Quapaw Bathhouse (Hot Springs, Arkansas)

 bathhouse, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, historical building, Mission Revival (architecture)

413 Central Avenue
Hot Springs, AR 71901
(501) 609-9822
www.quapawbaths.com/

The Quapaw Bathhouse was built in 1922 in a Spanish Colonial Revival style building of masonry and reinforced concrete finished with stucco. The most striking exterior feature is the large central dome covered with brilliantly colored tiles and capped with a small copper cupola. The building's use as a bathhouse ended in 1984 when the last contract ended. A new lease was signed with the National Park in 2007 and the Quapaw Bath house reopened as Quapaw Baths & Spa in July 2008.

The Quapaw Bathhouse was built on the sites of two earlier bathhouses, the Horseshoe and the Magnesia, which resulted in its large land assignment on Bathhouse Row. The moderately priced bathhouse services were designed to serve the public at rates set somewhere between the lower-priced Superior and the luxurious Maurice. It had an original capacity of 40 tubs.

It was originally to be named the Platt Bathhouse, after one of the owners, but when a tufa cavity was discovered during excavation the owners decided to promote it as an Indian cave. It was renamed Quapaw Bathhouse in honour of a local Native American tribe that briefly held the surrounding territory after the Louisiana Purchase was made. The natural hot spring in the building's basement was publicised in promotional brochures making the cave and hot spring a popular attraction. The Quapaw had bathing facilities on its first floor making them accessible to the elderly and the handicapped.

Most of the floor space is in the U-shaped first floor which has a quarry-tiled lobby with sun porches on each side and massage facilities on the north and south pavilions. The rest of the first floor is divided unequally between the men's and women's bathing facilities which respectively occupy the north and south sides. The narrow rectangular second floor, running the length of the facade and topped with the dome, has dressing rooms and a lounge. The Quapaw was the moderately priced bathhouse with none of the extras such as beauty parlours. baths, vapours, showers and cooling rooms were provided with massages and some electro-therapy also offered. The partial basement contains a laundry, mechanical equipment, and a tufa chamber housing the Quapaw spring.

Directly above the entrance is a cartouche with a carved Indian head set into the decorative double-curved parapet. The Indian motif, found in several other places in the bathhouse, was used to reinforce the promotional "Legend of the Quapaw Baths" which claimed that the Indians had discovered the magical healing powers of the cave and spring which were now housed in the building's basement. The double-curved parapets at the north and south ends of the building are capped with scalloped shells that frame spiny sculpin fish. The shell and the fish both emphasise the aquatic aspect of the building. The scalloped shell is a common architectural element found in Spanish Colonial and Revival buildings. Originally the symbol was used to represent Santiago de Campostela, the patron saint of Spain, but it evolved into a mere decorative element in secular revival buildings such as this. The sculpins, originally painted gold, are now painted white.

On the front elevation, a series of arched windows is interrupted by a central pavilion that forms the entrance. The arched entrance doorway is flanked by two smaller arches. Further emphasizing the entrance are two large finials that project out of the roofline of the second story, visually framing the dome behind them. The dome's mosaic is chevron-patterned with a band of rectangular and diamond patterns encircling its base. The dome rests on an octagonal base and a new compression ring was installed after 2004. The sloped roofs of the first and second floor are visible from the front elevation and are covered with red clay tiles. Portions of the roof that are not visible from the ground are flat. The interior of the building is more than 20,000 sq ft (1,900 sq m).

In 1928, the portico across the front of the building was winterized with glass enclosures in the window openings which was removed in the early 21st century. Acoustic tile ceilings were added in the men's first cooling room and the women's pack room. Some of the outside walls were insulated the following year. New partitions were installed in 1944 to allow more space for massage facilities. The display spring in the basement was covered with plate glass in the mid-1950s. Closed in 1968, it was reopened as Health Services, Inc. with only 20 tubs and services that were oriented towards hydrotherapy and physical therapy. It was the only bathhouse open on evenings and weekends. It regained its original name a year before it was closed in 1984 following the discovery of major damage to plaster ceilings and skylights. The exterior was sandblasted, repaired and repainted its original white colour in 1976.