Almost 14 Places to Pee in NYC
Rating NYC’s privately owned public toilets
I recently got super obsessed with NYC public toilets. I went down a rabbit hole researching public bathrooms after Council Member Gale Brewer came to one of my community board’s meetings and offhandedly brought up that it costs over $3.6M to build a public bathroom in the city. $3.6M?! Why?!
Remember San Francisco’s Toiletgate episode of 2023? When San Franciscans got super mad because their lawmakers thought it was normal for a public bathroom to cost $1.7M? The story made the NY Times. And NYC’s are over twice as expensive.
There’s lots of reasons why it’s so expensive to build a public toilet in NYC– that’s the next post, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, this post is about why public potties matter. And my adventure sampling a subset of them.
Why I care about public toilets:
I have a small bladder, I like to stay hydrated, and my favorite activity is walking around NYC.
New York City ranks 93rd out of 100 cities for public bathrooms per capita. We’re close to last. We can do better.
We should expect more. We should have high expectations of our city government. We shouldn’t settle for “everything is more expensive in New York.” We should be shocked and appalled when we hear that our public toilets are twice as expensive as San Francisco’s. If we as citizens let our elected officials off the hook for providing basic public services at a reasonable cost, it’s our fault that we don’t have nice things.
So public loos are important for meeting a basic need, but also emblematic of something bigger: if we can’t even build a toilet, how can we expect to solve even tougher problems like housing insecurity?
If the problem is that we don’t have enough public bathrooms, what are the solutions? One solution is to negotiate with developers to add public space, including bathrooms, into new commercial or residential buildings. These are called Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), areas that are technically owned by private entities but are open to the public for use. POPS are often zoning concessions. For example, say a developer wants to build a taller building than what zoning would usually allow. In return for increased height limits, they provide a public plaza with accompanying bathrooms. An interesting solution. How’s it working?
I collaborated with Anne Kadet to visit all 14 POPS bathrooms in NYC. Here’s our user experience with the POPS bathroom solution.
Why is Anne uniquely positioned to collab on a post about POPS toilets? She’s a subject matter expert, having written both about NYC POPS and NYC public toilets. Her substack, CAFÉ ANNE, is a delight. It reads like a conversation with your smartest, funniest friend who’s always one cultural step ahead of you but still relatable. Here’s Anne’s version of our adventure.
What was our methodology? We decided we’d visit each bathroom by splitting them between the two of us, and use the same very scientific rating methodology. Here’s the full spreadsheet, in case you’re into that. Basically, a 5-star is a bathroom that not only has basic amenities– it also goes above and beyond with special flair. A 4-star has all the basic amenities– it’s good. Annnnddd shit runs downhill from there.
Let’s start with the most remarkable bathrooms: the 1 star bathrooms. There were two that received a rating of 1 star:
825 Eighth Ave
Stars: ⭐️
The POPS plaza is just incredibly lovely. It was a sunny Sunday, the plaza was busy, it was a great New York scene. Until I had to pee. I asked the security guy with the yellow vest how to open the bathroom. He took out the key. It didn’t look occupied, but he knocked on the bathroom door first, just in case. He thought he heard something in there, so he let me in at my own risk. He clearly didn’t want to discover who or what was in there– he stayed on the outside of the door and opened it just enough for me to squeeze in. Luckily I found myself alone in there. But I didn’t want to touch anything. The tiles are grimy. The grout is weird. The toilet paper is hanging from a strip of plastic bag. The toilet paper dispenser hangs cockeyed and empty. No mirror. No soap. No water from the sink. Verdict: shockingly bad.
55 E. 52nd St
Stars: ⭐️
Here again, the carpet doesn’t match the curtains. The POPS plaza is actually nice– there’s a grand piano and a pianist.
The bathroom is another story. Anne visited with her friend Chris. Chris was the first to inspect the unisex restroom. He was in and out fast. "Literally, they took the plans from an airplane bathroom," he reported.
"Like the bathroom inside the plane?" Anne asked.
"Yes, he said, "The bathroom inside the plane. It's that small. And every piece was designed, clearly, to be cleaned by a hose."
Anne stepped in and closed the door behind her. The single-toilet room, roughly the size of a phone booth, featured a miniature sink with a tiny, wavy-glass mirror and a tiny toilet maybe 24 inches of the ground. There was no soap, no trash can and no room to do the highkicks that are so fun to perform after taking a leak. The message: "Yes, you can pee here, but you will be very sorry!"
There were two 2-star⭐️⭐️bathrooms at 805 Third Ave and 645 Fifth Ave. They weren’t as heinous as the 1-star ones. One of them looked like someone kicked in the sink and the other smelled like a combo of poop and cheap perfume.
There were three 3-star ⭐️⭐️⭐️ bathrooms. They get the job done, but joylessly. At 575 Fifth Ave, Anne commented, “Not the worst bathroom on my tour, but for sure the most depressing.” Cheap, dingy gray tile walls and floors, acoustic tile ceiling, old-fashioned tube fluorescent lighting that lends an eerie yellow glow to the scene. A scolding poster illustrated a long list of items you may not flush. Anne said, “After using this bathroom, I just wanted to die.”
At 120 Park Ave, I accessed the bathroom by asking the guard to unlock the door, which led to a dim, uninviting hallway with scratched and weirdly dented metal doors. It definitely feels like something bad happened in that hallway. Since the POPS atrium is not nice and the hallway is spooky, I expected the bathrooms to be in bad shape. But they’re actually totally fine. They’re clean and well stocked. 61 W. 62nd St is similar in that it’s functional and checks all the boxes, but there’s no joy in the experience.
The two 4-star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️bathrooms at 180 Maiden Lane and 875 Third Ave are solid. They’re well-maintained, with fully stocked TP, soap, and working appliances. Shout out to the very friendly security guard at 875 Third Ave– he really made Anne’s experience there!
The two 5-star bathrooms are magical. They give me faith that these public private partnerships can produce remarkable infrastructure that really benefits New Yorkers. Here’s the detailed ratings:
550 Madison Ave
Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Visit this bathroom now. Even if you don’t have to pee. Bring your friends. It’s a delight. You can refill your water bottle in there, do a cartwheel, change 3 diapers. The world is your oyster.
I wasn’t expecting any of the POPS bathrooms to hit 5 stars if I’m being honest. I expected POPS owners to really phone it in on bathroom maintenance because of the cost of upkeep and lack of accountability. And 5 stars is a high bar— the bathroom has to hit all the basics and also have pizazz. This bathroom deserves every star.
The entrance to the bathroom is flanked by the happiest plants you’ve ever seen, and it’s late November– the gardeners are feeding these plants them good drugs. As I entered the bathroom from the cold outdoors, I was greeted by warm air, acknowledged by a bored staff person, and ushered in by the brushed glass and new tile. I headed toward one of the 8 vibrant blue floor-to-ceiling stalls, each housing a pristine auto-flush toilet. There was a place to hang my tote bag, there was toilet paper, and once I headed out to wash my hands, there were 4 Dyson sinks that soaped, watered, and dried my hands without me having to move or touch anything.
I recommended this bathroom to my friend Susan who gets the heebie jeebies from public toilets. And she was like, “Whoa that’s nice.”
153 E. 53rd St, Citigroup Center
Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Anne and Chris visited this, the highest-rated POPS bathroom of them all. First, the atrium itself. Chris and Anne could only gaze around with wonder. This sparkling, buzzing space with its fancy food hall, giant trees and bubble lighting is about as spiffy as it gets in NYC without having to pay admission. "You could come here on a date!" Anne said.
"100 percent!" said Chris.
"Baby, all this is yours!" Anne rehearsed.
"Baby, all this is yours!" echoed Chris. "Everything you see is public space—between the hours of 10 am and 8 pm!"
And the bathrooms did not disappoint. Chris checked out the men's room first. "It's incredible!" he said, after inspecting the facilities. "Like a super high-end airport lounge bathroom. Also extremely clean. They clearly polished the stainless steel on the baby changing station."
It was Anne’s turn. Chris wasn't kidding. Eight stalls with doors flush to stall sides so no one can peek in. Six sinks, each a large mirror, with its own hook so you can hang your bag, overhead lamps casting a flattering glow and motion-activated dispensers releasing nicely perfumed soap. Not to mention the full-length mirror, high-end finishes, Dyson XLERATOR hand dryers powerful enough to take your hand off, and enough room to do a series of backflips onto the yes, stainless steel baby changing station. A bonus: the water station with a separate fountain for filling your water bottle.
One more bathroom made the list: 725 Fifth Ave, Trump Tower. But I didn’t think I’d have to go into the Trump Tower to rate this bathroom. The POPS public restrooms are supposed to be off the POPS atrium, which is right next to the Trump Tower. But there are no public restrooms off the atrium. I asked the security people, and they said the bathrooms were in the Tower. Which means the owner of Trump Tower isn’t providing the POPS required amenities in the manner specified: “2 restrooms on concourse level near Covered Pedestrian Space.” Shocking, I know.
This bathroom is still worth writing about. It’s in the basement of the Trump Tower. Which means you need to pass the flagship Trump Store, go down a golden escalator, and past three Trump-themed eating establishments: Trump Grill, Trump Cafe, and Trump Sweets. The menu items are not Trump-themed, I checked. Unless Boom Boom Shrimp is a reference that I don’t understand. The bathroom is down a pink marble hallway, and the lettering and accents are all gold.
The aesthetic is Trump’s style: it’s large, gaudy, and impressive, but in no way modern. It’s not traditional or vintage, it’s just anti-modern. Instead of playful modern fonts, it uses bold, authoritative Serifs. The bathroom is pink marble and gold. The pay phone next to the bathroom is the cherry on top.
I wasn’t sure whether to rate this one a 0 because it isn’t actually following the rules, or a 5 since it’s a public bathroom with personality. Here’s where I landed: it doesn’t get a rating because it doesn’t belong on this scale. It’s not a POPS bathroom. It’s a mall bathroom. Mall bathrooms are a separate category.
If you’ve been really keeping track throughout this post, you’ve counted 12 bathroom ratings. But aren’t there supposed to be 14 POPS bathrooms in Manhattan? That’s right, but two of the spaces are under construction, so no accessible POPS bathrooms. They get 0 stars for being nonexistent.
Takeaway:
POPS toilets are nicer and more accessible than other NYC public bathrooms. A recent city report found that 2/3 of NYC public restrooms are filthy or locked up. Only 6 out of the 14 POPS ones were closed or bad (1-2 stars). More than half were fine.
But POPS toilets are still a pretty bad solution to the “we don’t have enough bathrooms” problem.
It’s not a scalable solution. There are only 14 POPS toilets. Negotiating with developers hasn’t gotten us very far to date.
I don’t love this extracting concessions from developers thing. It might be fine if our zoning let us build bigger buildings as of right. But our current zoning is already too restrictive (40% of the buildings in Manhattan couldn’t be built under today’s rules, including the UWS’s and UES’s aesthetic). The concessions game assumes that any building that doesn’t fit into our zoning rules must be bad for the area in some way (e.g. too dense, blocks sunlight, etc.). The logic is that if we let a developer go beyond the zoning rules, we can extract concessions, so the public can something in return for that sacrifice. But that assumption isn’t currently a good one— our zoning rules already make it too hard to build normal buildings1. We need to make it easier, not harder, to build more.
Next post: why it’s so expensive to build a public toilet in NYC, what we’ve tried, and what advocates and electeds are doing next.🚽
City Councilmembers did just agree to a citywide rezoning plan that is a huge improvement though. It’s very exciting. Aaanndd the work doesn’t stop here.
Never have I been so captivated by the rating of public restrooms! I'm inspired to pay more attention to what's being offered downtown Sacramento, for example, as a comparison!
Such an awesome, weirdly insightful post!