- Russian and Turkish Baths is a health club in New York City's East Village neighborhood.
- Open since 1892, the bathhouse serves as a meeting place for the city's Russian and Jewish enclaves — and a hotspot for celebrities, millennials, businessmen, and tourists.
- For over 30 years, the Baths have been owned by two Russian émigrés who manage the facilities on alternating weeks.
Step through the tenement door on 10th Street in Manhattan's East Village, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd walked through a time warp.
Open since 1892, the Russian and Turkish Baths is about as old New York as it gets. The institution has survived wave after wave of tumultuous change in the city, it's grimy come-whoever spirit intact.
The baths have played host to New York royalty, including actor Robert De Niro and the late singer Frank Sinatra. More often, it has been a meeting place for the city's Russian and Jewish enclaves. Lately, it has attracted a new crowd of adventurous tourists and Brooklyn millennials.
Since 1985, the bathhouse has been owned by two Russian émigrés, Boris Tuberman and David Shapiro, who run the business under an unusual arrangement. After the two men realized they hated running a business together, they decided to split the baths. Each month is now split between "Boris weeks" and "David weeks." Besides sharing utilities and repair costs, the businesses operate separately.
Though the clientele has changed over the years, the bathhouse remains one of the few, true melting pots in the city. A day pass to the Baths costs $48, while a three-month pass has a price tag of $600.
We visited the baths on a recent Monday afternoon — on a "David week"— to see what we could find in the steam.
Originally called the Tenth Street Baths, the bathhouse has been open in Manhattan's East Village since 1892. In the early 1900s, the baths were a popular place for the Lower East Side's immigrant population. Few apartments had bathtubs at the time.
Tuberman and Shapiro purchased the building and the business in 1985 for $850,000. Shapiro's son Dmitry, who now runs his father's side of the business, said the two were looking for a job where they could be their own bosses. Shapiro had spent the previous five years as a taxi driver.
The baths weren't exactly an attractive buy at the time. The AIDs crisis was in full swing and the city was trying to shut down all the bathhouses, as many had become central to the gay swinging scene.
The Russian and Turkish Baths were a mess when Shapiro and Tuberman bought them. The building was falling apart, the roof was caving in, and there were hardly any clients left. But the men liked the fact that they were the only baths in town, Shapiro said.
"Everybody thought we were stupid," the elder Shapiro told The Wall Street Journal in 1997.
Tuberman and Shapiro quickly found they had completely different philosophies on how to run a business. Within a few years, they decided to split the business and alternate weeks.
The split business produces some complications. Shortly after I arrived at the Baths, a young woman came in with a pass for a "Boris week." Shapiro had to explain to the confused woman that she would either need to buy another pass or come the following week.
He said that happens from time to time and most people are understanding.
Because of their unusual management schedule, Shapiro hauls in his computers, his point-of-sale system, his merchandise, and his muds and scrubs, every other week.
Shapiro has also put the Baths on Groupon and other e-commerce sites to generate more business. But if someone tries to use a Groupon on a "Boris week," they're out of luck.
Tuberman still operates with pen and paper and refuses to do any promotion.
"It's a very bizarre way to run a business. I don't think anyone else would do it," Shapiro said.
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