How the Other Half Bathes

THE American bathroom, ever a target for European wits and soreheads, has a host of enthusiasts as well; none is more outspoken than Critic Edmund Wilson, who once said: "I have had a good many more uplifting thoughts, creative and expansive visions ... in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral." That sort of affection seems to run in the family. Mary McCarthy, who was wed to Wilson for eight years, has hailed the bathroom half-ironically as the "last fortress of the individual, the poor man's club, the working girl's temple of beauty."

It is a great deal more than that for the rich man and the nonworking girl. A renaissance of bathrooms and bathing seems to be in progress rivaling the innovations of the most inventive Roman voluptuaries. This in a country where Benjamin Franklin was considered a radical for his habit of tubbing regularly, where bathing was once considered so alien that Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia debated legislation outlawing the practice as dangerous to health. It is also a country where the President's house had no bathtub at all until 1851.

Like Fairyland. Designers such as Sherle Wagner of Manhattan and David Hicks of London stand ready to transform an ordinary bathroom into a soapy nirvana. "Today's bathroom," says Wagner, "is an escape area from these times of tension. It has become a spa at home." Most of Wagner's customers spend between $250 and $2,500 to renovate and redecorate their bathrooms, and the emphasis is on the higher end of that scale. "You can do a very very beautiful bathroom for $2,500," says Wagner. One customer has ordered a carved marble tub measuring 6 ft. by 4 ft. inside. Its cost: about $10,000. His latest conversation piece is a $1,600 toilet called "Sitting Pretty," made from marble and onyx, with a carved wooden seat cover.

Hicks, whose book, David Hicks on Bathrooms, is a basic text on the subject, believes that bathrooms should be "elegant and practical." His idea of simplicity is reflected in his designs for the small bathroom of Mrs. Harilaos ("Betsy") Theodoracopulos. He specified mirrors on walls and ceilings to "stretch the room out and at the same time heighten it." For surfaces, he used scrubbed stone "because of its rough, aggressive element which contrasts with the smoothness of the mirror." Many of the wall mirrors conceal storage closets. To Mrs. Theodoracopulos, the bathroom is "like fairyland."

For Mrs. Charles Revson, whose husband heads the Revlon cosmetics empire, space was not a problem: the bathroom in her Manhattan apartment is 23 feet by 19 feet. All fixtures are made of creamy Italian marble and there are two sun lamps. Mrs. Revson spends a lot of time there. "I am a compulsive bather," she says. "I take three baths a day--one in the morning, one at 5 p.m. and one later if I've gone out, regardless of the time."

Mood Lights. Before he entered a New York hospital last week for treatment of a heart ailment, Jazzman Louis Armstrong joked that he would be "foolish to take a bath" amid his glamorous plumbing because "I would smoke up the glass." Says Mrs. Armstrong: "Redecorating this room made the rest of my house look so shabby that I had to redecorate everything."

To Polly Bergen (Mrs. Freddie Fields), a bath "is one of the few great luxuries left in life." Her custom-built bathroom (by Frank P. Austin) features an elaborate marble tub with all-but-instant fill, four Jacuzzi water jets, a sauna, and lights that can be dimmed to fit a mood. "It's a place," she says, "where I can forget business concerns, my children's report cards and other worries. My only problem is that sometimes when I've got the tub ready and then leave the room, I come back to find my husband in it."

The Neil Rosenstein family of Los Angeles has another problem. Their house has seven bathrooms, but only one is sumptuous. So father, mother and the three children compete for the one that has a Jacuzzi and a sauna. Arthur Elrod, a professional decorator of Palm Springs, Calif., designed his own bathroom at a cost of around $22,500. He finds that both he and his clients spend much more time in their bathrooms these days. "Once I get home and into my sauna," he says, "I'm so thrilled to be there that I hate to go out." Mr. and Mrs. Walter Stewart, whose bathroom is in a separate building linked to their home by a covered walkway, ordered it designed so that a bather can look out onto a garden, as Mrs. Stewart's daughter, Rosalyn Burton, demonstrates (see color pages). Says Mrs. Stewart: "We wanted to capture a grotto feeling from the rocks and shells we collected along the Big Sur coast."

A Fireplace, Too. Designer Hicks has provided himself with a brace of splendid examples. His London bathroom (he calls it his "end-of-the-day room") features sauna, refrigerator and hifi. His country home's master bathroom has a tub with a custom bookstand and is spotted in the center of a comfortable sitting room with closets, several comfortable chairs and a fireplace.

Hicks and his clients are clearly aware that the pleasures of the bathroom transcend simple cleanliness. Consider, for example, the joy of a steely cold slug of vodka after a long hot sauna, or the titillation of sudsy coed splash parties. A whirlpool bath can be counted on to tone the muscles and raise the spirits, while built-in sun lamps will tan the hide. Given the space, there is no reason at all why parlor games cannot be moved into the bathroom. The relaxing atmosphere could also soften stiff business conferences.

If the bathroom's functions continue to expand, there will be little need for other rooms. But there is a cautionary note. As amateur doom criers delight in pointing out, the Greek and Roman civilizations went down the drain when their bathing facilities reached a zenith of opulence.

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