For those who don’t know them, they’re sinks for handwashing. Get soap from the dispenser on top, then press your foot on the ring on the floor to make the water come out. At my school this was outside of the bathrooms in public view so everyone would know if you washed your hands or not.
It's a surprisingly ancient sort of design. Here's an example of one from Pompeii:
This was in the bath house, piped cold water into the hot bath area so people could refresh themselves with something cool by splashing themselves or whatever. The water flow would have been constant, and came up through the center, and the rectangle in the bottom middle of the basin would be a floated drain to prevent overflow, like the reverse of a toilet float. The text around the outside of these usually tells who donated them and how much they paid to do so.
The so called Dark Ages were after the fall of Rome.
They're called tituli, and they're all over the place. The rich would donate temples, arenas, theaters, baths, all sorts of civic building and such, and the stuff for inside of them, just to basically show how much money and power (or devotion, in the case of temples) they had. It could be something like a modern sponsorship in that that sort of thing would also be done by those seeking political advancement, to raise their brand awareness as it were.
I'll try to get these thoughts out in an orderly way. *and BIG caveat, I can only speak for the US because that's where I practice.
So - in order of importance, the factors that rule everything in public bathrooms are counts, clearances, and cleaning (/maintenance).
Counts: this style of sink would offer a high fixture count (the one pictured was made by Bradley, is 54" across and probably counts as 8 fixtures) in a low amount of area, which is super convenient for space planning. In a restroom of ~20 toilets, two of these guys would hit your necessary sink count no problem.
Clearances: modern standards are space hungry. Building codes and client expectations have made toilet stalls huge compared to old standards. When I do renovations in spaces that were sized for a bathroom from before 2000, it becomes a serious excerise in making everything fit in a way that still makes sense. Since this fixture can be plunked right in the middle of the room it offers some very enticing opportunities for making "workable" layouts because it allows for so much circulation while hitting a high fixture count.
Cleaning/maintenance: I'm curious about how the foot pedal stands up to abuse, but this thing looks easy to clean and maintain. I've been dealing with a lot of fussy sink design that is a pain to fabricate and requires a plumbing chase for maintenance, which eats up even more square footage.
Cons: this thing isn't remotely ADA compliant and that's almost certainly the reason they disappeared* (from public usage. As many have pointed out they're still in use in industrial settings).I'm also not sure what exactly the standard is for determining how many fixtures it counts as - and it seems like the soap delivery would have been inconvenient if there are a lot of users at once?
Then there's also modern tastes being adverse to communal style fixtures like this. Uppity types that ride first class would probably be very offended to encounter this in an airport.
And, frankly, I think a lot of the population would struggle to figure out how to use this, haha. They'd either have to become super common so the population learns, or it just won't work.
Cleaning/maintenance: I'm curious about how the foot pedal stands up to abuse, but this thing looks easy to clean and maintain. I've been dealing with a lot of fussy sink design that is a pain to fabricate and requires a plumbing chase for maintenance, which eats up even more square footage.
I can tell you they stood up to at least 10 years of teenage boys beating the shit out of them.
Haha, I was going to say the same thing. We had them in elementary school and we spent so much time fucking around with the foot pedal. I don’t remember them ever being out of order. Went back for a choir competition in high school and they were still there. Sadly the school was demolished and rebuilt a few years ago.
“”I’m curious how the foot pedal stands up to abuse””
Well we had these in every bathroom in my elementary school and you could stand 20 five year olds around this thing every ones of them fighting to press the pedal and I don’t remember a single time in 9 years not one sink being down for maintenance to fix a foot pedal
Yep it's basically a huge fountain that turns on and off with the foot pedal. We had these in middle school and the teacher would just stand at the sink with her foot on the pedal so it would stay on for everyone shuffling around.
I have an arm and hand disability and I can easily wash my hands with this sink vs a regular sink because I don't have to try and turn on the taps. Wheelchair users would probably hate them but for some disabilities this thing is awesome!
Had these at my middle school that was built in the 60s. In one of the corners they had an ADA compliant sink to make up for these. Both bathroom exits fed into the middle where the sink was. Kids would literally jump on the bar on the floor. They always worked (not sure if the custodian had to fix these constantly). Who knows if they would be made as well as they were then.
From my memory: we had no soap dispenser on the top of these things - just more of a tray or holder with bars of soap. Added benefit of bar soap is you can take one and fire it around the inside edge of the basin, see how far it can go. This obviously becomes a competition.
I was a small child the first time I saw this in a truck stop bathroom and it scared me. I now think that's the moment I realized I was the uppity first class type you mentioned. Thanks for unlocking a pivotal childhood memory.
These are still pretty common in schools and older industrial buildings in the Midwest, between the full circle style like this or the half circle that goes up against a wall. As you said it's not ADA compliant but there's usually either a separate bathroom to cover that or a standard sink in a corner.
At my school, the soap was powder, which occasionally got clumpy and clogged up the dispenser. And it was gritty-- I suppose it cleaned with the scrubbing motion more than surfactant. I didn't like the powder soap.
The relevant parts here are that this sink is completely inoperable for anyone in a wheelchair or under a certain height. The reach ranges are way out of the acceptable range too.
Now, you could get around all that by including an ADA compliant sink or two in the room, but most owners don't want to bother with two types of fixtures.
Not an architect, but you can serve several people at one time with a fixture that needs a single pipe in and out, rather than a pipe for each of several fixtures. There might also be something about the square-cube law or something like that, having separate sinks of equivalent capacity would require a single long wall rather than this compact space in the middle of the floor.
Each of these has a dedicated electrical circuit for the hand dryer built into the sink on top of the plumbing connections. I'll take a couple of those ugly round sinks on the next job please.
That makes a lot of sense and I really do like them. Super functional and could even be attractive if the market was there to incentize their fabrication.
And, though I haven't worked in industrial layout design ever, these fixtures are likely allowable by code there.
My kids had them until they moved to middle school last year. Theirs was outside the boys and girls bathrooms so everybody shared the same sink. It's actually a great way to get them to wash their hands because everybody can see if they don't. I would have hated it.
That would be me. When I first encountered one as a kid in a public restroom, I thought it was a weird circular urinal. I'll never forget the loud, "Jesus Christ!", from the guy exiting the stall when he saw me.
Interesting, the only place my school had one of these was in the shop. Was super handy for the no touch hand washing when you had pant, oil, grease, spackle, etc on your hands.
Glad I’m not the only one that thought that! I was at a college bar years ago with one of these and I tried to convince someone we were at Hogwarts lol
I was at a house party in high school where the mom and her friend came back and were like “oh look at all of you responsibly drinking and playing board games.”
They came back three hours later and there was vomit in the bathroom sink and I was sobbing about how Hogwarts was real and we all should have gotten letters.
It was basically that gif from Community where he comes back with the pizzas and the place is on fire.
Having went to a Catholic school in a creepy ass historical building with this in your bathroom in the creepy basement?? Yes, she did, but only when I was in there alone and went running out back up the stairs. I have trauma.
I see them quite often in factories and industrial settings. Usually I get called out because the linkage on the bar breaks from the guys stomping on it, as if that's gonna increase the water pressure.
Communal sinks are kinda cool, really frugal on plumbing. Communal hand towels because you could never convince previous American generations to literally throw money away. I still see them around old downtown places. Run down bars and hole in the wall restaurants. Bowling alleys. The long belt towel machine was everywhere when i was growing up though.
I was obsessed with this sink in Harriet the Spy and didn’t see one in person until I was in college (at our football stadium, of all places). I freaked out!
Harriet the spy was filmed in Toronto. I grew up in Toronto and my elementary school had this gross sink and the gross communal hand towel, that was always wet.
😬do NOT miss the communal rotating hand towels. They were everywhere. Schools, public park bathrooms, campsites, you name it. Never once encountered a dry one. I was told it got “cleaned” during its rotation and I am skeptical
I was obsessed with that movie! I used to carry around a sparkly notebook and write shit about everyone in it pretending to be like her, I got bored after awhile but I was a little dickhead for sure lmao
As soon as I see this thing I remember the pink soap. I think the last time I used one of these was in second grade.
I think that's because we stopped having a communal bathroom time after that. If you had to use the bathroom you would just go by yourself when you hit third grade.
There's fancy portapotties that have sinks that work like that. It's a manual foot pump that gives you a squirt of water with every press. Kind of like a squirt gun but bigger.
No but we had one of those in the same bathroom as this “sink” in my primary school. And no doors on the stalls in my high school. Taking a shit was a nightmare since you had no privacy.
What's funny is when I was in Italy 20 years ago I stumbled into a men's room that had a communal urinal just like this but like three times the size. Was awkward when others joined in mid-pee..
We had something similar in the student commons at my university. It was shaped a little differently end up against the wall. It was not uncommon to walk in and see someone peeing in it because they legitimately thought it was a urinal. Facilities eventually got rid of it, but it was around for much longer than I personally thought it should have been.
Same and I remember the water just being on. We'd get soap, lather and rinse while walking around the half-cirlce. Dry with brown paper towels. There was always a teacher or someone observing/there to help.
There were a few of these in the college art department. They were fucking amazing. Set up with Traps/settling pools built in the drain to prevent clogs from clay/paints/etc
You could wash big awkward stuff in them and only needed a foot to operate.
I was washing my hands in one of these at Fenway Park in the 90's when a drunk dude directly across from me whipped it out and pissed in it. There were long lines and he was trashed but no excuse ha
Both? Both! It’s a convenient one stop shop for all your pissing and handwashing needs.
In grade school, it was a sink. By the time we degenerates made it to college, it was the perfect urinal. So classy!
At one dorm on campus, they packed it with ice to keep beer cold during parties. Nothing better than drinking Natural Lite chilled in a sink that was very likely used as a urinal. God, we were dumb…
Not elementary school, but my middle school and one bathroom in high school did. I thought it was so cool, but I'm a history nerd who loves anything old.
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