# When did showers become popular in the US (instead of baths)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 21, 2024, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135 "2024-03-21T10:23:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/1 "2024-03-21T10:23:50Z")
Way back in the days of yore, people heated water in pots over a fire or on a stove, poured it into a tub, and took a bath. At some point, indoor plumbing and dedicated gas/electric water-heating appliances became a thing, and at some point after that, showers became a popular alternative to baths. When did that happen? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/2 "2024-03-21T12:44:48Z")
According to [this](https://www.neptunebathing.ie/post/the-history-of-showering), showering versus bathing started to become popular in the 1920s in the US, which sounds believable to me. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/3 "2024-03-21T13:08:53Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > …showering versus bathing started to become popular in the 1920s in the US… Agreed, that’s when we started seeing showers as part of the bathroom package. Prior to that you’d mostly find a clawfoot tub with no shower. My apartment was built in 1914 and it originally just had a clawfoot tub, though retrofitting a shower head and curtain rod was/is relatively easy. I have seen plenty of homes where the servants’ quarters still had just a tub, which itself was also more likely to be freestanding, in homes built in the early 1930s. The family bathrooms still had proper tub/showers or completely separate showers. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/4 "2024-03-21T13:10:14Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > According to [this](https://www.neptunebathing.ie/post/the-history-of-showering), showering versus bathing started to become popular in the 1920s in the US, which sounds believable to me. That makes sense - American cities were at their peak and the suburbs were in their infancy, so a very large portion of Americans, maybe a majority, lived in apartments. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/5 "2024-03-21T13:34:39Z")
Based on looking at my city’s water department’s history, that’s right about the time that large-scale municpal water purification and treatment became a thing as well. So maybe the advent of consistent water pressure made showers viable? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/6 "2024-03-21T13:37:32Z")
Maybe. They started building tenements in big cities with high-pressure showers, and when their residents spread out to the rest of the country, they took their love of showers with them. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/7 "2024-03-21T14:52:31Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Way back in the days of yore, people heated water in pots over a fire or on a stove, poured it into a tub, and took a bath. One could, but I have to question this statement. If you are just bathing at home and have to slowly/laboriously/expensively heat pots of water, how often are you going to fill up an entire tub full of water, versus calling it quits after soaping up and rinsing off, skipping the final soak? ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/8 "2024-03-21T17:02:41Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > One could, but I have to question this statement. If you are just bathing at home and have to slowly/laboriously/expensively heat pots of water, how often are you going to fill up an entire tub full of water, versus calling it quits after soaping up and rinsing off, skipping the final soak? Fair point, maybe people didn’t often laze for an hour in a full-depth tub of piping hot water. I’m mostly wondering about the transition from a tub-based sponge bath kind of thing to a situation where a continuous spray of warm, clean water is raining down from an overhead shower nozzle. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/9 "2024-03-21T18:15:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Fast forward to 1767, when the first patent for a shower was granted to William Feetham, a stove maker from Ludgate Hill in London. These early modern-day showers were powered by a hand pump and used less water than baths. > **[A brief history of the shower](https://www.merlynshowering.com/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-the-shower)** > > We look back at the history of the shower – from waterfall showers in the Ancient World, to the first modern shower to the advent of the modern electric showers I had no idea. I’m glad that showers took some time to catch on. Old westerns would have been far less atmospheric if they’d shown cowboys lathering up under a gentle spray 🚿 while wearing bathing caps. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/10 "2024-03-21T18:27:15Z")
Plenty of westerns had the female cast showering from train stop elevated train stop water tanks. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/11 "2024-03-21T19:25:02Z")
FWIW, there’s a scene in _Our American Cousin_ (the play Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated) where the eponymous cousin, visiting his aristocratic English relatives for the first time, drenches himself to considerable slapstick effect because he’s unfamiliar with showers and how they work. So, presumably, by the mid-nineteenth century, they were a) common enough to be an expected thing in an upper-class English household, and a familiar enough concept for the play’s _audience_ to recognize one when they saw it; but b) uncommon enough that it would be plausible for a grown man from Vermont never to have seen one before. (Or, at any rate, not more implausible than everything else that happens in _Our American Cousin_. Realistic drama it’s not.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/12 "2024-03-21T20:02:11Z")
[A Brief History Of Showers - ThermaSol](https://thermasol.com/a-brief-history-of-showers/#:~:text=The%20modern%20shower%20did%20not,which%20eventually%20replaced%20the%20bath). _The modern shower did not become available until the 1960s with the introduction of electric showers. From the 80s onwards the shower began to be trendy and different accessories and jet designs were developed, which eventually replaced the bath._ _From a practical standpoint, the shower is more cost-effective, faster and generally more hygienic than the bath. Over time the bath has become more of an occasional relaxation accessory and shower cabins are often preferred in modern constructions, even combined with a bathtub._ I used to see RE listing where a bathroom with just a shower stall was called a “3/4 bath” (toilet and sink is 1/2 bath). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/13 "2024-03-21T20:06:44Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The modern shower did not become available until the 1960s with the introduction of electric showers. Huh?? ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/14 "2024-03-21T20:14:03Z")
Nothing refreshes like a gentle cascade of warm electrons. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/15 "2024-03-21T21:52:56Z")
Yeah that’s a strange take. I’ve seen rich people houses from the 1920s and 1930s that have original equipment body sprays and multiple heads. Maybe the 1960s is when we started to see electronically-controlled shower systems with fine-tuned temperature control and various programs? That’s still not common by any stretch. You still find plenty of homes with the standard tub/shower, a diverter valve, and one head. That’s little different from what was installed in a modest home in 1925. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/16 "2024-03-21T21:58:23Z")
I can just report my own experience. In the house I grew up in there was hot and cold running water, a bathtub, but no shower. You would fill the tub a couple inches with warm water, get in, lie down to get thoroughly wet, then stand up and soap yourself all over, then lie back down to rinse. I lobbied for a shower and finally, some time in the early 1950s, a shower was installed over the bathtub and a rail for a curtain. I once (1998) stayed in a hotel in Paris that had an old-fashioned tub with an added shower, but not curtain. It was challenging avoiding getting water all over the floor. The hotel also had an open cage elevator. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/17 "2024-03-21T22:50:37Z")
Maybe WW2 had something to do with it? Millions of men spent the first half of the 1940s showering instead of bathing, and might have brought the habit home with them. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/18 "2024-03-21T23:15:37Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > > [@DrDeth](#): > > > > The modern shower did not become available until the 1960s with the introduction of electric showers. > > Huh?? From the article @Jackmannii posted: > By the 1960’s, tankless water heaters were invented with made modern showers – known as electric showers – available to the wider public in the UK. This allowed consumers to generate an instant supply of hot water without relying on a water tank. So I assume electric showers are a UK thing, apparently some sort of tankless electric water heater coupled to the shower head. And I guess that’s what they consider to be “the modern shower”. So do Brits consider American showers, which do typically rely on a largish tank style water heater, to be old fashioned? ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/19 "2024-03-22T00:20:45Z")
So I found a cite which notes early historical examples > [@](#): > > It was really the ancient Greeks who pioneered the way toward the showers we’re familiar with today. Made of lead pipes, the water channels and sewage systems used by the ancient Greeks allowed water to be pumped into and out of communal shower rooms. In fact, it’s likely that showers of this time period were quite similar to the locker room showers of today… Notes the early hand pump shower > [@](#): > > The first hand-pump-operated shower patented in 1767 and used a pump that forced the water into a vessel above the bather’s head and a chain that released the water. While this system might have been an improvement to carrying water by hand, it clearly had some flaws. Discusses another gross version > [@](#): > > in the early 1800s, an English Regency shower was designed that towered over the user at 10 feet tall and was made up of metal pipes that had been, bizarrely, painted to look like bamboo. A basin was suspended above the pipes and fed water into a nozzle that allowed water to rain down. Water was drained through a grate in the shower floor and pumped back through the pipes and again into the basin. A major drawback of thissystem? It recycled the same dirty water for each use. And finally credits the modern proliferation of the shower to French barracks in the 1870s, whose communal style spread to boarding schools and bath houses. > [@](#): > > indoor plumbing was reinvented in the mid 1850s, which solved much of the problems with the shower model. Nearly 20 years later, modern showers were installed in the barracks of the French army for hygiene purposes. Here, the water was heated through the use of a steam engine in under five minutes, allowing multiple prisoners to wash at once with small amounts of water. The French system of communal showers spread to other countries over the rest of the decade, and were eventually replicated in boarding schools and public bathhouses. > From that point, the use of showers really took off. They grew in popularity across Europe, [and] the United States > **[The History of the Shower - Dauenhauer](https://dauenhauerplumbing.com/blog/the-history-of-the-shower/)** > > For most of us, taking a shower is part of a morning or evening routine that we don’t give much conscious thought.It’s probably safe to say you’ve not That claim also tracks here. > [@](#): > > Modern communal showers were installed in the barracks of the [French Army](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army) in the 1870s as an economic hygiene measure under the guidance of [François Merry Delabost](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Merry_Delabost), a French doctor and inventor. As surgeon-general at Bonne Nouvelle prison in [Rouen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen), Delabost had previously replaced individual baths with mandatory communal showers for use by prisoners, arguing that they were more economial and hygienic.[[1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_shower#cite_note-1) The French system of communal showers was adopted by other armies (the first being that of [Prussia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia) in 1879) and by prisons in other jurisdictions. They were also adopted by boarding schools, before being installed in [public bathhouses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_bathhouse). [https://en.m.wiki](https://en.m.wiki) pedia. org/wiki/Communal\_shower (I broke the link because it weirdly shows naked pictures of people showering, including kids!) I’ll note that these are references to communal showers. I suspect that this was the initial way that showering started. It was only after it became the norm at places like boarding schools or military service that people (who had become used to the practice) adopted them at home. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135/20 "2024-03-22T00:26:20Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > So I assume electric showers are a UK thing, apparently some sort of tankless electric water heater coupled to the shower head. And I guess that’s what they consider to be “the modern shower”. So do Brits consider American showers, which do typically rely on a largish tank style water heater, to be old fashioned? “Electric showers” might to do either or both of two things. First, as WildaBeast suggestss, heat the water as required, rather than drawing from a tank of pre-heated water. Secondly, use an electric motor to pump the water, rather than relying on gravity pressure. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-showers-become-popular-in-the-us-instead-of-baths/999135.md?page=2)