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This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to New York
It’s 4.30pm and I’m in a sub-sub-basement of a building in the Flatiron District, resisting the urge to flee. Sweat pours from my body as Kieran O’Leary, a sauna master, leads about 25 assembled sauna-goers in an ancient ritual called aufguss. “Set an intention,” he says as he dashes an ice ball scented with essential oil against the hot stones. “Mine is self-love.” The thermostat scrapes 90C. O’Leary artfully twirls his towel, fanning the hot air around the room. “I am loved,” I repeat to myself. “I am enough.” Then quietly I mutter, “I am so hot. Jesus Christ.”
Bathhouses are a 5,000-year-old tradition. They’ve existed ever since humankind discovered that soaking in hot water feels nice (and as the hot-spring-loving snow monkeys of Nagano indicate, the desire is not just reserved for homo sapiens). In New York City, however, bathhouses were for many years the exclusive province of the poor and the recently arrived. In the Lower East Side, where the first municipal bathhouses were built, the demographics overlapped. According to The New York Sun newspaper in 1891, the point wasn’t just hygiene but to baptise “some of these grimy Anarchists and some of these Poles, Russians and Italians into good Americans”.
Over the years, bathhouses have flourished in largely Russian and eastern European neighbourhoods such as Coney Island and the East Village, importing the banya experience for Old World émigrés. On Wall Street, the sauna became (like the cigar lounge, the locker room and the boardroom) yet another andron, where deals were made through the thick mist of a steam room. Titans in towels and slippers.
These days, bathhouses are once again having a moment. Bathhouse, a sleek new company, recently opened a 35,000 sq ft facility in the heart of Manhattan and is exponentially enlarging its original location in Williamsburg. Aire Ancient Baths, from Spain, is launching a second Manhattan location in a former storage facility for MoMA on the Upper East Side. And the demographic they’re attracting is democratic and varied. As the world spins ever more wonkily on its axis and chaos reigns, more and more people are seeking refuge in warm pools and hot rooms, according to Bathhouse co-owner Jason Goodman. “The heat is real, the cold plunge is real — it’s an uncomplicated core human experience,” he says. “You don’t have to be taught how to get it. You don’t have to understand theories. It is just a mind-body connection.”
Bathhouse
14 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10010
As one descends into this sprawling new Flatiron bathhouse, the light gets weaker and the air gets warmer. By the time you arrive on the lowest level, past the café carved out of Manhattan bedrock, bodies appear as glistening silhouettes against illuminated pools. The crowd here is as stylish as it is sweaty. In a large body-temperature pool, patrons relax. There are two hot tubs, a steam room, a dry sauna and an infrared sauna, but true acolytes head to the banya, powered by a large brick oven. Afterwards, they stream, steaming, into cold plunges, which hover at 7C and 10C. abathhouse.com; Directions
World Spa
1571 McDonald Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11230
There is no more diverse room in all of New York than the Grand Banya, America’s largest, at the World Spa — an almost comically luxurious facility tucked under an elevated train track in deepest Brooklyn. Orthodox Jews, tattooed hipsters, LGBTQ+ and straight, the old and young all come together across three floors of outlandish rooms. An elaborately tiled hammam channels Morocco; a sauna filled with dried herbs feels ancient; while an infrared sauna with undulating walls is straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In one room, mounds of snow flutter from an opening in the ceiling. It’s not quite Moscow on the Hudson but more like a dacha in Brooklyn. worldspa.com; Directions
Russian & Turkish Baths
268 East 10th Street, New York, NY 10009
Habitués of this bathhouse know the tale of long-feuding business partners Boris Tuberman and David Shapiro, who for years ran the 130-year-old business on alternating weeks. Though David died in 2020, his son Dmitry has preserved the bifurcated business. Guests must still buy either a pass for David or for Boris weeks. This place is a holdover from when the East Village was a largely eastern European neighbourhood, and the Russian and Turkish baths used to cater to Jewish mobsters, then to stars (Sinatra and John Belushi in his Saturday Night Live days were regulars) and today to a mix of old-timers and newcomers. Now run by Dmitry, the David weeks are notably younger, while Boris (eschewer of all technology) caters to a more traditional clientele. Both enjoy banyas of enormous heat, where men armed with oak branches flail you for a price, a treatment called platza. russianturkishbaths.com; Directions
Aire Ancient Baths
88 Franklin Street, New York NY 10013
Part of the bathhouse experience is the commingling, being cheek by jowl, towel to towel with humanity. But if you prefer more privacy, Aire Ancient Baths, a candlelit grotto in a former textile factory in Tribeca, allows only 20 patrons in at a time. They soak in four pools and shuffle in their robes to receive spa treatments including body scrubs, hair masks and massages. beaire.com; Directions
Mermaid Spa
3703 Mermaid Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11224
If the heat of a sauna rises in direct proportion to the percentage of Slavic languages being spoken, the Mermaid Spa has the hottest rooms in the city. Located near the traditionally Russian enclave of Coney Island, in the Seagate, it is one of the most old-school bathhouses in New York. Patrons are drawn to the large backyard patio, a traditional Russian restaurant, one of New York’s largest Jacuzzis and a dry-heat banya that reaches 93C — extreme even by Russian standards. mermaidspa.us; Directions
Do you have a favourite New York spa or bathhouse to recommend? Tell us in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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