Bathtub Row

When the top-secret World War II Manhattan Project took over the Los Alamos Ranch School, housing for the hundreds and then thousands of people pouring into town was limited. The army constructed dormitories and apartments, brought in trailers, Quonset huts, and other portable homes, and constantly struggled to meet housing demands. The log and stone cottages on this tree-lined street, formerly home to Ranch School staff, were the nicest living quarters in the community. The highest level scientific and military personnel on the project, including Laboratory Director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and base commander Col. Whitney Ashbridge, lived there in the only homes in town with bathtubs, because cast-iron tubs were not included in Army-built housing during the war effort. Alice Kimball Smith, a high school history teacher and wife of a prominent Manhattan Project metallurgist, gave the street its enduring nickname. In 1944, Ken and Peg Bainbridge hosted a party in Spruce Cottage to celebrate I.I. Rabi receiving the Nobel Prize in physics, and guests played roulette for a chance to take a bath. When the Atomic Energy Commission took over Los Alamos in 1947, the street was officially renamed 20th Street, though the bathtubs remained important. In the early 1950s, the pastor of the United Church and his wife lived in the Arts & Crafts House, and his wife invited young women living in dormitories to come enjoy a bath. In 2007, Los Alamos County officially restored the street’s long-used name, Bathtub Row.

Los Alamos, New Mexico · United States