“Sauna culture is like dumplings—it exists everywhere,” says Leonid Khanin, project director at World Spa, Brooklyn’s new 50,000-square-foot mega-spa. Khanin, an architect with a CV that includes international library and museum planning, has the dewy, radiant complexion of a man who spent the last five years designing New York’s biggest bathhouse.
World Spa opened December 8 in a chunky postmodern brutalist-y building (concrete with Nordic timber cladding) recently erected in a former parking lot on the outskirts of Midwood. In its first week, more than a thousand visitors passed through what Khanin calls “a glowing portal into the world of pleasures” (the front doors). The spa barely had to do any promotion—women on TikTok did it for them.
The facility’s three floors of globally inspired spa experiences include a Moroccan hammam, Eastern European banyas, Japanese onsen saltwater pools, and a snow room to mimic the Finnish tradition of rolling around in fresh powder. Treatments range from traditional facials and CBD-infused body massages to more foreign concepts, like venik platza, an ancient Russian bathing ritual that involves getting whacked with leafy bundles of aromatic tree branches to detoxifying effect. There are three on-site dining options, with menus ranging from coffee caviar tiramisu and truffle grilled cheese to chia pudding, cherry pierogies, and something called a cured meat beer set. The self-described wellness oasis is a well-priced one-stop shop for a decidedly vast array of offerings. Four-hour access costs $85 (Monday through Thursday before 4 p.m.), $100 (Monday through Thursday after 4 p.m.), or $115 (Friday through Sunday and holidays). Each additional hour is $25.
A woman on my Instagram Explore page invited me to “come along to World Spa.” Watching the woman share a bowl of edamame with a friend in a hooded bathrobe before a cut to a eucalyptus steam room followed by an infrared-light therapy session, I remembered a bit in Rem Koolhaas’s 1978 manifesto, Delirious New York, about a 534-foot-tall building with Turkish baths, swimming pools, massage parlors, artificial sunbathing stations, dining rooms, and lavish lounges where men escape city life to eat oysters naked. Koolhaas said that “the full spectrum of facilities [that restore] the human body” and “the fantastic juxtaposition of its activities” creates “infinitely unpredictable intrigue that extols complete surrender to the definitive instability of life in the Metropolis.”
Could World Spa help me extol complete surrender to the definitive instability of life in the Metropolis? I had to try. So on a recent Thursday afternoon, I cursorily shaved the majority of my body and Ubered to 1571 McDonald Avenue. I planned to surrender for 4 hours. Alas…
4 p.m. I start with Eastern Europe. The Petite Banya was built in Russia and shipped to Brooklyn in a container. “This is one of the purest banyas you can find,” Khanin says, stroking a wall made of crystallized pine sourced from Finnish swamps. He opens the Brazilian stone enclosure of a German-made heater and ladles water onto rocks that withstand heat 25 times longer than a pedestrian rock. A wave of velvet warmth fills the log cabin. “This is special,” Khanin says, “but if you want special special…” We cross the hall to the Grand Banya, North America’s biggest banya. A minute in my notebook is too hot to handle, and I make the scorching mistake of touching the metal clip of my pen cap.
4:15 p.m. To cool off after the banyas, you can: (a) splash your face with ice chips, (b) pull on a rope to release a flood of freezing water, (c) enter the glass-encased Snow Room where ski-slope machines churn out mounds of fresh powder, or (d) take a dip in the cold plunge pool. Khanin likes the pool but says: “Hipsters do too much. They’re like, ‘Yay! It’s anti-inflammatory,’ but it’s like, guys…” Three minutes max.
4:20 p.m. In the Himalayan Salt Room, lucent walls made from a trifecta of international salts (Siberian, Himalayan, and Polish) include panels from the microclimate of a thousand-year-old Wieliczka salt mine. On a bed of pink salt crystals, chaise longues are lined up under the purifying breeze of a medical-grade salt generator. Inhaling aerosolized salt can decrease inflammation, boost serotonin, and improve immunity— something about negative ions and osmotic pressure. A guest in a Speedo hits a gong suspended by the door.
4:45 p.m. Before the Clay Hay Sauna, Khanin grabs a tablet. “Music is crucial,” he says, queuing up an intense ambient soundtrack he calls “cult-y and Nordic.” The space is dark and womblike, with thick adobe walls intimating Mesoamerican sweat lodges. Over drum beats, Khanin says we’ve traveled back thousands of years to a time when sweat lodges were used to purify both body and soul. He wants it to feel spiritual. He’s going to train staff to recite poetry.
5 p.m. The Infrared Sauna has curvy alderwood benches with therapeutic light rods ideally positioned behind the spine. Regular infrared light exposure is said to help with a number of health conditions like high blood pressure, arthritis, and maybe even dementia. Khanin recommends a particular spot on the bench for a selfie. Since the heat is dry and mild, I hang around while three 30-something Russian men tell me about one of their fiancée’s father’s telepathic rabbi.
5:45 p.m. For wet heat, there are Moroccan and Turkish hammams. “You don’t want to know how hard it was to get these tiles from Marrakech,” Khanin says of a glistening, fully mosaicked room. A young woman struggles, given the 80% humidity, to photograph the chroma-therapeutic sphere sculpture on the Carrara Blanco marble. I peek inside the private hammams where guests lie on opulent slabs for black-seed-soap steams, ghassoul mud masks, body polishing, perfumed oil pours, and more.
6 p.m. I’m prone on a wooden shelf for venik platza, the classic Russian bath treatment where twigs are rhythmically thrashed against the body to boost circulation and epidermal capillary activity. My masseuse (a spitting image of Keith Richards if Keith Richards had more collagen) emigrated from Ukraine three months ago and doesn’t really speak much English, but I’ve been assured he understands harder and softer. Yaroslav gently places a bundle of cold dripping oak-leaf branches on my face. With more foliage, he slaps and strokes my thighs, slowly working up my spine. I picture a drive-through car wash. It feels tingly and incredible. After anywhere from 10 to 30 entrancing minutes, Yaroslav dumps a conclusive bucket of water on my head and leads me to the cold pool. I express trepidation regarding the frigid temperature, but the masseuse says—simply, sagely—“Yes” and escorts me debutante style into the 42-degree-Fahrenheit water. We bob in unison for a moment before the word reborn comes to mind. Yaroslav ushers me to the Himalayan Salt Room. He stomps on salt crystals and says: “Five minutes.” In a translated message later relayed to me, I learn that podal pressure-point stimulation releases energy blockages throughout the body.
7 p.m. The Onsen Room is a circuit of small, variously heated pools inspired by Japanese hot springs. You’re meant to cycle through all three for a hot-cold contrast, but since there is a couple cuddling in the hot one, I practice deep breathing in the 52-degree-Fahrenheit one.
7:45 p.m. I spend too long transcending and arrive late to my Ultimate Platinum HydraFacial with HydroPeptide Booster. The aesthetician is efficient. Deftly she triple tones, steams, and lymphatic massages before wheeling out the Syndeo, the latest in smart facial technology. My T-zone’s state of congestion is programmed into the $50,000 touchscreen computer. A wand suctions my pores. Vials of so-called boosters infuse my skin with Tasmannia lanceolata fruit leaf extract and glucosamine hydrochloride. For the finale, the facialist unclips a bottle from the machine: “What I will show you now is from your face,” she says, presenting a graduated flask filled with murky liquid to a line marked “Super Gunkie Today?”
9 p.m. I have plans regarding wagyu from the in-house Michelin-starred restaurant, but freshly exfoliated I feel ethereal and vegetarian and opt instead for sauna-side tapas. Still robed and wearing my World Spa wool sauna hat/banya bonnet (obsessed), I order balsamic beet salad with goat cheese and pecans, avocado hummus, pita, and fresh-pressed turmeric-carrot-ginger juice. Nearby, the Infrared Sauna Russian friends share chicken pâté.
10:45 p.m. Crossing the East River back to the city, my face is aglow with hyaluronic-acid-enriched antioxidant serum and my leftover hummus is packed up in a takeout bag on my lap. The spread was too good to leave.