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HOMO HISTORY: The Bathhouse

Saturday, October 09, 2010 10:45 AM

The Towleroad blog has a great post that revisits New York’s first recorded anti-gay raid on the Ariston Baths in Manhattan in 1903. And though I was never an aficionado of the Bathhouse scene, the gay history buff in me decided to do some research and even I was a bit surprised by the strong historical and social significance bathhouses have had on the gay community in America. In fact, it could be argued that the very concepts of the modern gay identity and community first originated inside a bathhouse.

Long before the internet, and even pre-dating the existence of gay bars, bathhouses served as the original gathering place for gay men. Records of men meeting in bathhouses for sex with other men date back to the 15th century and beyond - with ancient Greece and Rome being the best known examples. Bathhouses in American cities first became popular with the general public in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to a lack of tenement plumbing and bathing facilities, but would remain popular with gay men long after bathtubs became standard apartment features. The Everard in NYC (which long ago received the nickname - The Everhard) was converted from a church into a bathhouse in 1888 and was known to have a gay clientele even before the roaring 1920’s. In addition to providing spaces for gay men to meet and have sex, the baths also provided a type of community space and meeting place for gay artists and intellectuals during a time that gay sex was still punishable by law. A popular bathhouse in the 1910’s, the Lafayette Baths, was managed by Ira & George Gershwin. Charles Demuth, the American precisionist painter, practically used the Lafayette Baths as a second home and his famous self-portrait in a Turkish bathhouse is most likely set there. Bathhouses would continue to be one of the most popular places for gay men to congregate well after the modern gay rights movement began in the late 1960’s with the Stonewall riots. Preceding the 1980 election, the New St. Mark's Baths in NYC, with the help of the League of Women Voters, conducted a voter registration drive at the bathhouse. And though gay bathhouses saw a decline in popularity beginning in the 1980’s with the advent of the AIDS epidemic, many gay bathhouses continue to fill the same function they always have: a safe place to be gay and have gay sex. (Photos above text: (L) The Bowery - NY - 10 cent Turkish Bath circa 1884 (R) Male Bathhouse circa 1900. Click on photos below text to view slideshow)