I know this is a reaaaaaly old thread, but it piqued my interest as this topic does seem to come up both in "old house" circles who wonder how/why old homes had so few bathrooms, and also amongst those that wonder why new McMansions seems to have an overabundance of baths and "powder-rooms".
When I was a kid up until I was about 10 years old and we had our first "luxurious" house(== new
), and I'm not very old, I always lived in homes that had one bath. My grandparents, both having rather nice middle-class homes built in the 1950s did however have two baths. One had a very diminutive "master bath", the other having a sort of "utility" bathroom in the basement that was ostensibly my grandfather's.
But the point is that until the early 80s when we moved to Houston and we had our first house with a "half bath" on the first floor, I always thought that having any "spare" bath facilities at all was pretty darned luxurious! Heck, just having a master bath was quite impressive to me.
Many older homes only had one bath due to cost, and the the novelty as well. As pointed out earlier in the thread, it wasn't really all that long ago that homes didn't have indoor plumbing at all, much less a real bathroom. So initially the adoption of the new technology was such that even having ONE indoor room dedicated to bathroom activities was something of a luxury.
My parent's ca 1925 bungalow, rather largish at around 2500 sqft, also only had one bath which they only updated to a second bath about 15 years ago for my brother and sister.
Before moving to NC, we lived in a ca 1940 post-war house with about 950sqft and one bath for all 5 of us(3 kids). It was tight, but fortunately at that time the kiddos were small and we could manage. But we knew once they got older and wanted their privacy, it wasn't going to work out so well
So I agree with many of the previous posts, that if one has a family and can afford to have at least two baths, that's the way to go. It just gets too hectic with kids hogging the bathroom, everyone getting ready for work, school, church, you name it!
But I also see a reasonable balance, where it just becomes more work and inconvenience to have too many baths. Even if one is wealthy enough to have a housekeeper, it is still extra expense to have them cleaned and "stocked" if they aren't really needed. In those cases, just like the example above about televisions in every room, I have to suspect it more about status and bragging rights. When a house has as many, or in some cases several MORE bathrooms than bedrooms, I'm hard pressed to believe that is really necessary... unless one is perhaps running a boarding house
Now we've got a home built in 1929 with three baths, which honestly is something of a rarity in a house of this vintage unless a "mansion", which ours is not. One of the baths is in the basement and was for the maid's quarters, but is still fully functional. But even without that basement bath, which rarely gets used, we are so thankful for having a full bath on the first and second floors. We may not have a true master bath, but we have a direct door into the first floor bath as part of the master bedroom, and honestly that has worked out just fine.
So again, I think there is reasonable justification for a full bath per full occupied story(not just a single walk up bedroom perhaps, unless the master), and maybe for homes with a master bedroom with dedicated bath, that floor could benefit from a half bath. But beyond that, it seems superfluous and showboating to have more than that.
So for the average full 2 story house, 2-2.5 baths would seem completely adequate to me.
Oh and BTW, I love houses that have jack-and-jill walkthrough baths between kid's bedrooms. Kids seem to think it is the coolest thing, and it seems to work out well.
Al