The banner reminded me of a burlap bag, just monstrously larger and more pliable. It was hanging against one of those old exposed brick walls with the flaky white paint inside a warehouse where an auction would soon take place. The bricks were just as lovely as the banner.
The wall of bricks looked sturdy, but I couldn’t say that about the rest of the building. It was in such bad shape – wooden steps with no rails, narrow wooden staircases, weak floorboards – that the auction house required everyone entering the structure to sign a waiver form. The auctioneer was apparently protecting himself in case the roof caved in or someone fell through the floor.
The building had actually been an antiques shop for years, and the auction house was selling off the remainder of its inventory. How it managed to remain open in its condition was a mystery. A city inspector obviously had not been inside the place in decades.
The shop still contained some pretty neat stuff – three floors and a basement full of it. The banner was the piece that stood out as you braved a few rail-less wooden steps up to the first floor.
At first, I could only see a few words on the banner, “Camac Baths,” because the bottom was in folds. After an auction staffer spread out the folds, I saw that it was advertising a Turkish and medical bath house that was being built. The banner seemed to be 6 feet tall, towering over the spot where the auction cashiers had set up.
I had never heard of the Camac Baths – probably because it was way before my time – and found it curious that someone would use a banner to announce that a club was being built. So, I went sleuthing.
A man named Alexander Lucker built the bath house in 1929 on Camac Street in Philadelphia for immigrants new to the country, seemingly as a way to reconnect to their old lives and lifestyles in Eastern Europe. After learning this, I realized why the owner was advertising his new venture: He wanted all those immigrants to know that they would soon have a piece of home.
It was one of several bath houses in the area during the 1930s and 1940s, according to actor George Axler, who went there with his father. These were places where immigrants living in cold-water housing could ensure good hygiene, and socialize with others like themselves.
White men and women, and Jews (who had a tradition of Russian steam rooms) and non-Jewish people were accepted, but African Americans were not. Axler said in the interview that the space was divided in half – women on one side and men on the other.
Fathers took their sons to the place in what one retail site (which was selling “Camac Health Club” caps) called “a rite of passage for generations,” the sons following their fathers in this daily ritual, at a cost of $4.
Lucker opened the bath house as a Jewish “shvitz,” or a place to sweat, according to a 2009 obit on his son Arnold. Shvitz is Yiddish for steam bath.
There were steam rooms and massage tables in a building that spanned two floors and a basement.
“There was a room up on the second floor. And if you’ll recall, there was a basement where the steam rooms and the massage tables were,” Wexler said in the interview. “On the first floor, the street level floor, there were other massage tables where they gave you alcohol rubs and wintergreen rubs and they had a sunray room. You had to put goggles in there. And you would lie on your stomach for one minute and lie on your back for one minute and get the hell out of there or else you get burned.
“Then the entire upper floor was like a dormitory. And it was very dark, very, very dark with just a little red light at the door. And there were just rows and rows of beds. And people went up there to take naps. And my father used to like to do that. That was part of the routine when you go there. After you got your rub-down and everything, you just want to lie down for an hour.”
Another writer told of going to the Camac Baths with friends while in a private school on the Main Line:
“It was an old Russian style bath house patronized by older white immigrant men,” Dayton Lummis wrote in his 2012 book “Ramblin’ Bob.” He and his friends got the “‘full treatment,’ the beating and scouring by bundles of fronds, the steam … the hot and cold water and finally the steam room where flabby, very white old men wrapped in large white towels sat staring into space.” Cold water was doused on their bodies after the steam procedures.
When Lucker retired in 1950, his son took over and updated the place, adding among other things, a weight room, full-size swimming pool and racquetball courts. He also offered haircuts and pedicures, and sold food in the restaurant.
The years apparently did not treat the old bath house well, and it began to show signs of decay. It was sold in the 1980s. The building served briefly as a community center in the late 1980s, and was sold in the 1990s. It became part of the 12th Street Gym, located in the heart of Philadelphia’s gay community and was called the gay gym.
At auction, the banner was the subject of some heavy bidding, as it was likely one of only a few still around. As I recall, it sold for more than $200. And the buyer wasted little time removing it from the wall.
