Be the Champagne
On Northeastern Pennsylvania's Novelty Bathtubs
At the height of their powers in the 1960s and ‘70s, the owners of Mt. Airy Lodge hoped to attract “hard-working New Yorkers who wanted an easy, inexpensive getaway with relentless distractions.” New Yorkers of a certain age involuntarily memorized the melody and lyrics of the commercial jingle (“now’s the perfect time.”) It was perfectly maximalist: you were told to bring nothing but “your love of everything,” on the assumption that “everything” comprised skiing, swimming, tantalizing buffet dinners, a wardrobe of light-colored separates, a shimmering dance floor, and appearances by Bob Hope.
The aesthetic of Mr. Airy Lodge fascinated me as a kid, and I can remember being puzzled that we didn’t visit despite the fact that it was so self-evidently enchanting. Meanwhile, my mom and stepfather were restoring a tastefully rustic weekend cottage in the same region of Pennsylvania, with no novelty bathtubs anywhere in sight. Perhaps not coincidentally, they had a neighbor up there who sold something called “soft hot tubs,” and to this day we don’t know what those are.
Like most Poconos resorts, by the early 1990s the Lodge had fallen on hard times. Cheap airfares and cruise packages started to draw their clientele to the Caribbean, Las Vegas, and points beyond. It got harder and harder to book top acts for the Crystal Room. It fell into disrepair, got sold, and today the property is under new management as the Mount Airy Casino Resort and Spa. The website does not evince any self-aware embrace of the property’s heritage kitsch, and the suites pictured look more or less like a room at the local Doubletree. The Poconos have undergone a bit of a black grout Airbnb makeover in recent years, but that particular brand of cabincore isn’t likely to make it inside a casino anytime soon—not shiny enough, probably.
Eight year old me would ask what could be more luxurious—truly—than a champagne glass bathtub? Well, even if Mount Airy Casino Resort (and Spa) has quietly moved away from them, you can still find them at the Cove Haven Resort. There’s a genre of ruin photography that documents abandoned Catskills resorts online (tragically this includes Grossinger’s Hotel, the inspiration for Dirty Dancing’s Kellerman’s) but I checked TripAdvisor and not only is Cove Haven not in ruins as of 2021, it has pretty high ratings all around. Cove Haven also happens to be the birthplace of novelty bathtubs. And this innovation might be one reason that the Pocono’s had a heyday in the first place.
Cove Haven and its sister resorts, the Paradise Stream and the Pocono Palace, have 135 champagne-glass tubs and 437 heart-shaped whirlpool bathtubs. For the logistics engineers: the champagne glasses are seven feet tall and there’s a little spiral staircase that leads to the top where you get in. They were both invented by the hotel’s one-time owner, Morris Wilkins (1925-2015). So successful was his marketing of the Poconos to postwar newlyweds that he established the area as a honeymoon destination for decades.
The Poconos offered New Yorkers a nearby destination that was green, bucolic, and inexpensive, plus it was easier to get to than Niagara Falls. And though it’s extraordinarily beautiful, Northeastern PA isn’t a region full of outsized, jaw-dropping natural wonders like the Falls or the Grand Canyon. So Wilkins created an interior wonder in the form of sumptuous but not stuffy honeymoon suites with novelty tubs to lure people inside. (To paraphrase the sociologist Vera L. Zolberg, “an elite experience for everyone.”) He introduced the heart-shaped tub–which he cast in concrete and tiled himself—in 1968, and 20 years later earned US Patent number D294290 for the champagne glass.
Born in Stroudsburg, PA, Wilkins wasn’t trained as a designer, but he was an accomplished electrician. He served in the Navy on a submarine following Pearl Harbor, and started a career in hospitality when he bought Hotel Pocopaupack on Lake Wallenpaupack in Lakeville with business partner Harold O’Brien. They changed the name to Cove Haven in 1958. By the late 1960’s, when Wilkins created the heart-shaped tub, colorful bathtubs and fixtures were already well established in the marketplace, and as the decade wore on, shag carpeting, flamboyant lighting, and vivid hues were increasingly popular in statement bathrooms. By making it large enough for two, Wilkins succeeded in making the heart-shaped tub and its champagne coupe successor the interior equivalent of a secluded outdoor jacuzzi.
Appropriately enough, Wilkins settled in Palm Springs, CA in his later years, and passed away in 2015, aged 90, in Las Vegas. I, for one, propose a toast. 🥂