Gay trendsetter founded famed N.Y. bathhouse

NEW YORK — Steve Ostrow, who founded the trailblazing New York City gay bathhouse the Continental Baths, where Bette Midler, Barry Manilow and other famous artists launched their careers, has died. He was 91.

The Brooklyn native died Feb. 4 in his adopted home of Sydney, Australia, according to an obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald.

“Steve’s story is an inspiration to all creators and a celebration of New York City and its denizens,” Toby Usnik, a friend and spokesperson at the British Consulate General in New York, posted on X.

Ostrow opened the Continental Baths in 1968 in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, a once grand Beaux Arts landmark on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that had fallen on hard times.

He transformed the hotel’s massive basement, with its dilapidated pools and Turkish baths, into an opulently decorated, Roman-themed bathhouse.

The multilevel venue was not just an incubator for a music and dance revolution deeply rooted in New York City’s gay scene, but also for the LGBTQ community’s broader political and social awakening, which would culminate with the Stonewall protests in lower Manhattan, said Ken Lustbader of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, a group that researches places of historic importance to the city’s LGBTQ community.

“Steve identified a need,” he said. “Bathhouses in the late 1960s were more rundown 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.

The Continental Baths initially featured a disco floor, a pool with a waterfall, sauna rooms and private rooms, according to NYC LGBT Historic Sites’ website.

As its popularity soared, 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.

Lustbader said at 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.

The Continental Baths also became a destination for groundbreaking music, with its DJs shaping the dance sounds that would become staples of pop culture.