Square Footage

At Typical Camper Cabin at Gwynn Valley, Brevard, NC

One design challenge posed to many camps is a question of numbers… and by numbers, I mean square footage. Kids today are growing up in homes that are bigger on average than ever.

According to the US Census Bureau, new homes completed in 2013 averaged 2,598 SF. With the current average U.S. family size of 2.55, this is just over 1,000 SF per family member. Let's compare this to 1950, when the average home was 983 SF and the average U.S. family size was 3.54, leaving 278 SF per person. Back in 2006, NPR's "All Things Considered" tackled this topic in “Behind the Ever Expanding American Dream.”:

"The big house represents the atomizing of the American family," says John Stilgoe, a professor of landscape history at Harvard University. "Each person not only has his or her own television — each person has his or her own bathroom. Some of these houses are literally designed with three playrooms for two children. This way, the family members rarely have to interact. And the notion of compromise is simply out one of the very many windows these houses sport.”

Now consider that the majority of Summer Camps across the country where built before 1960. Where does this leave camp facilities when compared to the expectations of modern campers and parents?

One aspect of camp where this is particularly evident is in the basic camper cabin. There is a growing desire for each new camper cabin to contain bathroom facilities. When you look at the average American home today, this is not surprising. Many kids have their own bathrooms attached to their rooms. How are they expected to walk outside to use the bathroom at camp? Take this private girls' camp in North Carolina for example:

"The bathrooms have every convenience of home (tiled floors, large showers, “power flush” toilets that never clog, double sinks, cast iron hooks for towels, shelves for shower buckets, and endless hot water from tankless water heaters that never run out of hot water). “ - Camp Greystone: Cabin Life

This certainly wasn’t always the case. According to Salomon’s book, Camp Site Development, published in 1959, as a “book intended as a guide to all concerned with the planning and development of Girl Scout camping facilities.” a single bath was only featured as an option for a “Men’s Cabin” for the rare occasion that a dad or boy would need to stay on site." Instead the book features several community shower house plans. This book goes on to outline all aspects of camp facilities. The cabin and shower house are separate entities. This was not only true for Girl Scouts, but for camp facilities across the country. In her book, A Manufactured Wilderness, Van Slyck notes, that the separation between sleeping rooms, and bathhouse facilities in the camping world pre-1960 was also a sanitation concern. Salomon echoes this saying that,

“the idea that campers can be kept clean by an occasional soap scrub in the swimming hole has been pretty well abandoned.” –Camp Site Development, 1959

Salomon goes on to comment that due to the high capital investment of installing showers in each unit, a central shower house was often the best solution. In the late 1950's, planning manuals for other camping organizations, such as the YMCA, echoed this conclusion, establishing the "best practice" for many years of camp design.

As designers, we are often asked what is the best practice regarding building cabins with or without bathhouses. Ultimately, this depends on your camp, your mission, and your program model. What ages are you serving? What are the challenges of unit living within each age group? How are you marketing your camp experience to potential campers? To potential parents? There are advantages to both designs, but with the right guidance, well designed facilities can make your camp the best it can be.



Adler, Margot. "Behind the Ever Expanding American Dream." Audio blog post. All Things Considered. NPR, 04 July 2006. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. .

Salomon, Julian Harris. Camp Site Development. New York: Girl Scouts of the United States of America, 1959. Print.

Van Slyck, Abigail. A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2006. Print.