The residential and social concentration of gay men in the Rush Street area drew the attention of Alfred C. Lesbian bars on both the Near North and Near South Sides, especially those run by the lesbian entrepreneur Billie Le Roy, drew sizable crowds, as did the South Side's Cabin Inn, which featured a chorus line of cross-dressed black men. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Loop became an increasingly important meeting place for gay men the theaters,Īnd bars of this district supplemented the Near North Side venues as gathering spots for both gay men and the soldiers and sailors who swarmed the city during Among the best known were Waldman's, a gay male bar run by a married Jewish couple on Michigan Avenue near Randolph Street, and the Rose-El-Inn, a lesbian bar on Clark Street near Division. Building on the success of the interracial drag balls that had been held at the Coliseum Annex on the Near South Side since the 1920s, the Finnie's Ball became a celebrated Halloween event on the South Side, drawing thousands of gay and lesbian participants and heterosexual onlookers well into the 1960s.Īfter the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the first bars catering exclusively to lesbians and gay men opened in Chicago.
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In 1935 a black gay street hustler andĭoorman, Alfred Finnie, launched a series of drag (transvestite) balls on the South Side. era cabarets, including the Plantation Cafe on East 35th Street and the Pleasure Inn on East 31st. Lesbians and gay men became regular fixtures, as both patrons and entertainers, in With the arrival of southern black migrants during theĪ lesbian and gay enclave also developed on the city's One such network headed by Henry Gerber, a postal clerk and Bavarian immigrant to Chicago, founded the nation's earliest documented gay rights organization in 1924 the Society for Human Rights published two pamphlets before its members were arrested and the group disbanded. Yet while these public spaces played an important role in the construction of Chicago's lesbian and gay community, private parties and personal networks remained the foundation of gay culture. Gay men also gathered along Michigan Avenue and on Oak Street Beach and mingled with lesbians, hobos, and political radicals in In 1930,Įstimated that there were 35 such venues on the city's Near North Side. The Dill Pickle Club on Tooker Alley hosted group discussions and debates on homosexuality and lesbianism, while the Bally Hoo Cafe on North Halsted featured male and female impersonation acts, as well as a contest for cross-dressed patrons. In the tearooms and speakeasies of this district, lesbians and gay men from throughout the city and the Midwest met and socialized with localĪnd with heterosexuals bent on obtaining a glimpse of gay life. The lesbian presence in the city was less visible during these years, in part because many working-class lesbians “passed” as men in order to gain access to better-paying jobs ChicagoĬarried occasional sensationalized stories about local “men,” many of them “married,” who had been unmasked as women.īy the 1920s, a visible lesbian and gay enclave was well established in the Near North Side bohemian neighborhood known as Of Chicago noted the presence of “whole groups and colonies of these men who are sex perverts,” many of them working as During the early years of the century, much of this subculture was centered in the Levee, a working-class entertainment andĬatered to gay men and featured female impersonation acts. The anonymous and transient character of these neighborhoods permitted the development of Chicago's lesbian and gay subculture. As one of the busiest industrial centers and transportation hubs in the United States, Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century attracted thousands of single women and men with new employment opportunities and nonfamilial living arrangements in the lodging-house districts of the