What would your bathroom have looked like 100 years ago? Visit the Plumbing Museum on Rosedale Road in Watertown and find out.

This museum started in 1979 in Worcester Mass., and has only been open in Watertown for a little more than a year, yet has already had over 800 visitors!

When you walk in the first things you see are ancient toilets, sinks, and bathtubs. The newest version of the toilet is also there. It was made in Japan and has features you could only imagine. For instance, it cleans itself, and it has a seat warmer.

Most everything else in the museum is up to 100 years old. One thing that pops out at you when you walk in is all of the tubs that are made from wood, and there is also a glass case with what looks like little pieces of paper. Turns out that it is actually old-fashioned toilet paper.

A lot of the toilets looked like outhouses, but some look more like the ones we have today. If you go into the room with a lot of black machinery, you can learn how they repaired plumbing decades ago.

There are also loads of books about plumbing in which you can read anything imaginable about toilets.

If you have to go to the bathroom you can do that, too. Just make sure you don’t go in the ancient ones!

(For information on the plumbing Museum, go to http://theplumbingmuseum.org/ .)

–March 11, 2010–