In the too short period between the birth of gay liberation and the onslaught of the plague years of the AIDS epidemic there existed a public space that housed queer life in bath houses.

In 1968, homosexuality was illegal in New York State. Business at New York City’s Everard Baths was booming. Lines snaked around the block. Bathing was big business at the ‘Ever-hard’.

Sensing an opportunity, Steve Ostrow and his wife, Joanne, that same year opened the Continental Bathhouse in the basement of the faded Ansonia hotel on New York’s 74th Street and Broadway. In order to succeed at business, “you can either fulfill a need or create a desire,” wrote Continental founder Steve Ostrow in his book Live at the Continental. “If a business can create a desire that fulfills a need, how can you lose?”

The Continental Baths boasted 400 private rooms, a sauna, a swimming pool, vending machines full of drinks laced with acid and ecstasy and – get this – a dancefloor, where beginning in 1974 the likes of DJs Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Bobby “DJ” Guttadaro, David Rodriguez and Joey Bonfiglio worked the crowd. Bette Midler (“Bathhouse Betty”) accompanied on piano by Barry Manilow, New York Dolls, Patti Labelle, Nell Carter, The Pointer Sisters, Cab Calloway, The Andrew Sisters, Lesley Gore, Peter Allen, Sarah Vaughn and Andy Kaufman all performed at The Continental.

“I had been to a few clubs. But they turned me off. They were dirty … filthy. They treated you like shit… I built a disco room, a DJ booth, and these special things where you put the records: ‘turntables’! It was spectacular. People would dance in their towels, bathing suits, nude or anything!”  Steve Ostrow

A riveting essay in Wax Poetics says it was an even more sacred space.

An excerpt: The story of the notorious NYC bathhouse Continental Baths is the story of disco. Housed in the basement of a grandiose turn-of-the-century hotel on New York’s Upper West Side, the Baths were at the epicenter of gay culture and the burgeoning equal rights movement. The club’s early success in breaking new talent like Bette Midler and Patti LaBelle soon gave way to DJs moving front and center as the main attraction for its towel-clad patrons. After the sound system was overhauled on a shoestring budget, the club recruited well-known Fire Island selector Bobby DJ Guttadaro, who brought over his own following. In the stimulating nights that followed, the Baths would birth the careers of dance icons Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, two young DJs who were soaking in the nascent disco scene of the early ’70s—and who soon got their own shot behind the decks. Despite the technical limitations of the club’s equipment, both DJs honed their skills and moved on to influence the dance scene in immeasurable ways.

Although today it’s remembered mainly as a footnote in New York City’s gay liberation movement, the Continental Baths can be seen as an encapsulation of the entire disco era. Musical genres evolved to suit dancers whose once-taboo concepts of sexuality spread to the mainstream, technological adaptations encouraged DJs to push their art form further, and just when it seemed like the good times would never end, the venue shuttered. Much like the disco era, the key figures of the Continental Baths will always be remembered for their ability to keep the crowd dancing.

Read the full story here.