Mrs. Coolidge's Closets

"Every water closet shall be provided with a local vent. ... It shall be carried upward or into a heated flue or into the kitchen chimney."

So reads a sanitary ordinance of the city of Northampton, Mass., enacted in 1909.

For the four pastel bathrooms and two auxiliary lavatories in her new house at Northampton, Mrs. Grace Goodhue Coolidge, widow of the 30th President, picked out the very latest in streamlined water closets, ivory finish and requiring no outside vents. They had been installed, when Plumbing Inspector Carl Eddy ordered them all disconnected for violating the ordinance of 1909.

Greatly inconvenienced, Mrs. Coolidge, who was expecting her son John and a party of friends for his Amherst reunion, got her late husband's law partner, Ralph Hemenway, to see the authorities. Last week her water closets got into the newspapers. Mayor William H.Feiker promised to take them up with the City Council at its meeting June 16.

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