Club Baths

2005, Club Washington

Club Baths was a chain of gay bathhouses in the United States and Canada with particular prominence from the 1960s through the 1990s.

At its peak it included 42 bathhouses: Akron, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Camden, Chicago, Cleveland (two locations), Columbus, Dallas, Dayton, Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Key West, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Haven, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Providence, St. Louis, San Francisco, Tampa, Toledo, Washington, D.C., London (Ontario), and Toronto.[1]

The chain claimed to have at least 500,000 members. Most of the bathhouses were closed in the 1990s either by government agencies or a changing market after charges were made that it contributed to the spread of AIDS.[2]

The Club was founded in 1965 by John "Jack" W. Campbell (born 1932) and two other investors who paid $15,000 to buy a closed Finnish bath house in Cleveland, Ohio. Campbell wanted to provide cleaner, brighter amenities that were a contrast to the dark, dirty environment that existed previously.[2]

Campbell, a former president of the University of Michigan Young Democrats and a member of the Cleveland Mattachine Society, was active in gay politics and was on the Board of the National Gay Task Force. At one point while encountering Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, Perry was said to have told him "we have a hundred churches and a total of 30,000 members." Campbell replied, "Well, although we only have thirty churches, we have 300,000 members."[2]

Campbell would be active in the fight against the Save Our Children campaign headed by Anita Bryant in the late 1970s.

The Ottawa Club Baths (3,000 members) was raided in May 1976 by the police.[3] The facility in Toronto was one of four bathhouses raided on February 5, 1981, in a police action known as Operation Soap.[4]

3,000 men visited the San Francisco Club Baths every week before it closed down.[5] It was located on the corner of 8th and Howard, where it was replaced by an Episcopal sanctuary.[6]

Bathhouses that today claim a Club Baths heritage include the CBC Resorts Club Body Center, which has bathhouses in Miami, Florida, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Providence, Rhode Island,[7] and The Clubs, which has facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Miami, Columbus, Dallas, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.[8] Chuck Renslow and Chuck Fleck—co-owners of Club Baths locations in Chicago, Kansas City, and Phoenix[9]—later opened Man's Country.[10]

References

  1. ^ Taken from an undated advertisement reproduced in William E. Jones, Halsted Plays Himself, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2007, ISBN 9781584351078, p. 211.
  2. ^ a b c Clendinen, Dudley; Nagourney, Adam (1999), Out for good : the struggle to build a gay rights movement in America, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-684-81091-1, OCLC 40668240
  3. ^ "Ottawa LGBT History: The Club Baths Raid". The Village Legacy Project | Le Projet de legs du village. Retrieved 2024-12-28.
  4. ^ Tattelman, Ira (2005-01-01). "Toronto Police Raid Gay Bathhouses". GLBT History, 1976–1987. EBSCO Publishing. pp. 127–130.[dead link‍]
  5. ^ Shilts, Randy (1987-11-01). "Why AIDS spread so far, so fast". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  6. ^ Bajko, Matthew S. (2005-09-21). "Tour digs up SOMA's gay past". Bay Area Reporter. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  7. ^ "Club Body Center – Miami, FL". CBC Resorts. Archived from the original on 2009-12-15. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
  8. ^ "The Clubs". The Clubs. Retrieved 2024-11-07.
  9. ^ Keehnen, Owen (2012-09-13). "If These Walls Could Talk: Man's Country anniversary - Windy City Times News". Windy City Times. Retrieved 2024-01-26.
  10. ^ Keehnen, Owen (2023). Man's Country: More Than a Bathhouse (1st ed.). Cathedral City, California: Rattling Good Yarns Press. ISBN 9781955826419.