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Rivington Street municipal bath

1900 establishments in New York CityDefunct buildings and structures in ManhattanHistory of New York CityLower East SideManhattan building and structure stubs
Public baths in the United States
Sanborn Manhattan V. 2 Plate 08 publ. 1903
Sanborn Manhattan V. 2 Plate 08 publ. 1903

The Rivington Street municipal bath was the first bathhouse built with public funds in New York City. It was constructed in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which was a densely populated and poor area. in 1900. Costing $100,000, a large sum for the time, the baths officially opened on March 23, 1901. The bath was patronized largely by Hebrews, Hungarians, and Russian Jews. The cost was on par with other bathhouse projects.It featured 67 spray baths (which are currently showers), enabling patrons to take a total of 3,000 baths per day. Each bather was allotted a 20-minute shower. New York was the first state in the United States to pass a law making public baths compulsory. In the first five months of 1902, the Rivington Street municipal bath accommodated 224,876 bathers, of whom 66,256 were women and girls.In 1895, a law was enacted making it mandatory to establish free public baths in cities in which the population exceeded 50,000 persons. Maintenance of these facilities was provided for by local health boards. Cities and villages having fewer than 100,000 people might construct public baths with loans on their credit or appropriate funds for their establishment. The 1895 law stated that the public baths were to be open for fourteen hours per day and that both hot and cold water were to be provided.As the installation of showers in buildings became more common, the visits to the bath declined. Most of the bathhouses were maintained by the city as public swimming pools. In 1975, the City of New York cemented the building in and it has been discontinued ever since.

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Rivington Street municipal bath
Stanton Street, New York Manhattan

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N 40.716805555556 ° E -73.976805555556 °
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Baruch Playground

Stanton Street
10002 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
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Sanborn Manhattan V. 2 Plate 08 publ. 1903
Sanborn Manhattan V. 2 Plate 08 publ. 1903
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Cooperative Village
Cooperative Village

Cooperative Village is a community of housing cooperatives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The cooperatives are centered on Grand Street in an area south of the entrance ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge and west of the FDR Drive. Combined, the four cooperatives have 4,500 apartments in twelve buildings. The cooperatives were sponsored, organized and built by trade unions, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, as well as the United Housing Foundation, a development organization set up by the unions in 1951.The cooperatives followed strict Rochdale Principles, with one vote per member, irrespective of the nominal value of his shares. Resale of shares was restricted; members moving out of the apartments had to sell their shares back to the cooperative at the buying price, minus a flip tax. After the original financing structures governing the apartments were phased out, beginning in 1986, the shareholders of each cooperative decided, in separate votes in 1997 and 2000, to abandon the limited equity rules and free the resale of shares, in some cases increasing the value of apartments fivefold. To keep the maintenance fees low for original tenants, many of them retirees, a high flip tax is charged, up to 25% of the gross sales price for "first sales" and up to 15% for "second sales". In a similar instance, the shareholders at the Penn South sister cooperative in the Chelsea section of Manhattan voted to continue operating under limited equity rules.