America's Finest Public Room

Aarian Marshall reports:

For the past 14 years, the Ohio-based specialized services firm Cintas has held a competition to answer a vital question: What is the greatest public restroom  in America? This year’s finalists hailed from all over the country, from wine bars in Miami, ball parks in Cincinnati, music halls in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and pork-focused bistros in Boston.

But this year’s champion bathroom, crowned by voters on Cintas’ website, is not nestled inside some upscale restaurant in a major city. It’s a public restroom in Minturn, Colorado.

A collaboration between the town of Minturn, LaN Architecture’s Monika Wittig, LGM 3d Studios, and Noble Welding, the restrooms are meant to resemble a passageway into a Rocky Mountain mine. “The town rallied together and showed the value of a restroom that’s creative and memorable for guests,” Cintas’s assistant marketing manager Jillian Bauer said in a statement.

It is a rare win for the public restroom, which faces persecution all over America, and indeed, all over the world. Minturn’s win proves that public facilities are not only worth having, but worth thoughtfully designing, too.