"I discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bath-house in Trenton. " Louis I. Kahn

Development of the Bath House

      When Louis I. Kahn received the commission for the Trenton Jewish Community Center [TJCC] in 1954, he was a revered teacher who had built public housing projects, a few private homes, and an addition to the Yale Art Gallery. The Trenton project demanded an innovative interpretation and Kahn responded beautifully, creating his earliest mature works and some of the most haunting buildings of his career.

      Kahn had to define a new type, the suburban campus community center, and he had to wrestle with the creation of two nascent subtypes: the swim club and the day camp. After several years of planning and demands for redrawing, the TJCC patrons built only the smallest components of Kahn's complex. These were a swimming pool and its locker room, known forever as the Trenton Bath House, as well as a modest day camp. Ostensibly, insufficient funding derailed this project.

      Nevertheless, the Kahn designed facilities that were constructed proved to pivotal in his architectural philosophy and influenced much of his later work. For the Bath House, Kahn developed an interlocking set of four square rooms that surrounded a central, open-air atrium. The four spartan rooms served as the men's and women's changing rooms, the basket room (where street clothes were kept while patrons used the pool), and an entrance room that led to the elevated pool. The four rooms were each covered by a square pyramid roof, truncated at the vortex to accommodate a skylight that served as an oculus. The roof line stopped several feet short of the exterior wall, permitting additional light to enter through this space. Each roof pyramid was attached to the wall atop the four corner pillars by a modest steel bracket, delicately balanced on the concrete block "columns."

      The resulting structures are incredibly simple in their geometry, yet at the same time stunningly elegant. Although constructed from inexpensive concrete block (with no ornamentation except for a long gone mural at the entrance) the buildings have a purity of form and monumentality that surpasses these materials. They epitomize economical functionality, while also evoking ancient, sacred buildings.

      The significance of the Bath House extends well beyond its visually pleasing aesthetic qualities. Kahn frequently stated that this project was where he first divined the organizational scheme of dividing spaces served from servant spaces, a relational approach he utilized with great success throughout his subsequent career.

      Robert Venturi has said, "I'll never forget the excitement Louis Kahn's Trenton Bath House design evoked in me when I first saw it and I continue to be aware of its significant effect on my work."

      Vincent Scully, Jr. later extolled this design by saying that "The impression becomes inescapable that in Kahn, as once with [Frank Lloyd Wright], architecture began anew."