From sexual health support to discreet gathering place, bathhouses were once a small but important part of the city\u2019s gay community<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the late 1970s and early \u201880s, Paul M. would often fill himself with liquid courage before he slipped through the doors of Club LaGrange, a gay bathhouse that occupied a worn but majestic brownstone<\/a> in a gritty slice of downtown Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up a flight of stairs, he\u2019d approach the counter, supply his name and some cash, before proceeding to a room or locker, where he\u2019d stow his clothes and don a towel. Then, for the night, he was anonymous and free to explore the showers, saunas and private rooms of the club\u2014each space a new opportunity to cruise for sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was young, horny and in the closet,\u201d says Paul, now 82 years old; the bathhouses\u2014outside the gaze of the more public gay bars\u2014filled a need for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boston never had a legendary gay bathhouse scene like those in New York or San Francisco\u2014partly due to a hangover of \u201cPuritan prudishness\u201d that augured a tamer scene overall, according to historians. Boston\u2019s gay community, some of its own members admit, was not as \u201cwild\u201d or uninhibited as those in other large American cities. But for a period in the 1970s and \u201980s, a string of baths in the city gave gay men like Paul crucial community spaces\u2014which were also on the forefront of public health, before and after the AIDS crisis hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBathhouses thrived, to a certain extent, on being safe places when other places weren\u2019t safe,\u201d says Russ Lopez, author of The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s now been more than 25 years since Boston\u2014New England\u2019s largest city\u2014has been home to a gay bathhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neighbouring (and much smaller) Providence, Rhode Island, still maintains such an establishment<\/a>, as do New York<\/a>, Chicago<\/a> and San Francisco<\/a>, to name a few American cities. Yet in Boston, what was once a small but important cluster of baths has been lost to fire, gentrification and the shifting needs of the LGBTQ2S+ community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI really think these places should be there. They provide a service,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first documented gay bathhouse in Boston was a spot dubbed Ludine\u2019s Turkish Baths that could hold 150 people, according to Lopez\u2019s book. \u201cIt had Moorish arches and tile work to make it look like a hammam,\u201d he writes, and on \u201cFriday and Saturday nights, there\u2019d be a whole line of people going from the steps down, down along Carver Street, to get into the place.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It closed in the 1960\u2019s, and another bathhouse wouldn\u2019t open until the early \u201970s, when the national Club Baths<\/a> and Regency chains each opened a location in Boston. These became the two mainstays of Boston\u2019s gay bathhouse landscape through the \u201970s and early \u201980s, with local startups such as Saunatek, Club 297 or Liberty Tree Health Spa cycling in and out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were never more than two or three baths operating simultaneously in Boston. Gay bars, instead, occupied a larger part of the local gay culture in this era. Lopez explains that this was because, unlike other American cities, it was not illegal in Boston to serve openly gay men in a bar. \u201cWhich is not to say they weren\u2019t harassed\u201d by police, Lopez says, but there were no raids and mass arrests like those in New York City that famously inspired the Stonewall uprising. In Boston, \u201cyou might be harassed, but you\u2019re not going to lose your job, lose your life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With gay bars more or less tolerated by the public and police, there was less pull to the anonymity of a bathhouse. Which might also be why, as gay bars proliferated in neighbourhoods across the city<\/a>, bathhouses remained clustered in the \u201cCombat Zone,\u201d<\/a> a district so-named for its mix of violence and other businesses like strip clubs and porn theatres, deemed \u201cundesirable\u201d by city leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bathhouses \u201ccertainly had the reputation for being sleazy, I think an undeserved reputation for being sleazy,\u201d says Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Media and Activism at Harvard University\u2014and a former LaGrange baths employee. \u201cThey were community institutions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, they still are. One does not go to a bathhouse only for sex. Inside, the vibe can be rather social, not all that different from a bar. Except, because you were wearing only a towel (or less), \u201cnotions of class, notions of respectability \u2026 of where people worked, were all missing,\u201d Bronski says, allowing friendships to form across class boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was courtesy at the baths,\u201d Paul recalls. \u201cIt was safer, in my mind, than cruising, which I did a lot of as well.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Bars tended to self-segregate among jocks or queens or other gay stereotypes, Bronski says. \u201cThe baths cut through all of that,\u201d he says. They could also be an alternative to cruising in Boston\u2019s many parks and back alleys, a popular pastime of the era. \u201cThere was courtesy at the baths,\u201d Paul recalls. \u201cIt was safer, in my mind, than cruising, which I did a lot of as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A 1976 article in the Gay Person\u2019s Guide to New England<\/em> noted, \u201cContrary to another fear, baths are (with a few conscious and organized exceptions) open, non-judgmental, accepting places. You will not be ridiculed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early \u201970s, John Kyper also became a devotee of Club LaGrange. He, too, found that he was mostly treated well by the strangers he met there, some of whom even became casual relationships or repeated liaisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Kyper and Paul continued to patronize the Boston baths after the AIDS epidemic hit in the early \u201980s, and even saw the increased value of them during the crisis. The baths, rather than closing down completely, started distributing condoms. \u201cYou tried to take what steps you can,\u201d Paul says. \u201cIt didn\u2019t slow us down at all. We did what we did,\u201d albeit with more protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boston\u2019s baths avoided, to some extent, the fierce debate<\/a> over bathhouse closures that consumed San Francisco, in particular. This was, again, rooted in Boston\u2019s more docile gay scene. \u201cFrom the beginning it was clear that people who became infected in Boston had not overindulged; they were merely unlucky,\u201d Lopez writes in his book. \u201cThus the debate that focused on bathhouses in San Francisco and debauched bars in New York failed to gain traction within Massachusetts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, the baths in Boston inhabited a public health role they had taken up even before AIDS. Bronski, while working at LaGrange in 1978, remembers a weekly visit from a nurse who offered free testing for gonorrhea and syphilis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But perhaps due to simple fear or misconceptions, Boston\u2019s baths nonetheless began to lose their clientele during the AIDS crisis, and by the end of the \u201980s, began to shutter. LaGrange hung on until 1985. From 1986 to 1989, Club 297 was the sole remaining bathhouse. Its closure was heralded as the end of Boston\u2019s bathhouse era, but not attributed to unsafe sex practices. Boston officials shut it down for a number of violations, among them unlit exit signs and a lack of fire exits, according to a 1989 article<\/a> in Gay Community News<\/em>; some claimed the city\u2019s actions were motivated more by homophobia than a real concern for safety. A month later, the club burned down<\/a> in a fire that was later determined to be an insurance-motivated arson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf AIDS wasn\u2019t enough to kill the bathhouses, the twin forces of gentrification and broader LGBTQ2S+ acceptance mostly finished the job in Boston.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Club 297\u2019s closure, however, was not the death knell observers first predicted. Four years later, in 1993, the Safari Club opened as a new bathhouse in the South End\u2014a location it chose after an initial proposal for the Fenway area generated opposition<\/a> from neighbours. The club remained until 1999, when it too was shut down by city officials<\/a> citing code violations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If AIDS wasn\u2019t enough to kill the bathhouses, the twin forces of gentrification and broader LGBTQ2S+ acceptance mostly finished the job in Boston. Safari\u2019s closure would be the real and enduring end for the city\u2019s bathhouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former \u201cCombat Zone\u201d has since been transformed<\/a> into a non-threatening (if not especially vibrant) shopping and theatre district. In 2013, the LaGrange building (designed by famous architect H.H. Richardson<\/a>) was renovated into luxury apartments<\/a>. The former Club 297 on Franklin Street is slated for the same fate<\/a>. And the old Safari Club is now condos<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the same time, as queer sexuality became less stigmatized and the community achieved more visibility, there was less need to slither into an anonymous sex club under the cover of night. If you\u2019re not in the closet, there\u2019s little reason to hide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while Boston is left without a single gay bath, even in cities that still have them, American bathhouse culture is now a shadow of its former self. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFreedom is actually bad for a bathhouse,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, during this time of increasing hostility toward LGBTQ2S+ people, a bathhouse would be a useful place for many of the same reasons it was in the \u201970s: a place where queer sex could be had anonymously, outside the view of the public or the police. And a way to distribute information about safer sex, and conduct testing for HIV and other STIs. These simple actions, considered revolutionary or taboo 50 years ago, are once again in the crosshairs of politicians<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul, for his part, still yearns for the bathhouses of yore. He hasn\u2019t been to one in a while, partly due his age, and partly because he\u2019s currently in a relationship. But sometimes, he\u2019s still tempted. \u201cBeing an old man doesn\u2019t mean you stop being horny,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From sexual health support to discreet gathering place, bathhouses were once a small but important part of the city\u2019s gay community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1196,"featured_media":271765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editorial_slug":"103","_editorial_slug":"","exclude_from_latest_block":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"contributors":[2194],"topic":[86,103,104,131,109],"clients":[],"series":[],"timeliness":[58],"editorial_format":[31],"type-of-work":[2530],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272324,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271749\/revisions\/272324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributors?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"clients","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/clients?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"timeliness","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/timeliness?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"editorial_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/editorial_format?post=271749"},{"taxonomy":"type-of-work","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-of-work?post=271749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}