Arnold Brunner's 1905 11th Street Public Baths -- 538 East 11th Street

Water-themed designs like porpoises surrounding the cartouches and Neptune's tridents decorate the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

As the 19^th century drew to a close and the city’s poor crowded into cramped tenements, the problem of bathing was increasingly serious.  In the Lower East Side in 1896 there was one bathtub for every 79 families.

Half a century earlier the public had demanded action by the city.  By the time of the Civil War middle- and upper-class families in New York had begun bathing regularly, as the Europeans did.  But the lower classes had no means to bathe.  By 1858 the Committee for Free Public Baths had been formed, but nothing would be done about the situation for decades.

Even after the New York Senate passed a law on April 21, 1895 requiring that all first and second class cities create free public bathing facilities, Manhattan’s first bath did not open until 1901; governmental red tape miring the process.

Following the opening of the Rivington Street baths on the Lower East Side in 1901, the project gained momentum.   In 1903 the City bought two lots at 538-540 East 11^th Street in the Tomkins Square neighborhood which was populated mainly by German immigrants.  Architect Arnold Brunner was commissioned to design a public baths.  Construction was completed in 1905.

The first years of the 20^th century were marked by the City Beautiful Movement.  The philosophy behind it was that imposing, monumental structures would inspire citizens to behave consistently with their surroundings.  Brunner’s baths would follow that viewpoint—a gleaming white Italian Renaissance structure with splashes of Beaux Arts ornamentation.  Situated among the dark brown brick tenement buildings, it shimmered like a pearl.  The building, constructed of Indiana limestone, cost the city $102,989.

The Bureau of City Betterment of the Citizens’ Union of the City of New York had laid out their instructions for proper public baths:

1  * People’s baths houses should look and be clean, feel warm, smell sweet and be quiet and orderly.

2. * Bathing is a means of safeguarding the public welfare by the prevention of disease and by the raising of the standard of personal cleanliness and morality.
*  By the maintenance of free public baths universal bathing is more nearly and most economically accomplished.

The 11^th Street Baths followed these principals.  There were two separate entrances; one for males and one for females.  No proper Victorian would have mixed the sexes even in the lobby.    There were 94 rain baths (today called “showers”), 67 for men and 27 for the women; and seven bathtubs, two for men and 5 for women.   Bathers would bring their own towels and soap.  Privacy was an important factor and each stall had its own changing room.  Each person was allowed 20 minutes to bathe.

Male and female patrons had totally separate facilities -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

William Paul Gerhard, in his 1908 book “Modern Baths and Bath Houses,” noted that the 11^th Street Bath was “the only bath in which the generally insufficient city water pressure on the second floor is taken into consideration, and in which provision is accordingly made for pressure and air tanks, supplied from steam pumps and air compressors.”

Privacy was assured by individual shower stalls, each with its own dressing area -- "Modern Baths and Bath Houses" 1908 (copyright expired)

The first summer after the baths opened was insufferably hot.   On the last day of June 1906 14 people died of the heat and The New York Times reported “it was the hottest June since 1901.”  The indigent poor in the Tompkins Square neighborhood suffered.  The newspaper noted “The east side, which has always been the worst sufferer in hot waves, again supplied the biggest number of heat cases yesterday.”   To escape the heat people sought the cooling waters of the Public Baths.

“At the Eleventh Street baths people stood in lines four deep,” reported The Times.  “By and by the crush became so great that, despite the eighty-seven sprays and numerous tubs…the police reserves had to be called to preserve order.  The lines broke, and as each batch came out of the baths two or three hundred rushed to get in.  Order was finally evolved by the police and it was not necessary to make any arrests.”

The public school system used the baths, as well.  With no bathing facilities in students’ homes, shower baths were installed in public schools to promote personal cleanliness.  In 1917 the Board of Education’s Annual Report noted “The public bath is located in 11^th street near Avenue B.  This bath supplements nicely our school shower baths and enable us to reserve the latter for pupils of the intermediate or lower grades.”

In March of 1926 The Times remarked on the success of the city’s system of 15 public baths.  “Tenants in houses that were reared along about the time when the only tub in town was the celebrated marble affair in the late mansion of the Vanderbilts, are using the city-owned showers and pools three or four times a week instead of once or twice.” 

Despite the newspaper’s optimistic attitude, it was obvious to the city that the poor were using the public baths to keep cool rather than clean.  Patronage fell sharply off during the winter months.

Gradually, private bathrooms were installed even in the tenement houses and the need for the free public baths eroded.  By the middle of the century, only three public baths were in operation in the city, one of which was East 11^th Street.  Although in 1958 131,000 persons used the three baths, the city closed the 11^th Street and 109^th Street baths in money-saving move.

Brunner’s miniature limestone palazzo sat neglected for three years, then it was sold in 1961 and converted into a parking garage.  The steps into the arched men’s and women’s entrances were removed and ramps installed to enable cars to drive in.  As the neighborhood declined in the next decade, with Tompkins Square park becoming a notorious drug center, the baths building became a warehouse.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams and his wife Alyssa purchased the building in 1995.  It was converted into a photography studio, the grimy façade cleaned and replacement gates to the arched entrances installed.

Car ramps that replaced the entrance steps of the two outside arches are still evident -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite the abuse suffered by the 11^th Street Public Baths in the last half of the 20^th century, it emerged as “a highly intact example” of Arnold Brunner’s work, as described by the Landmark Preservation Commission.  It is an attractive reminder of a time in New York City when the simply task of taking a bath was difficult for many.

The Asser Levy (East 23rd Street) Public Baths

The 19th Century was a time of tremendous growth in New York City.  In the 50 years between 1820 and 1870 the population increased tenfold and communicable diseases were rampant.  Immigrants, crowded into tenement housing with no toilets or bathtubs, were subject to typhoid and cholera.  In the Lower East Side in 1896 there was one bathtub for every 79 families.

Prior to the Civil War, the public began to demand that the City do something.  Middle class and upper class New Yorkers had, by now, taken up the European example of bathing the entire body regularly.  In 1858 Gustav Struve, President of the Committee for Free Public Baths, wrote the editor of The New York Times scolding that Mayor Tiemann had promised six weeks earlier to petition the Common Council to establish free baths for the people.  "Why is nothing done by these gentlemen?  Many thousands of citizens are anxiously waiting for a decision from the Fathers of our City."

Those six weeks turned into thirty years before, in 1889, Dr. Simon Baruch led an impassioned drive for public baths.  Although the City established a few wooden floating baths in the rivers in 1870 -- the number climbing to 15 by 1888 -- there was the problem of sewage in the water and the seasonal limitations.  Obviously they could be used only in summer.

On April 21, 1895 the New York Senate passed a law requiring that all first and second class cities create free public bathing facilities.  Manhattan's first bath did not open until 1901, the process mired in political red tape.

Two years later the Department of Docks and Recreation chose the lot in the Gashouse District at Avenue A and East 23rd Street for a new bathhouse.  Designed by Arnold W. Brunner and William Martin Aiken, it was to mimic the monumental bathhouses of ancient Rome.  The "City Beautiful" movement of the period was motivated by the theory that the public would behave more civilly if surrounded by civilized buildings.

The architects, according to a 1904 New York Times article, were faced with considerations specific to bathhouses -- keeping water steaming hot, venting the steam and maintaining sanitation.  The baths, it said, "...are attractive, both outwardly and inwardly and have the dignity desirable for municipal structures.  The interior finish is intended to make for cleanliness, lightness and airiness."

Labeled Neo-Roman or Roman-Revival at the time, the new bathhouse was one of the most lavish in the City when it finally opened on February 17, 1911.  Costing $259,432, it boasted vaulted ceilings, balconies, skylights, stone urns and a fountain decorated with dolphins.  The facility included 79 showers for men and 59 for women, serving approximately 200,000 bathers per year.

In 1936 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses added an outdoor swimming pool and playground.  However by 1973 the aging building was in serious need of repairs and was closed.  While plans for extensive restoration of the interior architectural details were being drawn up, a fire seriously damaged the structure.

Nevertheless, in 1988 the rehabilitated bathhouse was dedicated -- renamed the Asser Levy Recreation Center after the 17th Century Jewish immigrant who stood up to Peter Stuyvesant and obtained civil rights for colonial Jews in New York.

Today the bathhouse offers a gym with weights, workout machines and treadmills; classes in yoga, aerobics, pilates; basketball, handball and indoor and outdoor pools.  But the modernized East 23rd Street Bathhouse retains the monumental quality so sought by the City Beautiful committee.