The bathhouse had long been an anonymous space where gay men could be themselves without shame - but the fire at the Everard reinforced the idea for many queer men that the few spaces they thought were truly their own weren't always safe.
But even as the '70s in New York were a relatively open, exciting time to be a gay man in New York - pride parades, gay bars and clubs proliferating, a mainstream weekly gay newspaper, a gay rights protest at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York - being openly gay, whether on the street or in the workplace, still came with dangers.
But by the time the fire engines came wailing down 28th Street around 7 a.m., nine men - trapped inside a building with blocked-up windows and no fire escapes - would not make it out alive.Įight years after Stonewall, the tragedy at the Everard Baths - never investigated as anything but an accidental mattress fire - marked the beginning of the end of a brief, exuberant heyday of New York City gay life that was able to thrive in part because of cheap real estate and a city government that was willing to look the other way when it came to, say, S&M clubs like the Mineshaft in the Meatpacking District (dress code included no cologne). They would have been hanging out in the steam room or the sauna, grabbing something to eat from the snack shop in the lobby, swimming laps in the heavily chlorinated pool in the basement, getting a massage, smoking a joint, buying drugs from the attendant on the third floor, or having sex on a bed in one of the private cubicles or the big, communal L-shaped dormitory, also known as the orgy room. Tuesday night was a big night at the baths, and many of the men would have rented one of the 135 tiny cubicles for $7 for 12 hours, or just a locker for $5. Maybe there were 80 to 100, as the building owner estimated later. No one knows exactly how many men were inside the Everard Baths in the early morning hours of Wednesday, May 25, 1977.