Friday / Weekend Open Line


For urban dwellers, the difficulty — or at least the expense — of doing their laundry began to ease on this date in 1934 when the first public, self-operated laundry in the U.S. opened its doors in Fort Worth, Texas. The first name was “Washateria,” eventually replaced with the now familiar “Laundromat.” Early facilities were not necessarily coin-operated, and there was always an attendant on duty. The automatic washing machine came along in 1937, and by the late 1940s, the first unattended, 24-hour Laundromats were opened. Now, there are nearly 11,000 coin-operated Laundromats across the country, and they do nearly $3.4 billion of business annually. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the America’s Economy mobile application at www.census.gov/mobile