One of the best parts of Nashville’s five-star Hermitage Hotel is a bathroom, according to a survey of US restrooms. The men’s room in the Oak Bar on the hotel’s lower level was voted best in the US in the seventh annual “America’s Best Restroom” contest sponsored by Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp, the nation’s largest uniform supplier.
The Art Deco-themed bathroom features terrazzo floors, leaded-glass tiles and a two-seat shoeshine station. It has been the setting for photo shoots and music videos, and was once rumored to have a secret tunnel that took patrons to the state Capitol, said Janet Kurtz, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. “It has a great history here in Nashville,” Kurtz said in a telephone interview. “People have enjoyed visiting that restroom for many years. They will talk business, talk politics. It’s really unique in that nearly everyone in Nashville knows it’s the place to get the ear of someone you might need to talk to.” Groups of women have been known to leave their seats in the adjoining Capital Grille restaurant to visit, Kurtz said.
The Hermitage, built in 1910, was among 10 finalists chosen by a five-person panel from hundreds of nominations submitted through a website. Cintas started the contest in 2001 to honour businesses with stylish, clean bathrooms.
The winner beat the bathroom in the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, by “a few hundred votes,” said the survey’s editor, David Brandt, who declined to give detailed voting results.
The 21C bathroom features one-way mirrors facing its urinals and LCD screens with moving images of eyes built into the mirror above the sink. The Brio Restaurant in Rockford, Illinois, with a men’s room nicknamed “Hell” and a women’s room labeled “Heaven,” took third. The bathroom of The Signature Room restaurant, on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago took fourth, and the water-themed restroom at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts, was fifth.
Past winners include Jungle Jim’s International Market in Fairfield, Ohio, which has doors that resemble port-o-potties yet open into a modern bathroom; Wendell’s Restaurant in Westerville, Ohio; and Fort Smith Regional Airport in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
