It may be
fair to suggest that this effort was the nucleus of the Public
School Art Society which was later formed in the city and of
which Miss Starr was the first president.
In our first two summers we had maintained three baths in the
basement of our own house for the use of the neighborhood, and
they afforded some experience and argument for the erection of
the first public bathhouse in Chicago, which was built on a
neighboring street and opened under the city Board of Health. The
lot upon which it was erected belonged to a friend of Hull-House
who offered it to the city without rent, and this enabled the
city to erect the first public bath from the small appropriation
of ten thousand dollars. Great fear was expressed by the public
authorities that the baths would not be used, and the old story
of the bathtubs in model tenements which had been turned into
coal bins was often quoted to us. We were supplied, however,
with the incontrovertible argument that in our adjacent third
square mile there were in 1892 but three bathtubs and that this
fact was much complained of by many of the tenement-house
dwellers. Our contention was justified by the immediate and
overflowing use of the public baths, as we had before been
sustained in the contention that an immigrant population would
respond to opportunities for reading when the Public Library
Board had established a branch reading room at Hull-House.
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