Resources: for Rainbow History's database of clubs and social spaces, click here
                    for information about the city's African American social clubs, click here

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The present number and variety of social options, locations that make up the social geography of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered life in Washington DC, is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Accounts of life in the first half of the century are rich in detail and in the joy of finding and socializing with persons of like interests.  Yet there were far fewer places to meet and a much narrower typology of social spaces.

Of the 397 locations identified so far in the city’s GLBT social geography, some 320 appeared in the last forty years of the century, the bulk of these since 1977.  The growth in number and variety is of recent vintage.  In a simple count of the starting dates of social sites, three years standout for the sheer number of new locations:  1977, 1982, and 1991.  Why these years gave rise to so many new social sites would be an interesting topic for research.

THE SIXTIES
In the Sixties, Washington, DC gained fewer than 30 new social spaces for members of the gay and lesbian community.  The following decade, more than 130 new social spaces appeared.  This paper surveys the changes between those two decades and some of the major themes that characterized Washington DC’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered social geography for the remainder of the century.

The Seventies’ rapid growth in our local social geography has its foundation in the preceding decade.  The expansion of clubs, bars, discos, and non-commercial gathering places is rooted in an energized activism and gay and lesbian visibility.

This social geography began a substantial alteration in the late Sixties that led to the growth of ‘gay’ neighborhoods, clubs, and social options.  In the preceding decades, the Washington, DC’s social geography consisted of bars or clubs, cruising spots, afterhours restaurants, a few movie theaters and health clubs.

Neighborhoods.   ‘Gay’ neighborhoods existed in so far as restaurants and clubs that welcomed gays and lesbians tended to cluster together.  The neighborhoods of gay social options before the mid-Sixties were

· the area around Lafayette Square,
· Georgetown (largely the 1200 block of Wisconsin),
· the 400 and 500 blocks of 8th St. SE,
· 9th St. NW from Pennsylvania Avenue to H St.,
· the bus station area along New York Avenue, nearby 13th St. locations, and the adjacent 14th St. strip, and
· a number of far flung outlying clubs such as Nob Hill on 11th St., Zombies far up  Georgia Avenue, and the Spring Rd Café.

By the close of the century, several of the ‘gay’ neighborhoods had disappeared, among them the Lafayette Square sites, the ‘strip’ around the bus stations on New York Avenue, Georgetown, the Ninth St. NW clubs, and much of the upper NW group of African-American clubs.  They were replaced by new social spaces around Dupont Circle, an expansion of sites along 8th St. SE, along South Capitol St., 17th St. NW, and a revival of 14th St. NW social spaces late in the century.   Examining the dynamics of ‘gay’ neighborhood creation and demise awaits future research.

Many of the older clubs and gathering places described by Dr Herlong continued to operate through the Sixties and Seventies.  Indeed, Carroll Tavern continued to operate until the mid Eighties, a remarkable run of some 52 years.  But the world of Carroll’s, the Hideaway, Britt’s Café, Johnnie’s, the Naples, Kavakos, Keith’s theatre, the Showboat, the Golden Key Club, and other landmarks of the first half of the twentieth century gave way to self-identified gay establishments, social clubs, community centers, and new local institutions.

Sixties' Activism & Visibility.      In Washington DC, the Sixties brought growing visibility and activism, together with a willingness to ‘push the envelope’ of legal restrictions on social spaces.  By the mid-Sixties, the Mattachine Society of Washington was publicly challenging employment, security, and other restrictions on homosexuals.  The ‘hidden minority’ of which Donald Webster Cory wrote in his 1951 study, The Homosexual in America, was no longer content to be hidden.

DC has always been known for its house parties.  In the Sixties, Liz Taylor’s events at her Hollywood House home in the 1800 block of Monroe St. NW lasted for entire weekends.  Parties at the Wingate complex in Anacostia are reported in oral histories to have lasted for weeks and moved from apartment to apartment.

Drag.   The Sixties also saw the first organized groups appear in the community of female impersonators.  DC’s first drag organization, the Oscars, began holding events around the city in the Sixties.  Bill Frye’s Miss America pageant held annual competitions for female impersonators, many of them also members of Liz Taylor’s haven for drag, the Oscars.  And in February 1968, Ken White, better known as Black Pearl, brought off the first gala gay evening, his International pageant, at the Washington Hilton.

Social Clubs.   In the Sixties, segregation, legal and defacto, limited social options for the city’s African-American gays and lesbians.  For many of them, the city was home and social life required a certain discretion.  In 1968, a group of Howard University students created the Group of Washington, a social club for African-Americans as an alternative to segregated clubs.  The Seventies saw the founding of many more social clubs, including the Best of Washington and the Associates, that have endured till today.  For more than forty years, DC’s social clubs have provided a very real but unsung alternative to the bars, clubs, and bathhouses more publicly available.  These social clubs created ‘virtual gay spaces’ since few of them were connected with any particular site but rather leased spaces for their events.

'Lost Clubs' of the Sixties.  The Sixties also saw a broadening of social options for younger African-American gays and lesbians.  Nob Hill, at the end of a small commercial district on 11th St. NW, had opened to the public in 1957 and provided a discrete neighborhood gathering place.  By the mid-Sixties there appears to have been a flourishing set of venues for African-Americans in upper Northwest.  Opposite the Tivoli, Bob’s Inn had become a welcoming club for young African-Americans and one of the most popular spots for shows featuring female impersonators.  Avis Pendavis, who later founded one of Harlem’s most famous drag houses (House of Pendavis), started performing here after graduating from Dunbar and attending George Washington University.  The Cozy Corner, at Georgia and Florida Avenues, was popular with Howard University students.  Other clubs were Cecelia’s across from the Howard Theater and the Golden Nugget, at 14th and Chapin, popularly known as the Black Nugget and a welcoming location for the transgendered.  Unfortunately, most of these clubs perished in the fires that followed Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in April 1968.

One of DC’s early social clubs created one of DC’s most successful African-American clubs and dance spots.  In 1969, the Metropolitan Capitolites, another African-American social club that had been meeting in a house at 4011 14th St. NW, needed room for expansion and took over the basement of a white biker bar at 221 Riggs St. NE.  Their new Zodiac Den, whose arrival was heralded by the new gay newspaper, The Gay Blade, eventually took over the entire building and became the Third World, one of the city’s premier dance clubs in 1972.

Transition Clubs.       Restrictions on serving and moving alcohol, and club owners’ aversion to same-sex dancing began to crumble in the second half of the decade.  Though the liquor regulations weren’t changed until well into the 1970s, what Paul Kuntzler has called the ‘transition’ clubs pushed the envelope of those restrictions.

The 1832 House on Columbia Road, which opened about 1966, took advantage of a loophole that allowed prospective ‘diners’ to wait and stand with drinks in an area screened from diners.  Bruce Pennington who remembers the 1832 House as one of the first places where it seemed everyone was welcome, recalls: “Now the 1832 had a second story mezzanine balcony area, that was about a third of the floor space downstairs, and they had a bar up there.  And they also had, there was no railing on the balcony, but there was about an eight inch strip of chicken wire, tacked to the edge of the floor overlooking the dining room floor.  That was the screen.”

At the end of the decade the new Pier 9 club, at 1824 Half St. SW, got around the immobility of diners and drinkers by installing telephones and easily visible table numbers.  One of the oral histories recalls, "They had these tables with a little pole in the middle of it and at the end of the pole was a number, so each table had a number and each table had a telephone.  So what you could do is dial that number and talk to whoever was sitting at that table without them knowing who you were.  That’s how a lot of dates were made."

Washington DC’s first gay bathhouse opened in 1968.  Since Riggs Turkish Baths had closed there had been no similar site in the city.  David Harris, newly returned from California, opened the Regency Baths.  He recalls. “I found a place 413 L St. NW which was a warehouse and I went in and I started the conversion.  Miss Taylor and a few other people during that time offered to help.  And there we started.  We built it, we painted it, we did it.”  Though often harassed by the police, the Regency survived until 1985.

Women's Social spaces. For most of the Sixties there were few public social options for women.  Until mid-decade there was no equivalent of the old Showboat club.  At 5828 Georgia, in upper Northwest, Zombies’ restaurant generally welcomed women.  And, at Spring Rd and 14th St. NW, the Spring Road Café, a purple building that was hard to miss, saw women’s gatherings on weekends.

JoAnna’s, which opened at 430 8th St. SE in 1968 represented a new social option for women, and a daring new dance floor.  Dr Franklin Kameny remembers, "JoAnna's arrived somewhat later, on the NE corner of 8th and E, directly across from Johnnie's.  It was responsible for the initiation of dancing in DC gay bars on a regular basis.  It was a women's bar.  They put in a small dance floor, which immediately started to attract business including, (I think) some men.  Johnnie's (across the street) saw the future and installed a postage stamp-sized dance floor, and began getting lots of customers."

The Sixties also saw the first willing identification with ‘gayness’ for clubs in the city.  Programs for Bill Frye’s Miss America drag pageants carried ads for Johnnie’s, JoAnna’s, the Gold Key Club (a North Beach, MD club), and the Hideaway.  Johnnie’s ads proudly proclaimed itself ‘the gay place to go in Washington” as early as 1967.

In early 1969, as the Mattachine Society’s campaign to take gay literature and its new “Gay Is Good” buttons got underway, two Mattachine members set out on a Sunday afternoon in Spring to distribute buttons and brochures to local bars.  As the May 1969 Insider reports, “.. their ulterior motive was to determine the current attitudes of bar owners toward Mattachine and its activities…Much to their surprise, and contrary to rumor, all the bars they visited were friendly and eager to hear about Mattachine”.  A number of bars, including Zombies, the Georgetown Grill, and Leon’s (probably the Derby) agreed to take the buttons and Mattachine brochures.  Later the same year, the Insider newsletter reported on Mattachine’s success in helping with distribution of the new Gay Blade.  JoAnna’s, Johnnie’s, the Golden Calf, 1832 House, and the Georgetown Grill were among the first clubs to distribute DC’s newest newsletter.

Visibility.  Clubs’ willingness to advertise and to carry Mattachine literature as well as the new Gay Blade seem to demonstrate a diminished fear of identification with the gay community.  Though many of the ‘old line’ clubs of the 50s and 40s that still survived remained leery of ‘gayness’, by January of 1970, the Insider listed Johnnie’s, the Georgetown Grill, and Carroll’s as early distribution points for the new Blade.

Police Activity. Police supervision and visitation of clubs and restaurants continued through the Sixties.  However, compared to New York and other cities, there were few raids.  The only two known raids of clubs in DC, in fact, were at the Uptown Lounge, across the street from the theatre in Cleveland Park, and at the Gayety on Ninth Street NW.  Police appearances in the clubs appear to have been calculated more at intimidating the patrons than at disrupting social gatherings.  A member of Mattachine at JoAnna’s one summer evening in 1969 saw “a steady procession of uniformed police come in and out of the bar.”  Querying a policeman about the procession, she was told “there was no trouble at all, but that the precinct was just keeping an eye on things.”

Same-Sex Dancing.   Same-sex dancing in the clubs was perhaps one of the greatest innovations on the social scene in the 1960s.  As Dr Franklin Kameny has pointed out, there were no laws against same sex dancing in the District.  Rather club owners were reluctant to allow it.  Some social sites allowed late night dancing if there were no police around, but most dancing had been limited to house parties and private social events.  The implicit ban was broken most visibly by JoAnna’s opening of a dance floor.

But the real breakthrough was the opening of the Plus One, DC’s first GLBT dance club at 529 8th St. SE, in the same neighborhood as Johnnie’s, JoAnna’s, the Guild Press, Millie’s, and Dobkins Grille.  As Dr Kameny recalls, “The Plus One, the first of the super bars then appearing, saw what was going on and saw what the future held, put in a dance floor, and dancing in gay bars was here to stay.”  For the first time in DC, lines of gays waiting in the street to get into the club began to appear.

Paul Kuntzler recalls one summer evening shortly after the Plus One opened that  the street was suddenly filled with police cars.  The obvious intent was to intimidate and scare off those waiting to get into the club.  Unlike later events at the Stonewall in New York City, the police didn’t attempt to arrest anyone but clearly expected gays and lesbians on the sidewalk to scurry off into the night.  No one did.  As Kuntzler recalls, the police were perplexed, regrouped and reappeared again in numbers—and achieved no visible reaction.  In the end, the police simply went away.  By the Spring of 1970, Washingtonian magazine was remarking at the long lines outside the Plus One.  For young gays eager to dance, it seems visibility was no longer to be feared.

Though the fires of April 1968 removed at least six African-American clubs from the city’s social options, the decade left most of the gay and lesbian ‘social neighborhoods’ intact.  The Lafayette Square and H Street area was still popular.  Eighth Street SE was adding new clubs and expanding.  Along Ninth Street NW, Carroll’s, Louie’s three story complex, and the LoneStar were joined by other clubs.  The bus station area around 13th and New York Avenue, where Naples, Dolly’s, and other sites offered more risqué and risky encounters continued to thrive.

In Washington, DC the confidence that came with increased visibility, a more strident demand for acceptance, and clubs’ successful pushing of the envelope of police and legal restrictions set the scene for change.   The Seventies brought the relief and release of not only vastly greater numbers of gay identified and gay friendly bars and clubs but a welcome variety of social options.  The gay liberation slogan “Out of the closet and into the streets” applied as much to social geography as to activism.  It became OK to be identifiably gay.

Between 1970 and 1972, years that saw establishment of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance in the District and Dr Kameny’s campaign for Congress, nearly thirty new clubs, bars, shops, restaurants, and social gathering places appeared.

The Plus One’s success led in short order to more ‘super’ dance clubs, foremost among them the Lost and Found, the Pier, and the Grand Central, in the newly emerging ‘gay club neighborhood’ along South Capitol Street.  Georgetown sprouted more social spaces as well, and in the years before construction drove them off of Ninth Street NW and New York Avenue, a host of new ventures appeared.  The District’s gay and lesbian community soon had leather and levi clubs, foremost among them the Eagle on 9th St., and then the leather shop the Leather Rack.  The loss of the African-American clubs in upper northwest was compensated by the emergence of La Zambra on 14th St., the Brass Rail on 13th St. NW and the Third World, the Metropolitan Capitolites second venture.

The Regency Bath’s success spurred other gay bathhouses to appear, including the District’s own branch of the Club Baths chain, the Olympic, and others as far afield as upper Blair Road NW and Richmond Highway in Alexandria.

The city’s women also gained more new social spaces, among them the Phase One, which joined the 8th St. SE neighborhood in 1971 and continues as the area’s longest surviving lesbian club.  Club Madame, also on 8th St. SE opened in 1974 .  It wasn’t until the 1980s, though, that there was a significant increase in women’s clubs.

More important perhaps to the emergence of a visible community was the number of new gay and lesbian-identified shops and non-commercial spaces. The Seventies brought gay commercial and social institutions to the city. These locations appear to have become a concomitant of solidifying gay neighborhoods.

The first community center, created by the Gay Activist’s Alliance opened in 1972 at 1213 13th St. NW.  Though the center lasted only a year, it provided meeting space and dance space for the increasingly visible community.  The second community center, organized by the Washington Area Gay Community Council, opened in the summer of 1979 at 1409 Church St. NW.  Like its predecessor the second community center offered meeting and discussion space for the community, as well as social events.

As community institutions began to appear, they also provided opportunities for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered to meet and to socialize.  The Washington Free Clinic, a counterculture institution of the Sixties, provided space at the Georgetown Lutheran Church for the first GLBT health group, the Gay Men’s Clinic which opened in 1973..  Late in the Seventies, the clinic and several other new health organizations joined to create the Whitman Walker Clinic, which in turn has given members of the community an opportunity to meet, volunteer together, and socialize.

The Dupont Circle area had no gay clubs before Mr. P’s appeared on P St. in the Spring of 1976.  But the area had been a hotbed of antiwar and counterculture activism in the Sixties and connected with the new gay activism as well.  Several of the city’s first gay-identified businesses grew out of the Community Building at 1724 20th St. NW, a center for activism from the days of the antiwar demonstrations.  Lambda Rising, a gay bookstore first located here, quickly became a defacto community center, particularly after the Gay Activist Alliance’s Gay Community Center on13th St. had closed.

With JoAnna’s, the Phase One, and Club Madame already on Capitol Hill, the first women-oriented shops appeared in the neighborhood, beginning with the Front Porch, followed by Lammas Books in the summer of 1973.  Lammas quickly became a social center and a community information center.  In 1971 in northwest DC, the Washington Area Women’s Center opened at 1736 R St. NW and quickly became a focus for lesbian and feminist expression.  Sophie’s Parlor, now a regular feature on WPFW radio, began here as a weekly coffeehouse featuring singers and entertainers, some of whom  became artists featured by Olivia Records.

Women's Social Spaces: 1960 - 2000

5878 Club	Here & Now	Phase One	Venus
After Dark	Hill Haven	Rising Women's Coffeehouse	Washington Area Women's Center
Chocolate Bar	Hung Jury	Round Up	Womon
Club Madame	JoAnna's	She-Bar	Zombies
Cousin Nick's	Jojo's	Sophie's Parlor
Elan	Lammas Books	Sophisticated Ladies
Ellington on 8th	Li'l Sister	Spring Rd Cafe/Steve's
Essie	O'Henry's	Studio
Front Porch	The Other Side	Studio 26
Harlow	Out of the Blue II	Tess's

The District’s enhanced club scene also brought tensions to the surface.  Several of the new super discos, among them the Lost and Found which opened in 1971 and Grand Central, opened 1974, both of them in the new South Capitol St. neighborhood, used ‘carding’ policies to exclude African-Americans, women, and female impersonators.  Almost from its opening the Lost and Found drew criticism for this policy.  Its exclusionary policy, prompted formation of one of the city’s first community coalitions, the Committee for Open Gay Bars.  [Click here for a link to a flyer for the Committee for Open Gay Bars.]  In an unusually frank interview with the Gay Blade, it’s owner maintained that he was only reflecting the bigotry of his customer base.

Carding was to remain a hot issue into the Eighties.  Title 34, the District’s first human rights ordinance provided legal grounds for GLBT community organizations to force an end to perceived discrimination both at clubs in the community’s neighborhoods and against other clubs’ discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Straight bars and restaurants throughout the 20th century have always tried to attract gay clientele.  But in the Seventies, it became common for straight clubs, such as Chicago, on 19th St. near Dupont Circle to hold ‘gay’ nights and women’s nights.

Latino gays and lesbians lacked any clubs marketing to them until the opening of El Faro, at 2411 18th St. in 1991.  The Fox Lounge, a Mount Pleasant institution from the late Fifties was one of the few clubs with a significant Latino clientele.  The Nineties, however, saw several successors to El Faro, which closed in 1995.  Among them have been El Scandalo and Deco on P St. NW, and the Ardiente on Capitol Hill.

Latino/Latina Social Spaces: 1960 - 2000

Ardiente

Deco Cabana

El Faro

Escandalo

Fox Lounge (irregularly)

For African-Americans, the Seventies brought the opening of several major sites that were to have a lasting impact on the community.  The Third World on Riggs Rd NE became so popular that it could no longer accommodate all the customers who wanted to dance there.  In 1975, the partners opened the Clubhouse, at 1296 Upshur St. NW.  The Clubhouse, which operated as a membership club, became a legend, not just locally but nationwide.  Its weekend parties were soon the capstone of weekend nights out for African-American gay men and lesbians.  The Clubhouse’s annual Children’s Hour parties, on Memorial Day weekend were for 15 years an annual much sought after ticket in Washington DC.  In fact, these events attracted African-Americans from across the country.  The year after the Clubhouse opened, another popular disco, the Delta Elite, opened in the Brookland area.  It is the second oldest African-American club in the city, after the Nob Hill.

The Eighties also saw the creation of another legend of the African-American community, the Coffeehouse.  At 816 I St. NE, the Coffeehouse became a crucible for young musicians, poets, and performance artists.  Created by Ray Melrose in a carriagehouse behind his home, the Coffeehouse provided, much as the social clubs did, a space for meeting, relaxing, discussing, and performing.

African-American Social Spaces: 1960 - 2000

Bachelor's Mill	The Coffeehouse	Lucy's
Backdoor Pub	Delta Elite	Marty's
Black Nugget	Ebony II	Micky's Bar & Lounge
Bob's Inn Restaurant	Encore Social Club	Nob Hill
The Brass Rail	Essie	Red Door
Bus Stop Deli	Fox Lounge	Studio
Cecelia's	Full House	Sugar Kane Palace
Checkmate's	Kenyon Bar & Grill	The Third World
The Circle	The Key	Zodiac Den
The Clubhouse	La Zambra

The effect of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s is worthy of several papers.  One of its most immediate effects was the closure of many of the city’s bathhouses.  The only one to survive that period is the Club Baths site in SE near South Capitol St.

In a brief space of time it is impossible to give attention to all of the sites worthy of mention.  This paper serves only to introduce the subject and to delineate the features of our social landscape.  It is also important to remember that though we speak of a ‘community’ of social spaces for same-sex encounters, these social spaces were divided by race and ethnicity and gender.  Many gays and lesbians familiar with the clubs of Dupont, Ninth Street, and Eighth Street, were unaware or unfamiliar with women’s social spaces, African-American social spaces, and Latino social spaces.

In closing, I would like to briefly sketch the history of one of the landmark sites in Washington, DC’s social geography:  The Community Building at 1724 20th St. NW.  The building, is a relatively ordinary rowhouse on a street running behind Connecticut Avenue.  But in the 1960s it was a focal point of the Dupont area’s counter-culture community.

For the city’s gays and lesbians, the building became in the 1970s an incubator of many of our local institutions including Lambda Rising, the gay hotline, gay youth groups, off our backs, and the Roadhouse organization which created the Sisterfire women’s celebration.  It was home for a time to the Gay Blade and was at the center of the city’s first, and enduring, official gay pride celebration.

For more about the Community Building, click here.