Russian and Turkish Baths

Experiencing a historic bathhouse

Throughout my time living in East Village I've often walked past a mysterious gray building on 10th Street with a sign out front that says "Russian and Turkish Baths," but I never paid it much attention. I, unlike many New Yorkers, have a bath at home, I'd proudly think to myself each time I strolled past. I had no desire to take a bath in that shabby gray building until one day a few weeks ago when my friends decided we were going to check the place out.

I decided to do some research on the Russian and Turkish Baths before going. It's a building with an assortment of saunas and steam rooms in the basement, along with a cold plunge pool. The building is owned by two Russian owners, Boris and David, who originally bought the business together in the 80's but began feuding and split the business in two so they never had to see each other again. The spa is now owned by their two completely separate companies which alternate custody of the building each week like divorced parents, making life difficult for customers who bought a punch card, gift certificate, or Groupon. If you bought a pass from David, it only works on David weeks. If you bought a pass from Boris, it only works on Boris weeks. 

The baths have been around since the late 1800's and have hosted many notable historical figures, from Frank Sinatra to John F. Kennedy. Bathhouses were once much more common in New York, but as the AIDS epidemic swept the city in 1985 the authorities shut nearly all of them down for fear that they were gay hangouts, sparing the Russian and Turkish Baths simply because they hung up a sign declaring that their bathhouse was a "straight place" (true story). However, the person who cuts my hair has assured me that on certain nights the bathhouse is certainly not a straight place. 

I also decided to look up some reviews. 

Yikes

Gina's scathing review certainly doesn't do the place any favors, but we decided to go anyway.

Immediately inside the door was a front desk and a small cafe serving Russian food. We paid our entrance fee at the desk and got changed in a tiny locker room. When we came out we were offered a pair of rubber flip flops and a threadbare towel. It felt more like checking in to county jail than a spa. We then descended the stairs into the baths.

The long and narrow basement was brightly lit with chipping tile on the floor and walls and flaking white paint on the ceiling. Bath-goers chattered loudly and sound echoed throughout the chamber. It had the ambiance of a high school boys locker room. The cold plunge sat along one side and various doors around the perimeter of the room led to different types of saunas and steam rooms. We walked into the first sauna we saw and sat down. 

To Gina's credit, the sauna did indeed smell like dirty old private parts. To cover up the smell of old private parts they periodically pump eucalyptus(?) oil into the sauna, which masks the smell but is so strong that it burns your eyes and nostrils like tear gas. My friends and I looked at each other through watery eyes. Shit. What have we gotten ourselves into? 

We walked back out to the main room feeling dejected and looked around, taking inventory of the other types of saunas at our disposal. In total there were five different types of saunas and steam rooms, and each had a window to see inside except for one. This windowless sauna was at the very far end of the basement and was ominously titled "Russian Room." 

We explored all the nearby saunas and had a much better experience than we'd had in the first one. They smelled pleasant and felt great. When I got too hot I took a dip in the freezing cold plunge pool. It was so cold that I struggled to breathe as I bobbed in the icy water like a third class Titanic passenger.

After a while there was only one room left to explore: the Russian Room. We made our approach and apprehensively filed inside. 

The Russian Room looked like a torture chamber. A single lightbulb illuminated the dim, cavernous space, which had stone walls and some type of cistern in the center. Bathers sat around sweating, and an employee in the corner - wearing what appeared to be a medieval executioner's hood - was whacking a man's motionless body with tree branches. I watched in horror, wondering what was happening and whether I should intervene. I later read that this was a treatment people pay for. 

According to the website, "[a] specialist will scrub you (actually beat you) with a broom made of fresh oak leaves, sopping with olive oil soap." I'm not sure what part of that sounds even remotely appealing, but we had already walked in so we had no choice but to sit down with everyone else and watch the sweaty Russian beat his customer like a piñata. The only open seat remaining was right next to this executioner and his victim, so I sat next to them and tried to casually converse with my friends while listening to the rhythmic "whap, whap" of the oak broom smacking the man's body a few feet away.

The stone walls of the Russian Room remind you of the long history the bathhouse has had in New York City over the last century and makes you wonder what has happened in these rooms over the years. Plenty of depraved sex acts, according to the person who cuts my hair, but what about before that? Countless New Yorkers have sat and sweated in this very basement over the decades. Did JFK turn up the heat on the Soviets after he was beaten senseless with an oak broom in this torture chamber? Perhaps Frank Sinatra was inspired to write his song Summer Wind after catching a whiff of dirty private parts in the sauna.

I thought of Gina's Yelp review and wondered whether it was entirely fair. Did it smell like private parts? In certain rooms. Were there men with fat hairy bellies wearing only nasty shorts? A few. Were there filthy-looking, almost-naked smelly old men sitting around the pool? At times. However, despite Gina's attitude toward the baths and their occupants, I had a lovely experience. Yes, it was a little dirty, and so crowded that you could scarcely maneuver without rubbing against a stranger's sopping, sweat-soaked body. But that was all part of the charm. To me, the baths symbolize life in New York City: different types of people in close quarters having a great time even though things are a little gross and weird. 

And so, to the Russian and Turkish Baths on 10th Street, I give a thumbs up. 

The most alarming part of the visit was that my friend seemed to have contracted a case of "corpse hand," which is a disease I just made up to describe when your hands look like a dead man's hands. 

Look at his hands compared to everyone else's hands. Yuck!

If you have any guesses as to why Harry's hands look like a corpse's hands, let us know in the comments!