East 11th Street Baths

Stroll down East 11th between Avenues A and B to find a stately Italian Renaissance facade whose frieze reads FREE PUBLIC BATHS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. Too wide to be a tenement but too narrow to be a courthouse, 538 East 11th Street is one of the last extant examples of a unique type of public building that proliferated during the first decades of the twentieth century. These facilities were the direct results of reform efforts to improve the hygiene (and morals) of the droves of the working poor, whose cramped apartments often lacked basic bathing facilities. Seven bathtubs and 94 newly invented “rain showers” allowed it to accommodate thousands of visitors per day. Built in 1905 by Arnold W. Brunner, a founder of the Architectural League of New York, its rear abuts the Tompkins Square Library, built in the same year by McKim Mead and White. While the library is still a library, the addition of plumbing to new, improved tenement buildings constructed in the 10s and 20s coincided with reduced attendance to public baths – this one finally closed in 1958. Bathing, o…