The Schvitz: Detroit’s Original 1920’s Bathhouse has made some welcoming changes
DETROIT (WXYZ) — Non-descript is an apt description of the two-story building on Oakland Avenue in Detroit’s North End neighborhood. Its only identifier is the small neon sign in the window.
Inside The Schvitz Detroit is where the real story and history are told.
“It was originally the Oakland Baths or the Oakland Bath House, but everybody called it the Schvitz. Schvitz is Yiddish for sweat,” said owner Paddy Lynch…
Detroit bath house the Schvitz gets a new life
Paddy Lynch is a third-generation Irish Catholic undertaker. But now, the 33-year-old Detroiter’s new title is caretaker, which is connected to his effort to revive a North End building featuring almost 100 years of the neighborhood’s Jewish history, the Schvitz.
“Like grief, there’s something deeply human about the experience [of taking steam with others in a 190-degree sauna],” Lynch says. “So, at a certain point it kind of blows up all the various boundaries and borders we put around us — whether they be religious or nationalistic or political or social.”…
Peek inside the Schvitz, undergoing renovations in the North End
The only historic bathhouse in Detroit, possibly in Michigan, has a long, storied past. Located on Oakland Avenue in the North End, the former Oakland Health Club, long known as the Schvitz, has served as a place of cleansing and restoration for Russian Jews, a gathering spot for the notorious Purple Gang, and a more recently, a host to swingers nights. But now under new ownership and a renovation process, it hopes to go back to its restorative roots…
A Detroit bathhouse cleans up its act. Welcome to the Schvitz.
The first punches had yet to be thrown in the heavily hyped Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor prizefight last month when Paddy Lynch looked around his newest project and saw a glimpse of what could be.
It was just a few months after he borrowed against the equity in his historic Detroit mansion and paid $160,000 cash for the Schvitz, a dilapidated, notorious and history-rich steam bath and club in the city’s North End neighborhood. Fight night was a fundraiser for its renovation, with the pay-per-view match displayed on screens on two of the club’s three levels. About 150 people paid to attend. Wearing everything from spa robes to Saturday-night heels, they mingled from the basement steam room to the main-floor dining room and the recently opened second-floor ballroom…
