot water), but the toilets and showers are “down the hall”. That part of the building was built in 1904. We’ve stayed there, and it was quaint to say the least. I wouldn’t doubt that there are similar partial-year lodges that also lack en-suite rooms.
My student house in Sheffield in the late 1990s still had a functional outdoor toilet in the back yard, which was useful in emergencies. (Except in winter, when it froze up)
My next door neighbour still has her outside loo (she doesn’t use it).
My primary school had a separate outside toilet block only until the mid 90’s when they added a corridor, and that must have been built post WWII (the main building was much older, but had been built as a toll house, of all things). It just didn’t seem to be much of a priority to make toilet access convenient.
I admit even now reading of houses in the US where the number of bathrooms equals or even exceeds the number of bedrooms seems a bit odd to me. Houses I’m familiar with have one ‘proper’ bathroom, sometimes plus a room with just a toilet and sink downstairs, or maybe an en suite in the main bedroom if they’re a bit posh. I don’t know anyone here who grew up with their own bathroom.
This was my experience in Germany in the 1990’s, too. Most hotels in smaller towns were Gasthäuser, and they simply didn’t always have private facilities. In the modern era, though, I only typically go to large cities for business (e.g., Cologne), and they have plenty of international style, large, four- and five-star hotels. Sadly I’ve not been back to any smaller towns for travel, so I don’t know if they’ve come along. For personal travel, it wouldn’t bother me. With family, maybe I’d want something more private.
For those of you thinking of coming to the UK and staying in Bed and Breakfast establishments rather than hotels, I can tell you that the majority these days have en-suite rooms, although there may also be some smaller rooms with shared facilities.
I stayed in a room above a pub in Dorset a few years ago. There was a shower cubicle in the corner of the bedroom with a sink next to it. Clearly a recent addition as it partly blocked the door. The toilet was a shared one along the corridor. I’m sure I wasn’t the first patron to realise that a sink and a urinal are very similar in the middle of the night!
Not to mention a shower drain.
If the Firenze was the first hotel in Europe to offer en-suite facilities (in 1914) (Jeffrey Archer may be right, but I wouldn’t count on it - he is a bit of a dickhead) - can anyone tell me when the first hotel in the USA or elsewhere had en-suite rooms?