Russian & Turkish Baths

268 East 10th Street | East Village | built 1900

Open on the map9 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

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

  1. 1865

    Two men garrote and rob a lodger at the boardinghouse on East 10th Street

    The address first appears in the record in 1865, with a crime. The New York Times reported that two men entered the large boardinghouse here on a Saturday evening, garroted Theodore Sanches in his second-floor room and robbed him while the house was filled with boarders. Bedford + Bowery, which found the item, notes that the address was then a boarding house.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  2. 1883

    August 27

    Sophia Danenbaum pays for a fourth floor on the East 10th Street house

    City records show the Fire Department and the Bureau of Inspection of Buildings approved plans on August 15, 1883, to add a fourth floor to the building's three floors and basement, lifting the flat roof from 45 to 54 feet. Work began August 27 and ended by New Year's Eve. Sophia Danenbaum paid the contractors, Peter Hughes and Sons, $2,000. Her husband Moses, a retired millinery merchant, had moved the large family here around 1880.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  3. 1892

    The Russian & Turkish Baths open on East 10th Street

    A bathhouse in the Russian and Turkish traditions opened on East 10th Street in 1892. Over the following decades it drew a mix of patrons, once described as ranging "from gangsters to hipsters, artists to politicians."

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 1909

    Lee Summerfield extends the Tenth Street Baths 40 feet into the back yard

    In 1909 Lee Summerfield oversaw what Bedford + Bowery calls the building's second major structural alteration. The rear of the first floor was pushed 40 feet into the back yard to make room for more of the bathhouse's amenities. Municipal Archives records describe steel and brick arches shaping the extension and terracotta coping on the interior walls of the saunas. For most of the 20th century the ground-floor business was known as the Tenth Street Baths.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  5. 1921

    A man living above the baths wakes to find a thief swapped his suit for a worn one

    In 1921 the New York Times reported that Herman Schwartz, who lived above the bathhouse, laid out his clothes, hat and pocket cash, worth $102.85 in all, then woke to find a brown derby and a cheap brown suit in their place. The next day he spotted the thief wearing his suit at 125th Street and Third Avenue. He convinced Patrolman Cornelius Walters by naming the brand of cigar in its pocket, and the thief, Abby Goldstein, was held on $1,000 bail.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  6. 1984

    Frank Sinatra, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are reported among the baths' patrons

    According to a 1984 New York Times article, regulars at the bathhouse on East 10th Street included Frank Sinatra, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. A 1991 account added Timothy Leary and John F. Kennedy Jr. Bob Woodward wrote in his book on John Belushi that the baths were one of the few places the comedian could go to relax.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  7. 1985

    Boris Tuberman and David Shapiro take over the bathhouse

    Boris Tuberman and David Shapiro became owners of the baths in 1985. The business later passed down within both families, run in later years by Tuberman's grandson Julius Tuberman-Solon and Shapiro's sons Dmitry and Jack, who still split operation between alternating "Boris weeks" and "David weeks."

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1993

    A neighbor's lawsuit over the baths' heat costs the owners $500,000

    In 1993 the baths' two owners suffered a financial blow when a lawsuit cost them $500,000. The Taj Mahal Development Corporation, which owned a neighboring building, claimed that heat from the bathhouse was seeping into its property and was so excessive that one tenant had fried an egg in his bathtub, according to the New York Times. The baths had been little affected by the AIDS scare of the 1980s, which led to the closure of many other bathhouses.

    Source: bedfordandbowery.com

  9. 2008

    The bathhouse gets a new facade

    With the building under DST Russian & Turkish Bath Corp., George Schwarz Architects replaced the historic front with a new one: plain brick facing on the upper stories over a stone base carrying inscriptions, topped with a molded hood over the door.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

Further reading

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