SCHWET Brings a Banya, and a Kitchen, to Tribeca in October

SCHWET, the Russian-style banya and social club Mauri Waneka is building at 78 Franklin Street in Tribeca, will open to members and friends in October and to the public in November, Waneka told Robert Hammond in a Culture of Bathe-ing interview published September 23. That's several months behind the spring 2026 opening the project was listing last winter.

It's also a bathhouse with a restaurant's priorities. The interview spends as much time on the lounge, the menu and the parties as on the hot rooms, and that emphasis tells operators where SCHWET expects to make its money.

How the building works

Guests check their phone and wallet at the door, take a key and go downstairs. Men's lockers sit halfway down, women's at the bottom, and both groups meet at the main bathing room two and a half levels below the street. Waneka calls it the Schwestine Chapel: dark pink marble floors under a hand-painted ceiling mural, with a mineral hot pool, a cold plunge and the banya.

The banya is narrow on purpose. "It's almost like you're in a booth across from someone, close enough that you might have to say hi," Waneka said. "We're forcing it a little." The cold plunge fits three or four people. A December 2025 Culture of Bathe-ing guide listed it at 48°F.

After the pools, the circuit moves back up to a ground-floor "skin suite" with the steam room, the Japanese scrub room and infrared, and from there into the lounge, where guests order food and drinks in a robe, a swimsuit or street clothes. The building once held a large pool, since removed; Waneka hosted a Culture of Bathe-ing dinner for more than 100 people at the bottom of it, with no silverware, while the floor was still under construction.

SCHWET hasn't published its heater or stove specifications, pool volumes, bather capacity or membership pricing. Waneka named the investments she considers serious: filtration, HVAC, "speciality sauna wood" and house-made scrubs. All the water is run through reverse osmosis, and the drinking water is remineralized and free on tap downstairs.

Food and drink at the center

The menu is Slavic with some Japanese dishes: vareniki, borscht, pickles and tinned fish. Waneka's pitch is decadence rather than austerity. "You don't go to sweat, you SCHWET," she said. "You're going to have fun, connect with somebody, get sweaty, feel good, eat something delicious, drink something amazing."

That puts SCHWET at the other end of the New York market from the sober, phone-free evening format Othership has built its sauna-as-nightlife programming around. Waneka told Hotel Online in August: "I want a place where you can have a green juice one day and a great glass of wine the next."

The pre-opening events show the playbook. Around Frieze New York in May, SCHWET threw a party for which Waneka prepped and cleaned a 171-pound tuna that was served as sashimi from the steam room, which was off that night, while a dance party ran in the lounge. At big events, phones go into pouches with brass locks.

Who's behind it

Waneka comes from hospitality, not wellness. She built and ran a boutique hotel and members' club that she later sold to Soho House, now known as Holloway House, and then opened Camp Kasbah, a retreat in Aspen, according to her Boutique Lifestyle Leaders Association speaker bio. She describes SCHWET as "an old-school Russian bathhouse" at its core, and the design draws on Budapest's Gellért Baths.

Membership won't be required. "We're not exclusive in the sense that you can't come if you're not a member," Waneka said. "It might be harder to get a reservation, but it's important to me that everybody can come to SCHWET."

A crowded downtown

SCHWET opens into the market Vanity Fair called the "sauna wars," where Bathhouse opened its Atlantic Avenue location in May and Othership has signed a third New York site on the Upper East Side for 2027. On last winter's listings, SCHWET's $150 visit cost more than twice a $65 session at The Altar; Lore Bathing Club listed $200 a month or $90 for a week, and SAINT $280 a month.

SCHWET is taking waitlist sign-ups at getschwet.com.

Also in New York

• CUL DE SAC, Gabe Bender's community sauna project, runs a residency with an outdoor wood-fired sauna at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden in the East Village from September 28 to October 16, and launches a Kickstarter on September 29 to fund a four-month winter residency starting in November, per Culture of Bathe-ing.
• Othership Williamsburg hosts the first session of "EXPERIENCE TOGETHER: Harry Styles," a guided session built on the singer's album with New Frequency, on October 1 at 8:30 a.m.