Amelia Soth at JSTOR Daily:
Here’s a pop quiz for you: What purpose did this little kiosk serve?
It’s quite a pretty little building—note the delicate grilles, the ornately etched glass, and the little bouquet of metal flowers bursting from the roof.
But of course, there is one key clue missing from the photograph: the smell. Or rather, the stench. This was one of Paris’s infamous public urinals—a pissoir (or vespasienne, if you’re inclined to be polite).
There was a moment around the mid-1800s in Paris when public urination began to be treated as a public health issue. A series of devastating cholera outbreaks led people to begin regarding human waste as a danger rather than a mere nuisance. Something had to be done.
More here.
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