Russian Sauna
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 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 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 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. Authors who have written about it include Nelson Algren and Saul Bellow. One of its most prominent regular customers in recent years has been Reverend Jesse Jackson – a fact that brought the bathhouse some publicity when it was first reported in the mainstream press. Mobster Sam Giancana was also said to have come here, and various out-of-town celebrities such as James Gandolfini and Russell Crowe have occasionally visited; their autographed portraits line a corridor on the first floor.
| “ | And down in the super-heated subcellars these Slavonic cavemen and wood demons with hanging laps of fat and legs of stone and lichen boil themselves and splash water on their heads by the bucket. There may be no village in the Carpathians where such practices still prevail. |
