Before Stonewall: Early LGBTQ Life and Resistance in New York City

Long before LGBTQ rights became a central part of public debate, New York City was home to gathering places, performers and organizers who helped create a visible queer social world. In the 1890s, Manhattan’s Bowery supported a network of saloons and dance halls known at the time as “fairy resorts,” where men who were described by that term could socialize and where gay and drag performers built reputations as entertainers.

Among the venues associated with that scene were Paresis Hall, Little Bucks, Manilla Hall, the Palm Club on Chrystie Street, the Black Rabbit at 183 Bleecker Street and The Slide at 157 Bleecker Street. These businesses were more than nightlife destinations: they formed part of an early urban culture in which queer people could find one another and performers could develop public identities. Earl Lind later described the Bowery’s 1890s world in her autobiography, published in two volumes in 1919 and 1922.

The city’s queer history also intersected with mainstream theater—and with efforts to suppress LGBTQ expression. Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance,” written in 1907, reached Broadway in 1924 as the first commercially produced Broadway play identified in this history as having a lesbian theme. The production quickly became the target of an obscenity case. The theater owner and all 12 cast members were arrested and found guilty, demonstrating the legal risks attached to presenting same-sex desire on a major New York stage.

Two years later, police raided Eve’s Hangout on June 11, 1926. The venue’s owner, Eva Kotchever, was arrested, convicted of obscenity and deported to Europe. Kotchever was later killed at Auschwitz during World War II. The raid marked another collision between a queer gathering place and the authorities, while Kotchever’s life remains part of the city’s LGBTQ history.

Taken together, these episodes trace several strands of early LGBTQ New York: nightlife in the Bowery, performance and public visibility, lesbian representation in commercial theater, and the vulnerability of queer spaces to police and censorship. They also show that LGBTQ community-building in the city did not begin with the better-known activism of the late 20th century. It was already taking shape through entertainment venues, theater and social spaces decades earlier.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Timeline of LGBTQ history in New York City” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_LGBTQ_history_in_New_York_City The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://archive.org/details/cu31924026883102 - https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-giovanni.html - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/03/us/rare-cancer-seen-in-41-homosexuals.html - https://web.archive.org/web/20160117221225/http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/ah/surveillance2012-trend-tables.pdf - https://web.archive.org/web/20180203205159/http://www.playbill.com/article/rupauls-drag-race-star-peppermint-will-make-her-broadway-debut-in-go-gos-musical-head-over-heels - https://stonewallforever.org/monument/ Image rights Photograph description: St. James Roman Catholic Church, Johnson City Historic District, February 2009 Creator: Doug Kerr. License: CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASt._James_Roman_Catholic_Church_Johnson_City_Historic_District_Feb_09.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.