New Generations Are Discovering the Sweat, Steaks and Fun of the Cleveland Schvitz

"What's the password?" a man asks, peeking his head out of the windowless brick building and into the wintry air.

“Uhhh…” I stammer, caught off guard. A password? There’s a password for the Cleveland Schvitz?

This place was secretive in its past life. It didn’t allow women, for the most part. Enduring social media comments still share the “first rule of the Schvitz.” (“You do not talk about the Schvitz.”)

But, a password? That’s new.

A moment later, the door flings open. “Just kidding. Come on in!”

My sister and I step inside and up the creaky stairs, which smell like eucalyptus and stale cigar smoke. Today, the 98-year-old social club is hosting a ladies’ days, and the space is boisterous and loud, with women in bathing suits, robes and towels maneuvering around the building, flip-flops slapping against the carpet and tile floors. 

At the second-floor dining level, we’re handed cocktails in plastic cups, then ushered to the cashier where we dole out $165 per person. The fee covers drinks, access to the steam room and cold plunge, plus a meal, from noon to 6 p.m.

Around the corner is a baking tray loaded with the thickest rib steaks I’ve ever seen, each one sliced with a band saw, then encrusted with hand-chopped garlic. A few steaks sizzle on the grill. The Browns-49ers game takes over every one of the dining room’s TVs. And there’s that lingering cigar smell, everywhere. Masculinity, everywhere. 

Yet, women have been regularly welcomed at the Schvitz on its popular ladies’ days and co-ed days — two recent offerings for the longtime male-only space.

While some nay-sayers have called ladies’ day “misguided,” the Schvitz’s co-owner Billy Buckholtz disputes that: “From 1927 till the late ’50s, every Wednesday was ladies’ day. My grandmother Lilly, whose father and uncle built this place; my grandmother never missed a Wednesday.”

The Cleveland Schvitz has an Instagram page, run by manager Ben Balogh. You can find its address (11516 Luke Ave.) on Google Maps. You no longer need to know somebody to get in.

Before the team of Buckholtz, Paul Rotman, Gary Wachs and other silent owners took over in 2017, former owners Mark and Greg Balogh, and before them, Gay Gold, operated with a more secretive mentality, says author Josh Womack.

Some patrons still think that way. While researching for his book, Sweaty Stories from the Cleveland Schvitz, Womack says he received Facebook messages telling him to “leave it the hell alone and go away.” But Womack, a longtime Schvitz fan, wanted to explore the piece of Cleveland history and found that Buckholtz was excited to share its stories. Buckholtz, who co-owns Murray Hill Market with his wife, Michele, was also the keyboardist and singer of the local band Wild Horses, known for its hit “Funky Poodle.” He was friendlier to the idea of media exposure than former owners.

“In terms of the people who say it should remain a secret and it should be kept underground, I totally get where they’re coming from. But at the same point, the Schvitz isn’t their business, it’s Billy’s business,” Womack says. “Places have to survive, and you have to adapt at least a little bit.”

If at one point the Schvitz was surviving, today, it’s thriving. Buckholtz’s phone pings with new reservations at all hours.

The Schvitz started more humbly. It’s the only remaining bathhouse from the three that Buckholtz’s great-grandfather Nathan Sharp opened with his brother Charles Sharp almost 100 years ago, to help working-class Clevelanders stay clean. “Schvitz” is the Yiddish word for “bath,” and the space welcomed neighborhood residents, which included Jewish people, along with Hungarian, German, Italian and Greek communities.

“Right from the get-go, it was not all Jews,” says Buckholtz, who is Jewish.

Buckholtz, 74, has been a regular since he was 7. His father, Norman, and uncle, Alan, gave platzas (a steam room massage where people are swatted with oak or birch leaves) for much of their lives. Billy learned to give platzas, too, spending years on the top step, the hottest level of the steam room.

From that vantage point, Buckholtz witnessed Schvitz attendance drop in the ’70s and ’80s as much of its customer base drifted from the changing Kinsman neighborhood. And then he saw it pick up again in the late ’90s, as younger generations of Clevelanders rediscovered the Schvitz. With millennials flocking in, curiosity grew around the business, especially for the daughters and wives of longtime patrons.

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Womack’s book, on display at the front counter of the Schvitz, is filled with anecdotes and stories around the business. Buckholtz’s daughter Samantha provides both an introduction and epilogue. “I am so proud of my dad. He has helped usher the Schvitz into the modern era while holding on to what makes it sacred,” she writes. “He has also welcomed many women into the experience so we can find our own joy and sacredness."

My sister and I quickly learn that we can’t really handle the temperatures that rise steeply in the upper steps in the steam room — except for during platzas, a $20 add-on where we’re hurriedly scrubbed down and whipped by branches on the top step’s intense heat.

Otherwise, we stay on the bottom three cedar plank steps, acclimating to the fiery hot sauna, and chat with the women around us.

We’re wearing bathing suits. Not everyone is. 

The room is packed with mothers and daughters, groups of coworkers, friends and girlfriends. Some lazily lounge against the steps. Others slip in and out of the room. One woman gets lightheaded and is escorted outside to cool off.

Warmth radiates from the ancient furnace on the other side of the room. My mango-blackberry cocktail’s few remaining ice cubes rapidly disappear. But along with the sweat pouring off of me, I feel tension and stress ebb out of my body. The dizzying heat becomes addictive. Fresh rounds of cocktails are periodically passed around in the room.

Occasionally, someone fills a metal bucket with ice-cold water from a spout and dunks it over their head, splashing anyone in their vicinity with a shock of cold water. But the biggest jolt is a dip in the cold plunge pool. A few daring, overheated attendees wade there.

I prefer the snowy patio. There, a group of friends pass around a dab pen, its vapor mixing with the clouds of steam emanating from outstretched arms. Back and forth — icy, steamy — again, and again.

After a couple of hours, we head upstairs to our spot at a long table, next to a pair of daughters and their mothers, who share their cheese plate with us. They’ve come to the Schvitz after years of hearing about it from their fathers and husbands. Today, they’re experiencing it for the first time.

Like us, they’ve ordered the steak, off a menu that also features hamburgers, salmon filets and zucchini pancakes. It’s the same menu offered on men’s days. (An attempt to swap in a steak salad special was an unexpected misstep, as one woman told Buckholtz when making a reservation years ago.)

“She goes, ‘Let me stop you right there. We want to eat the steaks. We want to drink whiskey, smoke cigars and eat your rib steaks with our hands,’” Buckholtz says, smiling. “And they did.”

It’s an absurd dinner scene: I’m wrapped in a towel, my bathing suit still damp, surrounded by other women in towels. We’re all about to eat the biggest steaks of our lives. These giant slabs of meat arrive at our table that’s already crowded with salads, soda, pickled peppers, beer and cookies.

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Generations of women share stories about their loved ones — some alive, some gone — and make new memories in this space that’s soon to reach a century of business. This living, breathing, steaming place.

Buckholtz’s own wistful idea of community culminates here at the Schvitz: “Behind these brick walls with no windows and steel doors, is the great American dream.”

We saw into the meat to find a perfect medium-rare pink, slathered in garlic and grilled onions. It’s simple. I savor it, this bite of Cleveland history.

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