New_St._Mark's_Baths

New St. Marks Baths

New St. Marks Baths

Gay bathhouse in New York, United States

The New St. Marks Baths was a gay bathhouse at 6 St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City from 1979 to 1985. It claimed to be the largest gay bath house in the world.[citation needed]

Quick Facts The New St. Marks Baths, Former names ...

The Saint Marks Baths opened in the location in 1913. Through the 1950s, it operated as a Turkish bath catering to Russian-Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side. In the 1950s, it began to have a homosexual clientele at night. In the 1960s, it became exclusively gay.[1]

In 1979, the bathhouse was refurbished, and the name was changed to the New Saint Marks Baths. In 1981, the neighboring building was purchased, with plans to expand.[2]

The AIDS epidemic caused some activists such as Larry Kramer to urge its closing.[citation needed]. In October 1985, an emergency resolution updating the New York Sanitary Code (10 NYCRR) § 24.2, authorized the New York City Department of Health to close any facilities "in which high risk sexual activity takes place."[3] Despite providing information on AIDS and condoms to all patrons, the New St. Mark's Baths was closed permanently on December 7, 1985.[4]

References

  1. [1]
    Leap, William (1999). Public sex gay space. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10691-2.
  2. [2]
    Moore, Patrick (2004). Beyond shame: reclaiming the abandoned history of radical gay sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-7956-1.
  3. [3]
    "Court Upholds Power to Close Gay Bathhouses - City of New York v New St. Mark's Baths, 130 Misc. 2d 911, 497 N.Y.S.2d 979 (1986)". Biotech.law.lsu.edu. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
  4. [4]
    Purnick, Joyce (December 7, 1985). "City Shuts a Bathhouse as Site of 'Unsafe Sex'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2019-09-13.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article New_St._Mark's_Baths, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.