Even the members weren’t allowed to talk about what went on here.’ ‘Due to the nature of the place the history of it is a bit hard to come by as it was shrouded in secrecy. Mayor Koch ordered the health department to shut down gay bathhouses as well as straight sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat.
Owner Larry Levenson went to prison for tax evasion in 1981. In 1980, Plato’s Retreat moved out of the Ansonia to a much bigger space at 509 West 34th Street. Guests could bump uglies in the disco, the Jacuzzi, and the huge swimming pool. ‘Celebrities indulged in orgies with regular joes and janes from the suburbs. ‘Management laid out strict rules: No gay men, couples only (though women could have sex with each other), no drugs, no booze. ‘Opened in 1977, Plato’s Retreat held court in the basement of the then-crumbling Beaux Arts Ansonia Hotel on Broadway and West 74th Street. Too many people in an orgy can lead to a lack of oxygen and breathing.’ In the past, several cases of fatal suffocation prompted the administration to respond. Indeed, since 1998, the state has limited this practice to 8 people. ‘The rule that this club too often neglected and which ultimately sentenced it to death was a failure to comply with the maximum quota of people allowed in orgy. You are certainly not aware of it, but these places, with light mores, are subject to several rules that must be observed. After several warnings and hefty fines, the manager had no other solution than to close his establishment in 2008. ‘Another libertine club victim of too severe administrative rules.
But here that seemed, though not impossible, at least less likely to occur than elsewhere.”‘ If anything, he looked afraid of getting beaten up, or murdered - not uncommon fears in the backs of the minds of most gay males. ‘In his memoir City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and 1970s, Edmund White remembers the Everard as “filthy … It didn’t have the proper exits or fire extinguishers, just a deep, foul-smelling pool in the basement that looked infected.” And Rumaker describes seeing a naked man who looked uncomfortable lying in his cubicle: “In spite of his display of nudity and the knuckle-whitened hand clenched at his crotch, he appeared, from the tension in his face, in no way to be awaiting some delightful erotic occurrence.
But by the time the fire engines came wailing down 28th Street around 7 a.m., nine men - trapped inside a building with blocked-up windows and no fire escapes - would not make it out alive. They would have been hanging out in the steam room or the sauna, grabbing something to eat from the snack shop in the lobby, swimming laps in the heavily chlorinated pool in the basement, getting a massage, smoking a joint, buying drugs from the attendant on the third floor, or having sex on a bed in one of the private cubicles or the big, communal L-shaped dormitory, also known as the orgy room. Tuesday night was a big night at the baths, and many of the men would have rented one of the 135 tiny cubicles for $7 for 12 hours, or just a locker for $5. Maybe there were 80 to 100, as the building owner estimated later. ‘No one knows exactly how many men were inside the Everard Baths in the early morning hours of Wednesday, May 25, 1977.