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Famed ’70s bathhouse trailblazer Steve Ostrow dies at 91

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Gay bathhouse impresario Steve Ostrow, the trailblazer who founded New York City’s iconic Continental Baths–the sex club and performance space that helped launch the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow in the early ’70s–has died. He was 91.

Ostrow, who was bisexual, passed away on February 4th at a retirement home in Australia, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

An entrepreneur and former opera singer, Ostrow opened the Continental Baths in 1968 in the basement of the previously lavish Ansonia Hotel, a Beaux-Arts landmark building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

After observing the crowds at other bathhouses, Ostrow wanted to elevate the scene from a seedy, rundown environment to a clean and extravagant wonderland where gay men could congregate more openly.

This was a particularly bold idea pre-Stonewall as homosexuality was still illegal, most NYC gay bars were owned by the mafia, and police raids were commonplace.

Ostrow transformed the Ansonia’s crumbling Turkish baths and broken-down pool into a Roman-themed pleasure palace with cascading waterfalls, saunas, public spaces with bunk beds, private rooms, and a disco dance floor.

The Continental Baths opened on September 12, 1968 with lines around the corner.

As its popularity continued to grow, Ostrow added themed rooms, a cabaret stage, restaurant, gym, bar, boutique, travel desk, medical clinic and roof deck with sand from a nearby beach. It was like the Soho House but with a lot more public sex.

Ostrow then got the idea to turn the Baths into an unlikely music venue and added live entertainment and DJ nights.

On Saturday evenings, emerging acts and later established stars would perform alongside patrons in various stages of undress. Most famously, Bette Midler got her start singing for the towel-clad masses with then-unknown piano player Barry Manilow.

Midler first debuted her 1973 hit “Friends” as “the Tubs”, as they were called at the time, and soon got the moniker Bathhouse Betty, which she used for the title of her 1998 album.

“I’m still proud of those days,” Midler previously said to the Houston Voice. “I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of ‘Bathhouse Betty’ with pride.”

While Manilow was not out during his time performing at the Continental Baths, he recently opened up about his experience at the “unusual” venue.

“They were just an audience. A great audience, too,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s unusual, I agree. But for me, it was a job for 75 bucks.”

Others who performed included Patti Labelle, Peter Allen, Cab Calloway, Lesley Gore, Andy Kaufman, Wayland Flowers, the Manhattan Transfer, Melba Moore, Freda Payne, Phoebe Snow, and Sarah Vaughan. Pioneering house and garage music DJs Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan also first got their start spinning at the Tubs.

During its heyday, the Continental Baths was open 24/7 and had upwards of 10,000 people hitting up its 400 rooms each week, according to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

The Saturday night performances also became popular with more mainstream audiences and soon the scantily-clad gays found themselves listening to Midler and co. seated next to A-listers like Mick Jagger, Alfred Hitchcock, and Andy Warhol.

Worlds were colliding!

In 1973, renowned soprano singer Eleanor Steber performed a Mozart recital alongside Metropolitan Opera musicians that was billed as a “black-towel event” for a semi-nude crowd of regulars and other assorted looky-loos.

With the scene evolving into more of a live music space for clothed straight people and less about hooking up, the gays soon stopped going. In 1974, Ostrow got rid of the musical performances before closing it for good in 1976.

A year later, the heterosexual swingers club Plato’s Retreat opened in the remains of the Continental Baths.

Decades later, the impact the Continental Baths had on LGBTQ+ history cannot be understated.

“I think the Continental Baths changed things more than Stonewall did,” late author, playwright and activist Larry Kramer told New York magazine in 1998. “Everybody there was walking around half-naked and having fun. It was clean. It was a party.”

In the ’80s, Ostrow relocated to Australia and became a vocal coach director of the Sydney Academy of Vocal Arts. In the ’90s, he continued his LGBT advocacy by founding the Mature Age Gays, a support and social organization for elder gays in Australia.

Ostrow is survived by two children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The 2013 documentary Continental explored the history and legacy of the Continental Baths and featured interviews with Ostrow. Check out the trailer below.

Related:

The Ariston Bathhouse Raid: Unpacking a century-long legacy of anti-LGBTQ+ policing in America

The first violent policing of gay spaces happened in 1903 at the Ariston bathhouse in New York City and is an often-forgotten moment in queer history.

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