California: "A Tale of Two Signs"

A while back, while visiting California clients, I noticed something about their bathrooms that I haven’t seen anywhere else on the east coast, or the rest of the country (for that matter); don’t worry – it has nothing to do with bodily fluids or functions.

While walking past office restrooms, I noticed Women’s restrooms are denoted by a circle and Men’s restrooms are denoted by a triangle. Also, I noticed it wasn’t just a couple of restrooms, it was ALL restrooms. By comparison, restroom signs on the East Coast and Midwest are square. This made me wonder, why are California restrooms denoted by circles and triangles? Recently, I decided to get to the bottom of this bathroom geometry lesson…

As for the rationale behind circles and triangles, there are many theories... One theory is body shape (females are more round, especially during pregnancy and males have broader shoulders), though I doubt females would embrace this theory, and in order for the male theory to make sense, the triangle would have to be inverted. Another theory is that they’re simplified representations of the Greco Roman symbols for male ♂ and female ♀. This seems to make more sense, though after some digging (cross referencing different sources), it turns out the explanation is a bit more complicated…

The geometric shapes were created by Sam Genensky, of Santa Monica. Born in Massachusetts in the early 1900s, he, like all newborn babies of the time, had to receive drops of dilute silver nitrate in both eyes to prevent the possible passage of syphilis from mother to child. Unfortunately, in his case, the chemical had not been diluted, causing both of his eyes to burn, resulting in partial blindness.

Since then, Genensky dedicated his life towards making the lives of the blind easier. Graduating from Brown with a BS in Physics and Harvard with a Masters in Mathematics, he would later work for the RAND Corporation, where he designed the first practical closed circuit television. In high school, Genensky would improve his vision by bringing his father’s World War I binoculars to geometry class to identify the circles and triangles written on the blackboard. These were his favorite shapes, and little did he know it at the time, but it would one day become the underpinning of the California restroom signage system.

Genensky’s idea in California was to make restrooms easily identifiable to those with limited vision by using large geometric shapes with edges thick enough to be felt, and colors easy enough to be seen, even from a distance.  A twelve inch diameter circle placed on the door would be used to identify a girls' or women's restroom, and a twelve inch equilateral triangle placed on the door would be used to identify a boys' or men's restroom. A triangle placed on a circle would be used to identify a single user restroom available to either sex. An important consideration was that the color of the shapes needed to contrast with the door on which they were placed.

Genensky’s idea was quite prescient, pre-dating even the American Disability Association’s (ADA) standards. This made California one of the first states to adopt accessibility options, making it unique in more than one way (which we’ll see in a moment).

When the ADA came around to it 1990 (40 years later), they began mandating their own federal standards for restroom identification, ignoring California’s well-established restroom door symbols. They wanted a raised character sign with Braille located adjacent to the door, not on the door (as suggested by Genensky). Their concern was that someone reading the sign up close would be hit in the face if the door suddenly opened. The California signs didn’t usually pose this problem, as the doors usually swung inwards vs. outwards, and  under Genensky’s system, it only took a second to tell if the sign was curved (women) or straight (men). Nevertheless, the federal government insisted that the wall sign be used in place of the door sign.

There were other differences, as well. The government signs were square for both men and women, and if accessible, needed to display the International Symbol of Accessibility (ISA) wheelchair pictogram.

When the new federal mandates were put in place, California considered eliminating the requirement for geometric signs. After all, the federally mandated signs contained the same information as the geometric signs. But California being California decided NOT to remove the geometric signs. Instead, they decided to adopt both signage. Hence, restrooms in California have both the geometric signs of Genensky AND the federally mandated signs approved by the ADA. Two signs for one restroom!

Hopefully you found this brief history of the California restroom signage system interesting. I guess if there are two lessons to be learned from this, they would be: 1) California often times marches to the beat of its own drum and 2) the government makes SQUARES of us all!Iz Byer California Dress Pants (Google Affiliate Ad)Iz Byer California Dress Pants (Google Affiliate Ad)