For the past 45 years, the Maurice Bath House has largely sat vacant on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park. The building, however, has a rich history that its current state doesn't reflect.
The present-day Maurice is actually not the original Maurice. HSNP museum curator Tom Hill said near the end of the 19th century the government decided that, in order to make the bath houses more sanitary, the original wooden structures had to be torn down and replaced with stone and concrete buildings. So, when the leases for the bath houses were up, these upgrades had to be made in order for the bath houses to continue to operate on the government land.
The Maurice is located where the Independent Bath House once stood. In 1880, William Maurice purchased the Independent and renamed it the Maurice Bath House. When the lease for the bath house was up, Maurice built the now-vacant building.
The bath houses originally became popular, Hill said, not because they were relaxing, but because there were perceived health benefits of the thermal water. "Originally it was a medicinal industry ... the water was thought to be helpful to illness," Hill said. Visitors had prescriptions from doctors for how hot their baths needed to be and for how long they would soak.
Around the time the old Maurice was ending its lease, Hill said that Bathhouse Row started attracting tourists -- travel was becoming easier due to trains. As a result, the Maurice set out to be the most elegant of the bath houses on Bathhouse Row.
The Maurice's neighbor, the Fordyce, also planned to be the best establishment on the Row. Hill said that Sam W. Fordyce, whose lease had also run out, intentionally delayed the construction of the current Fordyce so that he could see what the Maurice would look like. This allowed the Fordyce to top the Maurice when it opened in 1915. Not to be outdone, Maurice closed his bath house and began a remodel to reclaim the top spot.
In the remodel, a new room called the Roycroft Den was added, as well as a sun porch. The Roycroft Den, Hill said, was built as a memorial to his friend Elbert Hubbard, who had been killed when a German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania.
Hubbard, Hill said, was partially responsible for the success of the Maurice. Hubbard had published a series of booklets called "Little Journey," and one of the booklets was of the Maurice. Hill said he is unsure if Hubbard ever actually visited the Maurice, but his booklet got "a lot of nationwide attention for Maurice and his bath house," Hill said.
A copy of the booklet is on display in the Ozark Bath House.
As for why it is called the Roycroft Den, Hubbard was the founder of the Roycrofters craftsman design studio.
At first, the elegant room was a den that featured an elaborate stained-glass ceiling, oak furnishings, oak ceiling beams, a fireplace and paintings. "It was a gorgeous room, a tour de force of arts," Hill said.
Eventually, the room would be repurposed as a gymnasium.
Hill said that over the decades Hot Springs has welcomed numerous celebrities and stars, but he said he only knows of one famous person who was confirmed to have used the Maurice, boxer Jack Dempsey.
Dempsey was the lineal boxing world heavyweight champion from July 4, 1919, until Sept. 23, 1926, and was part of the inaugural class of inductees in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
"He would come to the Maurice and work out in the gymnasium," Hill said. While Dempsey was training in the Roycroft Den, people would be standing in the streets watching him work out, Hill said.
Following World War II, the bath house industry started to decline. Eventually, Bathhouse Row would become nearly vacant. The Fordyce was the first to close in 1962. While the Quapaw closed next in 1968, the building reopened the following year as a new business. The Maurice was the next to close in 1974. Hill said the two fanciest ones were the first to have to close their doors.
When the Lamar closed in 1985, the Buckstaff was the only operating bath house left --to this day, it has never closed since it opened in 1912.
Hill said that two years after the Maurice closed, the building became property of the National Park Service. Unfortunately, the building was not taken care of for a long time. The room that got the worst of it is the Roycroft Den. Hill said the stained-glass ceiling was removed, but the room was not made waterproof so rainwater ruined the wood interior of the den.
Over the decades since, the building has had a few things happen with it. The building was stabilized in the late 1990s, and the lobby was remodeled in the early to mid-2000s. An HVAC system was also installed in the building.
The building has also seen some use over the years. HSNP Superintendent Laura Miller said the building is used for some storage, and for a while was used by Cutwell 4 Kids as a studio for children to paint in.
Over the years, the other bath houses have been revived. The Fordyce reopened as the HSNP visitors center in 1989; the Quapaw reopened in 2008; the Lamar reopened as the Eastern National bookstore in 2012; the Superior reopened as a brewery in 2013; the Ozark reopened as the cultural center in 2014; and the Hale reopened this year as the Hotel Hale.
The revitalization of Bathhouse Row, Hill said, has been a positive for Hot Springs. He said before gambling became illegal in Hot Springs in the 1960s, Hot Springs was a real destination city. Outlawing gambling "put the town on the ropes," he said, noting the town has come back to life over the years, and the rebirth of the bath houses contributed to this.
As the last of the bath houses on Bathhouse Row to sit vacant -- along with the Libbey Memorial Physical Medicine Center, once known as the Government Free Bath House located a few blocks away from Bathhouse Row -- the Maurice has become the focus of the Friends of Hot Springs National Park, which is attempting to raise money to fix the Roycroft Den and sun porch, and finish the restoration of the lobby of the Maurice.
Local on 07/14/2019