Question for people who lived through the 60's: What was Plato's Retreat?

[bluestateguy]

Please educate this ignorant Gen Xer.

Reference was made to this place, Plato's Retreat, on "American Dreams" tonight. Can someone she some light as to just was it was?

[CO Liberal]

1. It Was a Sex Club in New York During the '70s

You could do anything in there, or watch it being done. It finally closed in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Yet another example of historical innacuracy in "American Dreams". I did a Google search on Plato's Retrat, and found the following:

By the time 1974 had ended, patronage was so low that Steve Ostrow had decided discontinue the lounge acts. He focused, instead, on resurrecting his business by making the baths coed. He even advertised on WBLS, but to no avail. In the end, Ostrow closed the Continental Baths for good. The facility, however, was reopened as a heterosexual swingers' club called Plato's Retreat, but it was shut down by the City of New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

http://www.gaylinkcontent.com/storydetail.cfm?storyid=1554

[jonnyblitz]

2. sex club in NYC. it was around way past the 60's though. n/t

[mr_hat]

3. IIRC, it was a swinger's club in NYC. You know what

swingers are, right?

[pnorman]

4. While I was busy Googling it,

everyone else beat me to the punch. Here's what I dug out:

>
>
Q: Tell me about Plato's Retreat.
A: First of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th century wedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side in New York. In the basement of the Ansonia was Plato's Retreat, then the world's most famous sex club. Men and women would stroll about the Ansonia lobby in nothing but towels. In the club, they would have sex with possibly a dozen or so people in a single night. Plato's Retreat represented the commercial version of what was happening in people's apartments and living rooms across the country.
>
>
http://www.twbookmark.com/authors/66/1848/interview9387.html

pnorman

[lapfog_1]

5. Not a sixties thing...

address: 2107 Broadway & 73rd Street (first location)

509 W 34'th Street (second location)
(between 10th and 11th Ave)
New York City
active years: 1975 - New Years Eve, 1985
DeeJays: Bacho Mangual
Sharon White
websites:
informations: — owners Larry Levenson and ???
— Plato's Retreat was located in the basement of the legendary Ansonia Hotel, prior to Plato's the premice was known as the Continental Baths
— the club was a heterosexual swingers' club located in a bathhouse which was advertised as bringing back 'the glory of ancient Rome'
— Plato's Retreat had a disco dance floor, sauna rooms, a swimming pool with waterfalls and it could welcome some 1000 people a night
— no liquor was served in the club, but the drug scene was pretty intense in NYC most famous sex club
— the club was moved to it's second location sometime around 1980
— in its heydays the club attracted celeberties like Madonna, Richard Dreyfuss, Sammy Davis Jr, Paul Newman, Ron Jeremy and John Wayne
— Joe Thomas sung about the club in this 1978 T.K. hit called just Plato's Retreat, where he was vocally backed up by Jocelyn Brown, Diva Grey and Gwen Guthrie
— Plato's Retreat was shut down by the City of New York on New Year's Eve, 1985, at the height of the AIDS epidemic

http://www.disco-disco.com/clubs/other-clubs.html

There is a great scene in the movie "Serial" (Martin Mull, Tuesday
Weld, Christopher Lee) where Harvey (Martin Mull) goes to a
"swingers club" with his new secretary and is spotted by a next
door neighbor. The club was "Plato's Retreat West" or something
which I'm not sure ever existed.

Definately a late seventies thing.

[CO Liberal]

6. And Like I Said Above....

...another example of the rampant historical inaccuracies on "American Dreams".

[jonnyblitz]

7. I can remember people talking about it all the time in the late 70's

when I was in my teens. It was notorious up here in the northeast.

[CO Liberal]

10. I Remember People Talking About It in the Late '70s and Early '80s...

...when I was still living in New Jersey.

[yardwork]

8. Sounds like the adult-only resorts like Sandals and Hedonism

I guess Club Med was the first well-known one, back in the 1970s.

[LiberalEsto]

9. Erica Jong

mentioned it in one of her novels

[MuseRider]

11. I remember rumors

about Buck Henry and that club, was he a part owner? I can't recall but I heard it often enough to remember it.

[NNadir]

12. I recall the hub-bub about it, but I didn't get the point of the club or

hub-bub and still don't.

Anonymous sex for the sake of sex itself and alone seemed then and now depressing.

[papau]

13. Washington Monthly(?) did an article the Reagan/DC sex clubs - but when

Plato closed, the DC operations (which had no ties to Plato other than theme - and the fact that it was an interesting way to pull down a little money from a day of the week - Saturday - that the place usually closed because business was so slow) also closed.

After the Article on the DC Resturant's Saturday "private sex club" was published (it may have been in the Post), folks on the following Monday were making jokes about the place because it was a main W/H hangout resturant (on 18th Street near G)during the week. So with running the sex club on Saturday revealed, folks asked if they could be assured that their table had been really cleaned before the had resturant re-opened on Monday.

Interestingly, the article did not result in closing down the resturant - they seemed to have political power - and I ate at the place many months later and it obviously was still packing them in.

Indeed, shortly afterward the word came down to media types that the George Bush Seniors screwing of the "lady on K Street" was not a story that would get published - so drop it! I remember some reporters at the bar in Masion Blanc across from the White House complaining about the hard work they had put in on the story only to have it killed.

Life is good if you are into "strange" (sex with someone not the wife) and your name is Bush! For the record, I did not hear of W doing anything of interest in the 80's - other than being mean to people. W seemed to have lost his push for underaged girls after the abortion of the 15 year old.

[BiggJawn]

14. It's where Dana went to hide...

When live got rough.