Friday and Saturday nights regardless of the weather were the busiest at Harlem's Mount Morris Baths, the oldest Turkish bathhouse in New York. The men, mostly black, sat on a long wooden bench or stood elbow-to-elbow, shoulder-to-shoulder, in a tiny vestibule, near the cashier's window, waiting for a room or a locker to become available. Sometimes they waited two or three hours. Being in such close proximity to each other often caused tempers to flare, especially if someone was thought to have jumped the line. On rare occasions angry words escalated into fistfights. But, the customers, for the most part, maintained their cool. Once inside, they had eight hours (twelve on weekdays) to explore the rooms, corridors, and other areas of an establishment that had been in operation since 1893.
That was the year when a group of Jewish doctors built it as a health spa for their patients. Sometime in the 1940s it became a gay bathhouse. According to the historian John Loughery, in his book The Other Side of Silence, it "catered to black men who were often denied admission to bathhouses in midtown Manhattan."
It became apparent upon entering the TV lounge/dormitory that this place would never appear on the front cover of Architecture Digest or Better Homes & Gardens. It looked and smelled every bit of its hundred plus years. The Fab Five of the reality show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would have had a field day doing an extreme makeover. Oddly, many customers preferred its antiquity and shabbiness. Mount Morris was sort of like the old man down the street whose shoes are turned over, pants baggy and soiled, face wrinkled, body decrepit but is still regarded with kindness.
Even though it had seen better days, for many of its customers, it was their second home. For some, it was home, offering a place to bunk down, take a shower, and have a free morning cup of coffee (with donuts).
One customer told me , "If these walls could talk." Indeed. The tales would fill several volumes of celebrities (past and present) and non celebrities, who were spotted getting a rubdown or sitting in the hot room or going in or coming out of someone's room.
Note: I worked as a towel attendant and cashier at Mount Morris Baths from February 2001 to August 2003. In August 2003, the bathhouse closed permanently.
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My Sicilian lover took me there in 1978 when I was a skinny 20 year old blond haired blue eyed kid scared of my own shadow. He would get off on watching all the well hung black guys using me. I had many a black boxer, celebrity and movie star in that place and have some incredible memories of that place and of my older Sicilian lover who introduced me to the pleasure and intensity of black sex.
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