Allen Street Municipal Baths

133 Allen Street | also 135 Allen Street | Lower East Side | built 1900

Open on the map3 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1905

   The city opens the Allen Street public baths in the tenement district

   The municipal bath house at 133 Allen Street opened in 1905, during a wave of public bath building in the city's slums, and for its first decades the elevated train blocked its view. Tenement residents, many without bathrooms of their own, could wash there. The designers, York & Sawyer, also meant the building to uplift bathers morally, so they gave it large arched windows and glass skylights for light and air. What look like scallop shells survive on the facade.

   Source: Ephemeral New York

2. 1908

   July

   The Sun calls the Allen Street bath about the busiest of the city's public baths

   On a July day in 1908 The Sun described the Allen Street bath as nearly the busiest in the city. The paper noted the boys outside with damp hair blown into wisps, and said there were more of them than ever came out of all the swimming holes in Indiana. Ephemeral New York says that in the early 20th century the baths were extremely popular.

   Source: Ephemeral New York

3. 1975

   The Allen Street baths close after outlasting the city's other public baths

   The Allen Street bath stayed open longer than the city's other public baths, according to the Tenement Museum, but it closed in 1975 as the city's fiscal crisis hit. The building now houses the Church of Grace to Fujianese, a storefront congregation with signs in two languages and a cross above the door. What look like scallop shells on the facade are the main reminder of its bathhouse past.

   Source: Ephemeral New York

Further reading

• This church was once the 1905 Allen Street bathsEphemeral New York

Nearby

• 143 Allen Street3 entries
• University Settlement House184 Eldridge Street | 4 entries
• Adath Jeshurun of Jassy Synagogue58 Rivington Street | 5 entries
• Rivington House45 Rivington Street | 4 entries
• 61 Delancey Street1 entry
• Lower East Side Tenement Museum81 Delancey Street | 6 entries

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