Continental Baths

, New York City, |alt=A black-and-white photograph shows a grand, ornate multi-story Beaux-Arts style building with elaborate facades, towers, and decorative details. The features of this bathhouse included a small disco dance floor, a cabaret lounge with a baby grand piano (both only feet from a narrow "Olympia blue" swimming pool), sauna rooms, bunk beds in public areas, and tiny rooms as one would find in any gay bathhouse. The facility had the capacity to serve nearly 1,000 men, 24 hours a day. One gay guide from the 1970s described the Continental Baths as a place that "revolutionized the bath scene in New York City." Some features of the Continental Bathhouse included a warning system that tipped off patrons when police arrived. There was a weekly STD clinic, a supply of A200 (a lice-killing shampoo) in the showers, a mouthwash dispenser, and K-Y Jelly in the candy vending machine. The documentary film Continental by Malcolm Ingram covers the height of the club's popularity through the early 1970s. ==Entertainment==

An attraction at the club was the entertainment provided by performers such as Barry Manilow and Bette Midler. Due to her performances at the baths, Bette Midler earned the nickname Bathhouse Betty. It was at the Continental, accompanied by house pianist Barry Manilow that she created her stage persona the Divine Miss M. Despite Midler's constant complaints about "that goddamn waterfall," her poolside performances were so successful that she soon gained national attention, beginning with repeat performances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. ==Closing==

The Continental Baths had lost much of its gay clientele by 1974. The reason for the decline in patronage was, as one gay New Yorker was quoted, "We finally got fed up with those silly-assed, campy shows. All those straight people in our bathhouse made us feel like we were part of the décor and that we were there for their amusement." By the end of 1974, patronage was so low that Steve Ostrow had decided to discontinue the lounge acts. He focused, instead, on resurrecting his business by making the baths coed. He even advertised on WBLS, but to no avail. In the end, Ostrow closed the Continental Baths for good. The facility was reopened in 1977 as Plato's Retreat, a heterosexual swingers' club. Plato's Retreat relocated to W. 34th St. in 1980 then was shut down by the city of New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic. ==Police raids==

In February 1969, the New York City Police raided the Continental Baths. Twenty-two patrons, whom an undercover, towel-clad policeman identified as having offered to have sex with him or actually had sex with him, were arrested. This happened again in December of the same year, when police entered the Continental Baths and arrested three patrons and three employees, charging them with committing lewd and lascivious acts and criminal mischief, respectively. ==References==