CALUMET, MI - More than a century ago, a simple hot shower or a long soak in a bathtub were daily luxuries out of reach for most of those who worked grueling hours in this Upper Peninsula town’s copper mines.
Staff at Michigan Technological University’s Archives recently took a deep dive into the history of Calumet’s communal bathhouses around 1900 and its later construction of a community swimming pool. By sifting through floor plans for turn-of-the-century workers’ homes, personal letters and photographs, Archivist Emily Riippa was able to explain why this U.P. bathhouse tradition was not only necessary, but a popular perk.
“COPPER TOWN U.S.A.”
Now a small village of about 700 people parked halfway up the Keweenaw Peninsula, Calumet of 1900 was one of the central hives in the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company’s massive copper operation that boasted some of the richest, deepest mine shafts in the world. Then known as Red Jacket, the town had about 4,700 residents at the turn of the century. Most had ties to the mines. And while it wasn’t strictly a mining “company town” - there were farming and trucking industries there, too - C&H had a “profound” influence on everyday life there.
“They provided money and land to provide churches, a public library system, underwrote the public high school and training for young boys," Riippa said in an interview with MLive. “They kind of set the tone for the community.”
If you worked for the mine, it’s likely you paid rent for your family to live in one of the C&H row houses, or you bought land from C&H so you could build your own home. And if you were a worker on the lower rungs of society, it’s likely your house didn’t come with an indoor bathroom.
“Mine managers, prosperous business owners, bankers, or other members of the upper crust might have a bathroom with hot running water for themselves and even their household servants," Riippa wrote in a blog she compiled earlier this year for the MTU Archives. "The family of the average trammer or surface laborer, on the other hand, hauled a washtub into the kitchen on Saturday nights, boiling water on the stove, and pouring it into the larger vessel for a scrub.”
EXTRA ROOMS WERE FOR BEDROOMS, NOT BATHROOMS
In company-built houses, indoor toilets were not a given. One historian noted that by 1912, toilets were present in about half of C&H company homes. Because they were not typically included when the homes were built, renters could request one in writing. According to Riippa’s research, the company would install these flush toilets upon request in a home’s basement, but only if that home was on a street that connected to the sanitary sewer.
As far as full bathrooms as we know them today - with a toilet and a bathtub - these were considered a wasteful use of space in an era where every spare room was coveted as a spot to put growing families, or make some extra cash by taking in boarders.
“Large families and boarders who provided needed supplemental income strained the size of working-class company houses; residents needed all the square footage provided by bedrooms, kitchens, pantries, and common areas,” Riippa wrote in her blog. “Giving up sleeping spots for bathing room was simply impractical, and constructing an addition to make a space was beyond the financial means of a common laborer.”
“I found it really fascinating,” she told MLive of sifting through the photographs and documents tied to the U.P. bathhouse era. “I looked at letters people sent to the company, asking to install bath fixtures. Some of the letters people wrote were really quite personal. They would go into great detail about why they needed this.”
“Nowadays, you can look around the houses in Copper Country and see a bedroom that has been turned into a very large bathroom. Back in the day, if you had six children, you might take in renters or boarders. You needed every space to bunk down."
BATHHOUSES WERE A COMPROMISE
C&H’s compromise on the pressing need for more bathroom space? Communal baths. The first one was built in the basement of the C&H library building. It had a strict gender segregation setup:
“Bath patrons descended the western staircase of the building to a landing that separated them into male and female quarters,” Riippa wrote. “On the men’s side, showers proved more popular than baths. In the women’s facilities, tubs won out. While friends and family members browsed the vast selection of company-approved books a floor or two above, downstairs their bodies could be scrubbed clean of dirt, germs, and worry.”
It was a popular spot, and by 1911 an expanded bathhouse was opened nearby, this one with a charge per-scrub for men.
“Possibly to offset the $45,000 price tag and to subsidize operations, C&H imposed a small fee for male users: 3 cents for grown men, with a half-cent discount for adolescents. Women, girls and very young boys still enjoyed the bathhouse for free.”
This new building came with an exciting perk: a swimming pool. It its early years, pool time was segregated by gender, just like the bathhouse section. It seems swimsuits were not a common item back then. Most people swam au naturel, Riippa said.
“Back in these times, the need for a swimsuit was not always so apparent to people. You bathed in the nude in the swimming pool and that is why it was so strictly gender-segregated.”
The big pool, she said, was a place for fun and socializing, she said. It wasn’t a substitute for the bathhouse and you didn’t bring your bar of soap in with you.
Riippa’s research into this topic started with something she’d seen earlier in her career, while touring one of the buildings that used to be a bathhouse. She said she was surprised to still be able to see marks on the basement floor from the bath equipment.
To read more about U.P. life and see historical photos and fascinating stories researched by MTU’s archivists, check out their online blog. To browse the MTU Archives and Historical Collections online, check here.