What's in a name?
Bathtub Row Brewing is not only one of the first brewery co-op’s, it’s located next to one of the most influential but unknown streets in the country. Here’s a glimpse at the history of Bathtub Row and how it inspired our Co-op’s name.
Bathtub Row consists of five original houses built in 1917 as part of the Los Alamos Ranch School facilities. They remained part of the Ranch School until 1942, when the United States Government bought out the school to use the area for a new, secret laboratory. As the town of Los Alamos was being built at a mad dash to keep up with the growing population of Manhattan Project employees, the former Ranch School houses remained the only ones with bathtubs. The rest of the houses and barracks had showers, but due to wartime limits that Congress imposed on iron bath fixtures, proper bathtubs were a luxury that only the most important of lab personnel could enjoy. The residents of Bathtub Row, especially Manhattan Project Director Robert J. Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty, were known to throw wild, music- and martini-fueled house parties.
Cheers! Los Alamos, New Mexico, a drinking town with a science problem.