The untold story about Plato’s Retreat

Larry Levenson was the owner of Plato’s Retreat, a swanky swingers’ lounge located inside the Ansonia Hotel on the Upper West Side of New York City. He epitomized the late 1970s hedonism in NYC and even made partner-swapping mainstream. Levenson was an unlikely character for this role, having been an absentee father of three and the former general manager of a Brooklyn McDonald’s. For his column, “The Naked City,” Josh Alan Friedman reported on the wild hanky-panky at Plato’s, which Levenson had opened in 1977.

Levenson transformed the basement of the Ansonia Hotel into his swinger’s lounge, which his son Michael called “the sexual Studio 54.” Many couples and female singles from the tri-state area frequented Plato’s for its wildly sexual ambience. The location of the club became popular, and soon, outlets such as Time magazine were reporting on the louche lair and the married suburban habitués it drew.

Levenson welcomed heterosexual couples and single women into his swingers’ club, which featured an Olympic-sized pool, a jacuzzi, a disco dance floor, and sex rooms. Guests undressed in locker rooms, where they were given towels that the club advised could be worn in various ways to “telegraph their intentions, their tastes.” Only couples could enter the mat room, and they couldn’t be fully clothed. The drug of choice was Quaaludes, and while prostitutes were banned, that didn’t stop single men from bringing them to circumvent the ban on bachelors.

Levenson often donned a plush black bathrobe embroidered with the moniker “King of Swing” and frequently sat perched atop a throne to better survey the steamy scene. He even took his sex-positive gospel to the Phil Donahue Show, explaining that at Plato’s, “We promote social intercourse and sexual intercourse. Whatever you want to do, you can do.”

According to the Vice documentary, Levenson had secured the finances for his swingers’ club through a Brooklyn man named Frank Pernice, who was said to have connections in the world of organized crime. Meanwhile, Levenson’s indulgences came at a cost. In 1979, while in a relationship with his live-in girlfriend Mary, he was robbed and brutally beaten in Queens. More trouble for the swinging mogul came in 1981 when he was sentenced to 8 years in prison on tax evasion charges for skimming $2.3 million in club receipts.

Levenson spent the rest of his life making fruitless attempts at reestablishing his swinger’s paradise while earning a living as a cab driver. He ultimately died of a heart attack at age 62 after undergoing quadruple bypass surgery in 1999. Despite their estrangement, Michael said, “I’m proud of what he created.”