Communal showers were once so common that they were a ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape. Essentially, every high school and middle school, (and indeed many elementary schools) included them in their designs. Moreover, every dorm, rec center, swimming pool, gym, camp ground, military base, and many work places included them. These facilities did not sit idle; people used them. In many situations their use was mandatory, but even where their use was not required, it was so customary and expected to use communal showers, that people used them regularly and automatically. This era lies within the living memory of most people alive today, and its influence is still felt in the popular depictions in media of any of the settings where they were common. However, it's also clear that times have changed. There has been a massive trend toward the replacement of communal shower with stalls or other private facilities, or even with the elimination of shower facilities all together. Most mandatory shower policies have been abolished or are not enforced. Even in places where communal showers still physically exist, they have often seen a massive decline in usage. When you pause and think about it, there has been a systemic shift within our culture in this regard. What is almost as impressive as this change is the degree to which it is not understood. Not only the "why" and "how", but even the "when".

The rise off communal showers is itself not thoroughly documented. We know they were first invented in the 1870’s and rose in popularity from thereon. The first communal shower in a public school in the U.S. was at Boston Latin in 1900. Beyond that, we know very little. They seem to have become fairly common by the 1920’s and 1930’s and became very common or even nearly universal in the 1940’s. This followed the era of common usage that defined our popular conception of communal showers and lasted for several decades, at least until the 1980’s or early 1990’s; however, this development and rise is not fully known or documented. We don’t know exactly how many facilities had communal showers and when they had them. The only thing that does seem clear is that at some point they began to decline, in terms of usage and then following a delay of some years but a physical decline and replacement of facilities. If you search you can find some reports going back to the 1970’s of objections being raised, but it seemed that throughout the 1980’s they still seemed very common. 1995 marks a watershed year because that year three major newspapers across the country (The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times) all published stories to the effect that communal showers were declining in usage. When did this decline begin, where did it start, and why? These are all questions that the collections of anecdotes we have cannot really explain.

It is the goal of the School Shower Survey to study this shift. Although similar studies could be done on any number of facilities, public schools offer the most potential because they are institutions whose records are public and easily accessible. The School Shower Survey will systematically search all school board and municipal records that are available online for all relevant data and proceed with interviews of those identified as being involved. Given the massive scope of this task, the Survey will focus initially on New Hampshire, as its small size and availably of records make it an excellent candidate for an initial survey. Once New Hampshire is complete, other states will follow.

We are very excited to inaugurate this long overdue and greatly needed research to shed light on a topic that has, thus far, been under-researched.