How Public Toilets Became a Scarce Part of City Life

A public-health response

On August 24, 2026, a JSTOR Daily account offered historical context for a problem familiar to pedestrians in many US cities: finding a toilet often means seeking permission from a private business. The article traces that situation through public-health policy, urban design and changing ideas about who was entitled to occupy public space.

Paris provides an early example. After repeated cholera outbreaks altered attitudes toward human waste, authorities moved beyond devices intended merely to discourage urination in particular corners. Public urination was banned in 1850, creating an immediate need for an alternative. The city’s answer was the pissoir, also known as the vespasienne: an often ornate street urinal decorated with ironwork and, in some cases, fitted with lamps and advertising.

Those facilities solved only part of the access problem. They were designed for men, reflecting an assumption that women were not regular participants in public life. Their limited privacy also produced uses their planners had not intended. Men seeking other men used the sites as discreet meeting places and communicated through graffiti. Police surveillance and blackmail followed, showing how infrastructure could become contested once residents adapted it to needs outside its official purpose.

From saloons to comfort stations

In the United States, the push for municipal toilets became entangled with temperance. Saloons functioned as an informal restroom network in major cities, so using a toilet could require entering a venue selling alcohol. Temperance campaigners argued that closing saloons would have to be accompanied by another place for people to go.

Reformers promoted large, multi-stall public “comfort stations,” rather than the minimally screened urinals seen in Paris. Yet public construction brought an unintended shift: some privately operated toilets restricted access once a municipal alternative existed. As Prohibition unfolded, construction of public facilities slowed, while existing stations deteriorated. The large underground comfort stations once found in American cities have since almost entirely disappeared, according to the account.

The result is a system in which hotels, shops, restaurants and coffee houses frequently stand in for civic infrastructure. Access may be free, but it is still governed by a business and can depend on whether a person appears to be a customer. That arrangement makes privacy conditional and exposes users to judgments about status.

The history suggests that the shortage did not arise from a single decision. Public facilities were repeatedly shaped by health emergencies, moral campaigns, gender exclusions, policing and maintenance choices. Their decline left a basic bodily need to be negotiated through private property—an outcome that still defines the experience of moving through many American downtowns.