This bathhouse was built in 1926 after the drafts by the architect Westerman. Designed in the Amsterdam School style, it had separate baths for men and women. Every neighborhood had a bathhouse and this one was one of the last ones to be shut down in the 1980s, when, at last, every single house in the neighborhood was equipped with a private shower.
Until late into the 19th century, only the elite could make use of private bathhouses. In order to improve the population's health and hygiene, at the turn of the century, public bathhouses were commissioned by the city for the common folk to use. The construction and management of the bathhouses was a task undertaken by the municipality from 1910 onward.
Waterbeschaving ('water civilization') was the term used by the Department of Washing, Cleaning, Bath and Bathing Establishments (WSBZ). It measured the extent to which the population was aware of the need to take regular baths.
The 'water civilization' of the Amsterdam residents was measured on the basis of the
so called 'bath frequency factor'. The ideal number was 52 which meant an annual average of one bath per week. The WSBZ kept precise records of the bathhouse visits in order to monitor how far this factor was from reality. Shortly after 1945 the bath frequency factor was five instead of the ideal 52. Halfway through the 1950s it increased marginally to ten. The WSBZ calculated that at the time, about half a million Amsterdammers never took baths!
It was only in 1933 that private showers became a requirement for all the newly built housing. Incidentally, the installation of a boiler was not required, so the showers were exclusively cold. As a result, most of the new showers cubicles installed in the new housing projects were used as extra storage room instead.
In the 1950s the use of municipal bathhouses reached its peak before starting to gradually decline. Halfway through the 1970s, the bathhouses still possessed a social function, particularly for the elderly. After intense debates, in the 1980s the city council decided that the bathhouses had to close.