Frankfurt bath
The Frankfurt bath describes the part of an apartment layout from the beginning of the 20th century in which the bathtub or shower is located in a niche in the kitchen or sometimes in the bedroom.
nature
This niche is separated from the other room by a curtain or sliding door . The bathtub was permanently installed and sometimes there was also a bath stove . The starting point for the architectural peculiarity was the fact that the bathing and washing process still mainly took place in the tub in the kitchen, as well as building regulations for apartment buildings from the 1880s. The room or niche should also be heatable and have a water connection, which was mainly provided in the kitchen. As a result, this shape of the bathroom could usually be installed later more easily than a separate bathroom elsewhere in the apartment.
meaning
The innovative thing about this solution, in view of the living situation that was common at the time, was that there was a permanently installed, ventilated sanitary area in the apartment separate from the toilet. Common - especially in urban areas - were unheated toilets in the stairwell or even in the courtyard or in the garden. The “water closet” now in the apartment represented a real step forward for the upper class and also a luxury appropriate to their class and was part of an innovative living concept with an apartment floor plan in which all rooms were separately accessible from a central corridor. Even today, many old buildings in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area still have this equipment.
literature
- Elsemarie Maletzke : My Frankfurt bathroom. In: The waters of Frankfurt. Edited by Brigitte Heinrich. Heinrich and Hahn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-86597-001-5 .