The Peculiar Truth about NYC’s Public Sex Club

• 1977: The entrance on Broadway looked like a phone booth. A flight of stairs as steep as the upper deck of Yankee Stadium led down into the basement of the Ansonia Hotel. Disco music blared from speakers. People danced in various states of undress.

• A sign printed in stencil font stated the club’s five rules: No drinking or smoking on the mats. No threesomes. Don’t stand in front of the entrance. No one admitted fully clothed. When the female leaves the mats, her mate will be asked to leave two minutes later.

• The admission price was $25 per couple - roughly $125.00 today. For that fee, people were welcome to dance, drink, eat at the buffet, and - most importantly - have sex. In the full view of everyone.

• The club was called Plato’s Retreat. It was a theme nightclub. The theme was an open orgy.

• The Sexual Revolution swept through America in the 1970s. Porn actors like Linda Lovelace and John Holmes became quietly famous. As the advertising executives on Madison Avenue said, sex sells. Few places in the US sold sex like New York City.

• Larry Levenson grew up in the Bronx and, unlike Plato, was none too bright. He worked a variety of restaurant jobs before he latched onto a gig that really suited him: he arranged sex parties for swingers. He thought it could lead to a money-making career.

• Gay men had their bars and bathhouses. Why not a similar place for heterosexuals?

• Levenson opened his first Plato’s Retreat (there were three locations in its eight-year run) in the basement of the Kensington Hotel on East 23rd Street. That place was more of a bar for single people to meet and hook up elsewhere. That wasn’t good enough. So within months, Levenson moved the operation uptown and created a nightclub where people could go specifically to have sex on the premises.

• Studio 54 also opened in ’77 and was the discotheque where New York’s glitterati went to be seen. The cocaine was plentiful. Whatever sex occurred at Studio 54 was not overtly advertised. That’s where it differed from Larry’s establishment.

• Plato’s Retreat had more than the initial five rules. Single women got in free. Single men were forbidden. Levenson didn’t want gays to attend. Plato’s was for straights. Lesbian sex, however, was permitted. Also verboten were drug use and payments for sex, but nobody enforced them.

• The rules sign at the entrance referred to “mats.” That was shorthand for the mattress room. It was a separate space with bedding on the floor. At any given time, the room would be the scene of a giant orgy where dozens of straight couples had sex side by side and back to back.

• But that wasn’t the only place on the premises where people got it on. They also had sex on a pool table, a ping pong table, in a sauna, and in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. There were also private cubicles.

• The ambience of Plato’s Retreat was dark and tacky. It was a hotel basement, after all. But nobody went there for the decor.

• Many of its customers were kinky married suburbanites who walked around in the nude even when their bodies weren’t all that enticing. Levenson often wore a robe with lettering that read ‘King of Swing.’

• A few celebrities were sighted in the nightclub. Richard Dreyfuss supposedly popped in because he resided upstairs in the Ansonia Hotel. Buck Henry was seen there. Management claimed to have welcomed Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Madonna. Whether or not those three actually attended, though, is anyone’s guess.

• Levenson had to cope with the NY Mob. He was attacked one night and suffered two broken legs. Some believed his injuries came from mobsters. Others said he was beaten by his own girlfriend’s secret lover.

• Then the IRS came calling. Levenson went to prison for tax evasion. But the club kept operating.

• In his absence, a male porn star took over Plato’s management. He made changes, like relocating to Hell’s Kitchen. He also permitted single men to attend, which soured all the regular customers.

• After his release from prison, Levenson found his nightclub overtaken by drug addicts and prostitutes. Everything went downhill from there.

• 1985: With the AIDS epidemic rising, NYC Mayor Ed Koch shut down all gay nightclubs and bars. He also forced the closing of Plato’s Retreat. Thanks in part to HIV, the Sexual Revolution came to an end.

• Larry Levenson went broke and became a cab driver. He died in 1999.

• For the rest of his life, Levenson tried in vain to resuscitate his one true success. But Plato’s Retreat was never revived.