The Saint Marks Baths opened at 6 St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan in New York City in 1913. Through the 1950s, it operated as a Turkish bath catering primarily to Russian-Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. In the 1950s, it began to have a homosexual clientele at night and by the 1960s, it had become an exclusively gay bathhouse. In 1979, the bathhouse was refurbished, and the name was changed to New Saint Marks Baths, though it continued to be known simply as Saint Marks Baths. In 1981, the neighboring building was purchased, with plans to expand. The AIDS epidemic caused some activists such as Larry Kramer to urge its closing, and St. Mark’s Baths would be shuttered on December 7, 1985.

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