A bitcoin-powered Brooklyn banya is opening a new location, and The Post has exclusive first photos of its chic interiors.
Since 2019, Williamsburg’s Bathhouse has been providing locals with a wellness destination that offers not just spa treatments, but also communal facilities — a stylish take on the traditional European shvitz experience adapted for American sensibilities.
And now, Manhattanites are getting their own iteration of the successful Brooklyn retreat, set to open in the Flatiron District before the year is out.
“Our whole goal is to give the customer an experience of going into another world and having them forget where they came from for a little bit,” Bathhouse co-founder Travis Talmadge told The Post.
It will be located in a former parking garage at 14 W. 22nd St. (“Turns out parking garages,” with their high ceilings, extreme width and open floor plans, “they kind of need the same things we need.”) The Flatiron location will feature six pools; four hot rooms (three saunas and one steam room); multiple heated marble hammams; an entire treatment wing with 27 tables (four for scrubs, 23 for massages); 500 lockers; “a ton of deck space;” and a full-service, liquor-license-equipped restaurant all spread across 36,000 square feet and three stories descending nearly 40 feet underground.
Patrons of the Williamsburg venue can expect a similar experience at the Flatiron branch (which will also be powered by bitcoin) albeit in a much larger, less intimate space — although the 103 N. 10th St. location will soon be growing significantly.
Construction is already underway on doubling the size of that currently 10,000-square-foot Bathhouse, which is expanding into an adjacent building, formerly a Brooklyn Brewery warehouse, and installing a sprawling outdoor space on its roof.
Bathhouse also has a Chicago location in the works, although that will likely not open until 2025.
The existing location, as well as the two new ones, will all offer programming which, unlike many “superficial” treatment-focused modern spas, will be centered around the simple, ancient practice of contrast therapy — also known as moving from really hot to really cold repeatedly, explained Talmadge.
“A lot of people come to us trying to get what they’re seeking out of a spa day, and you can certainly relax, but it’s really, truly a bathhouse” and not a spa, he added. “The big difference between us and your traditional spa that currently exists on the market is it’s not precious, there’s no cucumber eyes, which is one of our internal taglines.”
Talmadge and his company co-founder, Jason Goodman — both big fans of fitness and nutrition — saw bathhouses as the “third edge of a [wellness] triangle,” but were turned off by the grime at many they visited.
It inspired them to create a classic communal banya that also offered the polished attraction of many high-end day spas, a bathhouse that would be “cleaner than anything that exists.”
So the pair created an amalgamation of global shvitz culture they felt would most appeal “to a young American audience,” a demographic set apart by their lack of group-sweating customs.
Said Talmadge, “Throughout the world there’s such a rich history of bathhouses in every other culture — except the US.”