Tuesday Treasures

 Tom hosts Tuesday's Treasures.

August 2026 - Toronto ON

The historic and long-abandoned Oak Leaf Steam Baths located at 216 Bathurst Street.

Opened in 1941: The building operated as a .traditional wood-burning steam bathhouse (or "schvitz") for over seven decades.  It was legendary for having some of the most intense, hottest steam rooms in Toronto.

 Bathers would use traditional oak leaf branches (veniks) to hit the skin, a classic Eastern European practice meant to boost circulation and open pores.

Stepping inside was described by visitors as an untouched relic of the mid-20th century. To release the steam inside the rooms, patrons had to pull a mechanical chain on the wall, similar to the pull-cords found in old Toronto streetcars.

 It served eastern European immigrants, Jewish men, and later acted as a discreet social space for gay men.

By the late 1940s, it had quietly become a vital, discreet meeting space for gay, bisexual, and closeted men at a time when homosexuality was criminalized and heavily policed. By the 1980s, it was considered one of Toronto's oldest gay-identified operations, famously managing to evade the notorious 1981 Toronto bathhouse police raids.

Click here for murals of the police raids.

The bathhouse was shut down around 2015 due to a bitter legal feud between its co-owners. One owner had worked there since immigrating from Kyiv in 1990, manually stoking the wood fires that heated the facility. Amid mounting debts, hundreds of thousands in unpaid property taxes, and a court-ordered receivership, the historic facility closed its doors for good.