PHOTO: Rub a dub dub, four men in a President’s tub?
Posted by Jared Shepherd
- 4844 Views
- February 18th, 2013
- in Miscellaneous
- No Comments
Of the many fun facts and statistics surrounding the history of presidential plumbing and the White House, one of our favorites is the tale of President William Howard Taft’s bath tub.
President Taft’s nickname was “Big Bill” for a reason. At a weight of 330 pounds, his facilities required special attention. The 1909 photograph above shows Taft’s specialty-made bath tub which measured seven feet long and almost four feet wide, big enough to fit four grown men. The tub itself weighed close to a ton and might have held about 600 gallons. That’s a lot of wastewater.
Today, DC Water handles wastewater treatment for the White House and all of the District of Columbia.
Taft’s original tub was removed from the White House during a renovation in 1952.
RELATED STORIES:
- JULY 4: What were toilets like in 1776?
- GAMES: “You have died of cholera,” and other health lessons we learned playing Oregon Trail
Image from classroomhelp.com
