SweatHouz Assembly Row

SweatHouz at Assembly Row brings the chain’s private-suite contrast therapy to Somerville, in the redeveloped district on the Mystic River.

Assembly Row occupies the site of a Ford assembly plant that operated from 1926 to 1958. The area sat derelict for decades before redevelopment produced the current mix of retail, offices and housing, along with its own Orange Line station — the first new MBTA station built in over a decade when it opened in 2014.

The SweatHouz format is a private room containing an infrared sauna, a cold plunge and a rainfall shower, booked by the hour with nobody else in it. The circuit runs at your own pace, and the privacy removes the two things that put people off communal facilities: sharing a bench with strangers, and attempting a cold plunge in front of an audience.

Infrared warms the body directly rather than heating the air, so the cabin runs cooler than a Finnish room while producing a comparable sweat over a longer session. The plunge supplies the cold half.

Assembly Row has an Orange Line station and a large garage. Sessions book through the chain’s system.