For The Rich and Famous

The prevailing fashion among the rich and famous who are owners and occupants of the palace-like mansions that are springing up on the eastern side of Central Park is to have their luxury baths as lavish and ornamental as their boudoirs and bedrooms. A bathroom is no longer a place for the ablutions of all the members of a family, where the housemaid has a cupboard for her brushes and brooms, and where little boys and girls may sail their paper boats by way of an occasional indulgence.

Every member of a millionaire's family in these days has a suite of rooms for his or her exclusive use, consisting of the sleeping-room, dressing or sitting room, and the luxury bath. Onyx is the favorite stone for the belongings of a modern luxury bath. It was introduced a few years since by Mrs. Frederick Vanderbilt, the walls of whose bathing apartment are entirely of white onyx, as are also the furnishings. The floor of this luxury bath, of course, has its rich soft rugs, and there are cushions to the one or two chairs that the room contains, but no upholstery, and the draperies are all of muslin or some light washing material, so that microbe or insect life could  find no resting place in the apartment.

In the new and spacious mansion which adorns Fifth Avenue at the entrance to Central Park, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt's luxury bath is modeled very much after her sister-in-law's, except that it is much larger and with more decoration about the ceiling and side walls. There is little danger of the onyx luxury bath coming into common use, which is what all dainty women of the present day desire so much to avoid, as the expense of it is far beyond the means of any but the very rich.

White Carrara marble and prettily decorated porcelain have been used in the furnishing of Miss Gertrude Vanderbilt's luxury bath, the ceiling of which is exquisitely painted in cloud effects, with which the side walls harmonize. Miss Vanderbilt's bedroom and boudoir are all in white and blue, and to use the expression of one of her girl friends, "the sleeping-room is a dream of beauty in the palest blue."

from HARPER'S BAZAR, 1894