Bath house in New York City, United States
The Everard Baths or Everard Spa Turkish Bathhouse was a gay bathhouse at 28 West 28th Street in New York City that operated from 1888 to 1986. The venue occupied an adaptively reused church building and was the site of a deadly fire.
History
Everard Baths was a Turkish bath founded by financier James Everard in 1888 in a former church building, designed in a typical late-nineteenth-century Victorian Romanesque Revival architectural style. James Everard who operated the Everard brewery on 135th Street converted it to a bathhouse in 1888. Everard's bathhouse was intended for general health and fitness.[1]
On November 28, 1898, a soldier was found dead in his room at the baths and gas was suspected.[2][3]
On January 5, 1919, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice encouraged a police raid in which the manager and nine customers were arrested for lewd behavior. It was raided again in 1920 with 15 arrests.[4]
It was patronized largely by homosexuals by the 1920s and became the community's preeminent social venue from the 1930s onward.[5] It was patronized by gay men before the 1920s and by the 1930s had a reputation as "classiest, safest, and best known of the baths," eventually picking up the nickname "Everhard".[6]
The entrance was lit by two green lamps, giving it, according to patrons, the appearance of a police precinct, and giving rise to speculation that it was owned for a period by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association of the City of New York (a claim that was vehemently denied after patrons died in a 1977 fire).
Emlyn Williams described a visit in 1927:
- Up some stairs at a desk an ashen bored man in shirtsleeves produced a ledger crammed with illegible scrawls. I added mine, paid my dollar, was handed a key, towel and robe, hung the key on my wrist and mounted to a large floor as big as a warehouse and as high: intersecting rows of private rooms each windowless cell dark except from the glimmer from above through wire-netting shredded with dust and containing a narrow workhouse bed...[he later heard] a casual whisper, a sigh lighter than thistle-down, a smothered moan. Then appeasement: the snap of a lighter as two strangers sat back for a smoke and polite murmured small talk, such as they might exchange in a gym.[2]
Among the documented patrons were Alfred Lunt, Clifton Webb, Noël Coward, Lorenz Hart, Truman Capote, Charles James, Gore Vidal and Rudolf Nureyev.[7] Truman Capote and Ned Rorem wrote about their visits.[8]
On May 25, 1977, nine patrons (ages 17 to 40) were killed in a fire: seven from smoke inhalation, one from respiratory burns, and one who had jumped from an upper floor. Contributing factors were the deteriorating conditions and the lack of sprinklers.[9] Firefighters said they were thwarted in rescue efforts by paneling covering the windows. Between 80 and 100 patrons left the building; the indefinite number was because the club did not have registration at the time. Most of the victims were identified by friends rather than family.[10] Accounts said costs were $5 for a locker or $7 for a cubicle ($6 and $9.25 on weekends).[11]
Despite total destruction of the top two floors, the two floors were rebuilt, and the baths reopened.[12] However, it was closed in April 1986 by New York City mayor Ed Koch during the city's campaign to close such venues during the AIDS epidemic.[9]
Popular culture
Michael Rumaker wrote a book A Day and a Night at the Baths, devoted totally to the baths.[13]
The bathhouse is described in the novels Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran,[14] Faggots by Larry Kramer, and Now Voyagers by James McCourt.
The bathhouse is the subject of Goodbye Seventies by Todd Verow.[15]
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