Othership Signs a Third NYC Bathhouse on the Upper East Side

Othership, the Toronto-born social bathhouse operator, is planning a fifth location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, AN Interior reported on June 22. The space would be Othership’s third in New York City, joining the Flatiron and Williamsburg locations that opened over the past two years.

Futurestudio, the Toronto-based firm led by Ali McQuaid Mitchell, has designed every Othership location to date. Introducing managing editor Isabel Ling’s interview with McQuaid Mitchell, AN Interior said the Upper East Side outpost is expected to open in 2027. Othership told Patch in December 2025 that the space will be 14,000 square feet at 201 East 86th Street, on the corner of Third Avenue, and Commercial Observer reported a 10-year lease there the same month.

One design firm behind every location

Futurestudio has designed all four existing Othership locations and has recently completed Sant Roch (billed as France’s largest sauna), a social wellness club called Re in Dubai, and Umvelt in Montana. McQuaid Mitchell, whose background is in restaurant and hotel design, told AN Interior that the firm’s guiding principles for Othership are materiality, lighting, and flow.

“We didn’t look at spas for inspiration,” McQuaid Mitchell said. “We looked more toward nature, hospitality, and even the cinematic worlds of atmospheric films.”

The result is a consistent design language: custom floor tiles sliced from real river stones in every location, light fixtures with hand-painted filters to emulate candlelight, and, in the first location, cedar carried from the sauna through the reception area.

Uptown is a different customer base

Othership’s first two NYC locations landed in neighborhoods with existing creative and nightlife infrastructure: Flatiron and Williamsburg. The Upper East Side is a different bet. It is one of Manhattan’s most affluent residential corridors, where the customer base skews older and the competitive set runs toward legacy wellness (Equinox, SoulCycle) rather than social bathing. The Real Deal’s July 10 report on wellness-driven leasing named Othership among the sauna concepts that have opened in Manhattan. The quarter’s two largest leases, per the JLL data it cited, went to Chelsea Piers (76,000 square feet at the Seaport) and Life Time (71,000 square feet in North Williamsburg).

The 14,000 square feet on East 86th Street will test whether the Othership model, built on $58 guided sessions and group breathwork in a nightlife-adjacent atmosphere, works beyond the downtown-creative crowd that adopted social bathing first.

Four locations and about $18 million raised

Othership runs four locations today, two in Toronto and two in New York. It has raised three rounds: a $1.3 million seed round and an $8 million Series A in January 2023, according to The Logic, and about $8.5 million through a SAFE in 2025, according to Athletech News, or about $18 million in all. A fifth location in 2027, if it opens on schedule, would give the company three New York City locations within about three years of opening in Flatiron in July 2024.

The open question is whether the Upper East Side model will look different. McQuaid Mitchell told AN Interior that new rituals “are formed in these types of projects,” pointing to Othership’s recent additions of stand-up comedy and live performances alongside its core sauna-and-ice-bath programming. Whether the UES audience wants the same late-night energy that works in Williamsburg will shape how far the format can stretch.

Updated September 28, 2026: photography refreshed with views of existing Othership locations. The Upper East Side opening remains planned for 2027.