University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Preserving the tangible remains of San Francisco's lesbian community in North Beach, 1933 to 1960

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Preserving the tangible remains of San Francisco's lesbian community in North Beach, 1933 to 1960

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PRESERVING THE TANGIBLE REMAINS OF SAN FRANCISCO'S
LESBIAN COMMUNITY IN NORTH BEACH,
1933 TO 1960

by
Shayne Elizabeth Watson

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION

December 2009

Copyright 2009 Shayne Elizabeth Watson

ii

DEDICATION

For Robin, Mom, and Dad.
iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the following people for helping make this thesis a possibility: Dr. Kenneth
Breisch, for teaching me to be a better preservationist and historian; Trudi Sandmeier, for
helping me formulate this topic at the very beginning; Dr. Gail Dubrow, for the time and
effort she put into her wonderfully thoughtful suggestions; Gerry Takano, for lending his
knowledge of San Francisco preservation history; Dr. Kimberly Rae Connor, for her
advice and encouragement; Jay Shockley at the New York Landmarks Preservation
Commission, for educating me on New York preservation politics; Michael Corbett, for
generously sharing his North Beach Historic Contexts; Rebekah Kim and her colleagues
at the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society; Alex Gersh at the ONE National Gay and
Lesbian Archives; Moses Corrette, Matt Weintraub, and Mary Brown at the City of San
Francisco; Francisco Contreras and John Chase at the City of West Hollywood; Janet
Hansen, Edgar Garcia, and Lambert Geissinger at the City of Los Angeles; and Leigh
Jordan, Celeste M. Thomson, Thomas David Shackford, and Amy Gusick at the
California Historical Resources Information Centers. Most of all, infinite gratitude and
appreciation to my entire family for helping make graduate school a reality. Finally, xie
xie to Robin, my rock through it all.
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Abstract
Introduction
Chapter 1: Preservation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
Introduction
National Preservation Efforts
California Preservation Efforts
Local Preservation Efforts
Conclusion

Chapter 2: History of a Lesbian Community in San Francisco
Introduction
Background
Lesbian Communities in the United States
San Francisco
Conclusion

Chapter 3: Tangible Remains of Lesbian History in San Francisco’s North
Beach
Introduction
The Buildings That Housed the Community
The Lesbian Bar
When A Bronze Plaque Isn’t Enough
Conclusion

Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendices
Appendix A: Sample Self-Guided Walking Tour Brochure
Appendix B: Sample Online Archive
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v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Stonewall Inn, New York City, NY
Figure 2: Broadway Street in San Francisco, CA, 1910
Figure 3: The Black Cat Café, San Francisco, CA, n.d.
Figure 4: Looking west on Broadway Street from Kearny Street, June 1929
Figure 5: Spanish businesses on Broadway Street in San Francisco, CA, ca. 1950s
Figure 6: Advertisement for Mona’s 440 Club, 1939
Figure 7: Mona Hood in 1991 holding a photograph of herself from the 1940s
Figure 8: Building that housed Mona’s Barrel House in San Francisco, CA, 2009
Figure 9: Mona’s 440 Club, ca. 1945
Figure 10: Aerial view of 440 Broadway showing Mona’s 440 Club footprint, 2009
Figure 11: Advertisement for Mona’s 440 Club, 1942
Figure 12: Patrons and performers in Mona’s 440 Club, ca. 1945
Figure 13: Servicewomen in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs), n.d.
Figure 14: Servicewomen and others in an unknown gay bar in San Francisco, n.d.
Figure 15: Newspaper headline from The Truth, 1949
Figure 16: Newspaper headline from New York Times, 26 March 1952
Figure 17: Newspaper headline from New York Times, 3 November 1953
Figure 18: Newspaper headline from The Keyhole, 1 December 1955
Figure 19: Newspaper headlines from various newspapers, 1950s
Figure 20: Daughters of Bilitis publication, “Your Rights in Case of Arrest,” 1953
Figure 21: Daughters of Bilitis members marching, 1971
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Figure 22: Mattachine Society members marching in New York, 1970
Figure 23: The former site of the Artist’s Club, 2009
Figure 24: Former site of Tommy’s 299 Club, October 1923
Figure 25: Tommy Vasu in Mona’s Candelight, ca. 1945
Figure 26: Former home of Mona’s Candlelight Club, 2009
Figure 27: Former home of the Chi Chi Club, 2009
Figure 28: Former home of the Paper Doll, 2009
Figure 29: Souvenir postcard from the Beige Room, n.d.
Figure 30: Former home of Tommy’s Place, 2009
Figure 31: Former site of The Front, 2009
Figure 32: Sample Walking Tour Brochure Page 1
Figure 33: Sample Walking Tour Brochure Page 2
Figure 34: Sample Walking Tour Brochure Page 3
Figure 35: Sample Walking Tour Brochure Page 4
Figure 36: Sample Walking Tour Brochure Page 5
Figure 37: Sample Online Archive Index Page Screen Shot
Figure 38: Sample Online Archive History Page Screen Shot
Figure 39: Sample Online Archive Showing Current Views of Mona’s Screen Shot
Figure 40: Sample Online Archive Media Page Screen Shot
Figure 41: Sample Online Archive Media Page Screen Shot
Figure 42: Sample Online Archive Media Page Screen Shot
Figure 43: Sample Online Archive Media Page Screen Shot
Figure 44: Sample Online Archive Map Page Screen Shot
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ABBREVIATIONS

ABC Alcoholic Beverage Control
AFDCB Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board
CEQA California Environmental Quality Act
HCM Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument
LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender
LPC New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
National Register National Register of Historic Places
National Trust National Trust for Historic Preservation
NHL National Historic Landmark
NPS National Park Service
OLGAD Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects and Designers
Planning Department City and County of San Francisco Planning Department
SFPD San Francisco Police Department
SHPO State Historic Preservation Office (or Officer)

viii

ABSTRACT

Most lesbians living in San Francisco, or those who visit the city as tourists, likely do not
know that an extraordinarily broad and cohesive lesbian community existed in the city’s
North Beach neighborhood between the 1930s and 1960s. As of 2009, the buildings in
San Francisco that once served the country’s largest lesbian community bear no sign of
their former lives. Most still extant, the buildings have shed their lesbian skins and are
ghostly vestiges of a forgotten history. The former home of Mona’s – the veritable
birthplace of the lesbian community in San Francisco – is now a nightclub catering to
heterosexuals. The building that housed Tommy’s Place – targeted by police fifty-four
years ago in the first raid of a lesbian bar– is a stripper club called the Garden of Eden.
To date, none of the buildings associated with the historic lesbian community in San
Francisco is designated as a local, state, or national landmark. This is an enormous
disparity in light of the contributions lesbians have made to United States history.

This thesis explores the history of the lesbian community in San Francisco’s North
Beach, exposes a gap in the designation, commemoration, and interpretation of sites
associated with it, and makes suggestions to remedy these substantial oversights.

1

INTRODUCTION

Lesbians preparing for a visit to San Francisco have many services at their disposal to
help guide them in the planning of their trip. There is the 2009 edition of Damron
Women’s Traveller, the premier tourism guidebook for lesbian travelers published by the
forty-year-old, gay-owned Damron, Inc. There are multiple websites dedicated to gay
and lesbian travel, including OutTraveler.com, GayTravel.com, and PlanetOut.com. Or
there is San Francisco’s official tourism website, “Only in San Francisco,” which features
its own section on gay travel. Lesbians interested in lesbian history would be directed by
Damron to the Women’s Building in the Mission District, opened in the early 1970s as a
refuge for the budding lesbian-feminist community in San Francisco, or the “Cruisin’ the
Castro” walking tour, advertised as San Francisco’s only “historical gay culture tour.”
1

Women searching for lesbian neighborhoods would be guided by Damron and the
websites to the Castro or Mission Districts. Relying on this information alone, lesbian
tourists would leave San Francisco having had a rich cultural experience, but one that
focused almost entirely on a predominantly gay-male community formed in the 1970s.
Those same lesbians would leave San Francisco never knowing that an extraordinarily
broad and cohesive lesbian community existed in North Beach between the 1930s and
1960s.
2
Because even the gay guidebooks that describe North Beach’s Italian and Beat

1
Damron Women's Traveller 2009: The Best Lesbian Guide to the USA, Canada, European Cities & More,
(San Francisco: Damron, 2008). Historical Gay Culture Tour, (Cruisin’ the Castro Tours, 2009, accessed 12
October 2009); available from http://www.cruisinthecastro.com.
2
One of the few exceptions is Paula Martinac, The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian
Historic Sites, 1st ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).

2

history fail to mention that on those same streets San Francisco’s lesbian community was
born. This thesis explores the history of the lesbian community in San Francisco,
exposes a gap in the designation, commemoration, and interpretation of sites associated
with it, and makes suggestions to remedy these substantial oversights.

Chapter 1 examines the role of historic preservation in the designation, commemoration,
and interpretation of historic sites. The chapter begins by introducing the potential causes
behind the lack of attention to historic lesbian sites in San Francisco. The remaining
sections delineate the treatment of historic lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(LGBT) sites by preservation agencies at the national, state, and local levels. The chapter
ends with focused discussions of historic preservation activity in cities with a legacy of
LGBT heritage: New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington D.C., West
Hollywood, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Chapter 2 is devoted to the history of the lesbian community in San Francisco. It opens
with an overview of lesbian history in the United States in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The second part of the chapter traces the history of sites associated
with lesbian communities in major metropolitan areas in the United States. The chapter
closes with a historic context for the development of lesbian community in San
Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood and focuses on the following periods: 1800s to
1920s; Bohemianism and Prohibition; 1930s; World War II; 1950s and McCarthyism;
and finally, the homophile movement, which began in the early 1950s.

3

Chapter 3 includes an overview of the multiple building typologies associated with the
lesbian community in North Beach. The lesbian bar is highlighted as one building type
vitally important to the emergence of a lesbian community. The following section
describes the histories of lesbian bars in North Beach between 1933 and 1960 and
presents a determination of which are most significant. The end of this chapter provides
suggestions for designation, commemoration, and interpretation of the most significant
buildings and sites associated with the lesbian community in San Francisco.

4

CHAPTER 1:
PRESERVATION OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER
HISTORY

INTRODUCTION
As of 2009, the buildings in San Francisco that once served the country’s largest lesbian
community bear no sign of their former lives. Most still extant, the buildings have shed
their lesbian skins and are ghostly vestiges of a forgotten history. The former home of
Mona’s – the veritable birthplace of the lesbian community in San Francisco – is now a
nightclub catering to heterosexuals. The building that housed Tommy’s Place – targeted
by police fifty-four years ago in the first raid of a lesbian bar– is a stripper club called the
Garden of Eden. None of the buildings associated with the lesbian community in San
Francisco have been designated as local, state, or national landmarks.

The lack of officially designated sites and buildings associated with lesbian-specific
history is due in part to three issues. First, there is a tendency by governmental agencies
to conflate the histories of the lesbian, gay male, bisexual, and transgender communities –
groups with very diverse and largely non-convergent stories in terms of physical
locations. Second, the role of women in history remains grossly subordinate to that of
men. In 2002 only four percent of the nearly 10,000 sites in the National Register of
Historic Places (National Register) listed under Criterion B – an association with
significant persons – were designated as sites associated with significant women.
1
Given
that women comprise over half this country’s population, that percentage is far too low.

1
Carol Shull, "Searching for Women in the National Register," in Restoring Women's History through
Historic Preservation, ed. Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2003), 305.
5

Even when difficult subjects such as gay history gain public attention, the story told is
often incomplete. A contemporary example exists in the 2008 motion picture Milk, a
biopic of gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. Whereas many in the LGBT community
lauded Milk for advancing gay-rights messages into the mainstream, organizations such
as the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives and San Francisco GLBT Historical Society
maintain that Milk depicts an inaccurate view of history.
2
Not only were women almost
nonexistent in cinematic depictions of the throngs of supporters surrounding Milk, but
Milk’s right-hand women, activists Sally Gearhart and Gwenn Craig, were inexplicably
omitted. Finally, University of Minnesota Professor of History Gail Dubrow cites a
reluctance to engage “controversy” at historic sites as the third reason for the dearth of
officially recognized sites associated with lesbians, “…since a significant portion of the
American public still objects to homosexuality on moral and religious grounds.”
3

Dubrow believes there are managers of historic sites who feel that homosexuality is
“[in]appropriate for a family audience”
4
and thus choose not to address it. Irrespective of
the cause behind the lack of officially designated buildings associated with lesbian
history, Dubrow argues that “preservationists and historians have a responsibility to tell
the truth about the past,”
5
as uncomfortable as this may be. The inattention to or

2
Ruth Mahaney, "Missing from Memory," Fabulas: The Journal of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Transgender Historical Society (Summer 2009). Angela Brinskele, Sally Miller Gearhart Left out Of
"Milk" Lesbian History, (June Mazer Lesbian Archives, 2009, accessed 22 October 2009); available from
http://mazerlesbianarchives.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:sally-miller-
gearhart-left-out-of-qmilkq-lesbian-history-&catid=39:press-releases&Itemid=112.
3
Gail Lee Dubrow, "Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags," in Restoring Women's
History through Historic Preservation, ed. Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2003), 292.
4
Gail Lee Dubrow, "Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation: Recent Developments in
Scholarship and Public Historical Practice," in Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation,
ed. Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 12.
5
Dubrow, "Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags," 293.
6

deliberate omission of women’s and gay history has left many lesbians disconnected from
their community’s roots. If it is the role of historic preservation to maintain the link
between people and the built environment, communities and their heritage, then it is even
more vital to recognize and commemorate that link for minority communities, especially
those coerced into silence and life in the shadows. A revival and celebration of the
stories of lesbians, anchored in the built environment, will give these women visibility in
the histories of both San Francisco and the United States.

NATIONAL PRESERVATION EFFORTS
As of 2009, of the more than 85,000 sites and
buildings listed in the National Register of
Historic Places (National Register), the nation’s
foremost list of sites and buildings determined to
be important in American history and culture, only
one was listed based on an association with LGBT
history: New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The
Stonewall Inn was a small tavern in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which was
owned by the mafia and promoted as a gay bar beginning in 1966. Popular with a
predominantly gay-male clientele, the Stonewall Inn was one of several homosexual bars
targeted by policing agencies and frequently raided in the 1960s. During a routine raid
on 28 June 1969, some of the nearly 200 patrons inside the Stonewall Inn refused to

Figure 1 The Stonewall Inn.
(Photograph by Dr. Kenneth Breisch,
University of Southern California.)
7

cooperate.
6
Incidents of violence and intimidation directed toward drag queens
(transvestites) and the few lesbians in the bar enraged the crowd, which spilled onto the
street and ballooned to an estimated 600. Exasperated by pent-up fury and resentment
over decades of institutional homophobia and police harassment, the LGBT patrons of
the Stonewall Inn and their supporters on adjacent Christopher Street unleashed their
anger on the outnumbered police offers and forced a temporary retreat.
7
Now known as
the Stonewall Riots, the events of June 1969 were the largest and most-publicized
reaction against police and governmental oppression in LGBT history. Many historians
commemorate the Stonewall Riots for bolstering the momentum of the gay-rights
movement, which has its modern roots in the early 1950s.

Honored as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in May 2000, the tiny, non-descript
Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was the first (and last) LGBT resource officially
recognized by the United States Department of the Interior for the significant role it
played in American history. The Stonewall Inn’s National Register nomination was
sponsored in part by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and
authored by Andrew Scott Dolkart, Jay Shockley, David Carter, and Gale Harris, experts
in the field of LGBT heritage preservation. This groundbreaking listing by the National
Park Service (NPS) drew “no controversy,” according to State Historic Preservation
Officer (SHPO) Bernadette Castro, and not “one letter of opposition.”
8
Unfortunately,

6
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century
America, Between Men--between Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 194.
7
Ibid.
8
David Dunlap, "Stonewall, Gay Bar That Made History, Is Made a Landmark," The New York Times, 26
June 1999.
8

SHPO Castro was wrong. The NHL nomination for the Stonewall Inn was first proposed
by a now defunct group called the Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects and
Designers (OLGAD). Intending to nominate the site in honor of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, OLGAD submitted an NHL proposal and received an
official memorandum response from the Chief Historian of the NPS, James H. Charleton,
in March 1994.

The nomination was summarily denied for mostly perfunctory reasons: 1.) LGBT history
had never been surveyed by the NHL program and no historical context existed in which
the Stonewall Inn could be compared to similar properties; 2.) The Stonewall Riots were
only twenty-four-years old and did not meet the NPS’s fifty-year threshold for
significance; 3.) The interior of the Stonewall Inn had been significantly altered since the
time of the riots; and finally, 4.) The riots were not limited to the building and ultimately
spilled into nearby streets and a park.
9
These are routine responses to an application for
NHL listing, the highest level of distinction the Federal Government bestows on a
building. However, the Chief Historian’s justification for the NHL denial includes
language that extends far beyond the statements typically used to dismiss a subject whose
significance falls outside the mainstream or is younger than fifty years.

Chief Historian James Charleton begins his staff report by questioning the significance of
the Stonewall Riots, especially an event that “may have worked in some ways to

9
National Park Service, Proposed Stonewall Inn National Historic Landmark Nomination (1994)
Memorandum from Chief Historian to Associate Regional Director, Planning and Resource Preservation,
Mid-Atlantic Region.
9

reinforce negative public perceptions, because key participants were largely from the
most flamboyant and conspicuous elements of the gay subculture”
10
– in other words,
drag queens. To make matters worse, the Stonewall Riots were “not noviolent,” opposed
to more civil acts of disobedience, such as those “contested in courts, at the ballot box, or
by the example of individuals.”
11
Charleton seems to be asserting that both the
participation of drag queens and the violent nature of the riots were marks against the
nomination of the Stonewall Inn. A third mark against the nomination is the scarcity of
historical material on LGBT history, due to the “clandestine nature of the activity” and
that LGBT people are often closeted and lead “historically isolated and anonymous
lives,” keeping their sexual orientation “unknown to their parents and to their relatives
and to any children.”
12
Adding to the absence of historical material, Charleton notes that
LGBT people are “bereft of direct ancestral links to group history and traditions,” and
“lack direct descendents who carry on a legacy…” And unfortunately, according to
Charleton, the documented history that does exist is “scurrilous.” He writes:
[Gay history] is filled with documents…that feed bias and stereotypes and
sometimes inspire self-hate…In the absence of positive or objective accounts,
scandals and scoundrels tend to dominate the public impression of gay people and
have long even affected gay impressions of their own history. The scandals and
scoundrels become known, while the legal, social, financial – and personal –
burdens imposed by self-revelation have kept people of honesty and distinction in
the “closet” to the present day.
13

Finally, Charleton explains that only when an event has occurred that “convey[s] to
society at large the basic humanity of lesbians and gay men,” will the site and building

10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
10

associated with it be listed as a NHL.
Stonewall was not that event. President Ford’s rescue from an assassin by a gay
man was not that event. Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS was not. Nor was
Seargent Matlovich’s honorable and unquestioned service in Viet Nam, which
availed him nothing against the disclosure of his sexual orientation, which cost
him his military uniform.
14

He closes with this:
The evolving context of American society within which the Stonewall event
occurred and that which still prevails must also be considered. To this day the
perception of homosexuality as an illness, a disgrace, and an object of fear
endures in many quarters…Only when the ‘love that dare not speak its name’ can
be generally acknowledged without fear or persecution, physical harm,
professional and financial peril, and estrangement from friends and family will
that time have arrived. Until then, gay history can only be written in the most
tentative way, and even then much of it will remain forever lost in the mists.
15

Charleton’s discussion of the unavailability of LGBT historical documents is simply
untrue, and his assertion that LGBT history is filled with documents of a “scurrilous
nature” is disconcerting. Even more troubling is the indication that the Federal
Government would not consider listing an LGBT-related resource until the subject is seen
as less controversial in the eyes of the American public. All in all, Charleton’s report
seems less about Department of the Interior policy and guidelines and more an
opportunity for the author to set forth his own biases.

If it were not for a gay Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget at the
United States Department of the Interior, the Stonewall Inn still might not be a National
Historic Landmark. Appointed by President Clinton in 1997, John Berry is said to have

14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
11

spearheaded the designation of the Stonewall Inn when it was proposed for National
Register listing in 1999. During this process the applicants decided to nominate a
Stonewall District, including the adjacent streets and nearby park into which the
Stonewall Riots extended, to side step the fact that the owner of the Stonewall Inn was
non-cooperative. By adding the New York City-owned streets and park, the applicants
exceeded the threshold requiring more than fifty percent of property owners’ consent.
16

The Stonewall Inn was listed on the New York State Register in March 1999, the
National Register the following May, and elevated to NHL status in March 2000.
17
A
year later the NPS still showed signs of discomfort with the proposed NHL listing.
“There was by no means consensus on this issue, even among members of other civil
rights organizations,” remembers William Bolger, NHL Program Manager for the NPS at
the time of the NHL listing.
18
“The designation of the Stonewall District may still be
controversial for many people.” A NPS report describing the nomination process
attributed the controversy to an “uncertainty about deeming gay rights a legitimate civil
rights issue.”
19
In the ten years since the designation of the Stonewall District, no
progress has been made within the National Park Service toward official recognition of
LGBT resources.

In discussing Charleton’s response with University of Minnesota Professor Gail Dubrow,
who served as an outside advisor on this thesis, it was discovered that this type of

16
Jay Shockley, "Re: LGBT-Preservation Question," Email response to Shayne Watson, 10 September
2009.
17
David Carter and others, Stonewall: National Historic Landmark Nomination (1999).
18
National Park Service, The National Park Service and Civic Engagement: The Report of a Workshop
Held December 6-9, 2001, in New York City (2001).
19
Ibid.
12

response to new directions in historical scholarship that illuminate the significance of
things formerly stigmatized has a long and difficult history within the NHL Program.
Dubrow began working with the NHL Program two decades ago, when Page Putnam
Miller led the National Women’s Landmark Project, which with Congressional support
increased the number of historic places associated with women that are designated as
National Historic Landmarks. That project required engagement with NHL Program staff
from the earliest stages of conceptualizing a broad theme study about women’s history
through preparing responses to NHL staff comments on particular nominations. Dubrow
says,
The NHL staff are always attentive to matters of evidence in evaluating assertions
of relative significance: They prefer broad historical contexts in order to
determine significance and relative integrity; they are cautious about waiving the
so-called fifty-year rule that discourages premature assessments of the historical
significance of individuals and events; and they are scrupulous about matters of
documentation. Yet, their reactions to nominations that address politically
controversial subjects go above and beyond the usual procedural concerns.
Indeed, there is a twenty year history of NHL staff reviewing potential gay and
lesbian landmarks – as well as sites that deal with politically difficult subjects
such as American anarchism, prostitution, and other topics – that deserves to be
called what it is: homophobia, red-baiting, or victim blaming.
20

Sadly, while historical scholarship has evolved during this twenty-year period to develop
robust historical contexts for understanding the significance of particular people, places,
and events in gay and lesbian history and many other emergent sub-fields, when
presented nominations related to these histories the staff of the NHL program continually
react as if these subjects lack a comparative or historical context, and that the act of

20
Gail Lee Dubrow, Information in this section is derived from personal communication between Shayne
Watson and Dr. Gail Dubrow, 20 October 2009.
13

designating key sites represents a perpetuation of negative stereotypes. Dubrow
observes:
Unfortunately, at a time when the riots that began at Stonewall Inn have been
almost universally recognized as ground zero for the contemporary gay rights
movement; when the accomplishments of Emma Goldman have been fully
acknowledged within American political history; and rescue missions that saved
Chinese women from lives of prostitution are now integrated into histories of the
American west, NHL staff still espouse conceptions of American history drawn
from a time when military and political history were at the center of syllabi and
college texts. Perhaps the time has come to send out these sorts of NHL
nominations to outside scholarly experts such as prize-winning historian of
sexuality George Chauncey, Goldman expert Candice Falk, and master of Asian
American history Erika Lee, among others, who possess both the expertise and
intellectual currency to evaluate difficult subjects without prejudice and without
fear of the reactions that might follow from within the Executive or Congressional
branches of government.
21

CALIFORNIA PRESERVATION EFFORTS
The California Office of Historic Preservation (OHP), the state agency responsible for the
preservation of California’s “irreplaceable historic heritage,” has no programs in place
that recognize LGBT contributions to the state’s history. Furthermore, the California
Register of Historical Resources has no listings designated specifically for an association
with LGBT history.
22
When Gail Dubrow inquired among her contacts within California
OHP staff more than a decade ago about the extent to which gay and lesbian heritage was
recognized within the activities of the State of California’s Historic Preservation
programs, she too found no landmarks. However, Dubrow did note that the capacity to

21
Gail Lee Dubrow, Information in this section is derived from personal communication between Shayne
Watson and Dr. Gail Dubrow, 20 October 2009.
22
This information was verified by inquiries sent to California Historical Resources Information Centers in
the regions that cover major metropolitan areas: Northwest (Alameda, Colusa, Contra Costa, Lake, Marin,
Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano,
Sonoma, and Yolo Counties); Central Coast (San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties); Southern San
Joaquin Valley (Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, and Tulare Counties); and South Central Coastal (Los
Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties).
14

designate significant LGBT resources was established by means of planning documents
recognizing gay and lesbian communities as historically significant within the broader
context of California’s heritage. She found state-level documents identifying San
Francisco as a haven for gays and lesbians in the middle of the twentieth century and the
formative role both San Francisco and Los Angeles played in the emergence of the
homophile movements.
23

LOCAL PRESERVATION EFFORTS
A survey of three metropolitan areas in the United States with strong preservation
programs was beneficial for comparing preservation practices in San Francisco to those
of other cities across the country. Preservation officials in New York City, Los Angeles,
and West Hollywood were asked a series of questions regarding LGBT preservation
efforts in their cities: 1.) Does the city have an official program in place that recognizes
LGBT history?; 2.) Does the city have a historic context statement that either focuses
completely on LGBT history or one that contains an LGBT theme?; 3.) Has the city
designated any resources based solely on an association with LGBT history?

New York City
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Research Department staff
member Jay Shockley reported that of the more than 1,200 individual landmarks in the
city, none has been designated specifically for an association with LGBT history.
Remarkably, the Stonewall Inn, now a National Historic Landmark, is only listed as a

23
Gail Lee Dubrow, Information in this section is derived from personal communication between Shayne
Watson and Dr. Gail Dubrow, 20 October 2009.
15

local landmark by virtue of being a contributing element to the Greenwich Village
Historic District, not for its association with the infamous Stonewall Riots. Moreover, no
efforts have been made by either the city or private organizations to develop a historic
context statement or designate individual landmarks related strictly to LGBT history.
Shockley and LPC Research Department colleague Gale Harris have taken it upon
themselves to incorporate LGBT history into non-specifically-LGBT-related LPC
projects to which they have been assigned. Their efforts have produced more landmark
designations with language on LGBT history than in any other city.
24
An example
includes 122 East 17
th
Street, a residence within the East 17
th
Street/ Irving Place Historic
District, designated in 1998. Constructed in 1843-44, the building is misleadingly known
as the “Irving House,” home of writer, Washington Irving – yet Irving never lived in the
house. This false history was promoted by two of the house’s most famous residents,
Elsie de Wolfe, and her lover, Elisabeth Marbury. Elsie de Wolfe was an actress and one
of the first interior decorators, and Marbury was a well-known theatrical agent. The two
lived in the house between 1892 and 1911 and held Sunday salons that drew such
dignitaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore, and Mrs. William Waldorf Astor.
25
By
including the history of de Wolfe and Marbury’s relationship – a subject that may have
been avoided by other researchers – Shockley and Harris, who researched and co-
authored the report, presented a complete and honest history of the neighborhood. The
East 17
th
Street/Irving Place Designation Report proved to be groundbreaking, as it
contained the first use of the word “lesbian” in an LPC document when Shockley and

24
Jay Shockley, "Re: LGBT-Preservation Question," Email response to Shayne Watson, 28-30 August
2009.
25
Gale Harris and Jay Shockley, East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District Designation Report (1998),
21, Designation Report prepared for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
16

Harris included a quotation from the New York Times describing de Wolfe and Marbury
as "the most fashionable lesbian couple of Victorian New York.”
26
As Gail Dubrow
points out, LPC’s approach to historic preservation, driven by Shockley and Harris, is an
excellent example of how “sensitivity to and awareness of LGBT heritage [exhibited by
staff members] can result in an inclusive approach to heritage preservation.”
27

Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
In addition to his work in New York City, Jay Shockley researched LGBT preservation
efforts in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington D.C. He found that as of 2009
neither Boston nor Philadelphia has landmarked or officially recognized LGBT resources
in their respective cities. The State of Pennsylvania, on the other hand, commemorates
the gay-rights demonstrations held in front of Independence Hall between 1965 and 1969
with a Historical Marker (placed in 2005). The City of Chicago has one designated
Chicago Landmark related to LGBT history: The home of Henry Gerber, founder of the
Society for Human Rights, the first American gay-rights organization, and author of the
first recorded gay-rights publication, Friendship and Freedom (landmarked in 2001).
The residence and office of pioneering gay-rights advocate Dr. Franklin E. Kameny
represents the sole LGBT resource with an official designation of Historic Landmark in
the District of Columbia. This resource is particularly remarkable, as Shockley notes,
because Kameny is still alive and continues to live in the house.
28
A local, non-profit
LGBT organization called the Rainbow History Project sponsored the designation. Out

26
Ibid., 54. Also see Janet Allon, "Neighborhood Report: Gramercy Park; Forget the Lively Past: Window
Makes for Uproar," New York Times, 12 October 1997.
27
Dubrow.
28
Shockley, “Re: Lgbt-Preservation Question.”
17

of all the cities Shockley researched, none has made any moves to recognize individual
buildings associated with lesbian history.

West Hollywood
While the City of West Hollywood has yet to complete a city-wide, multiple-theme
survey, an LGBT theme has been integrated within a focused historic context statement,
the Historic Context for Multifamily Housing, completed in 2007. Though the report says
West Hollywood “stands at the epicenter of gay life in Los Angeles,”
29
none of the city’s
seventy-one Local Cultural Resources has been designated for an association with LGBT
history. In 2001 Catherine Hahn, later a commissioner on the West Hollywood Historic
Preservation Commission, requested that the City designate the building at 1114 Horn
Avenue as a Local Cultural Resource. Hahn argued that the building was significant as a
nightclub popular with gays in the 1940s, the Café Gala. Later, it was the home of
Wolfgang Puck’s original Spago restaurant. Hahn’s request was denied by the Historic
Preservation Commission and City Council. John Chase, Urban Designer and Liaison to
the Historic Preservation Commission, attributed the denial to poor integrity – the
building today does not resemble the Café Gala of the 1940s, according to Chase.
30

Los Angeles
The Office of Historic Resources at the City of Los Angeles has made significant efforts
to include LGBT resources in the documented history of the city. Of the 961 Los

29
Kathryn Wollan, Survey of R2, R3, and R4 Zoned Areas: Historic Context for Multifamily Housing
(Architectural Resource Group, 2007), Historic context statement prepared for the City of West Hollywood
Community Development Department.
30
John Chase, "Re: LGBT History in Weho," Email response to Shayne Watson, 17 August 2009.
18

Angeles Historic Cultural Monuments (HCM), one was designated for an association
with LGBT history. The Black Cat in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood was listed
as HCM #939 on 7 November 2008.
31
The Black Cat is significant as the site of police
harassment against gay people, specifically for a police raid in 1967 in which police beat
and arrested over a dozen patrons and employees on New Year’s Day. A second HCM
under consideration is the home of Henry “Harry” Hay in Silver Lake, founding place of
the Mattachine Society, the first major gay-rights organization in the country. An HCM
nomination was submitted, but ultimately denied on 11 September 2003 on the basis that
the nomination paperwork was “incomplete.”
32
An intensive city-wide historic resources
survey known as SurveyLA [sic] is currently underway and includes an LGBT-history
theme in its historic context statement. This is the first time an LGBT theme will be
incorporated into a Los Angeles historic context report. As of October 2009, the
SurveyLA historic contexts have not been released to the public, and the extent to which
LGBT communities and resources are documented remains unknown.

San Francisco
The City of San Francisco has done more to recognize the history of LGBT communities
than any of the three municipalities surveyed. On 5 January 2005 the San Francisco
Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board adopted the nation’s first LGBT-specific
historic context statement, Sexing the City: The Development of Sexual Identity Based

31
Janet Hansen, "Re: Question Regarding LGBT Preservation," Email response to Shayne Watson, 8
September 2009.
32
Lambert Giessinger, "Re: GLBT Survey," Email response to Shayne Watson, 9 September 2009.
19

Subcultures in San Francisco, 1933-1979 (Sexing the City).
33
Sponsored by the Friends
of 1800, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of LGBT-related sites in
San Francisco, Sexing the City was intended to “provide a philosophic and documentary
basis for preserving sites of significance to LGBT history.”
34
As with any historic
context statement, Sexing the City was the first step toward a city-wide cultural resources
survey that would focus on potentially significant LGBT sites. Sexing the City squeezes
nearly fifty years of history into fourteen pages of text and does not purport to be a
comprehensive history of the LGBT communities. The report’s author, Damon Scott,
states clearly that Sexing the City is meant to serve as the basis for future research. Scott
urged further studies into potential sub-districts of a larger LGBT historical district,
including the neighborhoods of North Beach, the Tenderloin, Polk Gulch, South of
Market, the Haight, the Castro, and the Mission. For sites located outside of the proposed
sub-districts, Scott suggests nominating those as individual city landmarks.

Sexing the City defines the period of significance for the proposed LGBT historical
district as 1933, the year Prohibition was repealed by the ratification of the Twenty-First
Amendment, to 1979, the year of the first LGBT National March on Washington. The
historic context statement includes contextual information pertaining to the post-
Prohibition growth of gay and lesbian social spaces; the influx of gay and lesbian bars
during World War II; gay- and lesbian-rights organizations headquartered in San

33
M. Bridget Maley, Telephone interview with Shayne Watson, 12 August 2009. Also see Damon Scott,
Sexing the City: The Development of Sexual Identity Based Subcultures in San Francisco, 1933-1979
(2005), Historic context statement prepared for the City and County of San Francisco Planning Department.
34
Alan Martinez and Mark Paez, Cultural Resources Survey for San Francisco, (Friends of 1800, 2004,
accessed 17 August 2009); available from http://www.friendsof1800.org/survey.html.
20

Francisco, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis; and information
pertaining to churches, presses, and buildings associated with lesbians in the 1970s and
LGBT people of color. Sexing the City concludes by suggesting further research into
four potential sub-districts – North Beach, the Tenderloin, the Castro, and Polk Gulch –
and defining the following six goals for future research: 1.) Survey potential sites
associated with the formation, expansion, and diversification of sexuality-based
subcultures; 2.) Evaluate the significance of sites relative to the Sexing the City context;
3.) Delineate boundaries for the four proposed sub-districts; 4.) Mark the most significant
sites with interpretive signage; 5.) Mark the four sub-districts with permanent interpretive
signage; and 6.) Evaluate existing SF Landmarks for potential associations with the
Sexing the City context statement.
35
The City of San Francisco is currently reviewing a
grant application to complete a historic resources survey of the Castro neighborhood, the
first attempt to define a historical sub-district associated with San Francisco’s LGBT
history. While the Sexing the City context statement is a substantial start, the City would
be better served if it were expanded and, as Scott says, used as a basis for deeper
research. In particular, the section on lesbian history is too narrow to tell the complete
story of the community, and significant gaps in the history exist.

In addition to the Sexing the City historic context statement, the City of San Francisco
adopted a second historic context statement that identified, but did not develop, a lesbian-
history theme: City within a City: Historic Context Statement for San Francisco’s
Mission District (City within a City), completed in 2007. The history of lesbians in the

35
Scott, 13-14.
21

Mission District is an integral chapter in the story of the neighborhood and City within a
City would not be complete without it. Yet, because lesbians settled in the Mission
District less than fifty years ago, the theme fell outside the neighborhood’s pre-1776-to-
1972 period of significance and was set aside with a handful of others for future study.
As the historic context statement explains, themes of the recent past are “difficult to
evaluate, since little time has passed with which to gain proper perspective of the period
and its property types.”
36
Though the City believes the significance of lesbians in the
Mission District in the 1970s is still too recent to evaluate, in 2008 Ipeleng Kgositsile, a
student in the Urban Studies program at San Francisco State University, completed the
following report as part of a senior seminar project in conjunction with the City and
County of San Francisco Planning Department: Documentation of Cultural Contexts in
San Francisco’s Mission District: Women and Lesbian Culture c. 1976-1994 (Women
and Lesbian Culture). The background on the lesbian community in Women and Lesbian
Culture is narrow, and it fails to mention the formation of the lesbian community in
1930s North Beach. Kgositsile concludes the report with a list of residential and
commercial buildings, cultural and social centers, and murals that she feels are significant
within the theme. Kgositsile’s report should be lauded as an effort by a local government
teaming with a university to teach historic preservation methods, but is still too
incomplete to be incorporated into the City within a City historic context statement, as the
introduction to the report suggests it will be. Indeed, it is best viewed as a basic resource

36
City and County of San Francisco Planning Department, City within a City: Historic Context Statement
for San Francisco’s Mission District (2007), 92, Historic context statement prepared for the City and
County of San Francisco Planning Department.
22

for a more comprehensive and systematic project that would benefit from professional
experience.

Architectural historian Michael Corbett recently completed a draft historic context
statement for the North Beach neighborhood, which is currently being reviewed by the
San Francisco Planning Department. The context statement was sponsored by the
Northeast San Francisco Conservancy, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of
parks, open spaces, and historical resources in Telegraph Hill, North Beach, Jackson
Square, Russian Hill, Chinatown, Nob Hill, and the Northeast Waterfront. Corbett’s
report, Historical Contexts for a Survey of North Beach (North Beach Contexts), is rich
and covers a broad swath of nearly 200 years of North Beach history. For the thirty years
of LGBT presence in the neighborhood, Corbett turned to Damon Scott’s Sexing the City
context statement; he felt that the information in Sexing the City sufficed and did not
pursue further research of his own.
37
Corbett inserted a full page of Scott’s text directly
into the North Beach context statement under the section titled “Places for Entertainment
and Vice.” From the standpoint of promoting an inclusive history, the North Beach
context statement would be even richer if gays and lesbians were mentioned in the
section on “Social Life” where Corbett traces the histories of Italians, Chinese, and
Bohemians – or, better yet, as Gail Dubrow points out, include gays and lesbians in a new
section titled “Civil Rights and Social Justice.”
38
Corbett’s definition of Bohemians as
those who “reject conventional social norms and seek to express new visions of life or

37
Michael Corbett, "Re: North Beach Context," Email response to Shayne Watson, 8 September 2009.
38
Dubrow.
23

society”
39
would easily apply to homosexuals. In the history of Bohemians, Corbett lists
a series of bars and clubs: among others, the Black Cat Café, 12 Adler Place, and Purple
Onion. What is not stated is that in these three businesses, Bohemians and homosexuals
mingled freely. The Black Cat, particularly after World War II, was one of the most
popular homosexual clubs in the city and featured nightly performances by the dashing
drag queen José Sarria. After the State Board of Equalization pulled the Black Cat’s
liquor license in 1949 for being a “hangout for persons of homosexual tendencies,” owner
Sol Stoumen fought back by appealing his case to the California Supreme Court and
ultimately winning. Stoumen v. Reilly essentially legalized homosexual assembly in
California.
40
The bar at 12 Adler Place was equally significant, especially in lesbian
history. Owned by the first lesbian bar owner in San Francisco, Tommy Vasu, 12 Adler
Place and Tommy’s Place (the bars backed up to each other and shared the same liquor
license) were raided on 8 September 1954 by the San Francisco Police Department and
Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board. The publicity surrounding the raid sparked a
fire storm of public scorn for homosexuality and ultimately forced Vasu to close down.
The raid of 12 Adler Place and Tommy’s marked a major turning point in the lesbian
community in North Beach, and it can be argued that this event was one of the catalysts
for the lesbians’ subsequent exodus from the neighborhood. Another place mentioned in
Corbett’s list of Bohemian clubs, the Purple Onion, was the home of Mona’s, San
Francisco’s first lesbian bar (ca. 1936 and 1938). Granted, the Purple Onion is famous in
its own right, but it was only one in a handful of Bohemian hot spots. The fact that the

39
Michael Corbett, Draft Historical Contexts for a Survey of North Beach (2009), 26, Historic context
statement prepared for the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy.
40
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003), 122.
24

same building once housed the city’s first lesbian bar is even more notable. To add these
or similar stories to the existing historic context statement would not only boost the
history of the neighborhood, but ensure that a more complete history of the LGBT
communities is being told.

While the Sexing the City historic context statement lists five designated Landmarks with
“significance to LGBT history”: Castro Theater (San Francisco Landmark #100);
McCormick House (San Francisco Landmark #203); Carmel Fallon Building (San
Francisco Landmark #223); Harvey Milk Residence/Castro Camera (San Francisco
Landmark #227); and the Jose Theater/Names Project Building (San Francisco Landmark
#241), three of these were designated for non-LGBT reasons.
41
The Carmel Fallon
Building was landmarked for its associations with Carmel Castro Lodge Fallon, a
member of a prominent early California family; its tie to LGBT history is that the
building currently houses the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. And the Castro
Theater and McCormick House are merely associated with LGBT history because of their
location in the heart of the Castro District. The Castro Theater is a magnificent example
of a single-screen movie theater designed by Timothy L. Pflueger, and it was landmarked
in 1976 as such. The McCormick house is a three-story Queen Anne building
constructed in 1902 and landmarked in 1999 for reasons unrelated to LGBT history. It is
possible to re-interpret these three landmarks in light of their associations with LGBT life
in the Castro District, but as of now they cannot be considered LGBT landmarks. So at

41
Scott, 21.
25

this time, of San Francisco’s 260 San Francisco Landmarks, only two were designated
specifically for a role in LGBT history.

The building that housed gay-rights activist Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera shop and
residence in the 1970s was the first San Francisco Landmark designated specifically for
its significance in LGBT history (designated in 2000). The Jose Theater/Names Project
Building (also known as the AIDS Memorial Quilt Building) was the second (designated
in 2004) – determined significant for its association with the origin of the Names Project
and AIDS Quilt, “an internationally significant project [started by activist Cleve Jones]
created as a political organizing tool and an expression of worldwide grief over the AIDS
epidemic.”
42
Efforts have been made to landmark the building on Montgomery Street in
which the Black Cat was located, but a nomination has yet to be approved. In May 2007
the City of San Francisco issued an official resolution authorizing the placement of a
plaque in the sidewalk in front of the Black Cat. Unanimously adopted by the Board of
Supervisors and signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, the resolution commends the Black
Cat Café for “welcom[ing] gays and lesbians during times of widespread prejudice and
oppression.”
43
Finally, although not an official San Francisco Landmark, a granite
memorial plaque is set in the sidewalk in front of the site of Gene Compton’s Cafeteria,
where in August 1966 transgender women fought back against police harassment and

42
City and County of San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission, Ordinance No. 92-04, (City and
County of San Francisco Planning Department, 2004, accessed 9 September 2009); available from
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/ordinances04/o0092-04.pdf.
43
City and County of San Francisco, Resolution No. 261-07, (City and County of San Francisco Board of
Supervisors, 2007, accessed 9 September 2009); available from
http://www.sfbos.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=21812.
26

started a riot. To mark the incident, which predated the Stonewall Riots by three years,
the plaque states: “Here marks the site of Gene Compton’s Cafeteria where…transgender
women and gay men stood up for their rights and fought against police brutality, poverty,
oppression and discrimination in the Tenderloin. We, the transgender, gay, lesbian and
bisexual community, are dedicating this plaque to these heroes of our civil rights
movement.”
44
To date, San Francisco recognizes no official or unofficial landmarks
associated with the city’s lesbian community.

CONCLUSION
As presented in the preceding paragraphs, while some progress has been made, LGBT
heritage is still mostly untapped by historic preservation agencies at the national, state,
and local levels. Just as women’s history has been overlooked in favor a male-centric
perspective, lesbian history is ignored by historic preservation agencies completely. In
2009 it is incomprehensible there is no building, site, or object associated with lesbian
history in the United States designated on any register or protected by any sort of
preservation program.

It is clear that historic preservation agencies at national, state, and local levels have made
some progress toward more democratic, inclusive programs, but the steps have been
small and far too intermittent in light of the great contributions LGBT people have made
to the history of the United States. Of the municipalities surveyed, preservation of LGBT
heritage was almost entirely the result of gay preservationists fighting to save their own

44
The plaque can be found on the sidewalk in front of the building at 101 Taylor Street, the former site of
Gene Compton’s Cafeteria (1954-1972).
27

history, and it seems that heterosexuals rarely begin the process on their own. LGBT
non-profit organizations have had the greatest impact on the preservation of LGBT sites,
including the following examples: OLGAD, the group that submitted the first nomination
of the Stonewall Inn; the Rainbow History Project in Washington D.C., the group that
nominated Dr. Franklin E. Kameny house for landmark status; and Friends of 1800, the
non-profit in San Francisco dedicated to the preservation of LGBT sites that authored and
funded the Sexing the City historic context statement. Though not an LGBT
organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (National Trust), the largest
non-profit historic preservation organization in the country, created a program in June
2009 to honor LGBT Pride month. Called Pride + Preservation, the program was formed
to “celebrat[e] the many contributions that LGBT preservationists and pioneers have
made to historic preservation, and the sometimes-overlooked spaces and places that tell
their fascinating stories.”
45
In that same press release announcing the unveiling of Pride
+ Preservation, National Trust president Richard Moe says, “The LGBT community has
been at the forefront of historic preservation in countless cities, towns and neighborhoods
throughout the country…'Pride & Preservation' celebrates the places and the people who
have made a difference.”
46
The program includes videos, articles, and blogs produced
and written by gay preservationists, including Will Fellows, author of A Passion to
Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture, and Paula Martinac, author of The Queerest
Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historical Sites.

45
National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Pride &
Preservation” Honors June – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Heritage Month, (accessed 26
October, 2009); available from http://www.preservationnation.org/about-us/press-center/press-
releases/2009/national-trust-for-historic-9.html.
46
Ibid.
28

Gay preservationists within municipal historic preservation agencies have also played an
important role. One of the best examples is Jay Shockley and Gale Harris at the New
York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, who have single-handedly worked to
secure a place for LGBT sites of significance on the local register. Additionally,
academics such as Gail Dubrow are pushing for preservation of LGBT heritage through
other venues. Finally, gay community members simply interested in researching and
commemorating their heritage have also produced change. A member of the Silver Lake
Community in Los Angeles, Jo Wes, authored the HCM nomination for the Black Cat,
currently Los Angeles’ only designated landmark related to LGBT history.

Unfortunately, if so-called gay meccas such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and West
Hollywood have so few designated LGBT landmarks (and zero lesbian landmarks), other
cities that are known to have rich LBGT histories are generations behind. As the section
in the following chapter on LGBT communities shows, Buffalo, New York; Washington,
District of Columbia; Chicago, Illinois; and Detroit and Flint, Michigan had vibrant
historic lesbian communities, yet those cities appear to be doing nothing with their
lesbian heritage.

In order to make progress, LGBT heritage preservation needs to be pursued not merely
by LGBT non-profits and LGBT staff members placed within governmental preservation
programs, but by heterosexuals who recognize the important contributions of LGBT
communities. Change must begin in the programs that oversee and drive historic
29

preservation policy in the United States – specifically the United States Department of
the Interior and National Park Service – and inclusivity in historic preservation should be
mandated.

30

CHAPTER 2:
HISTORY OF A LESBIAN COMMUNITY IN SAN FRANCISCO

INTRODUCTION
The night club that morphed into San Francisco’s first lesbian bar was born in a perfect
storm. Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment in December 1933,
local police lost control of liquor sales and distribution to a state-run tax agency, and
organized crime was forced to release its grip on San Francisco’s labor industries after a
decades-long run. In this wild and care-free post-Prohibition atmosphere, a twenty-three-
year-old Bohemian named Mona Sargent opened her first bar on the slope of Telegraph
Hill in North Beach – a bar that would soon evolve into a nerve center for lesbians in San
Francisco and the western half of the United States.

BACKGROUND
Lesbians existed long before the opening of Mona’s in 1933. In her seminal study, Odd
Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America,
historian Lillian Faderman traces the evolution of lesbian relationships. She names three
distinct periods of lesbianism prior to the 1930s. In the first period, which she dates to at
least the Renaissance, Faderman defines same-sex relationships as “romantic
friendships,” innocent, nurturing, and very normal connections between women that were
encouraged rather than frowned upon.
1
Romantic friendships reached a zenith in the late
nineteenth century when social advancements finally allowed women to go to college and
support themselves with their own careers. In 1880 there were forty-thousand American

1
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century
America, Between Men--between Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 11.
31

women enrolled in 153 colleges and universities, and fifty percent of those women who
graduated in the following decade did not marry.
2
While the number of unmarried
women who entered into same-sex relationships cannot be measured, as Faderman notes,
many female graduates wound up living together in “‘Boston marriages,’ as they were
sometimes called in the East where they were so common.”
3
One of the most famous
Boston marriages was between Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful,”
and fellow Wellesley professor Katharine Coman. The two lived together for twenty-five
years until Coman died in 1915. For female college graduates, same-sex relationships,
whether purely romantic or sexual, allowed women to pursue their own careers, a
freedom that would not be attainable in a nineteenth-century heterosexual marriage. But
because they “often felt adrift in a world that was not yet prepared to receive them,”
4
and
faced discrimination in the male-dominated workplace, female graduates turned to each
other and formed bonds over their common plights. Just as women living without men
began to enjoy relative freedom and success in the late nineteenth century, a storm was
brewing that would ultimately capsize any happiness lesbians had achieved and force
many of them to denounce their sexuality.

When sexologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries first began to write
about homosexuality as a medical condition, the public view of lesbianism underwent a
marked shift, which defined the beginning of a second, less romantic period of lesbianism
in the United States. The reason behind the sudden interest in lesbian sexuality,

2
Ibid., 13-14. See note 6 on page 311 for primary sources.
3
Ibid., 15.
4
Ibid., 21.
32

Faderman believes, was based in a “passion for taxonomy (the minute classification of
almost everything)” in medical circles of the second half of the nineteenth century.
5

Another reason was the rising interest in evolution and a moral society in which anyone
who did not “contribute to…the human race’s move forward” was considered
“degenerate,” or one with defective genes.
6
The first blow came in 1869 when a German
psychiatrist, Karl Westphal, attempted to describe female, same-sex love in medical
terms. Westphal’s subject was a thirty-five-year-old woman in a mental hospital who
was “profoundly disturbed” by her love for a young girl.
7
Westphal’s only explanation
for the woman’s hysteria was that she was a man trapped in a woman’s body. In 1886
German sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia Sexualis, one of
the first studies to categorize any sexual act not ending in pregnancy as a perversion,
including homosexuality. Though Westphal’s work and Psychopathia Sexualis were
intended for a scientific audience and did not reach the public sphere, they planted a seed
for additional research that would ultimately wind its way into the mainstream. One such
publication was British sexologist Havelock Ellis’ Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Ellis
suggests that, although he believed homosexuality is biological rather than pathological,
advancements such as education and feminist ideology were to blame for the increase in
lesbianism in the late nineteenth century.
8
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, in her essay
“Discourses of Sexuality and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870-1936,” writes that
American physicians and educators latched onto Ellis’ theories and launched a campaign

5
Ibid., 40.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., 41.
8
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Discourses of Sexuality and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870-1936," in
Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and
George Chauncey (New York: New American Library, 1989), 271.
33

against what she calls the New Woman, “a cohort of middle- and upper-middle-class
American women born between the late 1850s and the early 1900s, who were educated,
ambitious, and, most frequently, single…captain[s] of [their] own destiny.”
9
Lesbianism,
Ellis argues, “occurs with special frequency in women of high intelligence…”
10
A
contemporary of Ellis’, R. W. Shufeldt, went one step further when writing in the Pacific
Medical Journal in 1902, “Female boarding schools and colleges are the great breeding
grounds of artificial [acquired] homosexuality.”
11
Not only did these types of studies and
reports attack the progress women had made by the beginning of the twentieth century,
they blackened the lesbian relationships that had up until then been relatively innocent.
Ellis’ message and the campaign against the New Woman soon reached the masses, and
by the 1920s “charges of lesbianism had become a common way to discredit women
professionals, reformers, and educators – and the feminist political, reform, and
educational institutions they had founded.”
12

Prior to the research conducted by sexologists, women in same-sex relationships, whether
or not they were deliberately romantic, did not need to define their connections. They
were attached to the same sex and it was innocent and normal. When the sexologists
classified and attached pejoratives to their relationships, the innocence was lost. For the
first time in history, around the end of World War I, lesbians were forced to deny their
homosexuality and disassociate themselves from a public growing wary of their
existence. That these women became isolated and could bond over their shared

9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 272.
34

ostracism, Faderman believes, provided the impetus that drove the formation of the first
lesbian communities. “The sexologists virtually gave [lesbians] not only an identity and
vocabulary to describe themselves, but also an armor of moral innocence. Once they
knew there was a sizable minority like them, they could start looking for each other.”
13

The 1920s ushered in an era of sexual curiosity and a rebellious, anything-goes attitude
that aimed to buck whatever was left of the stodgy Victorian days. Bohemianism reigned
and its participants established enclaves in major cities throughout the country.
Homosexuality, now a common word, had become “chic” in its taboo and edginess,
especially for Bohemians who rejected popular theories of sexuality.
14
Indeed, two of the
main hubs of Bohemianism in the 1920s, New York’s Greenwich Village and San
Francisco’s North Beach, later transitioned almost seamlessly into homosexual meccas.
The 1920s also saw the emergence of lesbianism into popular culture, though the
representations of lesbians were often negative. Ernest Hemingway featured lesbian
characters in both The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). In 1928
Radclyffe Hall published the first openly lesbian work of fiction by a lesbian author, The
Well of Loneliness, which was extraordinarily affirming to many lesbians but scandalous
to everyone else. Three Broadway plays produced in the 1920s touched on lesbian
themes: Shalom Asch’s God of Vengeance (1923); Edouard Bourdet’s The Captive
(1926); and Sin of Sins (1926). All three were shut down after short runs for being too
obscene or “not fit for public presentation.”
15


13
Faderman, 59.
14
Ibid., 65.
15
Ibid., 66.
35

While the 1920s opened the door for lesbians to define themselves as part of a larger
community, and a growing population of progressive thinking led to an acceptance of
lesbianism in pockets throughout the country, the 1930s provided the stage on which the
lesbian story could play out. An examination of this and subsequent decades is included
in the following sections.

LESBIAN COMMUNITIES IN THE UNITED STATES
It is difficult to construct a clear picture of lesbian communities prior to the repeal of
Prohibition. Communities that did exist were little more than small clusters of women
scattered throughout the country, meeting clandestinely at private parties or underground
clubs. Until the appearance of lesbian bars in the mid-1930s, there were very few public
spaces to go where these women could find kindred spirits. Moreover, the public spaces
that did welcome lesbians would not have advertised that fact.

Salt Lake City, Utah
One of the earliest accounts of a lesbian cluster was documented by a woman who
conducted oral history interviews with two dozen of her lesbian friends living in Salt
Lake City in the 1920s.
16
Only known by the initials M.B., she hoped to publish the data
in an honor’s thesis, but was advised against it. Two professors at California State
University, Long Beach acquired the manuscript in the 1970s and published an analysis
in the journal Signs. The material provides a rich glimpse into the lives of lesbians who

16
Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, "Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s," Signs 2, no. 4 (Summer
1977).
36

kept their sexuality hidden from their staunchly conservative community. One
particularly insightful piece of information is that most of the women interviewed
“regarded San Francisco as a kind of mecca” and when they could visit were “somewhat
bolder in their social activities, including bar hopping.”
17
This statement is invaluable,
especially given that very little information exists to suggest that San Francisco was
friendly to lesbians as early as the 1920s.

New York
New York boasted some of the earliest known gay-friendly communities in the country.
In the 1920s Harlem was a predominantly African American community but “had a
particular appeal for whites who wanted to indulge in rebel sexuality.”
18
Though not
necessarily supporters of homosexuality, Harlem club owners looked the other way and
benefitted from the tourism dollars of whites who sought the wild and carefree energy of
the neighborhood. Conversely, African American lesbians who lived in the
neighborhood were tolerated and allowed to “socialize openly in their communities
instead of seeking out alien turf as white lesbians generally felt compelled to do.”
19

Faderman says the following clubs welcomed African American lesbians in the 1920s:
Clam House, Connie’s Inn, the Yeahman, the Garden of Joy, and Rockland Palace.

The Bohemian scene in 1920s Greenwich Village was equally friendly toward
homosexuals, and by the end of the decade, “all manner of homosexual retreats

17
Ibid.: 902.
18
Faderman, 68.
19
Ibid., 73.
37

flourished ...”
20
Tolerance of homosexuality aligned with the Bohemian trend of bucking
customs and provincial views of sexual expression. Bars that catered exclusively to
homosexuals existed in the 1920s – the Flower Pot, Jo’s, and Paul and Joe’s – but, as
Faderman points out, “there were not yet enough females to support all-women’s
clubs.”
21
The 1930s saw an influx of gay bars. In 1931 an article in the New York
Evening Graphic under the headline “Greenwich Village Sin Dives Lay Traps for
Innocent Girls” described a gay bar catering to lesbians in the Village:
I doubt if there are five places like it in America. Its patronage is composed
almost entirely of lisping boys and deep-voiced girls. They eat, drink, and
quarrel. They display their jealousies and occasionally claw at each other with
their nails. They talk loudly, scream, jibe at each other and order gin continually.
Always gin.
22

In Jess Stearn’s The Grapevine, he reported that the streets outside the Greenwich Village
lesbian bars were lined with license plates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, etc.
23
In one bar Stearn could “barely push [his] way
into the place. The bar itself was lined two and three deep with girls standing around
with drinks in their hands, watching every newcomer as she came in.”
24
In the late
1950s, the Daughters of Bilitis publication, the Ladder, featured a cover depicting two
women in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park, “a site known to readers of
lesbian paperbacks as a hub of activity in the lesbian world,” according to historian
Martin Meeker.
25
Meeker also describes the Village as “probably the key site of

20
Ibid., 83.
21
Ibid., 84.
22
Ibid., 107.
23
Jess Stearn, The Grapevine, 1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 170.
24
Ibid., 171.
25
Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 96.
38

lesbianism in the late 1950s,”
26
a distinction likely upheld by lesbian pulp novels, first
published in the early 1950s, that featured Greenwich Village bars as the only social
spaces in which lesbians could meet.

Women who frequented gay and lesbian bars in Buffalo reported not feeling comfortable
in Greenwich Village bars. “It just seemed there were an awful lot of straight people in
these bars…Tourists used to come in…Like, let’s watch the freaks, you know…I never
found that in Buffalo.”
27
Authors Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis researched
lesbian bar culture in white, working-class Buffalo in the 1930s and 1940s. In the many
oral histories they conducted, women noted the existence of bars in Buffalo in as early as
1932.
28
Galante’s on Wilkeson Street catered to both gay men and lesbians. The
Hillside, located in a farmhouse, also catered to men and women; it was in the Hillside
where one of the oral history narrators remembers seeing two men dance together for the
first time. In the 1940s Eddie’s Tavern was a popular hangout; one narrator said her
whole crowd of lesbian friends would take over the back room in Eddie’s and “dance
when women dancing [with other women] was rather frowned upon.”
29
Ralph Martin’s,
a gay and lesbian bar, was “central” to the lesbian scene in the 1940s.
30
So was Winters,
a small lesbian bar. Though not strictly gay bars, many lesbians spent time at the clubs
on Michigan Avenue (the “Avenue”) in the African American side of Buffalo and

26
Ibid., 116.
27
Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis, ""I Could Hardly Wait to Get Back to That Bar": Lesbian Bar
Culture in Buffalo in the 1930s and 1940s," in Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual
Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn (New York: Routledge, 1997), 50.
28
Ibid., 33.
29
Ibid., 34.
30
Ibid., 38.
39

“unquestionably felt at home there.”
31
Lesbians in Buffalo were equally active in the
private-party scene and often held gatherings in their homes that drew more than twenty
people.

In New York City, Tony Pastor’s and Ernie’s catered to lesbians in the 1930s.
32
In the
mid-1940s the 181 Club opened and featured “waiters who were butch lesbians in
tuxedos.”
33
Though it was a mixed club with a gay and tourist clientele, most patrons
“were committed to homosexuality and…came to be with other homosexuals.”
34

Cherry Grove on Fire Island in New York became a get-away for a small group of elite
lesbians beginning in 1936. “Under the wing – and in the shadows – of gay male power
and culture, an intrepid group of lesbian homeowners and renters and a larger number of
‘day-trippers’ established a fragile presence.”
35
Between 1936 and 1956, a small
restaurant and bar owned by a heterosexual, but tolerant, man – Duffy’s Hotel – was the
center for entertainment in Cherry Grove. Duffy’s was the only “public lesbian social
space and the only entrée for new women to see and be seen” and dance.
36
Cherry Grove
was a “very private gay country club” until the 1950s when Duffy’s was burned down
and replaced with a large hotel. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, the once secret hide-

31
Ibid., 36-37.
32
Faderman, 107.
33
Ibid., 127.
34
Ibid.
35
Esther Newton, "The "Fun Gay Ladies": Lesbians in Cherry Grove, 1936-1960," in Creating a Place for
Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn (New York: Routledge,
1997), 145.
36
Ibid., 150.
40

away experienced a “male and working-class influx.”
37
Consequently, the founding
lesbians pulled up stakes and left the island.

Washington, D.C.
The gay and lesbian community in Washington, D.C. began to flourish in the 1940s when
a large population of military personnel descended on the nation’s capital. “During
World War II,” author Brett Beemyn writes, “the number of bars with a large gay
clientele increased from five to about seven; by 1950 there were more than eleven, and in
1955, at least fifteen.”
38
However, none of these was an exclusively gay or lesbian
establishment; most of the restaurant-bars catering to homosexuals at night were attended
by heterosexuals during the day. The “principal” lesbian hangout in Washington was
called the Showboat, which Beemyn says catered to women between the mid-1930s until
the mid-1940s.
39
In the 1940s and early ‘50s, the restaurant-bar most popular with
lesbians was the Maystat (located halfway between the Mayflower and Statler Hotels),
which was later called the Jewel Box and finally, the Redskin Lounge.
40
One of
Beemyn’s oral history narrators remembered that the Redskin “featured a butch lesbian
performer singing and telling jokes,” though it was not exclusively lesbian.
41
Joanna’s,
another bar that drew a lesbian following, opened in the late 1950s.


37
Ibid., 156.
38
Brett Beemyn, "A Queer Capital: Race, Class, Gender, and the Changing Social Landscape of
Washtington's Gay Communities, 1940-1955," Ibid., 185.
39
Ibid., 186.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
41

Chicago, Illinois
Two early lesbian clubs were located in Chicago in the 1930s: the Roselle Club, run by
Eleanor Shelly, and the Twelve-Thirty Club, operated by Becky Blumfield. A newspaper
article from the mid-1930s with the headline “Shut Two Nightclubs with Girls Garbed as
Men” does not mention the specific bar names, but the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay
History Project believes the shuttered nightclubs were the Roselle and Twelve-Thirty
Clubs.
42
The article mentions that cross-dressing women were nightly patrons. “Such
places are a disgrace to the city,” a police major was quoted saying, “and they will not be
tolerated in Chicago. Every place of such character will be closed.”
43

Michigan
Detroit and Flint, Michigan both had early gay and lesbian communities. In her
dissertation on lesbian bars in Detroit, Roey Thorpe interviewed a group of lesbians who
frequented bars in the Detroit area. Thorpe concluded that there were “at least twenty”
bars in Detroit between 1939 and 1975 that catered almost exclusively to lesbian and
bisexual women.
44
Two bars stayed in business for more than twenty years, the
Sweetheart Bar and the Palais. Roey calls the Sweetheart Bar, opened in 1939, Detroit’s

42
Faderman, 329-330. Also see The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, ""She Even Chewed
Tobacco": A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America," in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the
Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey (New York: New
American Library, 1989).
43
Faderman.
44
Roey Thorpe, "The Changing Face of Lesbian Bars in Detroit, 1938-1965," in Creating a Place for
Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn (New York: Routledge,
1997).
42

first “lesbian bar,” yet her description of the space belies that statement.
45
Located in the
manufacturing district, the bar was divided into four distinct sections.
The front of the bar, the area closest to the entrance, seemed like other nearby
bars, where heterosexual men and women from the surrounding neighborhood
came to have a drink and socialize. At the back of this section stood a set of
double doors, behind which stretched a large space where the floor show, usually
a drag performance, alternated with time for dancing …[T]he middle section was
more or less for the bisexuals…men or women…Then [at the end] was the gays,
mostly girls but boys too, but mostly girls…The double doors provided a barrier
that need not be crossed by clientele uninterested in observing homosexuals and
bisexuals, and thus also provided a bit of privacy for those who frequented the
space behind the doors. This privacy meant that same-sex couples could dance
together, an unusual privilege even in gay bars of the time.
46

In 1949 the Palais (also known as “The Pit”) opened a few blocks north of the
Sweetheart. Similar to the Sweetheart Bar, the lesbians occupied the back of the Palais
while the “sightseers or the gay boys” stayed up front.
47
The Palais “employed big, tough
lesbians as bartenders, waiters, and bouncers” who were responsible for “asking
heterosexual men who stepped out of line to leave the bar, and resorting to physical
violence if they refused.”
48
The Palais stayed in business for twenty-five years. Detroit’s
first exclusively lesbian bar opened in 1952 and was called Fred’s Bar. Fred’s
maintained its exclusivity by having a deceptively dilapidated storefront and a hidden
rear entrance. “You’d go down this little alleyway and knock on the back door…so that
the people [in the] neighborhood…didn’t even know there was a bar there…”
49


45
Ibid., 167.
46
Ibid., 167-168.
47
Ibid., 170-171.
48
Ibid., 171.
49
Ibid., 175.
43

In the 1950s, according to author Tim Retzloff, Flint, Michigan developed a “bar-
centered gay community.”
50
With the Durant Hotel as its centerpiece, a cluster of gay
meeting places popped up within a three-block radius; the area was known as the “hub.”
There was the Purple Cow restaurant, the Loner Bar, Duffy’s, the College Inn, the
Golden Spike, and the State Bar. Though all of the bars in the “hub” were frequented by a
predominantly gay male population, it is interesting to note that the State Bar, the
“preeminent institution of gay life in Flint for…four decades,” was owned by a lesbian
named Melva Earhart, a former Fisher Body plant employee.
51
Many of Earhart’s
employees were also lesbian. After moving locations two times, Earhart’s State Bar
continued to be a success after her death in the 1980s, and is still open today.
52

Los Angeles, California
Moira Kenney, author of Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics,
attributes Los Angeles’ lack of a cohesive lesbian district to the area’s multiple centers of
activity. “The size and sprawl of the city necessitates a mobility of daily life that
scatters…culturally defined communities, reducing the possibilities of the kind of
geographic concentrations of community landmarks that characterize enclaves like
Greenwich Village or the Castro.”
53
Lesbians congregated in such disparate areas as
Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, and Long Beach. In the 1940s and ‘50s in Los
Angeles, lesbians congregated at the If Club, the Flamingo, Club Bayou, the Canyon

50
Tim Retzloff, "Cars and Bars: Assembling Gay Men in Postwar Flint, Michigan," Ibid., 229.
51
Ibid., 232.
52
Ibid., 242.
53
Moira Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics, American Subjects
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 5.
44

Club, and the Star Room. In Santa Monica, the Tropic Village was the place. The two
lesbian bars in the San Fernando Valley were Joanie Presents and Club Laurel; both
establishments were owned by women. Oral history narrator Sarah Anne Davis
remembers her experience in LA:
… I enrolled at USC in the Art Department and I had found the Tropic Village.
I'm not quite sure how I found it. And this place was the pits. It was jam packed
full of mostly gay women. And the women were doing a conga line all around the
place and I'd never seen anything like this before…And so I'd go to school in the
daytime, this very respectable university and attend classes and do my work. And
at night I'd go to the Tropic Village and hoot, holler and dance and have a good
time…It was a dingy place, a dance floor and booths and a bar. People used to
stand outside of the Tropic Village and complain about what a terrible place it
was and try to get people not to go in. But the cops never bothered the place while
I was there.
54

In Jess Stearn’s The Grapevine he reports that many lesbian bars, including one in Los
Angeles, were “fronts for more sinister activities. [The lesbian bar in Los Angeles] was a
well-known gathering spot for pimps, procurers, and drug addicts, preying on the lesbian
trade. And young hoods prowled the dark streets near the club attacking girls as they
emerged alone in the early hours.”
55
In another, less shady bar, Stearn says, “…the lights
were conventionally soft, the music low, and a charming chanteuse sang songs of love,
while pretty girls held hands under the table and male homosexuals laughed gaily at the
bar.”
56
Though it opened in 1973, much later than the first lesbian establishments, it is
worth noting that the Women’s Building located near downtown Los Angeles became
one of the main cultural hubs for lesbians in Southern California. The Women’s Building

54
JoAnn Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Sarah Anne Davis: Voices of the Oral History Project of
GLHSNC," Oral history interview stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in
San Francisco, 7 July 1980.
55
Stearn, 176.
56
Ibid., 177.
45

was opened by three feminist artists, Sheila de Bretteville, Arlene Raven, and Judy
Chicago, and remained an active community center until it closed in 1991.
57

SAN FRANCISCO
1800s to 1920
Many historians have attempted to answer the question of why a gay and lesbian
community developed in North Beach. The deepest and most comprehensive
examination to date is Nan Alamilla Boyd’s Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San
Francisco to 1965, published in 2003. The basic conclusion made by Boyd and many
before her is that North Beach’s gay community was merely an extension of the party
begun in the wanton, free-wheeling “Barbary Coast” days of mid-nineteenth century
Gold Rush San Francisco. Centered on the waterfront streets now roughly enveloped by
or abutting North Beach, the Barbary Coast was where San Franciscans (most of them
men) went to act on their id. The district was swollen with saloons, brothels, melodeons,
and dance halls, all known and feared for their licentiousness. The party peaked at the
turn of the century but came to a temporary end
when most of the Barbary Coast was destroyed by the
earthquake and fire of 1906. Taking advantage of the
clean slate and determined to wipe the area of its past,
the Barbary Coast was re-built “anew – and bigger –
at the same time that a renewed sense of civic pride
pressured police to quell violence on the waterfront

57
Kenney, 126.

Figure 2 Broadway Street in San
Francisco, 1910. (Photograph from
the San Francisco Public Library
Historical Photograph Collection,
Accession # AAB-2951.)
46

and clean up the city’s vice districts.”
58
The genuine bawdiness of the former Barbary
Coast never really returned, and the area became “something of a tourist strip, a
slummer’s paradise, with cleaned-up entertainments and variety shows designed to shock
rather than repulse.”
59
Despite the post-earthquake resurgence, the Barbary Coast was
finally shut down after a Progressive Era anti-vice campaign led by William Randolph
Hearst ended with the California Supreme Court upholding the Red-Light Abatement Act
of 1914.
60
By February 1917 the Barbary Coast “was deserted.”
61
Three years later,
Prohibition went into effect.

Bohemianism and Prohibition
Despite the stringent laws enacted during the previous decade, the 1920s proved to be
one of the most significant decades in North Beach history. The Bohemianism that
characterized the decade is said to have laid roots in the city with the founding of the
Bohemian Club in 1872 and the presence of literary luminaries like Robert Louis
Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, George Sterling, Jack London, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain.
62

Artists, writers, and free-thinkers found a headquarters in the Montgomery Block on the
600 block of Montgomery Street in North Beach. Completed in 1853, the four-story
brick building known as the “Monkey Block” became a landmark in San Francisco,
entertaining the avant-garde in Coppa’s restaurant on the ground floor where Bohemians

58
Nan Alamilla Boyd, ""Homos Invade S.F.!": San Francisco's History as a Wide-Open Town," in
Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn (New
York: Routledge, 1997), 79.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Kevin Starr, California: A History, 1st ed. (New York: Modern Library, 2005), 153-154.
47

could get “cheap food and wine…the essential ingredients for Bohemian life.”
63
North
Beach was also attractive to young men and women for its cheap rents and boarding
houses, not to mention the inexpensive studio spaces in the upper floors of the Monkey
Block.

Another favorite haunt of the Bohemians was the Black
Cat Café, opened after the earthquake and fire of 1906 at
Eddy and Mason Streets. The owner in 1913, Charles
Ridley, aimed to capitalize on the growing number of
artists and intellectuals in the city and dedicated himself to
making the Black Cat “the most popular place in
Bohemia.”
64
In an effort to do so, Ridley re-designed his
café to allow performances “startling for originality and
uniqueness” with waiters “costumed in carnival dress”
who promised to “outshine anything ever before
attempted…in San Francisco.”
65
The shows were an
immediate success and fulfilled Ridley’s dream of the Black Cat becoming at least one of
the most popular places in Bohemia; John Steinbeck, William Saroyan, Tallulah

63
Michael Corbett, Draft Historical Contexts for a Survey of North Beach (2009), 26, Historic context
statement prepared for the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy. Corbett cites James R. Smith, San
Francisco’s Lost Landmarks (Sanger, California: Word Dancer Press, 2005).
64
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003), 56. Boyd cites "Black Cat Cafe Will Celebrate Anniversary," San Francisco
Chronicle, 8 November 1913.
65
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 56. Boyd cites "Black Cat Cafe
Will Celebrate Anniversary."

Figure 3 The Black Cat Café,
n.d. (Photograph from the San
Francisco Public Library
Historical Photograph
Collection, Accession # AAB-
2597.)
48

Bankhead, and Bette Davis were frequent visitors.
66
Even more significant, the
performances at the Black Cat created an entertainment model that would be copied
twenty years later by the first gay and lesbian bars in San Francisco. In 1921, after years
of citations for being too popular, especially with disreputable women, the Black Cat lost
its dance permit and closed. It reopened in the 1930s after the repeal of Prohibition and
soon became one of the first hangouts for homosexuals in San Francisco.

Prohibition had very little impact on nightlife in North Beach in the 1920s. Speakeasies
were common, as was bootlegging. Nan Alamilla Boyd writes:
San Francisco’s pro-liquor interests were so concentrated that during Prohibition
the city gained the reputation as the “wettest city in the west”…The city flagrantly
defied [Prohibition]…So intense was the city’s commitment to drinking that San
Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in 1926 opposing the use of
city police to enforce “on any basis” the prohibition of alcohol.
67

Bootlegging operations were common in North Beach, as Italians in the neighborhood
were making wine in their basements long before
Prohibition. According to Boyd, “wine presses dried
peacefully in the street while fermenting vats of wine
sat in garages and basements.”
68
Speakeasies were
equally popular, and one in particular, Finocchio’s,
had an incalculable effect on the neighborhood.

66
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 56.
67
Ibid., 44-45. This is an important piece of information, as Boyd points out, because “the policing of
alcohol consumption, as it established itself in the early twentieth century, became the single most
important aspect of San Francisco’s queer public life.”
68
Ibid., 47.
Figure 4 Looking west on
Broadway Street from Kearny
Street, June 1929. Finocchio’s went
into the building on the right.
(Photograph from Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley.)
49

Finocchio’s opened as a speakeasy on Stockton Street during Prohibition. Started by a
heterosexual Italian immigrant named Joseph Finocchio, the club soon began hosting
performances by female impersonators or “drag queens.” As local lore testifies, the idea
for drag shows was sparked one night when a “well-oiled customer got up and sang in [a]
dazzling style that sounded exactly like Sophie Tucker. The crowd ate it up, and
Finocchio saw his future.”
69
Exoticism was just becoming vogue in the 1920s – in
architecture, art, and entertainment. Nightclubs boasting unusual themes and
performances were a huge hit, and Finocchio’s set the standard in San Francisco.
“Everyone came to see the show. And to drink,” said Joseph Finocchio.
70
The first
performances “featured a female impersonator paired with an ‘exotic dancer’ – a ‘hula
dancer’ or ‘young Chinese dancer.’”
71
In 1939 a guidebook said, “Wigged, gowned,
rouged, lipsticked, and mascara-ed, ten beautiful boys become singing, clowning,
ravishing women. In a revue of revues [sic]. It’s a Rabelousy rendezvous.”
72

Finocchio’s was significant not only for prefiguring the types of clubs to open in 1930s
San Francisco, but as San Francisco’s entrée into things blatantly queer.

1930s
Even in the 1930s San Francisco was a relatively hard-to-reach peninsula, only accessible
by land from the south or water from the north, west, and east. Broadway Street in North
Beach, the main artery of a soon-to-blossom gay mecca, was equally difficult to reach,

69
Ibid., 52. Boyd cites Jesse Hamlin, "What a Drag: Finocchio's to Close," San Francisco Chronicle, 4
November 1999.
70
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 52.
71
Ibid.
72
Jack Lord and Jenn Shaw, Where to Sin in San Francisco, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Book Cellar, 1939), 93.
50

hemmed in by Russian Hill to the west, Telegraph Hill to the north, and the San
Francisco Bay to the west. The famous columnist Herb Caen described Broadway as “a
wide and handsome avenue that…after starting out with great promise of easy sailing
from North Beach to Pacific Heights…comes to an abrupt and perplexed halt at the
eastern base of Russian Hill.”
73
North Beach was a somewhat distant enclave tucked
away from prying eyes in the far northeastern tip of the city. Architectural historian
Michael Corbett says North Beach has always considered itself “a separate world from
the rest of San Francisco” and called itself “Little City” early in its history.
74
The idea of
North Beach as a city within the city continued up into the 1950s when a tunnel was
finally bored under Russian Hill, creating a link between North Beach and the western
half of San Francisco. Progress in transportation in the 1930s made the San Francisco
peninsula infinitely more accessible. By 1939 both the Golden Gate and San Francisco-
Oakland (Bay) bridges were complete and a train line had been added to the latter,
resulting in easy access from the north and east.
75
The famous 49-Mile Scenic Drive,
unveiled in late 1938, directed drivers through the heart of North Beach. At the end of
the 1930s, access to San Francisco’s North Beach had never been easier.

San Francisco in the 1930s was rich in ethnic diversity and featured distinctive Irish,
Italian, German, Scandinavian, French, Russian, Mexican, African-American, and
Chinese neighborhoods.
76
Three of those enclaves either abutted or blended into the

73
Herb Caen and Max Yavno, The San Francisco Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948).
74
Corbett, 7.
75
Kevin Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 124.
76
Ibid., 135.
51

predominantly Italian North Beach: Chinatown to the southwest and a portion of
Broadway with French and Mexican businesses. Pacific Street, south of and parallel to
Broadway, was known as the International Settlement.

The city’s industry in the 1930s was concentrated on the waterfront, which was directly
connected to activity in North Beach. The port buzzed with such industrial heavies as
Crowley Maritime, Matson Lines, Schilling, Hills Brothers, Folgers, and MJB.
77
A large
produce district centered on Front and Clay Streets filled what is now Jackson Square
Park and served as the distribution headquarters for any fruits and vegetables coming into
and leaving the city.

By the late 1930s, Broadway Street was a colorful mix of
blue-collar industries near the Embarcadero and
restaurants, hotels, and clubs farther west. The industrial,
eastern side of Broadway teemed with the following
businesses: Pacific Coast Paper Mills, B & O and
Continental Nut Corporations, D.F. De Bernardi &
Company Olive Oils, Cariani Sausage Factory, and the
American Salt Company.
78
Hotels and restaurants were
equally prevalent on Broadway. In 1938 there were
approximately thirty-three restaurants and clubs and

77
Ibid., 118.
78
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, San Francisco, Colma and Daly City Street Address
Telephone Directory (San Francisco: 1938).

Figure 5 Spanish-themed
businesses on Broadway, ca.
1950s. (Photograph from the
San Francisco Public Library
History Center.)
52

eighteen hotels squeezed into the eight-block stretch between the Embarcadero and
Mason Street. With relatively low turnover in the buildings, many of the businesses and
hotels had been in continuous operation since the 1920s and continued in service
until at least the late 1940s. Italian surnames dominated the scene, including the
following long-term occupants: Parodi Wholesale Grocer; Rigoletto Café; M. Rebizzo &
Co.; Parenti’s Market; and Campidoglio Social Club.
79
Though predominantly Italian-
themed, there was a cluster of Swiss- and French-named businesses located between the
500 and 800 blocks of Broadway, including the Swiss American and Pyreneese Hotels,
the Hotel des Alpes, Hotel de France, and the Parisian Baking Company.
80
The 600 to
800 blocks of Broadway featured Mexican- or Spanish-themed businesses: Hotels
Espanol, Cadez, and de Espana; a Spanish Book and Music Store; La Mexican Groceries;
and Progresso Mexican Restaurant.
81
The international feel of this section of Broadway
and the adjacent Chinatown and Little Italy neighborhoods made this area a bustling hub
of activity and a huge draw for locals and tourists alike.

The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 was a momentous event for gay communities
throughout the country, but doubly for San Francisco. In 1933 Californians voted to
place control of liquor distribution in the hands of the state-run Board of Equalization;
whereas, in most states, liquor was controlled by local governments.
82
The 1933 Liquor
Control Act and 1935 Alcoholic Beverage Control Act “prohibited local liquor control,”

79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid.
82
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 48.
53

thereby making it nearly impossible to enforce the law at the city level.
83
Furthermore,
the laws created a loophole for nightclubs since it was illegal to sell hard liquor anywhere
that did not offer some form of entertainment. As a result, writes Nan Alamilla Boyd:
the 1930s saw the mushrooming of smaller entertainment venues like
nightclubs…By staging cheap entertainment, nightclubs capitalized on the patrons
once held by saloons, and their small size encouraged a specialized clientele.
Nightclubs became the terrain of the owner-entrepreneur…The intimate nature of
nightclubs also made the surveillance of activities inside the bar difficult…
84

A second factor that contributed to the appearance of gay bars in San Francisco after
Prohibition was the “disabling of organized crime.”
85
In cities such as New York, many
gay and lesbian bars were owned and operated by organized crime groups who sought to
make a profit off the growing demand for homosexual bars. Through the 1920s all
industries, including service, were controlled by unions, which were essentially
controlled by corrupt politicians. This was finally put to a halt after a Progressive Era
San Francisco mayor, “Sunny” Jim Rolph, “drove a wedge in the relationship between
crime and labor.”
86
The final blow came when the Internal Revenue Service sponsored
an investigation into vice economy in San Francisco. The Atherton Report, authored by
FBI agent Edwin N. Atherton and published in 1935, showed that revenue received from
vice and graft “reached as high as five million dollars a year – with graft payoffs at
almost one million dollars a year.”
87
San Franciscans and city officials who were
horrified by the report and tired of being in the grip of organized crime responded, “and
the prosecution of crime bosses began in earnest…As a result, organized crime was

83
Ibid.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid., 52.
86
Ibid., 51.
87
Ibid.
54

temporarily weakened.”
88
Beginning in the early 1930s, night life blossomed, legally, in
San Francisco.

“San Francisco was a fun town [after the repeal of Prohibition],” writes California
historian Kevin Starr. Wild, bacchanal, and completely unselfconscious, the city pulsated
in the exotic restaurants and clubs that appeared after the repeal of Prohibition. Topping
the list in the late 1930s were Charlie Low’s Forbidden City in Chinatown with its
“Chinese chorus girls”; Timothy Pflueger’s Art Deco cabaret at the Bal Tabarin on
Columbus; Izzy Gomez’s “upstairs joint” at 848 Pacific where patrons were encouraged
to dance on the table tops; Bimbo’s 365 Club, “Home of the girl in the fishbowl”; the Top
of the Mark penthouse bar at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, also designed by Pflueger; and,
across the Bay, Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian-themed restaurant and bar that competed
with Don the Beachcomber.”
89

North Beach had been a must-see for tourists since the Barbary Coast days, but in the
1930s it exploded. San Francisco was notorious for giving visitors a glimpse into
society’s underbelly, and that is exactly what drew many of them in the first place. A
guidebook titled Where to Sin in San Francisco, published in 1939, told tourists just
where they had to go to find it.
Today, the Barbary Coast is a gaudy memory, its gilt fast peeling. Sin has spread
out and taken over the whole City…Sin in San Francisco, we’re glad to warn you,
lives up to its terrific tradition. It’s very, very, very, very bad…A word of hard-

88
Ibid., 52.
89
Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s, 140.
55

learned advice: don’t over-sin. It takes too much out of you. And do all your
sinning at night.”
90

For sinners who were feeling “mood exotic,” they were directed to the Twin Dragon on
Waverly Place in Chinatown. For a “mood dictatorial,” Top of the Mark. For the
“swashbuckling” or “tropical” crowd, Trader Vic’s in
Oakland or The Beachcomber on Telegraph Hill. And
finally, tourists seeking the “mood mauve” or “boy-girls,”
were told to go to Mona’s.
91
Illustrated by a sketch of two
women dressed as men, the entry on Mona’s reads: “The
little girl waitresses look like boys. The little-girls-who-
sing-sweet-songs look like boys. And many of the little
girl customers look like boys. Murals of naked girls look
like girls…with a slightly tart flavor. There’s a wandering
artist in a green beret who’ll sketch you for a buck. And
Mona. Herself.”
92
The number of tourists who visited San Francisco and partook in the
sin side of the city reached a peak in 1940. To honor the completion of the Golden Gate
and San Francisco-Oakland bridges, San Francisco hosted the Golden Gate International
Exposition on Treasure Island. Seventeen-million visitors attended the fair,
93
bringing in
more tourists at the end of the 1930s than San Francisco had ever seen. Even the
Exposition could not escape an ignoble reputation and was listed in Where to Sin in San

90
Lord and Shaw, 7, 15. Nan Allamilla Boyd mentions the book in Wide Open Town.
91
All entries from Ibid., 35-57.
92
Ibid., 75.
93
Online Archive of California, Guide to the Golden Gate International Exposition Records, 1936-1939,
(23 September 2009 accessed); available from http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2d5n98c4.

Figure 6 Advertisement for
Mona’s 440 Club, 1939.
(From Jack Lord and Jenn
Shaw’s Where to Sin in San
Francisco.)
56

Francisco for tourists interested in the “mood super-sinful.” The Exposition’s “Gayway”
featured the Dnude Ranch where half-naked “cow-babes” wore “boots, but no saddles.”
94

Journalist Herb Caen summed up the 1930s with this:
The Great Depression was in full cry, but San Francisco was never more exciting.
The mindless city stayed up all night, partying, from the penthouses of Nob Hill,
where Socialite Anita Howard reigned, down to the Black Cat, over to
Finocchio’s and on to Mona’s, a lesbian joint rivaling anything in Paris.
Characters were king-sized: [William Randolph] Hearst striding into his flagship
building at Third and Market, Bill Saroyan betting wildly on the horses across the
street in Opera Alley, Editor Paul Smith entertaining Noel Coward and Gertie
Lawrence in his two-floor Telegraph Hill flat, Harry Bridges shaking dice in the
back room at Bimbo’s. And a lot of people ended their evenings at Sally
Stanford’s [brothel], where the champagne flowed all night and Sally herself
would whip up a batch of dawnside eggs for this guy from Pebble Beach, that one
from the Pacific-Union Club, and the City Hall playboy, who would be right
down.
95

Nearly all of the sites mentioned by Caen were in North Beach. It was in this
environment that San Francisco’s first lesbian bar was formed.

Mona’s: San Francisco’s First Lesbian Bar
Mona (Sargent) Hood did not intend for her bar to become the
first lesbian bar in San Francisco. It was simply a chance
encounter with a troubled young woman, combined with
Mona’s naturally magnanimous spirit that transformed a
heterosexual space into a wildly popular lesbian hub. Mona was

94
Lord and Shaw, 89.
95
Herb Caen, "Madame Queen," San Francisco Chronicle, February 1982.

Figure 7 Mona Hood in
1991 holding a
photograph of herself
from the 1940s. (From
Nan Alamilla Boyd’s
Wide Open Town.)
57

born Mona Nystrom in Santa Rosa, California in 1910.
96
She joined San Francisco’s
Bohemian crowd in ca. 1928 when she moved into a studio in the Monkey Block. Her
studio was spartan, with only a hot plate, chair, and closet. At some point she married
Jimmie Sargent, a semi-famous former football player at the University of California,
Berkeley. In 1933 a man who was friends with Jimmie suggested that Mona open a bar
and offered $500 to fund it. In an oral history interview with Nan Alamilla Boyd, Mona
describes the offer: “He knew that I knew, from living in the Monkey Block, all kinds of
kids, and artists, and writers…and he said, ‘Mona knows everybody’…He was always
just a nice person…and he thought that since things were legal [after Prohibition]…it
would be ‘cute’ [to start a bar].”
97
Mona’s husband wanted to call it “Jim Sargent’s” and
the investor said, “No. You go play football. We’re callin’ it Mona’s.”
98

Mona opened her first bar at the age of twenty-three at 431 Union Street on the
southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill in North Beach, three blocks north of Broadway.
The small space previously housed a bakery, so Mona was able to easily serve free food
for happy hours. For the first several months “it was beer and wine…and then it was
whiskey,”
99
which means that Mona must have had some form of entertainment – likely a
piano player, which she had at subsequent bars. There was a mural of a naked woman
coming out of the fireplace and a sailor cavorting with a Japanese woman behind the bar.
The scene was intimate and patrons were mostly artist friends of Mona. After two years

96
Unless noted, all personal information about Mona Hood derives from the following: Nan Alamilla
Boyd, "Mona (Sargent) Hood Oral History Interview," Oral history interview recorded on two tapes and
stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco, 25 July 1992.
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
58

at the Union Street location, neighbors of the bar asked Mona to move. Though many
sources mistakenly attribute the Union Street address as the first lesbian bar in San
Francisco, it is relatively clear from Mona’s oral history interview with Boyd that
lesbians first appeared at Mona’s second establishment.

Mona’s second club was located in a basement at 140
Columbus Avenue, a block-and-a-half south of
Broadway. She moved there in 1935 with her husband
and a bartender. The “old place hadn’t been used in
years,” she said. “It had a nice, long bar, a few
booths.”
100
They decorated the space with barrels and
sawdust, which is how it came to be known by patrons as
Mona’s Barrel House. It was exactly what she wanted – “just a hangout for artists and
writers.”
101
Mona recalls that many young women mingled freely with the Bohemians,
though she “didn’t know about lesbians,” only that “they were called ‘lady lovers.’”
102

The “little tomboy girls” came with the “arty crowd,” she said.
103
On one particularly
fateful night, a young lesbian hanging out in the club went to Mona with a problem.
According to Mona, “She cried and told me [she was a lesbian] and said her folks shut
the door in her face.”
104
The only thing Mona could think to do was offer her a waitress
job – the first in a long string of lesbian waitresses hired by Mona. Mona’s quickly

100
Ibid.
101
Ibid.
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid.
104
Ibid.

Figure 8 Building at 140
Columbus, 2009. Mona’s was
under the awning at the lower
left. (Photograph by Shayne
Watson.)
59

became famous for its male-impersonating waitresses. The club was packed every night.
When asked how it happened, Mona replied:
We had a piano player that always played for some entertainment…Waitresses
started getting up and singing…[I called them] ‘singin’ waitresses’…It just
happened…I wasn’t a smart enough businesswoman to think, ‘Oh boy, I’ll have
gay people [as waitresses].’ [Mona’s] was successful because I was the first
[lesbian bar]…[Women] would come up from Los Angeles, there weren’t any
there then. And celebrities would come in. And things just kind of fell in. It
wasn’t that I was so clever. It just slowly evolved.
105

Though it is unclear when lesbians first felt comfortable to settle in North Beach, one oral
history narrator, Reba Hudson, said: “The Bohemians were always very tolerant of
anyone and everyone. [Lesbians] just gravitated to [North Beach] and were accepted in
[North Beach]. It was the only place they were accepted. North Beach has always had
that reputation.”
106
Mona said, “We’re not offended at how the other fellow lives. That’s
where I was a true Bohemian.”
107
When Reba Hudson arrived in North Beach she
thought it was “the most exciting, vital neighborhood in [San Francisco].”
108
Italians,
gays, and Bohemians lived side by side, but there was “no prejudice, no nothing…a
working example of democracy…truly European,” she said.
109
“They didn’t care if you
were gay or not…Oh, it was exciting…we’d just sit around and shine our shoes and prep
our shirts and look forward to Friday and Saturday night. Always had a ball. Wind up
going to somebody’s house after 2 o’clock. Lot of parties. Lots of good times.”
110
As
more lesbian bars appeared, more lesbians moved to North Beach. Long-time resident

105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
108
Roberta (last name not given), "Oral History Interview with Reba Hudson: Voices of the Oral History
Project of GLHSNC," Oral history interview with Reba Hudson stored at the San Francisco GLBT
Historical Society, 31 October 1922.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid.
60

Charlotte Coleman said, “All the gay bars were in [North Beach in the 1950s]…and all
the gays lived on Telegraph Hill.”
111
She called it a “little bit” of a gay neighborhood.
Many lesbians purportedly lived in the apartment building across from Miss Smith’s Tea
Room (a lesbian bar on Grant Street in the 1950s), above the Savoy Tivoli café and bar
on Grant, and also over the space that housed the Paper Doll on Union Street (a gay and
lesbian bar in the 1950s).
112

Mona stayed at 140 Columbus until 1938.
113
She
contracted tuberculosis and left the bar in her husband’s
hands while she recovered for eleven months. When she
returned, she found that Jimmie had not paid the bills and
was cheating on her. She promptly divorced him and
decided to move the bar to 440 Broadway, where it
remained until 1948.

Mona’s 440 Club, as the nightclub on Broadway was known, was the only lesbian
establishment in San Francisco until after World War II.

111
Paul Gabriel, "Oral History Interview with Charlotte Coleman: Voices of the Oral History Project of
GLHSNC," Oral history interview stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in
San Francisco, 1997.
112
Roberta (last name not given).
113
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.

Figure 9 Mona’s 440 Club,
ca. 1945. (Photograph from
Nan Alamilla Boyd’s Wide
Open Town.)
61

The space was owned by a man named Charlie Murray
who was going broke and called Mona to partner with
him. All he really wanted, according to Mona, was to
have her name on the marquee. She agreed to partner
with him but insisted that the space be re-decorated to
“please [her].”
114
The result was a “cavernous” space
with an “enormous, big stage” at one end, a bar at the
other, and a lot of seating in between, remembers oral
history narrator Reba Hudson.
115
Kevin Starr says
there were “naked ladies painted on the walls.”
116
The marquee on the façade read
“Where girls will be boys" in big, black letters, “So anyone would know [walking] by
what kind of club it was.”
117

Mona’s 440 Club was famous for its entertainment. It
featured male-impersonating waitresses, but also
performances by lesbian entertainers. One of the most
popular performers was Gladys Bentley, described
(pejoratively) in a 1942 advertisement as “America’s
Greatest Sepia Piano Artist…the Brown Bomber of

114
Boyd, "Mona (Sargent) Hood Oral History Interview."
115
JoAnn Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of
GLHSNC," Oral history interview stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in
San Francisco, 22 October 1981.
116
Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s, 141.
117
Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of GLHSNC."

Figure 10 Aerial view of 440
Broadway showing Mona’s 440
Club footprint. (Aerial
photograph from Google.com.)

Figure 11 Advertisement for
Mona’s 440 Club, 1942. (From
San Francisco Life.)
62

Sophisticated Songs.” Bentley joined Mona after a successful career performing in
Harlem in the 1920s and ‘30s. At Mona’s, “Bentley packed her 250 pound frame into a
tuxedo, flirted with women in the audience, and dedicated songs to her lesbian lover.”
118

Articles in the Los Angeles Times in 1944, 1945, 1951, and 1956 show that Bentley was
performing at the Swanee Inn, Frank Mell’s Hollywood Mad House, The Jade, Larry
Potter’s Supper Club, and Nu-Paradise in Los Angeles. Other famous male-
impersonating singers at Mona’s 440 Club included Jimmy Reynard, “direct from
Hollywood’s famous Café International”; Kay Scott, “Gay Troubadour of Song”; Jan
Jansen, the only performer who dressed as a woman; and a woman who went by the
name of “Big Mike.”
119
Roberta Bobba describes the scene:
There were approximately six or seven women. With the exception of one, they
all wore men's clothes. They wore tuxedos, as a matter of fact. [Jimmy Reynard
was the headliner.] She was very handsome – maybe it was the tuxedo – and sang
ballads and the whole house was in love with her all the time. [Kay Scott sang]
Rabelaisian ditties…dirty ditties that people chimed in on and sang…They were
all so great looking to me. The whole atmosphere, it was loud, noisy, raucous, but
well-run. You could hold hands under the table but nothing else. No dancing was
allowed that I remember. There might have been dancing on Sundays but I could
never make it that day. A lot of tourists came in too and a lot of sailors would
come in, mostly to look at the girls. The house ran it pretty well. It was a behaved
house.
120

Reba Hudson and her friends were blown away by their first night at Mona’s – “They
were females…dressed in dinner clothes and the best looking dykes you’d ever seen in
your life, wearing these beautifully tailored tuxes…God, it just boggled our minds!” –

118
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 76.
119
Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of GLHSNC."
120
Ibid.
63

and they immediately felt at home.
121
“Everybody was really nice and sort of took us
under their wing…”
122

The piano player at Mona’s was a gay
man, but the bartenders were always
heterosexual. “I had straight
bartenders because it was
smarter…for all the tourists…and
then for the crowd of my own friends.
They wouldn’t have been quite
comfortable with [a] gay
bartender.”
123
Similar to most gay
bars throughout the country, Mona’s
440 Club proved to be a boon for
tourism, though Mona insisted the tourists made up only one-third of her clientele. “It
was one-third gay, one-third our regular crowd [her friends], and one-third tourists,”
though Mona balked at the idea that her business survived on tourism alone.
124
When the
Gray Line bus tour started dropping off tourists at her club she said, “You can
come in if you want, but there’s just standing-room only…I don’t need [your
business].”
125
Conversely, Finocchio’s business thrived as an official stop on the Gray

121
Roberta (last name not given).
122
Ibid.
123
Boyd, "Mona (Sargent) Hood Oral History Interview."
124
Ibid.
125
Ibid.

Figure 12 Patrons and performers in Mona’s 440
Club, ca. 1945. (From Nan Alamilla Boyd’s Wide
Open Town.)
64

Line “Nightclub Tour” for over fifty years, taking in 75,000 tourists a year in 1988
alone.
126
Owner of the club, Joseph Finocchio, admitted, "99 percent of [my customers]
are straight.”
127

Mona sold her share of Mona’s 440 Club to Charlie Murray in the mid-1940s, but the
club continued to operate under her name until 1948. Beginning in 1941, a lesbian
named Babe Scott took over as manager. Despite the fact that Mona was in the business
to make money – creating a safe place for lesbians to congregate was secondary – she
appeared to understand the impact her club had on the lesbian community. In her oral
history interview, she recalled a night when two young women looked at her with tears in
their eyes and said, “Ruby and I thought we were the only two people in the world that
were like this, and we didn’t know what to do.”
128
Mona continued, “The lesbians were
in their own crowd, having a good time. They had found a place [in the midst of the
Bohemians] and people that understood them. [No one said], ‘Get out of here, you
Goddamn lez’.’”
129


126
Grey Line Tours, "San Francisco Sightseeing: Nightclub Tours," (1985). Also see "Finocchio's," San
Francisco Chronicle, 26 October 1988.
127
"Finocchio's 45 Years of Guys Dolled up as Women," San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, 12 July
1981.
128
Boyd, "Mona (Sargent) Hood Oral History Interview."
129
Ibid.
65

1940s
World War II flooded the Bay
Area population with more
men and women than ever
before seen. Between
December 1941 and August
1945, 1,647,174 passengers –
“90 percent of them Army
personnel, the rest Navy,
civilians, American Red Cross,
and Allied forces”
130
–
embarked from San Francisco.
131
“Just about every man, woman, weapon, bullet,
torpedo, vehicle, foodstuff, medical supply, and piece of mail intended for the Pacific
passed through the San Francisco Port of Embarkation.”
132
Nearly 250,000 men and
women who moved to San Francisco beginning in 1942 were employed by war efforts.
133

Navy ship-repair facilities were located at Hunters Point in San Francisco and Mare
Island in the North Bay. In 1942 Mare Island was the largest of its kind in the country
and employed ten thousand civilians.
134
The Kaiser and Marinship ship-building
facilities in Richmond and Sausalito put more women to work than ever before in history,
giving them an “unprecedented boost in their income and self-esteem”; forty percent of

130
Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 84.
131
Ibid., 74.
132
Ibid., 78.
133
Ibid., 80.
134
Ibid., 76.

Figure 13 Servicewomen in the Women’s Army Corps
(WACs), n.d. (Photographs from the World War II and
Anonymous Lesbian Photograph Collections at the Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society in San
Francisco.)
66

Marinship’s work force was female.
135
In 1943 a San Francisco News article reported,
“The majority of women workers at Marinship, when queried by The Marin-er reporter,
said emphatically NO when asked if they’d go back to housekeeping when peace comes
again.”
136
However, when the war ended in 1945, 1.32 million American women lost
their war-related jobs. Still, having meaningful work (for the first time in their lives, for
many of them) and the disruption of normal familial patterns created solidarity between
large groups of women heretofore unseen. Many women stayed in the Bay Area after the
war.

World War II had a profound impact on nightlife in
San Francisco. Nightlife entertainment in the 1940s,
especially in North Beach, was driven by a “desire for
amusement, fantasy, humor, and escape.”
137
Big-
band orchestras reigned, and “all of America was
dancing.”
138
The nation fell in love with the jitterbug,
“wild, frenetic…anti-authoritarian…a dance that by
its very nature emphasized personal freedom and autonomy” and was “immediately
banned as subversive” in Nazi Germany.
139
The war, according to a 1942 issue of
Variety noted by historian Allan Berube in Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay
Men and Women in World War Two, revived the “‘devil-may-care spirit of the Barbary

135
Ibid., 157.
136
"Will Women Quit Job after War?," San Francisco News, 18 May 1943.
137
Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950, 8.
138
Ibid.
139
Ibid., 15.

Figure 14 Servicewomen and others
in an unknown gay bar in San
Francisco, n.d. (Photograph from
the World War II Collection, Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender
Historical Society.)
67

Coast days,’ which made San Francisco again into a ‘pleasure-seeking town’ full of ‘navy
and army boys’ [and women] looking for a good time.”
140
Restaurants and nightclubs
continued to push the envelope of convention, and were always full. The popular sites
for hetero- and homosexuals were Solari’s on Maiden Lane; Julius’ Castle, perched
above the Bay on Telegraph Hill; the Cliff House at Ocean Beach; Omar Khayyam’s in
Union Square; the Top of the Mark; Patent Leather Lounge in the St. Francis Hotel; the
Cirque Room in the Fairmont; the Persian Room and the Starlite Roof on the top floor of
the Sir Francis Drake Hotel; the Redwood Room at the Clift Hotel; the Pied Piper and
Happy Valley Bars at the Palace Hotel; and Slapsie Maxie’s on O’Farrell
141
where a
young lesbian named Reba Hudson was told by a waitress that she would fit in better at
Mona’s. Other exotic-sounding restaurants and clubs were the Zombie Village in
Oakland; Balalaika on Bush for Russian fare; the Peacock Court at the Mark Hopkins
Hotel; Kubla Khan’s on Grant; the Hurricane and its “native Hawaiian revues and
tropical storm effects” on Pacific; the Bamboo Hut at 473 Broadway, the Lion’s Den,
“Chinatown’s exotic underground nite club”; and the Gay Nineties Club in the
International Settlement, where a parrot pecked open a dancer’s sarong.
142
For the
lesbians, Mona’s continued to serve as the main hub during the war, but gay male


140
Allan Berube, Coming out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New
York: Free Press, 1990), 125. Also: "Barbary Coast Days Recalled by Frisco Boom," Variety, 4 November
1942.
141
Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950, 83.
142
"No Title," San Francisco Life, October 1945. Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace,
1940-1950, 82.
68

establishments could be found in North Beach, the Tenderloin, Financial District,
International Settlement, and the Embarcadero. Historian Kevin Starr writes:
Gay servicemen…might try the Black Cat Café near the International Settlement
or Li-Po’s in Chinatown, or the Silver Rail or Silver Dollar in the Tenderloin, or
Techau’s Cocktail Lounge near Union Square…or Finnochio’s in North Beach,
with its famed female impersonators and drag chorus line. The butch set favored
the Old Crow in the Tenderloin or the Silver Rail, where blue-collar civilians and
their military counterparts could talk tough together. Jack’s Baths, also in the
Tenderloin, catered to a down-to-basics crowd, while the nearby YMCA Hotel on
Golden Gate Avenue offered more subtle opportunities for erotic adventure.
Further up the social ladder, the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill maintained an even
more discreet gay scene that floated in a much larger sea of heterosexuality.
143

An advertisement in 1945 describes Techau’s on Powell Street:
“It’s smart, it’s gay, it’s intimate…it’s a favorite with knowing San Franciscans.”
144
In
addition to Mona’s, Kevin Starr notes, “Another favored lesbian place was the Rickshaw
in Chinatown.”
145

Throughout the war, the military went to great lengths to control the burgeoning
population of servicemen and –women in San Francisco. In 1941 the United States
Congress passed the May Act, which allowed military police to oversee the activity of
military personnel near military bases and “shut down places that catered to prostitutes
and vice.”
146
Army and Navy personnel were easy to detect because they were required
to wear uniforms on their leaves. Between 1942 and 1943, in a series of “military-
inspired antivice crackdowns,” sixty-three nightclubs lost their liquor licenses and
twenty-five others were cited, “including at least three popular gay nightspots –

143
Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950, 82.
144
"Techau," San Francisco Life, October 1945, 3.
145
Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950, 82.
146
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 113.
69

Finocchio’s, the Black Cat Café, and the Top of the Mark.”
147
The Black Cat, which
became a predominantly homosexual club in the 1940s, “went immediately on the Off
Limits list of the Military Police and Shore Patrol.”
148
Finnochio’s off-limits status
seemed to ebb and flow. “There’s a bit of confusion, we understand, as to whether
Finnochio’s is ‘out o’ bounds.’ May we state that it is definitely NOT,” concluded a
newspaper article in May 1943.
149
That same month, the Rickshaw was one of “six or
seven” gay bars raided and closed, according to Allan Berube. During the raid, “a couple
of lesbians [who] protested …were beaten up.”
150
In a constant effort to maintain order
and decency within the ranks, “military police and the Shore Patrol passed to and fro in
open jeeps or made sweeps through suspected establishments.”
151
Anyone who got out of
hand was thrown in the brig. “The constant threat of raids, arrests, and police
surveillance,” writes Berube, “sent a clear message to gay male and lesbian GIs that the
military and local governments did not want them to associate with each other in public
and even in private.”
152
In a final blow to nightclubs, beginning in February 1945, the
whole nation went dark at midnight as War Mobilization Director James F. Byrne
instated a curfew on all bars and cabarets and any other “places of public amusement.”
153

Still, somehow, even during a period of such strict enforcements, San Francisco’s gay
scene flourished. Between 1946 and 1960, over twenty clubs opened that catered to

147
Berube, 125.
148
Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s, 141.
149
"The Owl," 17 May 1943.
150
Excerpt from letter written by serviceman Jim Kepner to Army pen pal in May 1943. See Berube, 125.
151
Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s.
152
Berube, 126.
153
Charles Jr. Grutzner, "Midnight Curfew on Cabarets, Bars to Start Monday; Byrnes' Request," New York
Times, 20 February 1945.
70

lesbians, more than half of which catered almost exclusively to women, and almost all
located in North Beach.

1950s
While earlier editions alluded to it, the 1953
edition of Where to Sin in San Francisco
ignores homosexuality altogether. In its entry
on the Black Cat Café, arguably the oldest
homosexual bar in San Francisco, there is no
mention of its queer side. Described as “Bohemia’s Burliest Bastion,” the entry says,
“Rebels have been flaunting convention at the Black Cat for over twenty years. Any
night you can watch genuine artists, intellectuals and andsoforths boisterously
protesting…common social practices as sobriety and amiable conversation.”
154
Even
drag impresario José Sarria’s infamous Sunday brunch revues, which were at the height
of their popularity in the early 1950s, were omitted. The oversight was undoubtedly
intentional and indicative of the fact that by 1953 homosexuality had become the sin “that
dare not speak its name.”
155
In fact, in 1949, the Black Cat’s liquor license was
suspended by the State Board of Equalization on the grounds that it was a hangout for
persons of homosexual tendencies, an incident that would portend nearly a decade of
intensive attacks on gays and lesbians throughout San Francisco and the rest of the
country.

154
Jack Lord and Lloyd Hoff, Where to Sin in San Francisco, vol. Mid-Century Edition (Richard
Guggenheim, 1953), 113.
155
Oscar Wilde referred to homosexuality as the “love that dare not speak its name” in 1895.

Figure 15 Newspaper headline from 11 July
1949. (From the Gay by the Bay Collection,
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender
Historical Society.)
71

The 1950s proved to be one of the most difficult periods in gay and lesbian history.
While new lesbian bars continued to appear throughout the decade, Federal and local
governments were intent on reversing any progress the community had made. It began in
1950 when a relatively unknown United States Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R.
McCarthy, stood up in the Senate and announced that he had proof of fifty-seven card-
carrying communists employed by the State Department and knew of 81 to 200 more
who were Communist supporters. The country was at the height of Cold War-era
paranoia, and fears of Communist subversion were in full swing. McCarthy and his
cohorts were adamant that any real or perceived threat to the security of the country be
removed from government employment. When a State Department official testified to a
Senate committee that “ninety-one persons, ‘most of
them homosexuals,’ had been dismissed as ‘security
risks,’” McCarthy turned his focus from Communists
to homosexuals.
156
Even prior to McCarthyism, the
State Department had a policy of classifying homosexuals as security risks. Between
1947 and 1950, 4,954 homosexual men and women were discharged from the military or
governmental agencies.
157
Though the government claimed homosexuals were risky not
for their sexuality, but because they were “liable to blackmail,”
158
the terminology used
by the Republican National Chairman in April 1950, who described homosexuals as

156
"More Confusion over Mccarthy Case," New York Times, 30 April 1950. It is worth noting that the
Truman administration believed McCarthy switched his focus to homosexuality because he was losing his
case against Communists. The same article says, “Mr. McCarthy’s supporters first hit at ‘Communists,’
then at ‘Communists and perverts,’ and more lately at ‘perverts and Communists.’”
157
Faderman, 140.
158
"More Confusion over Mccarthy Case."

Figure 16 New York Times
headline, 26 March 1952. (From
ProQuest’s Historical New York
Times Archive.)
72

“sexual perverts…as dangerous as the actual Communists,” tells a different story.
159

Governmental officials were allowed to be blatantly homophobic, so long as it was in the
name of national security. New York Republican Governor Dewey accused President
Truman and the Democrats of “tolerating not only spies and traitors in government
service, but also sexual perverts.”
160
The accusations were relentless until 20 May 1950
when a Senate Appropriation subcommittee voted unanimously to investigate
homosexuals in the Executive Branch of government. The justification for the
investigation was based on a dubious “quick guess” of a Washington, D.C. vice cop that
“3,500 perverts” were employed by government agencies, up to 400 in the State
Department alone.
161

The investigations and committee hearings targeting homosexuals continued for the next
few years until December 1954 when the Senate finally quieted McCarthy with an
official censure. However, that did not stop President Eisenhower, in one of his first acts
as President, from issuing Executive Order 10450, banning “sexual perverts” from
government employment.
162
Though they were never able to provide evidence to support
their accusations, the attacks by McCarthy and his Republican colleagues proved
detrimental to homosexuals and had a resounding effect on the way in which
homosexuals were viewed throughout the world.


159
"Perverts Called Government Peril," New York Times, 19 April 1950.
160
Faderman, 141.
161
William S. White, "Inquiry by Senate on Perverts Asked," New York Times, 20 May 1950.
162
"384 Ousters Listed in State Department," New York Times, 6 November 1953.
73

The media were equally to blame for negative public perceptions of homosexuality. A
search for the word “homosexuality” in the New York Times revealed that, in a ninety-
year span, outside of a few dozen discussions pertaining to film, literature, or Nazis, the
term did not appear in articles until March 1950. Through the media, McCarthy instantly
brought homosexuality to the attention of the international public. The New York Times
reported that between January 1951 and March 1952, the State Department had
“discharged 126 homosexuals…and [was] determined to remove any others from the
department.”
163
State officials reportedly said, “There is no doubt in our minds that
homosexuals are security risks…and we have resolved that we are going to clean them
up.”
164
Ten months into Eisenhower’s presidency, 306 more State employees were
discharged.
165
By 1955 the number had reached 800.
166
The number of governmental
employees accused of being homosexual prompted the President of the National
Association of Evangelicals to say it was evidence of the “moral collapse” of the United
States, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times,
which ran under the heading, “U.S. Morals Lowest in
History.”
167
The homophobic rhetoric, common in
American media by the mid-1950s, was echoed in
Europe. In 1955 the British Medical Association reported that the “number of male
perverts in the United Kingdom might exceed half a million,” and many were active “in
church, Parliament, civil service, armed forces, press, radio, stage and other

163
"126 Perverts Discharged," New York Times, 26 March 1952.
164
Ibid.
165
"384 Ousters Listed in State Department."
166
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 118.
167
"U.S. Morals Lowest in History, Leader Says," Los Angeles Times, 17 April 1952.

Figure 17 Headline from New
York Times, 3 November 1953.
(From ProQuest’s Historical New
York Times Archive.)
74

institutions.”
168
According to a research panel, “The real safeguard against homosexual
activity is public opinion,” which was growing more and more anxious.
169

“Homosexuality Rise is Troubling Britons,” reported the New York Times in 1953.
170
In
reality, it was not the rise in homosexuals that was troubling both American and
Europeans – homosexuals existed in Britain all along – but instead the rise in negative
media attention focused on homosexuals.

New media attention in the 1950s on the medical and moral aspects of homosexuality
was equally damaging. At the beginning of the decade, the California Legislature passed
the Sexual Deviation Research Act, which included a study into the potential diagnosis
and treatment of homosexual males. In 1951 the Los Angeles Times said the study aimed
to more accurately “diagnose and treat” gays, which insinuated that homosexuality, as
perceived by the State of California, was a disease that needed to be treated. The Los
Angeles Times was particularly hard on homosexuals. In a twelve-piece series by Times
journalist Howard Whitman called “Crisis in Morals,” homosexuals were just one of
Whitman’s objects of derision.
Only in recent years has the subject of sexual deviation – specifically
homosexuality – been brought out into the open. Like other erstwhile taboos such
as venereal disease, the dark areas of sex behavior were kept that way – in the
dark – in some vague hope that they would get lost there…But homosexuality
certainly did not get lost. As a social infection it flourished in the dark, as indeed
many a physical infection does.
171


168
"British Panel Finds Wide Sex Deviation," New York Times, 17 December 1955.
169
Ibid.
170
"Homosexuality Rise Is Troubling Britons," New York Times, 3 November 1953.
171
Howard Whitman, "Spotlight Hits Dark Areas of Sex," Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1958.
75

Throughout the article, Whitman referred to homosexuals as “sick,” “neurotic,” “gravely
sinful,” “immoral and unhealthful,” and “undoubtedly [in] need [of] help.”
172
He feared
those who “lure and proselytize others” or “worst of all…prey on the young.” Finally,
Whitman charged that anyone who believed differently was simply a minority in a
“cultlike fringe.”
173
Whitman ended the article by saying, “[F]ew would deny that the
more science learns about the homosexual the more he can be helped – and the better
society can be protected.”
174
As late as 1962, the Los Angeles Times continued its assault
on homosexuals. In an article titled, “Homosexuality Seen as Growing Problem,” Times
medical editor Harry Nelson reported that homosexuality was a “greater problem than
schizophrenia,” but that “70% can be helped by psychotherapy if they want to be
helped.”
175

After years of national news headlines repeatedly slandering homosexuals as perverts,
deviates, immoral, and worst of all, security risks, San Francisco officially turned on its
gay community. In June 1954 the San Francisco Examiner reported a “marked influx
recently of homosexuals.”
176
A day later an editorial in the same newspaper “demanded
that police move in to clean up San Francisco’s ‘unwholesome’ condition: ‘The condition
is marked by the increase of homosexuals in the parks, public gathering places and
certain taverns in the city. It is a bad situation…Even worse, these deviates multiply by

172
Ibid.
173
Ibid.
174
Ibid.
175
Harry Nelson, "Homosexuality Seen as Growing Problem," Ibid., 15 December 1962.
176
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Boyd cites "Police Jail, Warn Sex
Deviates in Full Scale Drive," San Francisco Examiner, 27 June 1954.
76

recruiting teenagers.”
177
The largely Irish Catholic San Francisco Police Department
(SFPD) responded with great dispatch, immediately embarking on a mission to “clean the
homosexuals from streets, the public rooms and the parks where their actions have
become intolerably offensive.”
178
A member of the public responded favorably in a letter
to the San Francisco Examiner:
I noticed your reports of the battle the San Francisco authorities are making
against sex deviates. This idea must have the support of all who care what
happens…to the city’s reputation as a decent place to live…We do not knowingly
expose our children or older citizens to polio, typhoid or any other dangerous,
virulent diseases. The carrier must be isolated from those who are not infected.
The good of the majority is at stake…
179

In July 1954 The SFPD and the Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Board (AFDCB),
which continued to oversee activity in local bars throughout the 1950s, began raiding
taverns “suspected of being frequented by sex deviates.”
180

Bar raids and closures did not begin in the 1950s; many gay establishments were
punished with closures or loss of liquor licenses throughout the 1940s. Since the transfer
of liquor control after Prohibition made it difficult to police gay bars at the local level,
three organizations combined forces: the SFPD, State Board of Equalization, the
AFDCB, and, in 1955, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC). In 1951 the
AFDCB declared the following bars off limits to military personnel: the Beige Room, the
Black Cat Café, the Chi-Chi Club, the Club Alabam, Jim Dolan’s Supper Club,

177
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 93. Boyd cites "Needed: A
Cleanup," San Francisco Examiner, 28 June 1955.
178
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Boyd cites "Police Jail, Warn Sex
Deviates in Full Scale Drive."
179
Jordan Nash Wright, "Drive on Deviates," San Francisco Examiner, 1 July 1954.
180
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 93. Boyd cites "Raids Here
Lauded," San Francisco Examiner, 29 June 1954.
77

Finocchio’s, the 585 Club, George’s Bar, Mona’s Candelight, the Paper Doll, and
Tommy’s 299. As Nan Alamilla Boyd notes, the list included all three exclusively
lesbian bars open at the time (Mona’s Candelight, the Paper Doll, and Tommy’s 299).
“The heightened scrutiny of lesbian space in the 1950s,” Boyd believes, “reflects a
pattern evidenced in U.S. culture...the heightened policing [in the Cold War] of gender
roles and, thus, the increased stigmatization of sexualized and/or masculine women.”
181

Up until 1950, it was illegal for homosexuals to assemble in bars, as homosexuality itself
was illegal through California sodomy laws. The law was challenged by the owner of the
Black Cat Café, Sol Stoumen, when he lost his liquor license in 1949 for operating a
“hangout for homosexuals.”
182
After losing his case in both the Superior Court and Court
of Appeals, the California Supreme Court overruled the State Board of Equalization’s
decision to pull the Black Cat’s liquor license in 1951 in Stoumen v. Reilly. The Supreme
Court decision meant that it was finally legal for homosexuals to assemble in public – an
overwhelming victory for gays and lesbians. However, there was a loophole: If the
policing agencies could prove that illegal or immoral acts were taking place on the
premises, the law was on their side. “This stipulation…problematically differentiated
between homosexuality as a state of being (status) and homosexuality as an illegal act
(conduct) – a distinction that potentially identified any behavior construed as lesbian or
gay to be automatically immoral and illegal,” states legal theorist Arthur Leonard.
183

Crackdowns became even more stringent in 1955 when the ABC was created. That same
year, the ABC “declared war on homosexual bars in San Francisco” and “argued that the

181
Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, 119.
182
Ibid., 121.
183
Ibid., 123.
78

ABC need not be bound by Stoumen v. Reilly if it could acquire evidence of unlawful acts
within a bar.”
184
It did not take long for the SFPD and AFDCB to pick up on the
loophole. Soon, undercover officers, who even went so far as to dress and act
homosexual, began planting themselves in gay and lesbian bars on the lookout for
anything obviously homosexual.

The first raid on a lesbian bar in San Francisco occurred on 8 September 1954 at
Tommy’s Place (529 Broadway). Owned by Tommy Vasu, the cross-dressing former
owner of Tommy’s 299 Club, Tommy’s Place
was one of twelve bars catering to lesbians at
the time, but was undoubtedly one of the most
popular. The bar backed up to another lesbian
hangout at the rear of the building, 12 Adler
Place. Both bars were connected by a spiral staircase and shared the same liquor license.
When the SFPD and AFDCB raided Tommy’s and, a week later, 12 Adler Place on
suspicions that the bars contributed to juvenile delinquency, they claimed to find drug
paraphernalia hidden under the bathroom sink.
185
Additionally, they claimed to find
under-age women in the bars. The two women listed on the liquor license, Grace Miller
and Joyce Van der Veer, were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors.
(Vasu avoided arrest because, due to an earlier offense, her name was not listed on the
license.) Miller, who was in her mid-30s at the time, served six months in the county jail;
she had no prior record. Miller and Van der Veer and many of the bar patrons were

184
Ibid., 136.
185
Ibid., 95.

Figure 18 Headline referring to the raid
on Tommy’s Place, 1 December 1955.
(From the San Francisco Collection, ONE
International Archives.)
79

dragged through a tumultuous and protracted legal battle. Worse, the story made
headline news, which unleashed a rash of public outrage and resentment toward the
women who were “recruiting” young women.
[The] local chapter of the PTA demanded police protection; Police Chief Gaffey
directed vice squads to ‘move in on sexual deviates’; the State Board of
Equalization filed charges to revoke the liquor license for Tommy’s Place; the
district attorney considered abatement proceedings to immediately close the bar;
the San Francisco County Grand Jury initiated an investigation ‘into the sexual
deviate problem’; and a United States Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile
delinquency took up the case…More importantly, a handful of young women
found themselves publicly humiliated at hearings where they were encourage to
testify against the women who welcomed them into a bar that supported their
sexually unconventional and gender-transgressive behavior.
186

In 1955 The Keyhole newspaper described Grace Miller as “a former operator of a thrill
bar” and Tommy’s Place as a place “which sold liquor to minors who were recruited by
homosexuals and plied with narcotics while being schooled in homosexualism.”
187

Tommy’s Place was ultimately forced to close.

The raid on Tommy’s Place and subsequent raids on local bars rattled lesbians, yet they
continued to frequent lesbian bars, albeit cautiously. Oral history narrator Betty Boreen
recalls her experience in a bar raid as traumatic. Every time she went into a bar after the
raid she instinctively searched for the exits.
When you see the door open, it's sort of a reflex. [Being in the raid] marked
me…Whenever I am in a gay bar I will usually look at whoever walks in…You
had to hide [being in a bar] because if it came out, God knows what kind of price
you would have to pay…you never came out in the daylight….[only] after dark

186
Ibid., 94.
187
"Woman Operator of Notorious 'Thrill Bar' for Perverts Gets Light Jolt on Minor Charge," The Keyhole,
May 1955.
80

and you would always look around on the street to see if anybody was out there
that might possibly know mom and dad, or whatever.”
188

Boreen says the bar raids and public opinion of homosexuality made her feel like a
“leper.”
189
“Even though [I] felt pretty good about [my]self, [I] still had that in the back
of [my] mind that society says I'm wrong… I know what I am doing is right for me, but
maybe it's wrong.”
190
Another narrator, Robert Bobba, remembers “quite a buildup of
police oppression” in North Beach in the late 1950s.
191
“There was always the constant
threat that the place be raided…If a fight started in a bar, for instance, I left because of
the potential of the police coming. So my antenna was up all the time to stay out of
trouble… not to be picked up by the cops…That was the most important thing.”
192
Reba
Hudson said harassment by policing agencies was
common. “If [the bar] got to be too overtly gay,
the vice squad…in their plain clothes would just
stop in…trying to intimidate. People were [easily]
intimidated in those days. If they had any kind of a
job at all, and it became known that they were
lesbian, well that was just the end of their
life…end of their job.”
193
Raids became so heavy
during the mid-1950s that after a raid on Hazel’s Inn in Pacifica, which “netted 113
perverts…77 were men, 10 women and three teenagers, one a 17-year-old girl,” some of

188
David S. Olson, "Betty Boreen at the White Horse Inn, Berkeley, California," Oral history interview of
Betty Boreen stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco, 2002.
189
Ibid.
190
Ibid.
191
Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of GLHSNC."
192
Ibid.
193
Roberta (last name not given).

Figure 19 Newspaper headlines
reporting raids on homosexual bars.
(From the San Francisco Collection,
ONE International Archives.)
81

those arrested said that they “drifted down [the coast] after the police in SF began
cracking down on their hangouts in the city...” The San Mateo County Sheriff warned,
“Homosexuals harried by San Francisco police action will find no haven in San Mateo
County.”
194
Mona Sargent bragged that her bars were never raided: “[Policemen were]
my friends. Everybody on Broadway was nice to me…“[The police] knew me.”
195
One
outgrowth of the bar raids was the increased popularity of the gay supper club, according
to North Beach resident Charlotte Coleman. “[T]he places that had restaurants lasted
longer...[The police] didn’t pay much attention to them.” The supper clubs operated
under the guise of restaurants and catered to the crowds who would rather talk than be
entertained or dance.
196

In one of the most significant raids in lesbian
history, in September 1956 San Francisco
police raided Kelly’s Alamo Club and arrested
thirty-six patrons (mostly women) for
“frequenting a house of ill repute.” All but four
pleaded guilty and were sentenced to ten days in
the city jail. This raid caught the attention of the
newly formed (and first of its kind in the world)
lesbian-rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis. In their newsletter The Ladder,
founders Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon believed the women involved in the raid “plead

194
"Two Raids Net 113 Perverts," The Keyhole, March 1956.
195
Boyd, "Mona (Sargent) Hood Oral History Interview."
196
Gabriel.

Figure 20 Daughters of Bilitis
publication describing a lesbian’s legal
rights in case of arrest, 1953. (From the
Ladder.)
82

guilty not because they [had] committed a crime…but because they [were] made to feel
guilty about being a homosexual.”
197
The raid on Kelly’s prompted the Daughters of
Bilitis to publish an article titled, “What to Do in Case of Arrest.”
198
The article urged
lesbian readers: “DON’T PLEAD GUILTY…call your attorney; don’t volunteer
information – in fact, don’t talk to anyone about anything.”
199
The article also included
thirteen ways a woman could consider her rights in the case of arrest. For the first time in
history, lesbians found an advocate – in the Daughters of Bilitis.

Homophile Organizations
The gay-rights movement, in which the Daughters of Bilitis
was a key player, changed the face of the lesbian
community. Though the bar raids continued through the
1960s, the gay-rights organizations founded in the 1950s
etched away at harassment, slowly but surely. Author
Salvatore J. Licata divides the history of the gay-rights
movement in the United States into eight distinct phases: 1.)
1908-1945, attempts by individuals to defend the rights of
gays; 2.) 1945-1950, “dawning of minority consciousness
among gay people living in the cities” sparked by awareness of homosexuals as distinct
minority; 3.) 1950-1952, search for identity; 4.) 1952-1953, righteous indignation; 5.)
1953-1960, influx of information and education; 6.) 1960s, civil-rights activism and

197
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Lesbian/Woman (San Francisco: Glide Publications, 1972), 215.
198
Daughters of Bilitis, "San Francisco Police Raid Reveals Lack of Knowledge of Citizen's Rights,"
Ladder 1, no. 2 (1956).
199
Daughters of Bilitis, "Citizen's Rights," Ladder 1, no. 3 (1956).

Figure 21 Daughters of
Bilitis members marching,
1971. (From Marcia Gallo’s
Different Daughters.)
83

homophile movement; 7.) 1969-1973, gay liberation; 8.) 1973-1979, movement and
government working together through institutionalized channels.
200
The first documented
gay-rights organization, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, was founded in
Germany in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfield. The first American gay-rights organization
was the short-lived Society for Human Rights, organized by German-American Henry
Gerber in Chicago in 1924 and shut down by
the police a few months later. The first
significant and longest-lasting gay-rights
organization was the Mattachine Society,
founded by Harry Hay in Los Angeles in 1950.
Mattachine Society was followed by ONE, Inc.
in 1952; Daughters of Bilitis in 1955; and the
Society for Individual Rights in 1964, which would become the largest homophile
organization in the country. The Daughters of Bilitis was formed as an alternative to the
lesbian bars. Established by a small group of eight women, including Del Martin and
Phyllis Lyon, it was “a club for Lesbians…to meet and socialize outside of the gay bars”
where they could find “privacy not only from the watchful eye of the police, but from
gaping tourists in the bars…”
201
The Daughters of Bilitis had chapters in Louisiana, New
York, Rhode Island, and San Francisco
202
and held the world’s first lesbian convention at
San Francisco’s Hotel Whitcomb in May 1960. Latching onto the civil-rights movement,
the gay-rights movement made huge strides in the 1960s. In 1965 the United States

200
Salvatore J. Licata and Robert P. Petersen, Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality, Research on
Homosexuality, vol. 2 (New York: Haworth Press: Stein and Day, 1981).
201
Martin and Lyon, 219.
202
Meeker, 101.

Figure 22 Mattachine Society members
marching in New York, 1970. (From the
New York Public Library Digital Gallery.)
84

Court of Appeals ruled that an applicant for a federal job could not be disqualified based
on a claim of homosexual conduct.
203
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association
deleted homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 1975 California
decriminalized sodomy. And in 1977 Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person
elected to public office in California.

Beginning in 1954 the number of lesbian bars in North Beach began to decline, and by
1965 all but one lesbian bar in North Beach had closed down. The community dispersed
to different neighborhoods in the city, especially the Mission and Haight-Ashbury
Districts. Today, only one exclusively lesbian bar remains: The Lexington Club in the
Mission District, “Where every night is ladies’ night,” opened in 1997. The dispersion of
the lesbian community in North Beach was clearly a result of McCarthyism, bar raids,
and harassment. Yet, major infrastructure projects on Broadway in 1950s that
undoubtedly altered the feeling of North Beach could have also factored into the
community’s decision to leave. The Broadway Tunnel at the west end of North Beach
was completed in 1952; three blocks in length, the tunnel was bored through the base of
Russian Hill and opened a direct vehicular and pedestrian route into North Beach from
the west. A second project, the Embarcadero Freeway, had a substantive impact on the
east side of Broadway near the Embarcadero. The double-deck Embarcadero Freeway
was constructed on top of the Embarcadero running parallel to the San Francisco Bay. A
freeway onramp built on Broadway sometime between 1956 and 1959 not only
necessitated the demolition of several historic buildings on Broadway, including the

203
"Court Rules in Hiring of Homosexuals," Los Angeles Times, June 1965.
85

former home of Tommy’s 299 Club, but it created a physical and emotional barrier
between North Beach and the waterfront – cutting off the neighborhood from a part of the
city that once sustained it. In 1964 North Beach once again pushed the boundaries of
sexual conformity when the Condor Club opened on the corner of Broadway and
Columbus. Known as the “birthplace of topless dancing,” the Condor Club was made
famous by Carol Doda’s topless, and later, bottomless, performances.
204
The club drew
patrons with its forty-foot tall sign, featuring a nude Doda with blinking nipples. Several
similar clubs followed and soon, “a sailor in North Beach could buy a cone at a topless
ice-cream stand, eat it while getting a topless shoe shine, then take in a show starring ‘a
topless mother of eight.’”
205
Long-term Broadway tenants like the New Royal Coffee
Shop, Moretto’s Pharmacy, and the Roma Hotel and Restaurant became stripper clubs
called Big Al’s, the Roaring 20s, the Hungry I, and Centerfold’s. Tommy’s Place is now
the Garden of Eden, where the storefront has been transformed into blinking images of a
naked Eve and the requisite snake and apple. The Garden of Eden website beckons
customers to “come in and take a bite!” The Garden of Eden “is where sin begins!”
Since the 1960s Broadway Street in North Beach has been inexorably tied to the topless-
dancing industry and has yet to recover. There is not a single sign that lesbian feet ever
touched North Beach at any point in San Francisco’s history.


204
Martha Groves, "Topless Era Sign to Be Stripped Away Renovation," Ibid., 23 August 1991.
205
Tad Friend, "Naked Profits," The New Yorker, 12 July 2004.
86

CONCLUSION
Lesbians have long played an important role in the history of the United States. Their
communities spread throughout the country and could be found in such unsuspecting
places as Salt Lake City, Utah and Flint, Michigan. They celebrated progress and
suffered oppression. Beginning in the 1930s, lesbians found a welcoming home in San
Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood and experienced relatively good lives surrounded
by many like-minded women. After the severe harassment and homophobia enacted
upon them during the 1950s and McCarthyism, lesbians in San Francisco regrouped and
ultimately persevered. They became homophile activists and fought fierce battles for
their civil rights. Beginning in the 1970s, having dispersed from North Beach a decade
earlier, lesbians resettled in the Mission and Haight Ashbury Districts. Future research
into the history of the lesbian community in San Francisco could concentrate on the post-
North Beach settlements of lesbians and the many buildings ripe with opportunities for
official recognition and preservation.

87

CHAPTER 3:
TANGIBLE REMAINS OF LESBIAN HISTORY IN SAN FRANCISCO’S
NORTH BEACH

INTRODUCTION
As Chapter 2 demonstrates, San Francisco is hardly lacking in lesbian history, yet it is a
history that remains largely untold outside LGBT circles. It is an exciting and condensed
story colored by both triumph and tragedy. Unfortunately, it is also a story that is slowly
being erased in terms of tangible remains. True, lesbian history will be transmitted
through the books sold in mostly LGBT bookstores, but the buildings that housed the
history of lesbians in San Francisco have been severed from it and they risk demolition
without any awareness of their significance. What can be done to protect and preserve
this heritage?

It is the responsibility of historic preservation organizations and advocates to re-establish
the link that has been missing between the history of lesbians in San Francisco and the
buildings that once served as the history’s stage. The answer as to why these buildings
deserve more recognition than, for instance, a building that housed an interesting
heterosexual bar, is simple: These buildings were critical to the development of a lesbian
community in San Francisco. As delineated in Chapter 2, the nature of a lesbian
existence in the United States in the 1930s through ‘50s meant that a high degree of
precaution was required to flourish. During that period, this could only be accomplished
in the dark, safe recesses of quasi-public space. Heterosexuality, on the other hand,

88

flourishes in the light of day, which makes a bar less vital to the way heterosexuals move
through the world and which made all other places legitimate. As Chapter 1 shows,
historic preservation to date has failed to officially designate any of the historic buildings
associated with lesbians, and only a few associated with gay men. Not all buildings can
or should be designated – only the most significant. However, a larger number of sites
and buildings can be commemorated and interpreted in creative ways, as the following
sections will show.

THE BUILDINGS THAT HOUSED THE COMMUNITY
Before determining which sites associated with lesbian history are the most significant, it
is important to offer a short historical context of the development of all buildings related
to the early lesbian community in San Francisco. As with any community, the built
environment is comprised of multiple building and landscape typologies. In San
Francisco, the following significant typologies were key to the development of a lesbian
community: lesbian bars; restaurants; private homes in which lesbians hosted house
parties; bookstores; coffee shops; comedy clubs; women’s centers; churches; and resort
destinations. Lesbian bars, restaurants, and private homes were popular during the first
period of lesbian emergence, the 1930s to 1960. Once policing agencies began harassing
gays and lesbians and raiding bars, many women turned to private homes as places of
refuge. In the mid-1950s, the Daughters of Bilitis provided spaces outside of lesbian bars
in which women could feel comfortable being themselves. Aside from the bars, which
will be described in detail in subsequent sections of this chapter, significant buildings

89

dating to this period include the home of Daughters of Bilitis founders Phyllis Lyon and
Del Martin at 651 Duncan Street, where they lived together beginning in at least 1957;
the Daughters of Bilitis’ first office at 693 Mission Street #308, beginning in 1956 (same
building as the Mattachine Society); and the Hotel Whitcomb at 1231 Market Street, site
of the world’s first conference on lesbians, hosted by Daughters of Bilitis in May 1960.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the appearance of an entirely new set of building typologies
associated with lesbians, which coincided with the creation of various lesbian-liberation
and feminist movements and the lesbian community’s geographic shift from North Beach
to new neighborhoods such as the Valencia Corridor in the Mission District and the
Haight Ashbury District. During this period, the lesbian community found anchors in
such places as Maud’s at 937 Cole, opened between 1966 and 1989 and one of the
longest-running lesbian bars in San Francisco; the Old Wives’ Tales Bookstore at 532
Valencia Street, opened in 1976; Artemis Café at 1199 Valencia Street, opened in 1977;
Amelia’s bar at 647 Valencia, opened in 1978; and the Women’s Building at 3543 18
th

Street, opened in 1979.

Churches are another important building typology in lesbian communities. The first
church in San Francisco to open its doors to the LGBT community was Glide Memorial
United Methodist Church (330 Ellis Street) under the leadership of Reverend Cecil
Williams beginning in 1963. In 1964 Revered Williams, the Daughters of Bilitis, and
Mattachine Society joined to form the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. The

90

mission of the organization was, in the words of LGBT historian Lillian Faderman, “to
tackle the most insidious persecutor of homosexuals, organized religion.”
1
The Council
on Religion and Homosexuality opened a dialogue between religious organizations and
homosexuals and challenged churches to “reconsider their positions on homosexuality.”
2

In 1970 the Metropolitan Community Church was founded by gays and lesbians and
became the second LGBT congregation in the country.
3
The first church services were
held at Jackson’s Bar and Grill on Fillmore Street in North Beach. The Metropolitan
Community Church finally settled at 150 Eureka Street in Noe Valley and remains there
in 2009. Two other churches of note are St. Francis Lutheran Church (152 Church
Street) and First United Lutheran Church (temporary location). Religious Studies
Professor at the University of San Francisco Kimberly Rae Connor describes two
incidents that brought national acclaim to the churches:
St. Francis extended pastoral calls to Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, a lesbian
couple who had not been certified for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA). First United called Jeff Johnson, who would not
promise to refrain from homosexual activity as the ELCA expected of its pastors.
The three were called to initiate Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministry, an outreach
to the [Bay Area’s] gay and lesbian community. Approximately 30 Lutheran
pastors and 30 pastors from other denominations participated January 20, 1990, in
an ordination ceremony for Frost, Johnson and Zillhart at St. Paulus Lutheran
Church, San Francisco, an ELCA congregation. In 1990 the ELCA suspended St.
Francis Lutheran Church and First United Lutheran Church for "willfully
disregarding criteria for recognition as ELCA congregations by failing to call

1
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century
America, Between Men--between Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 192-193.
2
Ibid.
3
Damon Scott, Sexing the City: The Development of Sexual Identity Based Subcultures in San Francisco,
1933-1979 (2005), 9, Historic context statement prepared for the City and County of San Francisco
Planning Department.

91

pastoral leadership in accordance with church call procedures,” [according to the
ELCA]. The congregations were expelled from the ELCA December 31, 1995.
4

Glide Memorial, Metropolitan Community Church, St. Francis Lutheran Church, and
First United Lutheran Church are significant within the LGBT communities as
organizations that blazed paths toward the inclusion of LGBT people in religion. St.
Francis, in particular, stands out as one of the first churches in the country to ordain
openly lesbian women as pastors.

This thesis only examines in depth a single building typology associated with the
development of the lesbian community in San Francisco: the lesbian bar. The United
States Department of the Interior and National Park Service believe that significance can
only be determined for buildings, sites, and events older than fifty years, with very few
exceptions, as fifty years provide enough perspective to determine a property’s eligibility
for listing in the National Register. In North Beach, the fifty-year cut off envelops the
first period of buildings associated with lesbians, which was comprised almost entirely of
lesbian bars and, to a certain extent, house parties. Though house parties were equally
important in San Francisco’s lesbian community between the 1930s and 1960, they will
not be addressed here, but should be researched in further detail in the future.


4
Kimberly Rae Connor, Information in this section derives from personal communication between Shayne
Watson and Dr. Kimberly Rae Connor, 26 October 2009.

92

THE LESBIAN BAR
Lesbian bars (or spaces in which lesbians were tolerated) existed as early as the 1920s.
However, it was not until after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 that the number of
lesbian bars across the country expanded. Before tracing the histories of lesbian bars in
San Francisco’s North Beach, it is important to discuss the significance of this building
typology. The first lesbian bars provided entry into a lesbian community that did not
previously exist, and the relatively high number of bars that appeared within a short
period of time is indicative of the importance of these spaces and number of women who
had the courage to frequent them. Prior to having a place to congregate, most lesbians
led closeted lives of secrecy and discretion. “[T]here were no personal ads, no lesbian
political organizations, few special-interest social groups for lesbians,” writes Lillian
Faderman.
5
Essentially viewed by the government and public as psychologically
impaired sexual deviants, women who frequented lesbian bars faced the risk of losing
jobs or incrimination, especially daunting scenarios at a time when being a financially
independent woman was exceedingly difficult (and even stigmatized).
6
The women who
braved these risks were hyper-conscious of intolerance and were concerned for their own
safety, yet the draw of a public space where they could finally meet other women was
equally strong. The establishment of the first lesbian bars meant that a formerly lonely,
disconnected group of women finally had a place to meet, and the women who ultimately

5
Faderman, 107.
6
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003), 33. It wasn’t until 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association deleted
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and 1975 when California decriminalized sodomy.
6

93

risked everything to be openly gay in public should be lauded as the founders of a nation-
wide lesbian community.

The development of a lesbian community is inextricably tied to the buildings that housed
the lesbian bars, yet the significance of the buildings lies neither in architecture nor
design, but in less tangible features such as the spaces created by the buildings and the
protection afforded by their four walls. The walls of a lesbian bar and the boundary
demarcated by them marked a distinct separation between two opposite realms. Crossing
the threshold of a bar, a lesbian experienced an escape from a community of strangers
into a place of like minds, safety, tolerance, potential companionship, and sex. The
polarity of the two realms is defined by what author Susan Kent describes as the partition
of architecture, the idea that architecture creates boundaries out of unbounded spaces.
7

Architect and author Aaron Betsky suggests that the spaces created by gay and lesbian
bars could be viewed as figurative public closets, “…a place to hide, to create worlds…in
a secure environment… where you can define yourself, constructing an identity out of
what you have collected, in a space that is free and boundless exactly because it hides in
the dark recesses.”
8
In sociological terms, the early lesbian bars could be viewed as third
spaces, “space[s] at the margins of society that can be adopted as [sites] for contesting

7
Susan Kent, Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study,
New Directions in Archaeology (Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
41.
8
Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 1st ed. (New York: William Morrow &
Co., 1997), 17.

94

power, [places] where new identities, actions, and opportunities can be constructed.”
9

Indeed, in a time when lesbians were ostracized by religious institutions and government,
the lesbian bars in San Francisco became churches, political headquarters, and emotional
support centers. “San Francisco’s queer bar-based community was able to pool its
resources, strengthen its ties, and ultimately, develop a foundation for its own brand of
political mobilization,” writes Nan Alamilla Boyd.
10
For over twenty years, inside the
dark, secure recesses formed by the walls of lesbian bars, a previously disconnected
group of women quickly coalesced into a powerful, political whole, which flourished into
the most visible and cohesive lesbian community in the world.

Author Jess Stearn, whose research in the 1950s resulted in one of the first widely
published, non-critical studies of the lesbian community, says this in his groundbreaking
book The Grapevine:
For many lesbians, the gay bars were a combination town- and country-club.
While some preferred an all-girl bar, others would often settle for a mixed
homosexual bar, where they could count on not being bothered. In these bars, in
their own way, as loners, they often made friends and influenced people – and not
all of these friends were women. But just as often as not, they would take their
own girl-friends to their lesbian haunts, sharing together the excitement of being
exclusively with their own kind…Hard-jawed bouncers guarded the door at some
lesbian spots, keeping out unwelcome males or routing them to distant tables
where they would not disturb the girls…Many of the bars, deliberately bleak to
discourage passing trade, operated back rooms in which the lesbian clientele,
okayed by the bartenders, could dance, drink, and otherwise cavort to the endless
music of the jukebox…Beer was the staple, more for economy than

9
Daniel Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007), 12-13.
10
Boyd, 61.

95

preference…Some of the bars were so inconspicuous that for years neighbors [did
not know they were lesbian bars]…
11

Between 1946 and 1960, after the introduction of Mona’s Barrel Room and 440 Club,
over twenty clubs opened that catered to lesbians, more than half of which catered almost
exclusively to women, and most were located in North Beach. Only those that were
located in North Beach will be described here. (Mona’s Barrel Room at 140 Columbus
and Mona’s 440 Club at 440 Broadway were described in Chapter 2.) The emphasis in
the following section is intentionally placed on significance rather than integrity. Though
only cursory descriptions of integrity are included, it can be said that of the extant
buildings described, all appear to have relatively high levels of exterior integrity. As
national, state, and local registers all require a substantial degree of integrity in order for
buildings or sites to be listed in historical registers, a deeper examination would be
required in order to nominate any of the following buildings for landmark status.

Artist’s Club (345 Pacific Street)
After Mona’s clubs, the next bar that opened, which was
frequented by lesbians – the Artist’s Club – was
established in 1946. Very little information exists on the
Artist’s Club. It moved into a space previously occupied
by a broom factory and was located in a heavy industrial

11
Jess Stearn, The Grapevine, 1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 169.

Figure 23 Former site of the
Artist’s Club, 2009.
(Photograph by Shayne
Watson.)

96

area near the produce district.
12
Nan Alamilla Boyd calls it a “divey straight-owned
lesbian hangout.”
13
Connie Smith, the woman who opened a lesbian bar in 1954 named
Miss Smith’s Tea Room, was a waitress at the Artist’s Club. The Artist’s Club closed in
1949.

Tommy’s 299 Club (299 Broadway)
The third club to open, and arguably the first bar opened specifically to attract lesbians,
was Tommy’s 299 Club. The 299 Club is significant as the first club owned and operated
by a lesbian – Tommy Vasu. Located on the second floor of a four-story brick building
two blocks from the Embarcadero, the 299 Club shared the same block as De Bernardi
olive oil company. The Firenze Hotel was on the upper two floors and a saloon was
below.
14
Reba Hudson remembers: “[Tommy’s 299 Club was] a gay bar full of old
broken-down gay whores…down at Broadway where the freeway is now…[Tommy]
dressed in a tie, kept her hair short and went with hookers...ran around with gangsters,
and drove a Cadillac convertible.”
15
Roberta Bobba recalls, “Tommy dressed as a man
all the time…but very expensive suits, you know, very, and just passed as a man
completely…[R]ole-playing was so embedded in her…[S]he would have to buy the

12
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, San Francisco, Colma and Daly City Street Address
Telephone Directory (San Francisco: 1938). Sanborn Map Company, "Fire Insurance Map for San
Francisco, 1949," (Sanborn Map Company).
13
Boyd, 83.
14
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.
15
Boyd, 88.

97

drinks, that's for sure.”
16
Tommy was a popular figure, as Herb Caen included her in a
1961 column: “[She’s] a short-haired, long-tempered girl named Tommy who runs the
best parking lot on B’way in North Beach – a gentleman among ladies.”
17
The 299 Club,
known as a haven for the prostitutes who frequented the hotel upstairs, stayed in business
until 1952. The building that housed Tommy’s was demolished sometime between 1956
and 1959 to make way for the Embarcadero Freeway.
Figure 24 Former
site of Tommy’s 299
Club, October 1923.
(Photograph from
the Bancroft
Library, University
of California,
Berkeley.)

Figure 25 Tommy Vasu
in Mona’s Candelight, ca.
1945. (From Nan Alamilla
Boyd’s Wide Open Town.)

Mona’s Candlelight Club (473 Broadway)
The same year Tommy’s 299 Club opened, Mona Hood
moved her business across the street from the 440 Club to 473
Broadway. Mona called her new club Mona’s Candlelight
and stayed there for a few years. The Candlelight was a more
intimate space than the 440 Club and entertained women with
a piano bar. The two-story, brick building in which it was
housed was constructed in 1907 and is still extant.

16
JoAnn Castillo, "Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of
GLHSNC," Oral history interview stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in
San Francisco, 22 October 1981.
17
Boyd, 88.

Figure 26 Former home of
Mona’s Candlelight Club,
2009. (Photograph by
Shayne Watson.)

98

The Chi Chi Club (467 Broadway)
Open in ca. 1946, the Chi Chi Club (next door to Mona’s
Candlelight), became a lesbian hangout in the late 1940s. The
Chi Chi Club was owned by Andrew and Theodore Marefos,
two heterosexual former football players who tolerated their
lesbian clientele for the revenue garnered from the large
crowds. Reba Hudson says the Chi Chi Club catered to a more
upscale crowd -- the Peninsula lesbians with their “French cuff
and cuff links.”
18
The Chi Chi Club stayed in operation until
1956. The building that housed the Chi Chi Club is a two-story, masonry building
constructed in 1907. It still exists today and contains a small stripper club called Casbah.

The Paper Doll (524 Union)
Opened in 1949 by a heterosexual man named Tom
Arbulich, Mona Hood lent her name and proprietor
experience to the Paper Doll during its first few
years of existence. The Paper Doll was
purportedly the first gay supper club in San
Francisco. There was a big bar on one side and
rows of booths down the other – no entertainment, only a juke box. Women who were

18
Roberta (last name not given), "Oral History Interview with Reba Hudson: Voices of the Oral History
Project of GLHSNC," Oral history interview with Reba Hudson stored at the San Francisco GLBT
Historical Society, 31 October 1922.

Figure 27 Former home
of the Chi Chi Club, 2009.
(Photograph by Shayne
Watson.)
Figure 28 Former home of the Paper
Doll, 2009. (Photograph by Shayne
Watson.)

99

tired of the floor show at Mona’s turned to the Paper Doll where they could eat and have
conversations. Many lesbians preferred the Paper Doll’s restaurant atmosphere to the
typical bar scene. Oral history narrator Roberta Bobba says women went to the Paper
Doll for an “elegant dinner.”
19
Another local lesbian and bar owner, Charlotte Coleman,
says, “[The Paper Doll was her] favorite bar forever…the best one ever [sic]
happened…the number one place that we went every Friday and Saturday night. Many
of [her] years [she] spent in that bar.”
20
The Paper Doll was a mixed club, attracting both
gay men and lesbians. Bobba remembers that men mostly sat at the bar and the women
squeezed into the large booths. “[We would] go there with [friends] and sit down. The
waitress would say, ‘Well…can we seat two more people with you?’ So they’d sit down
next to you. And then a little while later it’d get real busy and they’d stick in two more.
So there you were, every time you went, you met some new people…you got to know all
the ladies in town.”
21

Lesbians also liked the Paper Doll because it was sited adjacent to an alley and had a side
entrance. As mentioned in Chapter 2, supper clubs gained in popularity as harassment
against homosexuals rose. A nightclub that served food was less suspect. Location also
became very important, and buildings located in out-of-the-way districts and on alleys
were attractive to gays and lesbians trying to avoid altercations. Coleman says, “Women

19
Castillo, “Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of LGHSNC.”
20
Paul Gabriel, "Oral History Interview with Charlotte Coleman: Voices of the Oral History Project of
GLHSNC," Oral history interview stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in
San Francisco, 1997.
21
Ibid.

100

used to pick bars that were tucked away, quiet little areas and districts and what not, and
the Paper Doll, at that time, was.”
22
Still, the Paper Doll lost its liquor license in the late
1950s, according to oral history narrator Reba Hudson. It closed in 1961. The building
that housed the Paper Doll was constructed in 1908, is wood frame, two stories, and still
contains a bar and restaurant space.

The Beige Room (831 Broadway)
The Beige Room opened in 1951 and was a
Finocchio’s-like entertainment venue that became
famous for its female impersonators. Though this
venue catered to both gay men and women, Roberta
Bobba says many lesbians enjoyed a Sunday-night
ritual of dancing at the Beige Room. It was a “very
important” Sunday activity. Bobba also recalls
seeing an impromptu performance by Johnny Mathis.
23
Founders of the Daughters of
Bilitis Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon participated in a drag contest one Halloween at the
Beige Room. The Beige Room closed in 1958. The building that housed the nightclub
was constructed in 1938 and is two stories and defined by Art Deco details. The Beige
Room was also located adjacent to an alley.


22
Ibid.
23
Castillo, “Oral History Interview with Roberta Bobba: Voices of the Oral History Project of LGHSNC.”
Figure 29 Souvenir postcard from
the Beige Room, n.d. (Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, and Transgender Historical
Society.)

101

Tommy’s Place and 12 Adler Place (529 Broadway and 12 Adler Place)
In 1952 Tommy Vasu took ownership of two nightclub
spaces in a large building that faced both Broadway Street
and Adler Place (now Saroyan Place), a small alley, at the
rear. Vasu put control of the operations into the hands of
Jeanne Sullivan. Reba Hudson says Tommy’s Place had a
bar in front and a restaurant in the back. It was connected to
12 Adler Place by a mezzanine and stair. Tommy’s Place
was the first lesbian bar oral history narrator Betty Boreen
visited. She describes her experience: “Wonderful…You
could go upstairs or downstairs. But we used to always go in
the alley door and hang out downstairs... I went there frequently.”
24
Boreen was
underage at the time and hung out with older women – a typical arrangement, but one
that ultimately resulted in the infamous raid on Tommy’s Place in 1954. The building
that housed Tommy’s Place and 12 Adler Place still exists. It is a three-story brick
building constructed in 1911. The space that once housed Tommy’s Place is a stripper
club called Garden of Eden. 12 Adler Place remains virtually unchanged and is a bar
called Specs’ 12 Adler Museum Café.


24
David S. Olson, "Betty Boreen at the White Horse Inn, Berkeley, California," Oral history interview of
Betty Boreen stored at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco, 2002.
Figure 30 Former home of
Tommy’s Place, 2009.
(Photograph by Shayne
Watson.)

102

Miss Smith’s Tea Room (1353 Grant)
Owned by a former waitress at the Artist’s Club, Connie Smith, this site was home to a
lesbian bar between 1954 and 1960. Miss Smith’s was described as “dark and dreary” by
the Daughters of Bilitis. The apartment building across the street was popular with
lesbians. Constructed in 1907, the building that housed Miss Smith’s still exists. It is
three stories, wood frame, and has four ground-floor commercial spaces and two floors of
residential above. The storefront that was once Miss Smith’s Tea Room is now an Irish
bar called Maggie McGarry’s.

Copper Lantern (1335 Grant)
Opened in 1955, the Copper Lantern was located a few doors down from Miss Smith’s
Tea Room. It was owned by a Russian woman named Lisa and her tuxedo-wearing
girlfriend, “Big Mike.” The two women were waitresses at Mona’s and the Paper Doll.
The Copper Lantern was raided and temporarily closed in 1956. It finally closed
permanently in 1965. The building in which the Copper Lantern was housed still exists.
Built in 1907, it is a three-story, wood-frame building with a ground-floor commercial
space and residential above. Chong’s Barber and Beauty Shop now occupies the Copper
Lantern Space.

Anxious Asp (528 Green)
Open between 1958 and 1967, this was home to a popular lesbian bar owned by Arlene
Arbuckle. Local lore says the bathrooms were papered in pages from the Kinsey Report.

103

The Anxious Asp was open longer than any other lesbian bar in North Beach.
Constructed in 1908, the building, which is extant, is three stories, wood frame, and has
two stories of residential spaces above a storefront.

The Front (600 Front)
Long-time lesbian bar proprietor Charlotte Coleman opened The Front in 1958 after
she was discharged from the IRS for being a
homosexual. During an internal investigation
of employees, her phone and mail were
monitored and she began to be followed
without her knowledge. Because she regularly
frequented gay bars, including Mona’s, the IRS
investigators soon realized she was
homosexual. Her friends warned her that she was risking losing her job by frequenting
lesbian bars, but, as Coleman says in an oral history interview, “I liked my job and I
needed it, but I’d rather go to the bars.”
25
Still, Coleman says she was “crushed” when
she lost her job, but, she added, “in the end it was the best thing that ever happened to me
‘cause it forced me to go into business for myself.”
26
It is rumored that Coleman used
severance money to fund the purchase of The Front.


25
Gabriel.
26
Ibid.
Figure 31 Former site of The Front, 2009.
(Photograph by Shayne Watson.)

104

Given that The Front was opened at the peak of harassment in the late 1950s, Coleman
needed to be careful about opening a homosexual bar. She intentionally located The
Front in an out-of-the-way neighborhood “where nobody was around [at night]…so
nobody would notice the gay people coming and going too much."
27
The bar was housed
in a two-story industrial building in the heart of the produce district.
28
A vegetable
market that spanned an entire block was located to the immediate west.

In discussing how she founded her first gay bar, Coleman says in an oral history
interview, “[N]umber one...you don’t tell [people] you’re going to open a gay bar.”
29
She
started out with a thousand dollars and worked the bar by herself for seven days a week.
She did not have enough money to buy a liquor license, so she served beer and wine.
Coleman wore slacks and a jacket with a tie to work. “I wanted to look [like a lesbian],”
she says.
30
“I wanted to look like I was gay and that’s the way I dressed.”
31
Coleman
described The Front as “a storefront – long and narrow and old. It had that old-fashioned
tin wallpaper on the walls and high, high ceilings.”
32
There were tables and chairs and a
little stage and dressing room, built by Coleman herself. Performances included men and
women – “We had whatever was around.”
33
Coleman wanted The Front, her first of
many gay bars, to be a lesbian bar, but “there were no gay papers to advertise in.”
34
It

27
Gabriel.
28
Sanborn Map Company.
29
Gabriel.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.

105

became popular by word of mouth. Unlike Mona Hood’s clubs, this was a strictly
women’s bar – no tourists. The clientele was “mostly young…going to school and going
to college…” – women who had very little to lose by frequenting a lesbian bar.
35
Her
patrons also had very little money, and many were unemployed. Those who had jobs
would only show up once a week and “spend a few bucks.”
36
One of the first events held
at The Front was a St. Patrick’s Day brunch fundraiser for the Daughters of Bilitis.

The Front was only open for a few years before the city began to demolish the produce
market and surrounding buildings. The block including The Front and others to the west,
north, and east were slated for an enormous redevelopment project. It was good timing
for Coleman, as she was ready to leave the lesbian-bar business. As Reba Hudson says,
“[T]here never was that much money in women’s bars. Women weren’t making [the]
kind of money they had to have to go [to the bars]. Whereas, [there were] a lot of
wealthy gay men…educated [with] good jobs. [Gay men have] always had the money.”
37

Coleman closed The Front in 1961 and opened the Golden Cask on Haight Street. After
losing money on The Front, Coleman decided to make the Golden Cask a men's bar. "I
wouldn't even let women in with slacks," she says.
38

The first few bars Charlotte Coleman owned were consistently raided by the police who
served her with “morals” charges. Undercover ABC officers monitored her bars looking

35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.

106

for violations (i.e. signs of homosexual conduct): a man wearing silver slippers; a
bartender who dabbed perfume behind the ears of customers; a man who put his arm
around another man. Harassment continued through the 1960s, according to Coleman.

The Front was demolished in the 1960s as part of a multiple-block redevelopment
project. The former site of The Front is now Jackson Square Park.

WHEN A BRONZE PLAQUE ISN’T ENOUGH
The collection of buildings that once housed San Francisco’s lesbian community in North
Beach are collectively significant, and the entire neighborhood should be evaluated as a
potential historic district. But of all the buildings, three are considerably more significant
than the rest: Mona’s Barrel House, the first bar singled out by lesbians; Mona’s 440
Club, irrefutably the first popular lesbian bar in San Francisco; and Tommy’s Place, the
site of the first police raid of a lesbian bar. The three buildings that housed these
establishments have high potential for designation, commemoration, and interpretation.

Suggestions for Designation
One key impetus for designation is protection. The fact that all three significant
buildings associated with lesbian history in San Francisco are extant means that they can
be touched, viewed from multiple angles, interpreted, and analyzed. Without the
buildings, the history of the lesbian community is incomplete. Designating the buildings
is one way of ensuring they will be present for future generations. Mona’s Barrel Room,

107

arguably the birthplace of the lesbian community in San Francisco, should be nominated
as a San Francisco Landmark and for listing in the California Register of Historical
Resources (California Register) and the National Register of Historic Places (National
Register). Though most landmark statuses are essentially honorary and ultimately do not
preclude demolition of a building, attributing San Francisco Landmark status to a
building would create the strongest defense against loss. Any permits filed requesting
demolition of a San Francisco Landmark or a building located within a historic district
would be reviewed by the City and County of San Francisco Planning Department.
Additionally, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) views the demolition of
historically significant buildings as an adverse impact on the environment. Thus, threat
of demolition to an important building in California invariably results in a long and
arduous review process. Because the process is often costly and time-consuming, many
times it serves as a deterrent to demolition. As presented in Chapter 1, San Francisco has
made no official moves to preserve either a lesbian historic district in North Beach or
individual buildings. The addition of Mona’s Barrel Room to national, state, and local
registers would create a more honest and inclusive collection of treasured landmarks.

Suggestions for Commemoration and Interpretation
Commemoration and interpretation can be more creative than a typical landmark
designation, as thresholds for significance do not need to be set – all buildings that served
the lesbian community in North Beach can be commemorated and interpreted equally.
Commemoration and interpretation can include such things as art installations, either at

108

one of the former bars or elsewhere, a walking tour, or an online archive. These are just a
few suggestions for expanding efforts of commemoration and interpretation at LGBT
heritage sites.

A walking tour has many benefits: It would draw lesbians back into the neighborhood
where San Francisco’s lesbian community was born; provide a three-dimensional context
for interpretation; and allow lesbians to walk the same streets on which the founders of
the community walked a half a century earlier. Most of the popular gay and lesbian
travel guidebooks ignore North Beach altogether and instead focus on the Castro District.
A short walking tour of North Beach inserted into a guidebook would change the face of
San Francisco for tourists looking for authentic cultural tours. Appendix A contains a
sample self-guided walking tour brochure.

Documentation is an equally important aspect of preservation, and the internet provides
lesbians who may not have the opportunity to visit San Francisco an opportunity to
interpret significant sites and buildings from a distance. Lesbian history is rich in
interesting archival material that not everyone has access to. An online archive dedicated
to individual buildings or districts is an easy and creative tool for collecting rare material
in a single place and presenting it to a large audience. Documentation can include
historical and contemporary photographs, ephemera, maps, videos, and music. Screen
shots from a sample online archive dedicated to Mona’s 440 Club are included in
Appendix B. Tommy’s Place at 529 Broadway would qualify for a similar online archive

109

that might focus on more difficult memories associated with lesbian bars, such as
McCarthy-era harassment, bar raids, and homophobia.

CONCLUSION
It is believed that the aforementioned buildings could potentially be contributors to a
lesbian historic district in North Beach, as the collection of these resources created the
stage on which the development of the lesbian community in San Francisco emerged.
Had the lesbian bars never appeared, a lesbian community would undoubtedly have
developed anyway, but in the case of North Beach, the lesbian bars were instrumental in
the creation of community beginning in the 1930s.

Future research should delve deeper into an integrity discussion of the lesbian bars
described in this chapter, with a particular emphasis on interior integrity. Arguments for
designating similar buildings types have been difficult or ultimately denied based on low
levels of interior integrity. The topic of significant buildings associated with the lesbian
community in North Beach would also benefit from historical contexts that focus on
other buildings typologies, including those mentioned earlier in this chapter.

110

CONCLUSION

As of 2009, officially designated sites associated with lesbian history do not exist in
historic preservation. A historical narrative compiled solely from buildings and sites
listed on national, state, and local registers would lead one to believe that lesbians have
never existed at all. Because the history of women, in general, remains subordinate to
that of men (of the nearly 10,000 properties listed in the National Register under
Criterion B, only four percent are tied to significant women), and the history of
heterosexuality reigns over homosexuality (one out of more than 85,000 properties listed
in the National Register was designated for an association with LGBT history), lesbians
comprise one of the least-recognized minorities in historic preservation.

Chapter 1 shows that some steps have been made toward preserving LGBT resources at
the local level in progressive cities, but LGBT heritage preservation at state and national
levels is far behind. New York City continues to make great progress toward including
histories of LGBT people in landmark nominations, but only because of the efforts of a
gay man and lesbian working for the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Efforts in
cities such as San Francisco and Washington, D.C. benefit from local LGBT non-profits:
respectively, Friends of 1800 and the Rainbow History Project. Though the City of San
Francisco adopted the country’s first LGBT historic context statement, the City itself has
made few moves to promote the preservation of LGBT history. In West Hollywood and
Los Angeles, local residents with an interest in LGBT history authored the only LGBT
landmark nominations those cities have seen. Despite some listings associated with
111

LGBT people on local registers, lesbian-specific history is not recognized at all. This is
an enormous disparity in light of the contributions lesbians have made to United States
history.

The United States is not wanting in lesbian history. Chapter 2 presents nearly a dozen
cities with robust lesbian histories: Salt Lake City, Utah; Harlem, Greenwich Village,
New York City, Fire Island, and Buffalo, New York; Washington, District of Columbia;
Chicago, Illinois; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; and Los Angeles, California. San
Francisco, California had one of the largest and most geographically cohesive lesbian
communities in the country between the mid-1930s and 1960s. In 1954 alone there were
at least thirteen bars exclusively marketed or catering to lesbians, and most were located
in North Beach. San Francisco’s North Beach was a residential lesbian district as well;
many lesbians were drawn to the neighborhood’s cheap rents and proximity to lesbian
nightlife. In addition to bars, there were private house parties; meetings held by the
nation’s first lesbian-rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis; bookstores; coffee
shops; cafes; and the Women’s Building, a community center for women founded
entirely by lesbians.

As Chapter 3 details, the aforementioned cities with lesbian communities, especially San
Francisco, are ripe with historic preservation opportunities. Given that many of the
buildings are extant, San Francisco’s North Beach is an exceptional candidate for a
lesbian historic district, which would include many of the lesbian bars that set the stage
for the development of a lesbian community. Three specific lesbian bars stand out as
112

extraordinarily significant: Mona’s Barrel Room at 140 Columbus Avenue, arguably the
birthplace of the lesbian community in San Francisco; Mona’s 440 Club at 440
Broadway, a veritable anchor for lesbians in San Francisco and throughout the country;
and Tommy’s Place at 529 Broadway, the site of the first police raid on a lesbian bar in
San Francisco. These three bars deserve recognition either through official designation,
commemoration, or interpretation.

Future researchers should continue to press national, state, and local historic preservation
agencies into finally recognizing lesbian history. More comprehensive research may
uncover additional historic lesbian communities throughout the country with potential for
designation. In San Francisco, the historic lesbian community in North Beach deserves
to be documented in an official historic context statement, which would serve as the basis
for a historic resources survey and possible designation of individual landmarks or a
historic district. Deeper analysis of exterior and interior integrity will be essential.
Additional research may uncover even more significant building typologies associated
with the historic lesbian community that deserve recognition. The buildings that
comprised the second geographically cohesive lesbian district in San Francisco –the
Valencia Corridor section of the Mission District—should also be analyzed for relative
significance, landmark status, or inclusion in a historic district.

The day a property associated with lesbian history is officially recognized by a
governmental agency as being significant within the history of the United States will be a
day worthy of landmark status of its own.

113

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122

APPENDIX A

Figure 32 Cover page of sample self-guided walking tour brochure. (Created by Shayne Watson,
2009)

123

Figure 33 Second page of sample self-guided walking tour brochure features a short history of the
lesbian community in North Beach. (Created by Shayne Watson, 2009)

124

Figure 34 Third page of sample self-guided walking tour brochure features a map showing sites
related to the lesbian community in North Beach. (Created by Shayne Watson, 2009)

125

Figure 35 Fourth page of sample self-guided walking tour brochure includes background
information on sites related to lesbian history in North Beach. (Created by Shayne Watson, 2009)

126

Figure 36 Fifth and last page of sample self-guided walking tour brochure includes background
information on sites related to lesbian history in North Beach. (Created by Shayne Watson, 2009)

127

APPENDIX B

Figure 37 Sample online archive index page (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Index.html)

128

Figure 38 Sample online archive history page outlining the background on Mona’s 440 Club (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/History.htm)

129

Figure 39 Sample online archive page showing contemporary axial and aerial views of 440
Broadway (See http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/440Broadway.htm)

130

Figure 40 Sample online archive media page with historical photographs of Broadway Street and
women inside Mona’s 440 Club (See http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Media.htm)

131

Figure 41 Sample online archive media page with a photograph of Mona Hood, historical
advertisements for the club, and a photograph of an ashtray from Mona’s 440 Club (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Media2.htm)

132

Figure 42 Sample online archive media page with a souvenir photograph from on archive and a
historical photograph of Tommy Vasu, owner of Tommy’s 299 Club and Tommy’s Place, and
friends in Mona’s Candlelight Club (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Media3.htm)

133

Figure 43 Sample online archive media page dedicated to lesbian performer Gladys Bentley,
including a historical photograph, advertisement for Mona’s 440 Club, and a video of Bentley
performing on Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Media4.htm)

134

Figure 44 Sample online archive map page showing other lesbian bars in North Beach (See
http://www.shaynewatson.com/Monas440Club/Map.htm)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Most lesbians living in San Francisco, or those who visit the city as tourists, likely do not know that an extraordinarily broad and cohesive lesbian community existed in the city’s North Beach neighborhood between the 1930s and 1960s. As of 2009, the buildings in San Francisco that once served the country’s largest lesbian community bear no sign of their former lives. Most still extant, the buildings have shed their lesbian skins and are ghostly vestiges of a forgotten history. The former home of Mona’s – the veritable birthplace of the lesbian community in San Francisco – is now a nightclub catering to heterosexuals. The building that housed Tommy’s Place – targeted by police fifty-four years ago in the first raid of a lesbian bar– is a stripper club called the Garden of Eden. To date, none of the buildings associated with the historic lesbian community in San Francisco is designated as a local, state, or national landmark. This is an enormous disparity in light of the contributions lesbians have made to United States history.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Watson, Shayne Elizabeth (author)

Core Title Preserving the tangible remains of San Francisco's lesbian community in North Beach, 1933 to 1960

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Historic Preservation

Degree Program Historic Preservation

Publication Date 11/23/2009

Defense Date 10/30/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag gay bar,GLBT,Historic Preservation,historic resource,lesbian,lesbian bar,LGBT,North Beach,OAI-PMH Harvest,San Francisco

Place Name California (states), North Beach (city or populated place), San Francisco (city or populated place), USA (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Breisch, Kenneth A. (committee chair), Dubrow, Gail (committee member), Sandmeier, Trudi (committee member)

Creator Email sewatson@usc.edu,sewatson77@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2752

Unique identifier UC1493386

Identifier etd-Watson-3218 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-279723 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2752 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Watson-3218.pdf

Dmrecord 279723

Document Type Thesis

Rights Watson, Shayne Elizabeth

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu