Baths

 On 11th Street between Ave. A and 1st Ave. is a private residence that was once one of NYC's Public Baths.  It opened in 1905 for the German and Irish immigrants in the neighborhood.

In the 1840's the New York State legislature enacted laws to provide for the hygiene of the many immigrants coming into the city.  The first Public Bath was opened in 1849 at 141 Mott Street.  Financing wasn't provided; the baths had to charge; the immigrants were poor; the baths closed.  After the Civil War New York followed the example of Boston and built inexpensive floating public bathing facilities in the rivers around the city.  Begun in 1870 by 1888 there were 15 of these free baths serving 4 million people a year, but they were seasonal.  This is also a time in the U.S known as the Gilded Age when there was a strong resistance to government intervention in people's lives.  It should be noted that NYC knew very well about the connection between the lack of hygiene and the incidence of epidemics: 1822-yellow fever, 1832-cholera, 1848-cholera, 1854-cholera, 1866-cholera.  TB was also a constant part of public life.  It wasn't until 1895 that the NY State Legislature passed a law requiring  public bathing facilities.  But it was still a struggle to implement and the first Bath did not open until 1901 on Rivington Street.  The last City Public Baths, The Allen Street Baths, closed in the 1970's.
 

The Russian and Turkish Bath is on 10th Street between 1st Ave. and Ave. A.  They have been in operation since 1892 but are not free.  Among their services are 2 types of saunas.  The Russian sauna has 20,000 lbs. of rock that are cooked overnight.  If it gets too hot there are plenty of buckets of ice water to pour over you head.  At the redwood sauna you can get the Platza Oak Leaf Treatment.  A Platza specialist scrubs you, actually beats you [this is from their website] with a broom made of fresh oak leaves sopping with olive oil soap.  The Platza treatment is also called Jewish acupuncture.  There's  massage, dead sea salts scrub, black mud treatment and a "soap wash where our specialist will wash you like you haven't been bathed in months."  There's even a restaurant so after all the shvitzing, maybe a little seltzer.  Tsar Nicholas never had it so good.