Draw a Bath

Our earliest and most vivid memories of joy can be watery ones: splashing in a wading pool as a toddler, taking a bath before bedtime, revelling in the surf with hundreds of others on a hot summer afternoon. But the emotions associated with water go back further than childhood: They’re primeval stirrings. They remind us that bathing has been an aquatic occupation of ours for thousands of years.

The Architecture of Bathing, by the architect and University of Waterloo professor Christie Pearson, surveys famous, beautiful, and idiosyncratic balneal buildings, along with such objects as tubs and pools that are the props for ablution. Pearson’s bathing summary is comprehensive, both historically and geographically. It includes how we augment nature with piers, docks, and promenades, and how we build elaborate spas that are somewhat antithetical to the simple pleasures of plunging into hot water that springs magically from the ground and of wallowing in...