Plato's Retreat: The Notorious NYC Swingers' Club That Ruled and Fell With the '70s

For eight years in the middle of the disco era, there was a place in Manhattan where you could grab a plate of barbecued chicken, take a dip in an Olympic sized pool, and watch forty or fifty naked bodies moving together on a mattress the size of a basketball court. That was Plato's Retreat, the heterosexual swingers' club that ran from 1977 to 1985 and became just as famous, in its own way, as its flashier neighbor a few blocks south, Studio 54. Both clubs opened the same year. Both turned...