Action Movie News, Inc. is a Domestic Business Corporation, located at 299 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10171; formed on November 6, 1975. This file was obtained from the Secretary of State and has a file number of 383537.
Advanced Print & Video, compiles footage of F.D.N.Y. fire scenes and has been allowed special, privileged access to the scenes of New York City fires for nearly four decades. By outsourcing the videotaping of its work the F.D.N.Y. can absolve itself of the fraudulence, deceit and trickery that goes into editing and compiling these fire records.
"Kosinenko Goldenberg" in quotation marks returns only two hits on Google--both to StevenWarRan blogs.
The way Winfrey of the Times would have it, those who jumped did so from the lower of the two upper floors, while 20 were rescued from the higher floor at the Everard Baths by firemen on aerial ladders, is exactly backwards. It doesn't account for the two most seriously injured, one of whom became the ninth victim when he died in the hospital. His name was never released by city fire authorities, although he was said to have broken his spine.
Six patrons jumped from a second-floor ledge to the pavement, and 20 were rescued with aerial ladders from the third-floor windows facing 28th Street.There were only two upper levels of escape from the Everard Baths: the broad show windows on the third floor, (what Winfrey calls the 2nd floor,) which had been painted over, and backed up on the inside with pressure walls made of two-by-fours and plywood, and lined with insulation. On the fourth floor, (what Winfrey calls the 3rd floor) where the exterior had been bricked up, the only possible mode of escape was through any of three, rectangular, through-the-wall openings for air conditioners, which at the time of the fire were mounted with fixed heavy-duty air-conditioning units. By the time any photographs or video were taken, all three of these openings had been opened up, although almost every image depicting them has been doctored in some way to disguise the obvious facts.
The New York Times reports:
Because many patrons signed in under false names, identification of the dead was expected to prove difficult. At the morgue, Dr. Dominick J. DiMaio, the city's Chief Medical Examiner, said none of the dead had been identified.However, my recollection of how the bathhouse system worked, was not only did one leave their valuables---generally wallets and house keys---at the desk with total assurance, but it was an absolute requirement as a surety for the locker or room key. How else would a bathhouse enforce an 8- or 12-hour limit on visits if everybody who entered their door went ghost at the threshold? Men in towels look remarkably alike---believe it or not. Irving Fine is repeatedly quoted as saying between 80 and 100 persons were inside when the fire occurred, but why didn't he just count his cash drawer and the keys the house had in its possession? You didn't have to know individual identities to arrive at an accurate count of patrons.
Winfrey says the "eighth body was carried out at 10:40 A.M.," which turned out to be the last body removed from the premises, so who's responsible for this rhetoric:
Many of the fatalities were believed to have occurred when the roof collapsed in the rear part of the building. A fireman who tried to reach that area said the smoke was simply too intense.I moved to New York City in the fall of 1977, after I'd turned twenty, and missed any contemporary news coverage of the Everard fire. I began to question why it was then, that I had such a succinct mental picture of the fire in my mind. Not only was the image powerfully formed---it was completely erroneous. According to my vision, a row of round clerestory windows ran along the top of the building, and it was through these, that some of the skinny and supple managed to escape, while the portly couldn't pass through the eyes of the roundel.
On May 27, 1977, Laurie Johnston took over as lead writer for the Times. In her article, 9 Killed In Bath Fire Identified By Friends; Morgenthau Planning Investigation Into Whether Violations of Code Might Have Led to the Blaze, she reports
According to a Fire Department spokesman, rescue efforts were slowed by the small, round windows on the third floor and by paneling and insulation that covered all windows.But there were no round windows, other than a giant, useless oculus-to-nowhere, and the "according to a Fire Department spokesman" crap doesn't cut it when the facts can be visually verified from the street. Carey Winfrey was the only writer to describe the upper floors of the Everard as being the 2nd- and 3rd floors---and she's within her journalistic doyenne rights since that's what it appears to be in Google Street view, but this would mean there's a heck of an attic; or a missing fourth floor; and the little matter of comprehension and consistency with other writers.
I know now I got my mental picture later on out of a novel---Dancer From the Dance, written pseudonymously by Andrew Halleran and apparently as influential a book as ever I read. Though I haven't picked it up in thirty years I'll bet payday Halleran novelistically has young boys crawling out of round holes instead of rectangular air-conditioning slots, even though the horror of someone clawing their way through a mechanical installation is exponentially more dreadful than any window.
Halleran had the same agent as Larry Kramer, who wrote Faggots; the two books were issued almost in tandem in 1978, by different big-name publishing houses, and reviewed together in the Times. All I remember about Kramer's book was trying to read it on a Metroliner traveling to Washington, D.C., and struggling to keep the cover shielded with a magazine while I read, so powerful and disturbing was it even to be publicly seen with the word. I'm sure many cultural buttons were meant to be pressed in so timely a pair of offerings, but I'd never imagine sanitizing the Everard was high on the list.
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June 17, 1964, New York Times, Bathhouse Blaze Kills 2, Injures 4, by McCandlish Phillips,
June 25, 1973, New York Times, page A1, Flash Fire in New Orleans Kills at Least 32 in Bar, by Roy Reed, [continued on page 66]
May 26, 1977, New York Times, page A1, 9 Killed by Fire at a West Side Bathhouse; Search Goes On for Bodies, by Carey Winfrey, View original in TimesMachine,
May 26, 1977, New York Times, page B9, Homosexuals Mobilize to Aid Fire Victims, by Laurie Johnston,
May 26, 1977, New York Times, page B9, Baths Had a Fashionable History, by Peter Flint,
May 27, 1977, New York Times, 9 Killed In Bath Fire Identified By Friends; Morgenthau Planning Investigation Into Whether Violations of Code Might Have Led to the Blaze, by Laurie Johnston, View original in TimesMachine,
May 28, 1977, New York Times, page 20, Judge Calls for National Inquiry Into 'Leak' in Terrorism Case, Times Machine,
June 17, 1964, New York Times, page 1, Baker Gains Control Of Vending Concern, [cont. page 21]Baker Acquires Majority Stock Of the Serv-U Vending Company, Part of the screen surrounding the recent activities of Robert G. Baker has been pulled aside by sources that have had dealings with the once powerful Senate employee.
June 17, 1964, New York Times, page 2, Jagan Asks U.N. To Study Guiana; Seeks Panel to Investigate Detention of Politicians; Jagan Appeal Heard,
June 17, 1964, New York Times, page 18, Students Briefed On Peril in South,
June 17, 1964, New York Times, page 27, Rockefeller Drive Cost $5 Million,
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June 17, 1964, New York Times, page A38, Bathhouse Blaze Kills 2, Injures 4, by McCandlish Phillips,
Two men were found dead yesterday morning amid charred timbers and still smoldering mattresses after a fire swept a bathhouse on the Lower East Side.
Above the men, at ceiling level, were the newly installed pipes of a sprinkler system that might have saved them from death in their rented cots. But the system was not fully installed and would not have been in operation until Thursday at the earliest.
Four other men were taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment and at least 10 others were rescued. Firemen used a ladder to save a man clinging to a windowsill by his fingers two floors above the pavement.
The fire began in the century‐old Gordon's Bath at 24 First Avenue, just off Second Street, at about 9 A.M. Most of the 45 regulars and transients had left for the day, but about 15 were still in the dormitories. that form the top three floors of the four‐story structure.
The fire raced through the wooden interior. Smoke and the heat were so intense that the men could not get down the narrow wooden stairways, the only exit. They gathered at the frosted glass windows.
Clerks from stores ran across First Avenue and shouted at the desperate men not to jump. Fire engines approached and a crowd of about 200 gathered. Two men crawled out of second-story windows.
Man Clings to Sill
One clung by his fingers to the sill until firemen came with a ladder. The other worked his way along the two‐inch wide top of the bathhouse sign to the fire escape of the Ortiz Funeral Home next door and came down.
At the rear, a man in underwear crawled out onto an adjoining roof and made his way to the street by a fire escape. The other men stood in top-floor windows, shouting. Firemen brought them down on ladders. The alarm was sounded at 9:22 A.M.; the fire was out at 9:45.
One of the dead men was identified as James Morris Mastes, 70 years old, a resident of the dormitory. The other, described as an elderly “newsboy who just used to come in and didn't give his name,” had not been identified by last night.
Leon Muhnueig, 74, and Leon Rosdahl, 57, both dormitory residents, were hospitalized, as were Isidore Melnick, 60, of 102-40 62d Avenue, Forest Hills, Queens, and Joseph Dubinsky, 67, of 97 East Seventh Street, both bath customers. They suffered smoke inhalation and minor burns.
Gordon's Baths is a brick building painted milky pink and orange. To the left are three vacant stores.
Fire‐red doors lead into a white tile hall and a stairway with a brass rail running up one side — almost exactly duplicating the style of the entrances in the flophouses on the Bowery two blocks west.
At the top of the short stairway is a cashier's cage of heavy iron grill work. Dormitory cots rent for $1.80 a night or $10 a week, mostly to truck drivers, dock workers and drifters.
This article can be viewed in its original form,
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May 26, 1977, New York Times, 9 Killed by Fire at a West Side Bathhouse; Search Goes On for Bodies, by Carey Winfrey, View original in TimesMachine,
Nine men were killed and 10 were injured yesterday in an early-morning fire that destroyed a Manhattan bathhouse that catered to homosexuals.
Fire officials feared that more bodied would be found in the rubble, and Commissioner John T. O'Hagan said the search for bodies could go on for a week.
Scores of men some clad only in towels or robes, fled their rented cubicles and the dormitory at the Everard Baths at 28 West 28th Street, in the wholesale flower district, as dense smoke poured out of the three-story building. By the time the fire was brought under control at 8:45 A.M., an hour and three-quarters after it started, nearly 200 firemen and 31 pieces of equipment had been called to fight the blaze. Six patrons jumped from a second-floor ledge to the pavement, and 20 were rescued with aerial ladders from the third-floor windows facing 28th Street.
Commissioner O'Hagan said that an inspection last August resulted in an order for a sprinkler system to be installed at the baths, but that the owner had until July of this year to comply. In all probability," the Commissioner said, "a sprinkler system would have prevented this fire."
Irving Fine, 62 years old, who said he was the owner, said a sprinkler system had been installed but was not yet working. However, a spokesman for the Mayor's office said plans for a sprinkler system were rejected by the Buildings Department in January for noncompliance with codes.
page B8.
Even before the fire was brought under control, homosexuals across the city rallied to give blood, help in the identification of victims and raise funds. Many expressed concern that the inevitable publicity in the wake of the fire would force a crackdown on the homosexual world in general, while others said they hoped that fire violations in similar establishments would now be corrected.
Mayor Sees a Violation
At a late-afternoon news conference on the steps of Gracie Mansion, mayor Beame said he had asked the District Attorney "to investigate why a bathhouse would have overnight guests---this is in violation of their operating permit."
One of the survivors said the city allowed hazardous conditions to exist where homosexuals congregated.
"'Faggots' are given a certain amount of liberty in New York City," said Michael Rhone, 26, "and most of that is to hang out in sleazy sorts of low places that are substandard. At a straight health spa you wouldn't have rooms partitioned halfway up the walls so the fire could spread."
The blaze recalled a 1973 fire in a French Quarter bar in New Orleans in which 30 persons dies. That fire, in a second-floor bar called the Upstairs, which also catered to male homosexuals, was packed the evening of June 24, 1973, when flames cut off escape by both the stairs and the elevator. Although arson was widely suspected, New Orleans homosexual organizations contended that the investigation was not effectively pursued.
Bath places catering to male homosexuals, while not new, have proliferated throughout New York City over the last dozen or so years. Patrons watch television, swim, sit in sauna rooms, or "cruise" for sexual liasons. The standard attire is a towel. Though there's a 12-hour time limit, many patrons sleep overnight, in the large dormitory room or in the cubicles, which at the Everard were barely large enough to hold a single bed.
Because many patrons signed in under false names, identification of the dead was expected to prove difficult. At the morgue, Dr. Dominick J. DiMaio, the city's Chief Medical Examiner, said none of the dead had been identified.
Officials said they believed that the four-alarm fire, which broke out shortly before 7 A.M. and tied up rush-hour traffic, started when a mattress fire, thought to have been extinguished an hour earlier, re-ignited. Many empty fire-extinguishers inside the building indicated that the occupants had tried to fight the blaze for some time before calling the Fire Department.
Mr. Fine estimated there had been 80 to 100 men in the bathhouse when the fire broke out. "Tuesday night was always a good night in this place," said Jeffrey Sanyour, who had come to meet a friend. "Like a bar gets known for a certain night---this place was known for Tuesdays and Thursdays."
Raymond Walsh, 20, who paid a $7 fee for one of the 135 tiny cubicles, said he was awakened by the heat and saw an orange glow under his door. "I opened the door," he said, "and saw the room across the hall all in flames, even the wall. I started to panic and ran into the 'orgy room' ---the dorm room---and yelled to everybody to wake up. I don't know how I got down the stairs."
Michael James, 29, of Philadelphia was on the second floor when he noticed the flames. "I just saw some orange," he said. "You couldn't smell anything. Then in a matter of seconds the halls were filled with a dense smoke, the electricity went out and it was pitch dark. All you could hear was people hollering, 'This way down, this way down!'"
Miguel Agosto, 18, was trapped on the third floor, but escaped through a bathroom window. "I grabbed a bar outside the bathroom window and swung to the other roof," he said. Mr. Agosto was one of four patrons treated at Bellevue Hospital for smoke inhalation. Three others were admitted to the emergency ward, two in critical condition, one in serious condition.
Two Firemen Treated
Fireman Patrick Brown, 24, was treated at Bellevue for exhaustion. He had administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to unconscious victims for more than an hour. "I know two of them died," he said.
Fireman Thomas Dyer was treated for smoke inhalation.
Many of the fatalities were believed to have occurred when the roof collapsed in the rear part of the building. A fireman who tried to reach that area said the smoke was simply too intense. "I had my nose to the floor as it was. If you can't breathe, you can't move."
The fire was the second at the Everard in five years. A two-alarm fire gutted the top floor and destroyed much of the roof on March, 1972, but there were no injuries. "It was always a rat trap," said Walter LeBeau, a patron who escaped unscathed yesterday.
Built in 1890 by James Everard, an Irish brewer, the Romanesque structure enjoyed great success as a public bathhouse in the red-light and gambling district known at the turn of the century as the Tenderloin. It had catered to a homosexual clientele since the 1950's. An explicitly sexual newspaper described the Everard as "well-kept and reasonably clean, attracting a kinky cross-sectional clientele from every age group.
Mr. Rhone, one of the survivors, said that customers, who paid $5 for a locker or $7 for a cubicle ($6 and $9,25 on weekends) included "your old men, young gorgeous men, your models and your successful businessmen."
'Stretching the License'
The building was last licensed in 1921, according to Commissioner O'Hagan, when a certificate of occupancy was issued for a facility with a "pool, baths and dormitory." While Mr. O'Hagan stopped short of calling the owner in violation of that license, he said that with 135 cubicles, "obviously he was stretching it a bit."
As the eighth body was carried out at 10:40 A.M., the scene outside the baths was one of water hoses snaked through the street littered with broken glass. The doors leading to marble stairs in the bathhouse were open, and a sign reading "Everard Baths---Men Only" was visible.
The only windows still unbroken were those on the first floor, including an ornate intertwined "EB" in a stained glass.
The last occupant to emerge alive was a cat, carried out at 11:55 A.M. by a fire marshal.
A fireman who asked not to be identified said three of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. "You couldn't even tell they were bodies," he said.
"Eight is a lot," he added. "But the way they were packed in there, it could have been a lot worse."
Action Movie News, Inc./ Kosinenko Goldenberg
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May 26, 1977, New York Times, page B9, Homosexuals Mobilize to Aid Fire Victims, by Laurie Johnston,
May 26, 1977, New York Times, page B9, Baths Had a Fashionable History, by Peter Flint,
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May 27, 1977, New York Times, page A22, 9 Killed In Bath Fire Identified By Friends; Morgenthau Planning Investigation Into Whether Violations of Code Might Have Led to the Blaze, by Laurie Johnston, View original in TimesMachine,
The nine known dead in the Everard Baths fire were identified yesterday, mostly by friends rather than family members, as District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan announced an investigation as to whether criminal violations of the fire and building codes might have caused the blaze Wednesday.
According to a Fire Department spokesman, rescue efforts were slowed by the small, round windows on the third floor and by paneling and insulation that covered all windows.
Seven of the nine persons injured in the fire at the homosexual bathhouse, at 28 West 28th Street, remained hospitalized, one in critical condition. Fire officials said other bodies might be found in the rubble.
The early morning fire sent 80 to 100 men fleeing from the building, some clad only in towels. Further search of the partially collapsed ruins awaited the removal of suspended wreckage by a crane.
Patrons and former patrons of the Everard Baths said yesterday that its practice of not requiring registration made it impossible to tell whether all customers present had been accounted for.
Inspections at Issue
Amid charges by homosexual-community leaders that the city "looks the other way in protecting the safety of gays," the investigation was expected to center on whether the Everard Baths had been improperly inspected or approved in view of their use.
The certificate of occupancy issued in 1921, when the Everard retained some of its fashionable clientele as a Turkish bath, described it as a "bathhouse and dormitories." Since then, most of the second and third floors have been divided into cubicles, with scarcely room for a bed and coat hangers, and with plywood partitions part way to the ceiling.
Irving E. Minkin, director of operations for the Buildings Department, said yesterday that the baths had passed inspection after a fire in March 1972 made renovation necessary. But he said he could only refer to plans filed with the department.
"We had no idea of cubicles there--there was no indication to us of any use other than stated in the certificate of occupancy," Mr. Minkin said. "The question of cubicles is 'iffy'--they would not change the basic legal use but might give us cause for concern."
Crowds of spectators opposite the burned-out building yesterday could see the partially detached pipes of an overhead sprinkler system, which was installed in response to a July 1977 deadline set by the Fire Department, but which had not been connected to the street main.
Sprinkler Order Rescinded
A 1964 Fire Department order to install sprinklers was rescinded in 1965, after the owners "provided certain safety items," said the first deputy fire commissioner, Stephen J. Murphy. There was no order to install sprinklers following the 1972 fire and renovation. However, in keeping with new fire regulations, the installation was ordered again last year.
A widespread rumor, said to be "gay community lore," that the Everard Baths were owned by either the Police Benevolent Association or the Police Athletic League, drew denials, including one from Mr. Morgenthau, who said "that it's not owned by the Police Athletics League, because I'm the president of the P.A.L."
Of the nine men who died in the fire, seven succumbed to smoke inhalation, one to respiratory burns and one--who jumped from an upper floor--to a fractured spine.
They were identified by the Medical Examiner's office as Amadi Alamo, 17 years old, West 108th Street; Kenneth Hill, 38, West 4th Street; Ira Landau, 32, West 75th Street, and James Stuard, 30, East 25th Street, all of Manhattan; Anthony Calarco, about 25, 1519 Mace Avenue, the Bronx; Patrick Knott, 27, Bay Parkway, Brooklyn; Hillman Wesley Adams, 40, Scotch Plains, N.J., and Brian Duffy and Nicholas Smith, no addresses given.
One patron who jumped, Philip Osbaum, 50, was listed in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital with a fractured trachea and fractured ribs. Others there, listed as satisfactory, are Kevin Duffley, 33; Luis Figueroa, 22, and John Stanisz, 22, inhalation and multiple minor injuries, all of Manhattan; Alexander Mamon, 28, Jamaica, Queens, inhalation and fractured ankle.
Thomas Dyer, a fireman, remained at Bellevue Hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.
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May 28, 1977, New York Times, page 20, Judge Calls for National Inquiry Into 'Leak' in Terrorism Case, Times Machine,
A Federal Court judge in Manhattan called yesterday for a national investigation into the disclosure in The New York Times of non-public information relating to terrorist bombings.
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June 17, 1964, New York Times, page A25, Keogh Is Released after 8 Months,
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at 29 seconds, the camera pivots to see a young civilian striding quickly towards the lens; who after making
face contact, turns and quickly moves away.
The certificate of occupancy issued in 1921, when the Everard retained some of its fashionable clientele as a Turkish bath, described it as a "bathhouse and dormitories." Since then, most of the second and third floors have been divided into cubicles, with scarcely room for a bed and coat hangers, and with plywood partitions part way to the ceiling.
According to a Fire Department spokesman, rescue efforts were slowed by the small, round windows on the third floor and by paneling and insulation that covered all windows.
A 1964 Fire Department order to install sprinklers was rescinded in 1965, after the owners "provided certain safety items," said the first deputy fire commissioner, Stephen J. Murphy. There was no order to install sprinklers following the 1972 fire and renovation. However, in keeping with new fire regulations, the installation was ordered again last year.
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