RESTROOMS: Our readers remember there being a public restroom below the gazebo in what is now called Veterans Square.
However, Sally Costik, curator of the Bradford Landmark Society, wrote to let us know there have been more than one public restroom in town over the decades.
“On the subject of public restrooms, or as the Era delicately put it ‘comfort stations,’ the one that the writers in (Wednesday’s) RTS are referring to is the restroom underneath the bandstand,” Sally writes. “And everyone was right — by the 1960s they were pretty awful and mothers would caution their children against even looking inside!”
But that one was not the same as the facility that was featured in Monday’s column.
“The one that you wrote about a few days ago was actually under the supervision of the Board of Commerce (now the Chamber of Commerce) at No. 8 Main Street. Back then, this was in the Odd Fellows Building on the square — not the present day Seneca building (which was built in 1930).”
Additionally, Sally said there was still another public restroom that opened in July 1916 in what was then the Carnegie Public Library that had “a competent lady attendant.” That building is now Beefeaters.
She passed along a couple of newspaper clippings that talk about the construction of the Veterans Square restroom that everyone remembers.
The first article says the new restroom and bandstand will replace a frame structure that was formerly in the public square. The old structure was given to Lewis Run Borough.
“The comfort station and band stand will be a massive and ornate structure with rest rooms for men and women in the basement and an ample band platform above,” the article stated.
The project was “being financed by public subscriptions gathered by a special committee of the Board of Commerce.”
The second article talked about how the board of commerce was still trying to raise the money to build it, saying, “To date only half of the needed $5,000 has been raised and the committee in charge of the campaign expects the balance will be raised within the next few days.”
