The springs belonged to the federal government, which sold the water to bathhouse operators and regulated them. Who got to use it was left to local custom. After Reconstruction, Black residents could work in the bathhouses but no longer bathe in them freely. In the 1880s Black patrons could buy tickets at the Ozark and the Independent, but were kept out of the best hours, particularly 10 a.m. to noon. A poor Black bather could use the Government Free Bathhouse, which gave free baths to the indigent from 1878 into the 1950s. Its 1921 building was divided into four sections: Black women, white women, Black men and white men.
Malvern Avenue
The Crystal Bathhouse, opened in 1904 at 415 Malvern, was the first built only for Black patrons, and the 1913 fire destroyed it. The Knights of Pythias rebuilt. The Pythian Bathhouse and Sanitarium opened on December 27, 1914, designed by W. T. Bailey of the Tuskegee Institute and run by J. T. T. Warren. Knights of Pythias members paid half price. It grew from two stories to four, and Dr. John E. Eve directed its hospital on the top floor. Nearby, the Woodmen of the Union, led by John L. Webb, finished a hospital and bathhouse by 1922 and dedicated a $500,000 building at 501 Malvern in 1924, with a 2,000-seat theater, a nursing school, doctors' and dentists' offices and a bath hotel. By 1915 the avenue held 45 businesses and the offices of Black physicians and lawyers.
Players and performers
The Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago American Giants and Memphis Red Sox trained in Hot Springs in the 1920s, and local historians place them at the Pythian and Woodmen hotels, as they do the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords in the 1930s. The Crawfords' 1935 camp is documented in the Black press, though their lodging that spring is not. One paper listed Satchel Paige at camp; another called him absent without leave, and photographs show about eighteen players without him. Joe Louis was a guest at the National Baptist Hotel, and Count Basie and Peg Leg Bates appeared at the Woodmen building.
Opening the Row
Most attendants on Bathhouse Row were Black, and they organized. Fred W. Martin, president of the Bath Attendants' Association, won a city council seat in 1954 and lost it in 1956. Thelma Guinn, a government bathhouse attendant, was active in the NAACP chapter revived in the late 1950s. On March 28, 1963, two national NAACP officers tested the Buckstaff for nondiscrimination, and the local chapter won guarantees from managers on the Row. Accounts date the end of separation from 1963 to 1965, and afterward neither Black-owned house drew as many bathers. The National Baptist Convention had bought the Woodmen building in 1948 and opened its bathhouse in February 1951. Its manager, Alroy Puckett, said in 1983: "It's a small price to pay for integration." The Pythian closed in December 1974. The National Baptist closed on November 13, 1982, though other accounts say 1981 or 1983.
Start at Hot Springs National Park, then walk to Malvern Avenue. The Pythian is gone, but the Woodmen building still stands at 501, now senior apartments, within the Malvern Avenue and Pleasant Street Historic District.