The stoop is a coveted treasure in all of New York's boroughs. Let's take a look at what residents passionately call "stoop culture" through the years.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the densely crowded neighborhoods of New York, whose apartments lacked bathing facilities, combined with a progressive civic action to create a peculiar and somewhat short-lived (for its original purpose) municipal facility: the public bath house. In the 19th century, public baths, of a sort, were established as floating pools in the rivers during the hot summer months. A few "People's Baths" were built with private funds through the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor prior to 1900. In 1895 the passage of a state-wide law required the construction of public bathing facilities in the state's largest cities. The first truly municipal bath opened on Rivington Street in 1901. Many of the resulting public baths were architecturally impressive, both inside and out. The complexes usually included laundry facilities, a swimming pool, and separate tubs for men and women. The immediate need for the baths diminished some with the passage of the 1901 Tenement House Act, which required new apartments to provide toilet facilities. (Many, though not all, landlords also included baths.) Yet the public baths saw periods of high volume especially in the summer months. The year 1920 saw 7.5 million baths taken in these 20 facilities. In the 1930s some of the baths were renovated by the WPA. By the mid century, the public baths were closing and being demolished or being converted to other usages. Some facilities located in parks were made into recreational facilities. The final bath to close, in 1975, was the Allen Street Bath at 133 Allen Street.

People's Baths Milbank Memorial, 1904. In 1902, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, heiress to the Borden Condensed Milk Company fortune, pledged to donate funds to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) for the construction of a public bath. The resulting facility was completed in early 1904 at the cost of $140, 000. The facility was large enough to service more than 3000 bathers in one day. Today the building is occupied by the Republic of Indonesia's mission to the United Nations.