Field Museum Experience: Dinosaurs, Fossils … and Awesome Toilets

For more than 100 years, Chicago’s Field Museum has been a tourist draw for its natural history exhibits and fossil collections. Now, the museum can add prize-winning restrooms to their list of attractions after winning Cintas’ 10th annual “America’s Best Restrooms Award.”

Cintas, a Cincinnati-based manufacturer of restroom supplies and other products, allows people to nominate and vote on their favorite restroom facilities across the nation. The winner is selected based upon hygiene, style, public accessibility and usability.

The Field Museum won out over hundreds of other competitors, including the mobile Don’s Johns Presidential Restroom trailer and the luxurious facilities in the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel.

View a slideshow of America’s Best Restrooms

The winning restrooms feature plenty of family friendly amenities, including a “Tot Area” for pint-sized visitors and the “Nanny Caddy,” which is filled with all kinds of necessities from diapers to Band-Aids.

But most importantly, with more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the Field Museum takes restroom hygiene seriously and has its restrooms cleaned every hour.

“We’re so excited. When [Museum's Vice President Jim Croft] accepted the award [Friday] he said was flushed with excitement,” said Emily Waldren of the Field Museum. “We were nominated for this by the public, and we are all about our visitors.”