Steve Ostrow, who founded the trailblazing Manhattan bathhouse and music venue the Continental Baths, a gay landmark that served as a launchpad for performers including Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, died Feb. 4 at his home in Sydney. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his friend Toby Usnik, who co-wrote an obituary for Mr. Ostrow in the Sydney Morning Herald. Mr. Ostrow, who moved to Australia in the 1980s, “had been in decline for months,” said Usnik, who did not know the specific cause of death.
Mr. Ostrow opened the Continental Baths in 1968 in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, a once-grand Beaux-Arts building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that had fallen on hard times. Under his direction, the hotel’s massive basement, with its dilapidated pools and Turkish baths, was transformed into an opulently decorated, Roman-themed bathhouse.
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The multilevel venue was a sanctuary for a music and dance revolution deeply rooted in New York City’s gay scene, as well as an incubator for the community’s broader social and political awakening, which was spurred by the Stonewall protests in Lower Manhattan.
“Steve identified a need,” said Ken Lustbader, a co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, which documents places of historical importance to the city’s LGBTQ+ community. “Bathhouses in the late 1960s were more run-down and ragged, and he said, ‘Why don’t I open something that is going to be clean, new and sparkle, where I could attract a whole new clientele?’”
Privately run bathhouses proliferated in the 1970s, offering a haven for gay and bisexual men to meet during a time when laws prevented same-sex couples from even dancing together. When AIDS emerged in the 1980s, though, bathhouses were blamed for helping spread the disease and were forced to close or shuttered voluntarily.
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The Continental Baths initially featured a disco floor, a pool with a waterfall, sauna rooms and private rooms, according to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. As its popularity soared, Mr. Ostrow added a cabaret stage, labyrinth, restaurant, bar, gym, travel desk and medical clinic. There was even a sun deck on the hotel’s rooftop complete with imported beach sand and cabanas.
Share this articleShareAt its peak, the Continental Baths was open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, with some 10,000 people visiting its roughly 400 rooms each week, according to Lustbader.
“It was quite the establishment,” he said. “People would check in on Friday night and not leave until Sunday.”
The Continental Baths also became a destination for groundbreaking music, with DJs including Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan shaping sounds that would become staples of pop culture. A young Midler performed on the poolside stage with a then-unknown Manilow accompanying her on piano, helping cement her status as an LGBTQ+ icon.
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As the bathhouse’s music drew a wider, more mainstream audience, the club’s popularity among the gay community waned, and it closed its doors in 1976. The following year, Plato’s Retreat, a swinger’s club catering to straight couples, opened in the basement space.
“I think the Continental Baths changed things more than Stonewall did,” the playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer told New York magazine in 1998, looking back on the early years of the gay liberation movement. The baths “were like ancient Greece,” he added. “They were clean, and you could talk to people, and Bette Midler sang to you.”
Stephen Allen Ostrow was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 16, 1932. An aspiring opera singer, he took voice lessons at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan, sang with opera companies throughout his life, and ran a loan business before starting the Continental. The New York Times reported that his loan company collapsed after he was charged with mail fraud in 1966 for issuing loans to out-of-state customers.
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After moving to Australia, Mr. Ostrow served as director of the Sydney Academy of Vocal Arts and founded Mature Age Gays, a social group for older members of the country’s LGBTQ+ community. In 2021, he received the Medal of the Order of Australia for his advocacy work.
His marriage to Joanne King, a fellow opera singer, ended in divorce. Survivors include their two children, Scott Ostrow and Maria Jaul; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Harrison Smith contributed to this report.
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