A 50-Person Amphitheater Sauna on Fifth Avenue
The Altar, a health club at 122 Fifth Avenue in Flatiron, is built around a community sauna laid out like an amphitheater: its wooden benches rise in tiers and curve around the oven, so the people inside face the fire and one another. It was designed by Marsollier Villacorta, the New York and Mexico City studio of Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacorta. A standard session costs $65.
A plan that faces inward
The sauna, a traditional Finnish sauna built for 50 people, sits in the Atrium, the club's sauna side, which also holds a cold plunge suite and a central gathering area. Inside the sauna the benches step up in rings around the oven, and a wood-clad column rises straight through them.
The gathering area repeats the arrangement in stone. A ring of seating looks toward a central granite fountain under a gridded light fixture, where a stainless steel faucet arcs over the basin. Granite also wraps the Atrium's columns and runs down into the stone seating, and an oculus is set into the wood paneling above the stairwell.
Marsollier Villacorta's earlier work includes Aesop stores from the Nomad store in Manhattan to Kumamoto in Japan. The Altar's creative director is Stuart Winecoff, a photographer and cinematographer.
Hot and cold
The cold plunge pools sit under fabric light boxes hung from the ceiling, and the showers are clad in stainless steel.
Sessions come in two formats. In a guided session, from 60 minutes, a guide leads the group through sauna and cold plunge with aromatherapy oils, breathwork, light movement, aufguss techniques and music. In an open session, from 75 minutes, guests move between hot and cold at their own pace with a guide present, and quieter open sessions are set aside during the week.
The Practice
A second, multi-purpose room, the Practice, offers recovery treatments, from vitamin IVs given by registered nurses to a seated hyperbaric oxygen pod.
No membership is required to book a session, memberships start at $165 a month, and off-peak weekday daytime sessions, from 8am, are $45. Guests bring a bathing suit; the club supplies towels, shower amenities, tea and water, and prefers no phones inside the Atrium.
