Division Street Russian and Turkish Baths
Encyclopedia
Public bathing
Public baths originated from a communal need for cleanliness. The term public may confuse some people, as some types of public baths are restricted depending on membership, gender, religious affiliation, or other reasons. As societies have changed, public baths have been replaced as private bathing...
at 1914 W. Division Street
Division Street (Chicago)
Division Street is a major east-west street in Chicago, Illinois, located at 1200 North . Division Street begins in the Gold Coast neighborhood near Lake Shore Drive, passes through Polonia Triangle at Milwaukee Avenue into Wicker Park and continues to Chicago's city limits and into the city's...
in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, which has operated since 1906. Although it originally provided separate facilities for both men and women, the women's side has been closed for several years.
The bathhouse is divided into two areas, both with entrances on the south face of the building.
The door on the west leads to the men's area, which consists of a locker room, lounge areas and massage rooms on the first floor. Stairs lead down to the basement level which contains the bath facilities: open showers; cold pool; warm pool; eucalyptus
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
-scented steam bath; and a hot room
Banya (sauna)
Banya in Russian can refer to any kind of steam bath, but usually to the Russian type of sauna. In Bulgarian, banya usually refers to a bath and bathing...
. As of February 2006 this side of the bathhouse is undergoing repair and is closed, but is expected to reopen within months.
The east entrance leads to a smaller set of facilities, which were originally the women's side. For a while, the women's side was rented to a separate owner and operated under the name "European Spa" but that business closed several years ago.
Division Street's owner, Joey Colucci, is currently running the men's bath house in the part of the building which had formerly been the women's side (i.e., the "European Spa") while he renovates the larger side (i.e., that accessed from the western entrance, which was traditionally the men's side).
In this smaller area there is a small bar area on the first floor, with the basement containing a locker room as part of the wet area; massage rooms; divided showers; steam room; and a hot room. There are no pools on this side of the bathhouse.
The most popular feature at Division Bath is the traditional Russian Banya
Banya (sauna)
Banya in Russian can refer to any kind of steam bath, but usually to the Russian type of sauna. In Bulgarian, banya usually refers to a bath and bathing...
or hot room. These rooms (one on either side) are built of concrete and tile with glass doors. In a corner of each is a brick oven in which granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
boulders, approximately the size of watermelons, are heated to extreme temperatures by gas jets; hot water is then thrown on the rocks by the customers as desired. When this happens, the water instantly evaporates, creating steam inside the oven and heating the brick enclosure, thereby raising the air temperature in the room. This method provides a much dryer heat than common steam rooms. The bathers sit or lay on three-level tiered wooden benches, which allow for dramatically different temperatures at the various heights. Cold water is provided by taps located under the benches - when overwhelmed by the heat, a bather may dump a bucket of frigid water over his head while still in the hot room, or may step outside to use the cold pools.
Several attendants are usually on hand in the hot rooms to give a plaitza or "rub"- a scrubbing with a handheld birch broom or a bundle of leafy oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
twigs. The customer receiving this will lay naked on a sheet, usually with a towel over his face, and be scrubbed thoroughly, front and back, then doused with cold water to remove the soap. This is an additional service which costs ten dollars.
Division Bath is the only traditional bathhouse remaining in Chicago, and one of only a handful in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Authors who have written about it include Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
and Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
. One of its most prominent regular customers in recent years has been Reverend Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
- a fact that brought the bathhouse some publicity when it was first reported in the mainstream press. Mobster Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana
Salvatore Giancana , better known as Sam Giancana, was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966...
was also said to have come here, and various out-of-town celebrities such as James Gandolfini
James Gandolfini
James J. Gandolfini, Jr. is an Italian American actor. He is best known for his role as Tony Soprano in the HBO TV series The Sopranos, about a troubled crime boss struggling to balance his family life and career in the Mafia...
and Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe
Russell Ira Crowe is a New Zealander Australian actor , film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a...
have occasionally visited; their autographed portraits line a corridor on the first floor.