Step inside New York's oldest health club, where celebrities, millennials, and businessmen mingle over Dead Sea mud treatments and a 190-degree steam room

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

Russian and Turkish Baths remains one of the few, true melting pots in New York.

• Russian and Turkish Baths is a health club in New York City's East Village neighborhood.
• Open since 1892, the bathhouse serves as a meeting place for the city's Russian and Jewish enclaves - and a hotspot for celebrities, millennials, businessmen, and tourists.
• For over 30 years, the Baths have been owned by two Russian émigrés who manage the facilities on alternating weeks.

Step through the tenement door on 10th Street in Manhattan's East Village, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd walked through a time warp.

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Open since 1892, the Russian and Turkish Baths is about as old New York as it gets. The institution has survived wave after wave of tumultuous change in the city, it's grimy come-whoever spirit intact.

The baths have played host to New York royalty, including actor Robert De Niro and the late singer Frank Sinatra. More often, it has been a meeting place for the city's Russian and Jewish enclaves. Lately, it has attracted a new crowd of adventurous tourists and Brooklyn millennials.

Since 1985, the bathhouse has been owned by two Russian émigrés, Boris Tuberman and David Shapiro, who run the business under an unusual arrangement. After the two men realized they hated running a business together, they decided to split the baths. Each month is now split between "Boris weeks" and "David weeks." Besides sharing utilities and repair costs, the businesses operate separately.

Though the clientele has changed over the years, the bathhouse remains one of the few, true melting pots in the city. A day pass to the Baths costs $48, while a three-month pass has a price tag of $600.

We visited the baths on a recent Monday afternoon - on a "David week" - to see what we could find in the steam.