A pissoir (also known in French as a vespasienne) is a French invention, common in Europe, that provides a urinal in public space with a lightweight structure. The availability of pissoirs aims to reduce urination onto buildings, sidewalks, or streets. [1] They can be freestanding and without screening, with partial screening, or fully enclosed.
In the spring of 1830, the city government of Paris decided to install the first public urinals on the major boulevards. They were put in place by the summer, but in July of the same year, many were destroyed through their use as materials for street barricades during the French Revolution of 1830. [2]
The urinals were re-introduced in Paris after 1843, when over 400 were installed by Claude-Philibert Barthelot, comte de Rambuteau, the Préfet of the Department of the Seine. Having a simple cylindrical shape, built of masonry, open on the street side, and ornately decorated on the other side as well as the cap, they were popularly known as colonnes Rambuteau ("Rambuteau columns"). In response, Rambuteau suggested the name vespasiennes, [3] in reference to the 1st century Roman emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who placed a tax on urine collected from public toilets for use in tanning. This is the usual term by which street urinals are known in the French speaking world, although pissoirs and pissotière are also in common use.
In Paris, the next version was a masonry column that allowed for the pasting of posters on the side facing the footpath, creating a tradition that continues to this day (as a Morris column, a column with an elaborate roof and without the urinal).
Cast iron urinals were developed in the United Kingdom, with the Scottish firm of Walter McFarlane and Company casting urinals at their Saracen Foundry and erecting the first at Paisley Road, Glasgow in October 1850. By the end of 1852, nearly 50 cast iron urinals had been installed in Glasgow, including designs with more than one stall. [4] Unlike Rambuteau's columns, which were entirely open at the front, McFarlane's one-man urinals were designed with spiral cast iron screens that allowed the user to be hidden from sight, and his multi-stall urinals were completely hidden within ornate, modular cast iron panels. Three manufacturers in Glasgow, Walter Macfarlane & Co., George Smith (Sun Foundry) and James Allan Snr & Son (Elmbank Foundry), supplied the majority of cast iron urinals across Britain [4] and exported them around the world, including Australia and Argentina. [5]
Back in Paris, cast iron urinals were introduced as part of Baron Haussmann's remodelling of the city. A large variety of designs were produced in subsequent decades, housing two to 8 stalls, typically only screening the central portion of the user from public view, with the head and feet still visible. Screens were also added to Rambuteau columns. At the peak of their spread in the 1930s there were 1,230 pissoirs in Paris, but by 1966 their number had decreased to 329. From 1980 they were replaced systematically with new technology, a unisex, enclosed, automatically self-cleaning unit called the Sanisette . [6] By 2006, only one historic pissoirs remained, on Boulevard Arago. [7]
In Berlin, the first pissoirs, in wood, were erected in 1863. In order to provide a design as distinguished as in other cities, several architectural design competitions were organised in 1847, 1865 and 1877. The last design, proposed by a city councillor, was the one adopted in 1878, a cast-iron octagonal structure with seven stalls and a peaked roof, known locally as a Café Achteck ("Octagon Cafe"). In common with British designs, they provided complete enclosure, and were provided with interior lighting. Their number increased to 142 by 1920, [8] but there are now only about a dozen remaining in use. [9]
A similar design was adopted in Vienna, though simpler, smaller and hexagonal. They were equipped with a novel "oil system", patented by Wilhelm Beetz in 1882, where a type of oil was used to neutralise odours, dispensing with the necessity for plumbing. [10] About 15 are still in use, and one has been restored and set up as a display in the Vienna Technical Museum. [11]
In central Amsterdam, there are about 35 pee curls, which consist of a raised metal screen that curls in a spiral enclosing a single urinal stall, including some two-person examples with the same details but a simpler shape. Though the design first emerged in the 1870s, an updated design by Joan van der Mey dates from 1916. All the remaining examples were restored in 2008.
Pissoirs of various sizes and designs, but mostly in patterned cast-iron, can still be found dotted across the UK, with a few in London, but especially in Birmingham and Bristol. A solitary example of Walter McFarlane's one-man spiral urinal remains in Thorn Park, Plymouth. [12] A number have been restored and relocated to the grounds of various open-air museums and heritage railway lines. [12]
Rectangular pissoirs, with elaborate patterned cast-iron panels, similar in design to some of the UK ones, were installed in the city of Sydney, Australia in 1880 [13] and Melbourne, Australia, in the period 1903–1918. Of at least 40 that were made, nine remain in place and in use on the streets in and around central Melbourne, and have been classified by the National Trust since 1998. [14]
In recent years, temporary pissoirs with multiple unscreened urinals around a central column have been introduced in the UK. [15] [16] A temporary pissoir for women called the "peeasy" is used in Switzerland. [17]
A pissoir was featured in the first scene of the 1967 James Bond spoof film Casino Royale . [1]
A pissoir was also featured in a few episodes of the British WWII comedy series 'Allo 'Allo! , as a meeting place for René Artois (Nighthawk) and other members of the Resistance, and is accidentally blown up a few times, twice while Officer Crabtree is inside, and once with the Italian Captain Alberto Bertorelli.
Clochemerle , broadcast in the UK in 1972, starring Peter Ustinov and many others, depicts a rural French town's attempts to erect a public urinal.
A plaskruis is a pissoir designed in the Netherlands that is the same size as a portable toilet and provides four urinals per unit. They are not connected to the sewer system but have their own storage tank. They are commonly used for music festivals and other events, but some cities also use them on a regular basis to control public urination during busy nights. It was designed by Joost Carlier who works for Lowlands and other events. They were first used in 1991 during the "Monsters Of Rock" event in the Goffertpark.
Clochemerle at IMDb
A urinal is a sanitary plumbing fixture for urination only. Urinals are often provided in public toilets for male users in Western countries. They are usually used in a standing position. Urinals can be with manual flushing, automatic flushing, or without flushing, as is the case for waterless urinals. They can be arranged as single sanitary fixtures or in a trough design without privacy walls. Urinals designed for females also exist but are rare. It is possible for females to use stand-up urinals using a female urination device.
A pillar box is a type of free-standing post box. They are found in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories, and, less commonly, in many members of the Commonwealth of Nations such as Cyprus, India, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Malta, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, as well as in the Republic of Ireland. Pillar boxes were provided in territories administered by the United Kingdom, such as Mandatory Palestine, and territories with agency postal services provided by the British Post Office such as Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait and Morocco. The United Kingdom also exported pillar boxes to countries that ran their own postal services, such as Argentina, Portugal and Uruguay.
Possilpark is a district in the Scottish city of Glasgow, situated north of the River Clyde and centred around Saracen Street. The area developed around Saracen Foundry of Walter MacFarlane & Co., which was the main employer. In the wake of the Saracen Foundry's closure in 1967, this part of Glasgow became one of the poorest in the United Kingdom, and decades later deprivation and crime rates remain high.
Sanisette is a registered trademark for a self-contained, self-cleaning, unisex, public toilet pioneered by the French company JCDecaux. These toilets are a common sight in several major cities of the world, but they are perhaps most closely associated with the city of Paris, where they are ubiquitous. In the United Kingdom they are known informally as "Superloos".
Advertising columns or Morris columns are cylindrical outdoor sidewalk structures with a characteristic style that are used for advertising and other purposes. They are common throughout Germany including its capital Berlin, where the first 100 columns were installed in 1855. Advertising columns were invented by the German printer Ernst Litfaß in 1854. Therefore, they are known as Litfaßsäulen.
Lau Pa Sat, also known as Telok Ayer Market, is a historic building located within the Downtown Core in the Central Area of Singapore. It was first built in 1824 as a fish market on the waterfront serving the people of early colonial Singapore and rebuilt in 1838. It was then relocated and rebuilt at the present location in 1894. It is currently a food court with stalls selling a variety of local cuisine.
Ballymoney railway station serves the town of Ballymoney in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
The Phoenix Iron Works, located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, was a manufacturer of iron and related products during the 19th century and early 20th century. Phoenix Iron Company was a major producer of cannon for the Union Army during the American Civil War. The company also produced the Phoenix column, an advance in construction material. Company facilities are a core component of the Phoenixville Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places site that was in 2006 recognized as a historic landmark by ASM International.
Cast-iron architecture is the use of cast iron in buildings and objects, ranging from bridges and markets to warehouses, balconies and fences. Refinements developed during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century made cast iron relatively cheap and suitable for a range of uses, and by the mid-19th century it was common as a structural material, and particularly for elaborately patterned architectural elements such as fences and balconies, until it fell out of fashion after 1900 as a decorative material, and was replaced by modern steel and concrete for structural purposes.
The Strand Arcade is a heritage-listed Victorian-style retail arcade located at 195–197 Pitt Street in the heart of the Sydney central business district, between Pitt Street Mall and George Street in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by John B. Spencer, assisted by Charles E. Fairfax; and built from 1890 to 1892 by Bignell and Clark (1891), with renovations completed by Stephenson & Turner (1976). The only remaining arcade of its kind in Sydney, the property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 13 December 2011.
A female urinal is a urinal designed for the female anatomy to allow for ease of use by women and girls. Different models enable urination in standing, semi-squatting, or squatting postures, but usually without direct bodily contact with the toilet. Sitting models also exist, and are designed for body contact with the urinal.
The Saracen Foundry was the better-known name for the Possilpark, Glasgow–based foundry company W MacFarlane & Co. Ltd, founded and owned by Walter MacFarlane. MacFarlane's was the most important manufacturer of ornamental ironwork in Scotland.
The Glasgow International Exhibition was the second of 4 international exhibitions held in Glasgow, Scotland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition took place during a period of half-mourning requested by Edward VII but was still popular and made more than £35000 profit. The exhibition was opened by the King's daughter, the Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife.
Havelock Mills in central Manchester were built between 1820 and 1840. It was probably the largest surviving silk mill in the north-west region in the 1970s and had a unique combination of silk and cotton mills on one site. It was a landmark on the Rochdale Canal, overlooking Tib Lock, one of the Rochdale Nine.
Men's Toilet is a heritage-listed public toilet at Russell Street, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1919. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 June 1994.
Paris during the reign of King Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) was the city described in the novels of Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo. Its population increased from 785,000 in 1831 to 1,053,000 in 1848, as the city grew to the north and west, while the poorest neighborhoods in the center became even more crowded.
Rondebosch Fountain is an ornamental Victorian drinking trough for horses, standing on a traffic island on the intersection between Belmont Road and Main Road in the centre of Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa. It was declared a National Monument on 10 April 1964.
Café Achteck is a common local slang for certain public urinals in Berlin. These urinals consist of seven ornamentally decorated, green-painted cast iron wall segments, arranged onto an octagonal floor plan, provide standing room for seven men, and the eighth side is the entrance. The roof is crowned by an eight-sided ventilation hood. In front of the entrance, there is a privacy screen of at least three segments. The design for these urinals came from the city councillor Carl Theodor Rospatt in 1878. In 1920 there were about 142 of these urinals in Greater Berlin, and today about a dozen preserved specimens can be found.
The pee curl is a public urinal, many of which are found in the centre of Amsterdam. They originated at the end of the 19th century, and were first installed by the Public Works Department of Amsterdam.
A urine deflector is a device for deflecting the stream of urine during urination. These may be part of a chamber pot, latrine or toilet intended for the purpose, or they may be deterrents, installed in the sides or corners of buildings to discourage their casual use as urinals by passers-by. They may be constructed in various ways from a variety of materials but are typically designed to have an angled surface which catches and redirects the stream.
