Many neighborhoods experience substantial shifts over decades, due to adaptive reuse and new construction projects. Neighborhood change is nothing out of the ordinary. “If it weren’t for you,” says one entry from 1974, “we’d all be lonely.” New developments and a new look In others, they express gratitude for the club’s existence. In some entries from the 1970s and early 1980s, guests thank the club owners and ask to remain anonymous. In the 1930s and ’40s, the club was a popular stopping point for actors traveling to New York City, and only later (and very secretly at first) became known as a gay club, according to Anderies.Ī thick guest book from Maxine’s gives an indication of how important the club was to visitors and residents in the Gayborhood through the mid-20th century. The site of Maxine’s, which is now the LGBTQ bar Tavern on Camac. “People were pushed there because they weren’t accepted elsewhere,” says Orne, who researches the history of LGBTQ-focused neighborhoods and authored the book Boystown: Sex and Community in Chicago. They helped define the neighborhood as a space for-predominantly white, male-gay residents. The neighborhood’s LGBTQ-focused clubs, bars, and businesses were its “anchor institutions,” explains Drexel University assistant professor of sociology Jason Orne. Many young gay men lived on Camac Street, which Anderies calls Philly’s version of Greenwich Village, and which saw a surge of young bachelor residents. The community flourished around what Anderies calls “artistic” and “bohemian” spaces in the 1970s and ’80s. But over the decades following, the LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood shrank, by the late 1990s coming to mean the area bounded by Chestnut and Pine streets and Broad and 11th streets. The area of the city that featured gay bars and LGBTQ-friendly private clubs once stretched beyond its current home, at the blocks surrounding 13th and Locust, all the way to Rittenhouse Square, which was a popular place for young gay men to spend time in the 1950s, explains William Way archivist John Anderies. Following the city’s recognition, the neighborhood was officially called the “Gayborhood” on major online maps, and it’s referred to as the Gayborhood by the city’s Office of LGBT Affairs.īut the neighborhood claimed its identity long before the name was official. It was recognized by the city in 2007, when Mayor John Street dedicated 36 rainbow street signs around the neighborhood-a number that has since almost doubled. The name “Gayborhood” was first used by a journalist to describe the area in 1995, around that year’s Outfest, an annual block party that celebrates the neighborhood and the LGBTQ community. The changes to the Gayborhood mean more residences, more retail, and more customers at small businesses, but they also raise concerns about identity and loss, as well as an important question for the LGBTQ community: What place do queer neighborhoods have in modern-day cities? History of the Gayborhood But as the neighborhood changes-with a new name, “Midtown Village,” and new projects like the $400 million retail and residential development, East Market-some longtime residents wonder if its first identity is in danger of slipping away.
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Those places were mostly found in the city’s Gayborhood, which was then full of LGBTQ-focused bars, restaurants, private clubs, and gathering spaces: safe havens for a group of people with few other spaces to call home. Instead, young queer Philadelphians had to call the community center to get information from the booklet about places to meet other members of the community. The cards, which date to the 1970s, tell the story of a more dangerous time for queer men and women-a time when gay-friendly resources, community centers, businesses, and bars weren’t listed in the yellow pages.
Others list running groups for lesbians (“Frontrunners”) and bike groups for gay men. One card holds the number for a suicide hotline, another for a lawyer who specializes in helping gay men who are being blackmailed and harassed. The booklet, with cards directing young queer people to LGBTQ-focused spaces in and around the Gayborhood.