With his profits, he invested in real estate after 1875, and built up one the country’s largest brewing concerns. In 1886-87, it became the Regent Music Hall, then the Fifth Avenue Music Hall, financed by James Everard.īorn in Dublin, Ireland, Everard (1829-1913) came to New York City as a boy, and eventually formed a masonry jobbing business that was successful in receiving a number of major city public works contracts. In 1882, it was converted into the New-York Horticultural Society’s Horticultural Hall.
The building began as the Free Will Baptist Church in 1860.
One of the most legendary of New York’s bathhouses, the Everard Baths was a refuge for gay men probably since its opening in 1888, but, as documented, from at least World War I until its closing in 1986.