Gas station bathrooms are the last place most people want to stop to do their business.
\nBut that wasn\u2019t always the case. Spotless bathrooms were once a crucial selling point for gas stations.<\/p>\n
In fact, oil giants\u2019 gas station ads in the early and mid-20th century assured travelers that their bathrooms were as clean as those in drivers\u2019 own homes.<\/p>\n
Texaco, Gulf, Shell, Sunoco, Esso, Phillips and other companies plastered billboards on roads, ran color ads in national magazines and created catchy slogans such as \u201cRegistered Rest Rooms\u201d and \u201cClean Restroom Crusade\u201d to highlight their facilities. The companies battled to surpass each others\u2019 bathrooms, with some companies even sending out \u201cWhite Patrol\u201d and \u201cHighway Hostess\u201d teams to inspect and certify them.
\nCompanies tried to make their bathrooms feel more like home in response to the growing number of women who were driving and traveling around the country. By 1928, women bought half of gas stations\u2019 fuel that year, according to an industry journal.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/popularnews.pw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/220603154827-02-gas-station-bathrooms-history-300x169.jpg\")
\nTrailers stopping into a gas station in New Jersey in the early to mid-20th century. Gas stations upgraded their bathrooms to appeal to women.
\nVisual Studies Workshop\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Oil companies believed women would be the ones deciding where to stop with their families, even if they weren\u2019t driving, said Susan Spellman, a historian at Miami University who wrote her thesis on how women influenced the development of gas stations.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will remember the dirty rest room and avoid the station on her next trip,\u201d read a 1938 article in trade journal National Petroleum News with the headline \u201cWomen Shun Dirty Stations.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, companies\u2019 efforts excluded Black women and men, who were barred from using these restrooms in the segregated South and were not a focus for these companies in the North until the 1950s and 1960s.
\nThe development of the interstate highway system and the rise of self-service marked the end of clean gas station bathrooms\u2019 heyday.<\/p>\n
Appealing to women
\nAt the turn of the 20th century, automobile drivers would pull into a blacksmith shop, a hardware store or a pharmacy to purchase a tin can of gasoline.<\/p>\n
But the mass adoption of cars, development of roads and the introduction of the hand-operated gas pump around 1910 led to a proliferation of curbside gas stations.<\/p>\n
By 1920, there were 15,000 filling stations in the United States. Many of these stations, however, were in shabby condition and their designs and services were an afterthought.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/popularnews.pw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/220603155425-03-gas-station-bathrooms-history-300x169.jpg\")
\nThe Ford Model T at a filling station in 1910. Early gas stations were often in shabby condition.
\nAssociated Press<\/p>\n
As competition for customers grew in the 1920s and 1930s, companies found they needed ways to separate their stations beyond the indistinguishable gasoline brand they sold. They began focusing on service and amenities.<\/p>\n
They sought to attract customers by building homey, cottage-style buildings, adding courteous station attendants in uniforms, and offering an array of services and perks like oil checks and windshield wiping.<\/p>\n
At the time, the public was anxious about the spread of venereal disease in public facilities. \u201cStations Must Be Clean To Overcome Public\u2019s Growing Fears of Syphilis,\u201d National Petroleum News warned in 1938.<\/p>\n
Better bathrooms were meant to allay these fears, particularly to help draw women.
\nA gas station on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut between the 1940s and 1950s. Gas stations began improving building design and services to attract customers.
\nH. Armstrong Roberts\/ClassicStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Women consistently listed clean restrooms as their top priority for patronizing a gas station, according to trade journal articles during the period that Spellman unearthed.<\/p>\n
The bathroom layout adhered to the gender norms of the period. Unlike today, when all customers usually have to enter a gas station to use the bathroom, the typical women\u2019s restroom of the era was built in the back of the building or off to the side to give women extra privacy. The men\u2019s room, on the other hand, was located inside near the sales floor.<\/p>\n
Gender roles at the time dictated that women were in charge of anything involving the home, including the bathroom, Spellman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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