MacDougal Street

The Cafe Wha? as it appeared in 2016.

NPS PHOTO

“Men admitted, not welcome”

In the decades before Stonewall, Greenwich Village hosted a number of places where gay and lesbian New Yorkers mixed with artists who were gay, lesbian bisexual or straight. Together, they show the Village as a place where new, challenging ideas on race, gender and sexuality were considered, debated and even developed into art. The following is just an example of what could be found within a few blocks of the Village.

At the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets was the San Remo Café (93 MacDougal/189 Bleecker), one of the most beloved hangouts for straight and gay bohemians alike.¹ Drinkers included artist Jackson Pollack and William de Kooning, composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham and writers James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, Frank O’Hara, James Agee, Allan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal.²

The roster of musicians and comedians who played the Café Wha? reads like a mini-history of American music and humor in the 1960s. Bob Dylan came here on the first day he arrived in New York City from Minnesota. Dylan played on “Hootenanny” night and crashed on the sofa of someone in the audience. A few years later “Jimmy James,” later known as Jimi Hendrix, played in the house band, where his future manager Chas Chandler first spotted him. Village favorites played here, mixing music with lyrics expressing leftist politics (the Fugs) or gender and sexual variations (the Velvet Underground). A teenage Bruce Springsteen, folk musician Dave Van Ronk and Kool and the Gang performed here as well, along with comedians who expressed counterculture ideas such as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Woody Allen.³

Places where lesbians could go were more limited. Louis’ Luncheon at 116 MacDougal catered to both lesbians and gay men in the 1930s and 40s; it was later knows as the Gaslight Café, a popular hangout for beat writers.⁴ The Black Rabbit (same name as a much earlier gay-friendly bar on Bleecker, but a different establishment) opened at 111 MacDougal. It closed in 1929; the Minetta Tavern was opened there in 1937 and is still in business as of this writing.⁵

Eve Addams’ Tearoom (also known as “Eve’s Hangout”) was an after-theater club run in 1925-26 by Eva Addams (Eve Kotchever), a Polish-Jewish émigré. As the sign at the front stated, “Men are admitted but not welcome.” Kotchever was an author as well. Her collection of short stories was titled Lesbian Love. Few Americans could have gotten away with such frankness in the mid-1920s, even in the Village, and neither did she. Kotchever was not a U.S. citizen; she was detained, then deported in 1926.⁶

---

¹ "NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project: San Remo Cafe," NYCLGBTsites.org, NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Retrieved June 24, 2019.

² "South Village Historic District: National Register of Historic Places," National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, December 24, 2013, section 7, page 18 and section 8, page 27.

³ "Manny Roth, 94, Impresario of Cafe Wha?, Is Dead," New York Times, August 3, 2014. Retrieved June 24, 2019.

⁴ Betts, Mary Beth, director of research. South Village Historic District Designation Report, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, December 17, 2013, p. 38.

⁵ Betts, op.cit., p. 37.

⁶ "Men Are Admitted, But Not Welcome," August 2, 2010, daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com. Retrieved June 24, 2019. Also found at Betts, op.cit., p. 37.

The website of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation hosts several detailed reports about the streets and buildings of the Village.

 

Plaque for the location of the old San Remo Cafe. It mentions several writers, musicians and visual artists who frequented the bar, including: James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, Miles Davis, Allan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Judith Malina, William S. Burroughs, Jackson Pollock, Frank O'Hara, Gore Vidal.

NPS PHOTO