Publisher's Synopsis
Before Studio 54 and the disco era, there was the Continental Baths - the most daring, delightful, and notorious gay establishment that New York City had ever seen. Founded in 1968, the five-story bathhouse deep beneath the glamorous Ansonia Hotel fostered an almost utopian club experience for gay men and the LGBTQ community. Visionary businessman Steve Ostrow transformed the building's Victorian-style baths into an underground pleasure palace. The Continental featured unabashed carnal adventures with amenities such as a steam room, sauna, swimming pool, thousands of fresh towels...and few rules about sex or propriety. But it was so much more than merely a hyper-sexualized venue. The Continental Baths pioneered the organic integration of leisure, art, sexuality, and community - an act of revolution during a pivotal era.
By 1971, the steamy evenings also featured cabaret-style live performances that launched Bette Midler and Barry Manilow to stardom. Behind the scenes, the Continental Baths weathered ongoing moralistic attacks and political pressures against the bacchanalian celebration of gay life. Steve Ostrow staunchly defended the venue that came to anchor and empower New York's post-Stonewall identity and sexual revolution.
The Palace of Pleasure chronicles the dramatic rise and untimely fall of the Continental Baths against the backdrop of evolving gay history - from the optimistic hedonism of the pre-AIDS 1970s to eventual backlash and closure in 1985. This forgotten story reveals the critical role niche subcultural venues played in fostering modern queer visibility, entertainment, politics and beyond. It immortalizes the mythical safe space whose magic launched cultural icons and revolutionized urban American gay life for generations hence.
Step into the steamy confines of the Continental and immerse in this unknown history as we reveal its euphoric heights, tragic turns and enduring legacy. The Palace of Pleasure brings to life a lost John Waters-esque wonderland that pushed boundaries and accepted human desires in all their messy splendor during a fleeting cultural moment that still echoes loudly today.
