Is this the Wildest Queer Address in NYC?
How one building on First Avenue was home to a historic gay bathhouse, sapphic Ancient Roman restaurant and pioneering Asian-drag queen eatery
For nearly half a century, a single, ordinary brownstone building in the East Village housed a series of uniquely unconventional commercial spaces, each of which proved significant to varying members of the LGBTQ+ community. Below is a detailed history of how one building contained the first openly gay-owned bathhouse, an Ancient Roman-themed bistro that hosted lesbian orgies and a restaurant exclusively staffed by Asian drag queens.
Club Baths (1971-1983)
Beginning in the year 1971, the building at 24 First Avenue between 1st and 2nd Streets in Manhattan’s East Village turned gay. That year, the former Russian Jewish bathhouse became the Club Baths, the first openly gay-owned bathhouse in New York City. This particular Club Baths was, in fact, part of a massive chain of gay bathhouses scattered across the United States and Canada, which at its peak was operating 42 locations in a variety of cities and towns that included Akron, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Key West, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Haven, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence, St. Louis, San Francisco, Tampa, and more. Overall, the Club Baths would prove highly influential in the bathhouse world.
The Club Baths was initially founded in 1965 by John "Jack" W. Campbell who, alongside two other investors, paid $15,000 to buy a closed Finnish bath house in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time, Campbell wanted to provide cleaner and brighter amenities to patrons, to contrast the dark, dirty bathhouse environments that had previously been the norm. Prior to founding the Club Baths, Campbell had been president of the University of Michigan Young Democrats and was a prominent figure in gay politics, serving on the board of the National Gay Task Force as well being an active member of the Cleveland Mattachine Society.
During its run, the East Village’s Club Baths was both extremely popular and rather groundbreaking it was a quite lavish gay space. One ad for the bathhouse boasts “seven levels of pleasure,” which included the “Dome”—“a large, atrium-like room designed for enjoyment and relaxation with the openness of an airy glass roof, sparkling fountains, and provisions for lounging.” The Baths also included the largest bath facility in New York, top-notch steam, sauna, and jacuzzi equipment, “mirrors galore,” game and refreshment areas, and the “maze”—which was filled with”exotic, erotic murals.” Former Club Baths manager Bob Kohler further detailed the bathhouse’s over-the-top decor and environment: “We had these huge palm trees, real live trees. For the people coming, you[’d] pay your money, [and then] there’s going to be sex. Boom, boom. You walk in and there are birds singing. Here you are, you came to f-ck. And suddenly you are sitting there and there is a jungle, there’s parrots, and palm trees and exotic flowers.”
On his blog Zeitgayst, Rob Frydlewicz related the logistics of the Club Baths: “The price of admission got you a locker; for an additional charge you could rent a cubicle-sized room (with a cot and a door) for four hours. I never rented a room since I preferred walking about the complex—and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of rejecting those I wasn't interested in…For those looking for groups to play with there was an orgy room, a movie room with bunks, and a maze. Patrons walked around with a towel wrapped around their waist and opened it, or dropped it to the floor, as ‘opportunities’ presented themselves.” Frydlewicz later added: “Disco station WKTU played throughout the complex. Whenever I hear songs such as Put Your Body In It (Stephanie Mills); Harmony (Suzy Lane); Street Life (The Crusaders); or Yellow Beach Umbrella (Bette Midler), warm memories come to mind. The music would be regularly interrupted by the desk clerk announcing a room number whose four-hour rental was about to expire.”
Artist Keith Haring was a frequent patron of the Club Baths, who reportedly preferred visiting there specifically on Mondays and Fridays, which were called “Buddy Nights.” Club Baths regular Teddy P. also fondly recalled those nights: “Buddy Night was great during my college years, from ‘72-76. They had one dollar lockers then and it was the first orgy room I ever experienced!” Regarding “Buddy Nights”, patron Henri B. remarked: “I remember standing out front, asking if someone wanted to be my 'buddy', [since] I think that meant that it was 2-for-1 to get in.” Patron Michael B., however, preferred going on Wednesdays: “My friend Mark and I used to frequent the Club Baths back in the day! We loved it especially on Wednesday nights, when cute Black and Latino boys made up a good portion of the crowd! The hot tub/showers /steam room area was great!”
In 1975, lesbian author Rita Mae Brown snuck into the bathhouse disguised as a man, donning a fake mustache and codpiece. She then wrote about her adventure in the essay, Queen for a Day: A Stranger in Paradise. In his book Make Love, Not War, David Allyn notes how Brown wondered if the 'f-ck palace' of the gay bathhouse meant total 'erotic freedom' or 'the ultimate conclusion of sexist logic.' In the end, Brown decided that lesbians need bathhouses, too. She wrote: “I want the option of random sex with no emotional commitment when I need sheer physical relief...Our Xanadu would be less competitive than the gay man's baths.”
The Club Baths in New York was ultimately shuttered in 1983 at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, though other branches from the chain hung on until the early ‘90s. The Club Baths did, however, spawn some offspring which continue to operate today, such as the CBC Resorts Club Body Center, which has bathhouses in Miami, Philadelphia and Providence, and The Clubs, which operates facilities in Cleveland, Columbus, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Orlando, and St. Louis. After the Club Baths in NYC closed, the building at 24 First Avenue was purchased in 1986 by a woman named Hayne Suthon for $2.9 million, with money earned from her family’s natural-gas wells in Louisiana.
Cave Canem (1986-1993)
When Hayne Suthon bought the building in 1986, she had the labyrinthine maze of small rooms that had been filled with parrots, palm trees, and orgies opened up and turned the place into Cave Canem, a quirky restaurant that served Ancient Roman dishes and employed a bevy of glamorous lesbians as servers. During renovations, which according to New York magazine was done by "neighborhood skinheads, models, and graffiti artists,” Suthon remarked: "We found all these artifacts, huge rubber dildos and everything—it would have made a great museum." While some changes were naturally made to renovate the space, the ostentatious restaurant also kept many of the gay bathhouse's original features, including the jacuzzis which would occasionally still get filled with water. Perhaps thanks to its staff, Cave Canem became a popular hangout for hip lesbians in particular, and would occasionally host its own series of raucous orgies and sex parties for women in those tubs, fulfilling Rita Mae Brown’s aforementioned prophecy.
According to Culinary Gourmet, Hayne Suthon was a former tax attorney and "a rare combination of savvy entrepreneur and party girl," who brought her quirky spirit over from New Orleans and into New York’s downtown scene in the ‘80s. Gourmet also noted that Canem was one of the first places to combine drinking, eating and partying into a single locale, while Grub Street noted that the restaurant’s name was Latin for “Beware of the Dog.” A New Yorker article from the time reported that Suthon hired a Harvard food historian for the restaurant and employed a well-known chef in the kitchen to help concoct a garum- and pheasant-heavy menu of dishes from Ancient Rome, some of which were literally taken from a cookbook written by Apicius in the year 87 AD.
Suthon’s friend Steve Lewis once described Cave Canem as a splashy Roman-themed restaurant that "was almost an orgy and there was plenty of that if you knew who to know." Indeed, in keeping many of the bathhouse's original features, Canem patrons could literally splash around in the venue's occasionally water-filled jacuzzis, which naturally meant that clothes would be coming off. During its run, Canem was called "a real hot spot for the chic-est of the yuppies" as well as "THE place for downtown's hip art scene." Suthon, meanwhile, told TIME in 1989: "It's the only place you can go swimming in New York without cement shoes and garbage bags."
Hayne Suthon also specifically remarked in the New Yorker that at Cave Canem, “we had a lot of glamorous lesbians working here." Consequently, the space became a particularly popular hangout for queer women and would often host legendary gatherings catering specifically to them, including lesbian orgies and fetish parties. Photos by Efrain Gonzalez document one such event held at Canem—a party thrown by the Sirens Motorcycle group in which queer women decked out in a variety of leather garb can be seen drinking, dancing, and frolicking in the jacuzzis.
Jody M. was a former employee at Cave Canem and recalled how over-the-top and absurd it was to work there: “I remember being dressed in a toga with three other waiters carrying out a wood slab with an entire roasted goat on top covered with a sheet. When we sat the slab down on saw horses and jerked the sheet away, white doves flew out from the goat carcass.” Patron Dee F. also recalled a particularly wild night out at Canem: “Went to the wildest lesbian party [there.] I can't remember...if it was after Pride or New year's Eve but we were like sliding down that bar in our underwear, Maguerite pouring shots of Jager in our mouths and we carried [around] Jeenie Filipini naked, but for the grapes that people were eating off her body. The pool under the stage was filled and the back room was, well a backroom—a first for the lesbian scene…that night was pure magic.”
Other patrons also recounted fond memories of debauchery from the place. Jill B. recalled: “My favorite memory was a lesbian dressed as Elvis singing opera on the bar. Not to mention all the sweaty dancing in the bathhouse rooms with bubbles!” Holly S. remarked: “Some of my best nights out were there. It was a dark and sexy place. We were young, broke and pretty.” Though Cave Canem was certainly one of a kind and was clearly responsible for some truly wild times, by 1993 the space was no longer viable and Hayne Suthon shut the restaurant down. But she wasn’t quite done with the building at 24 First Ave. Suthon went back to the drawing board and soon returned with another wacky idea for the space.
Lucky Cheng’s (1993-2012)
After closing Cave Canem in ‘93, Suthon partnered with producer Robert Jason and dreamed up a new outlandish concept. In Canem’s place, she decided to open a “California-Asian”–style restaurant, where all of the servers were also the performers, and they all just happened to be Asian drag queens and trans women. Suthon named the new place Lucky Cheng's, after a former Canem busboy named Mi Ching Cheng, who would eventually became part owner of Lucky’s and would later go on to run a neighboring S&M-themed space called La Nouvelle Justine.
At the time of Lucky Cheng’s conception, Suthon had noted that there was a dearth of Asian cuisine in the East Village—and in typical Hayne Suthon fashion—wanted to make a big splash by opening one of New York City’s first ever drag queen restaurants. Suthon and Jason then hired an exclusively all-Asian, gender-ambiguous waitstaff, who would serve food and wait tables while in drag, but who would also perform numbers for patrons during meals. According to Jason in Thrillist, “It was revolutionary and very taboo,” but also “a raging success.”
In its own way, Lucky Cheng’s became a sanctuary and community hub for queer Asians who, at that time, often felt rejected from society and considered the restaurant their second home. Tora Dress, who worked there since the restaurant’s inception, noted that since many Asian cultures expected men to get married and adhere to strict gender guidelines, the mere existence of Lucky Cheng’s was “a big-to-do.” Daisy Ang, another original restaurant employee, noted: “I would feel safe and welcome. At other gay places during that time—Uncle Charlie’s, Splash—oftentimes I would get pushed away, like they were not into skinny, effeminate Asians. At Cheng’s I could feel comfortable.” Another queen employed at Lucky’s described her drag style as being very different from American drag queens and was therefore not always welcome—“not Brady Bunch, but futuristic Asian sci-fi goddess.”
Lucky Cheng’s eventually loosened up its policy on hiring only Asian queens, and numerous well-known performers today in fact jumpstarted their careers there, including Laverne Cox, prior to her big break on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, and Kitten Withawhip, who would later change her drag name to Bob the Drag Queen and go on to win the eighth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. Meanwhile, though early restaurant clientele consisted primarily of artsy, East Village bohemians, by 1995 the restaurant had received significant media attention and was attracting celebrities like Prince Albert of Monaco, Bernadette Peters, and even Robert De Niro and Barbra Streisand, who famously arrived together, couldn’t get a table, and were forced to dine elsewhere. In 1998, the eatery gained even more global prominence when it appeared on the debut episode of Sex And The City, as the spot where Miranda celebrated her birthday with her girlfriends in tow.
Thanks to the SATC exposure, by the 2000s Lucky Cheng’s had devolved into the 'Bachelorette Party Capital of the Universe.' Screeching bachelorettes suckling on phallic lollipops and donning giant penis balloon hats would roll up in limousines and drink there until blackout. As blogger Tony Whitfield appropriately lamented: “Do the straight girls know that they're celebrating impending nuptials among the ghosts of thousands of naked gay men? Do the trendy straight hipster boys fingering the Koi have any idea what else was once fingered in that pool?”
This newfound popularity meant that by the end of the decade, Lucky Cheng’s had outgrown its gritty East Village location. In 2012, after nineteen years in the East Village, Cheng’s relocated to Times Square, reopening in a much larger venue at 240 West 52nd Street. The new location broadened the restaurant’s customer base further, bringing in many tourists and midtown passersby off the street, many of whom would experience drag there for the very first time. Unfortunately, tragedy also struck in 2012 when the beloved Suthon was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. Within just two years, she passed away and the Times Square location closed not long after. Later on, Lucky Cheng’s resurfaced as a pop-up nightclub, and over the past few years has bounced around several venues. Most recently, it continues to operate out of the Laurie Beechman Theatre at West Bank Cafe, located at 407 West 42nd Street.
Meanwhile, the storied building at 24 First Avenue stood idle for years after Cheng’s departure. Sadly, the building was at last demolished in 2019 to make way for a luxury condo, and with it we lost over 40+ years of a wild slice of queer history.
This was a wild ride, indeed! Fantastic work, Marc.
GREAT profile, Marc!