Warm Springs Bathhouses

Two bath houses at Warm Springs in Bath County, Virginia, enclose pools fed by a natural spring. The men's bath house is a simple one-story frame octagon with little decoration. Its two gabled entrances appear original, while the projecting dressing rooms were added later. The women's bath house is a larger, twenty-sided building with vertical siding and an enclosed gallery under a shed roof holding individual dressing booths. Each pool is thirty-five feet across, fed through loose cobbles at the bottom, and the water stays close to 96 degrees. Each roof is a truncated octagonal pyramid with a ventilation opening. The springs first drew visitors seeking cures, then grew into a fashionable resort. They served as the starting point for the annual tours of the Virginia springs, a summer custom of wealthy Southerners. The men's bath house is thought to date to the late eighteenth century. Both buildings are still used for bathing and have changed very little.