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The Rivington Street municipal bath was the first bath built with public funds in New York City.〔 It was constructed in a densely populated and poor〔''International Year Book, Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1901''〕 area in 1900 at a cost of $100,000, a large sum for the time. It officially opened on March 23, 1901. The bath was patronized largely by Hebrews, Hungarians, and Russian Jews.〔''Municipal Journal'', Volume 38, Municipal Journal and Engineer, Inc., 1915, pg. 689.〕 The cost was on par with other bathhouse projects.〔''Tammany Hall versus Reformers: The Public Baths of New York City'' p.57 (full text )〕 It featured 67 spray baths—or present-day showers—enabling patrons to take a total of 3,000 baths per day. Each bather was allotted a 20-minute shower. New York was the first state in the United States to pass a law making public baths compulsory.〔 In the first five months of 1902 the Rivington Street municipal bath accommodated 224,876 bathers, of whom 66,256 were women and girls.〔''The battle with the slum'', Jacob August Riis, MacMillan Publishing, 1902, pp. 279 ''-'' 283.〕 In 1895 a law was enacted making it mandatory to establish free public baths in cities in which the population exceeded 50,000 persons. Maintenance of these facilities was provided for by local health boards. Cities and villages having less than 100,000 people might construct public baths with loans on their credit or appropriate funds for their establishment. The 1895 law stated that the public baths were to be open for fourteen hours per day and both hot and cold water were to be provided.〔''New International Encyclopedia, Volume 2, Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, and Frank Moore Colby, editors, Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1902, pp. 564 ''- ''. 568.〕 As the installation of showers in buildings became more common, the visits to the bath declined. Most of the bathhouses where maintained by the city as public swimming pools. In 1975, the City of New York cemented the building in and it has been discontinued ever since. ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rivington Street municipal bath」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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