225BatonRouge.com

To naked eyes, Barrie Edgar has one lemon of a building. Sandwiched between Nicholson Drive and Highland Road near the I-10 bridge, it has sat idle for years waiting for time to heal its neighborhood woes.

Graffiti. Broken windows. Peeling paint.

To keen eyes, Edgar has a goldmine of history. With a name like the “Turkish baths” building, it has a rich tale to match.

Family. Sweat. Music.

Once upon a time in 1933, the Manships used the building for their Baton Rouge Broadcasting Company. Fourteen years later, for $15,000 and a 25-year promise not to use the building for radio-related purposes, it became property of James Alvin Roy.

PHOTO GALLERY
Turkish Baths

You saw it on pg. 16 of our March issue. Now go inside the "Turkish baths" building.

Enlarge photo

Yes, that Alvin Roy, the man who believed in weightlifting so much he trained Olympians and changed LSU football. For roughly 30 years, it was his Turkish baths, the slenderizing salon and health club that turned boys into fast, flexible, muscular men.

The late 1970s brought a change of ownership to the building. It became the Isokinetic Health Club, though the owners could legally still use the words “formerly Alvin Roy’s” in its title and advertising.

Now, with saunas and showers intact, yet aged, the Turkish baths building is Edgar’s. For more than a decade, he rented the building as 11 rehearsal spaces for bands including his own, The Basement Wall, recent inductees into the Louisiana Entertainment Hall of Fame.

What future history the building holds is unknown, but that’s why Edgar has been renovating it for the past 18 months. He knows there’s more history to be made; all he needs is a renter with a keen eye.

Want to wander more inside history? Click the picture for a photo gallery of the Turkish baths.