The five-story house on Eight Avenue in the middle of Manhattan appears unspectacular. A supermarket and a Cuban restaurant are located on the ground floor; the brick facade with the large windows above is partially covered by scaffolding.
Only a look at the doorbell sign at 939 Eight Avenue gives an indication of the importance of this inconspicuous building in the history of the global fitness market: several Pilates studios are listed on it, including one on the second floor nicknamed “Original Joe’s Place”.
In these rooms with the number “207”, Joseph Pilates, who was born in Mönchengladbach and emigrated to New York and would have been 140 years old on Saturday (December 9th), opened the first studio for the physical training he had developed in the 1920s. From here, the Pilates training method conquered the world – and is still taught and practiced by millions of people in countless places today.
From beer brewer to body trainer
Joseph Pilates’ father was already an enthusiastic gymnast, as scientist Eva Rincke writes in a biography about the trainer. However, he earned his money as a journeyman locksmith, his wife was a housewife, and the couple had several children. Joseph Pilates, born in 1883, completed an apprenticeship as a beer brewer after school, but, like his father, was interested in all types of exercise – whether boxing, gymnastics or gymnastics. “Physical fitness is the first prerequisite for happiness,” he later wrote in one of his books.
During World War I, Pilates was sent to a British internment camp, where he began training those around him. Back in Germany he continued, reportedly founding a boxing school in Gelsenkirchen and training police officers in Hamburg.
“Contrology” becomes the Pilates method
Pilates emigrated to New York in the mid-1920s. On the ship across the Atlantic he met his future wife, a trained nurse. Together they opened the studio on Eight Avenue in Manhattan, where the physical training program that Pilates had been working on for many years was to be taught, which he first called “Contrology” and which later conquered the world as the Pilates method.
The aim of the whole body training is to strengthen the deeper muscles, especially the pelvic floor, stomach and back. Stretching, breathing and posture also play a major role – the body should be centered and stabilized. The dozens of different exercises can be performed on a mat on the floor or on special machines, many of which Pilates invented and patented.
Pilates fans Katherine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall
The Pilates couple’s studio soon attracted many customers, including numerous celebrities such as dancers Martha Graham and George Balanchine and actresses Katherine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall. The German boxer Max Schmeling is also said to have trained Pilates in New York – with him and many other interested people, Pilates is said to have worked individually on their respective physical challenges and sometimes even invented their own exercises for them.
Until old age, Pilates trained himself and his students with meticulous attention to detail and wrote several books about the method he invented. After his death at the age of 83 in 1967, his widow Clara continued to teach the Pilates method for around ten years until her own death. Numerous students of the two opened their own studios and thus contributed to the method spreading worldwide.
Pilates – an unprotected term
The Pilates couple had no children and Joseph Pilates neither left a will nor made arrangements for the continuation of his work. This led to the term Pilates not being protected – which repeatedly leads to legal disputes. In 2000, a judge in New York ruled that the term Pilates could be used by anyone – like yoga or aerobics.
The lawsuit was filed by Pilates teacher Sean Gallagher, who had once worked with a student of Joseph Pilates and, according to a report in the New York Times, had bought several boxes of material and photos of the Pilates couple from her, among other things.
Pilates’ birthplace Mönchengladbach has erected a memorial plaque for the physical trainer and is considering a museum, but was unable to purchase his birthplace during a foreclosure auction last year, at least initially. Meanwhile, millions of people around the world continue to train with the Mönchengladbacher method every day – many perhaps without knowing that there was really a person behind the name.
Interest in Pilates and other fitness and wellness offerings such as yoga was still a niche at the time of the Pilates inventor, but in recent years and decades it has increased extremely – a global success. Pilates himself is said to have said shortly before his death in hospital: “I am 50 years ahead of my time.”
