Home / New York City / Research / Public Baths

407 West 28th Street Public Bath

Cost: $226,000

The West 28th Street Bath was the penultimate public bath built as part of the early 20th century public bath movement. Although one additional bathhouse was built in Harlem in the late 1920s, construction of public park facilities was hereafter oriented towards recreation. In addition to showers and an indoor swimming pool, the building included public laundry facilities, a gymnasium with an indoor track, and a roof garden and playground. The bath was built to serve what was then a community of Irish immigrants. A 9 February 1967 Village Voice article indicates that the pool was still around in the late 1960s.

The building is, obviously, gone, although I'm not exactly certain where it was. The block between 27th/28th streets and 9th/10th avenues is the current Chelsea Park. The north end of the park is home to a City Department of Health facility, but the building appears to be of 1930's vintage.

The address 407 should be on the north side of the street, which is home to the expansive Morgan Postal Facility. The part of the building facing 28th street was an addition built in 1992 that could have been a reason for demolishing the old bath house. The Morgan Postal Facility is an intake and sorting building connected to the Farley Main Post office by tunnels. This facility is also notable as site contaminated by the 2001 anthrax attacks that followed soon after the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Next: Milbank Memorial Bath