PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the largest and most important city in the British North American colonies and then in the early American republic. For more than one hundred years thereafter, it was among the greatest manufacturing centers in the country. One of its nicknames, "Workshop to the World," was entirely justified. With economic read-justments after World War II, however, Philadelphia began a long decline and slipped from being the third largest U.S. city to its ranking as fifth in the 2000 census. Although the economy of the region remains strong, the contemporary urban core shares many of the problems common to postindustrial cities. The downtown area, however, known in Philadelphia as Center City, is thriving, in no small part due to the presence of the many LGBT residents and businesses that were committed to the area long before there were signs of economic revival. This broad picture is necessary to contextualize the history of sexual and gender minorities in Philadelphia.

There are few sources upon which to base a detailed LGBT history before the late nineteenth century. With most of that early period, all that exists, or has been discovered so far, are legal documents, so little social or cultural history is possible. What antigay laws there were, as was the case with many laws on other subjects, completely ignored women. Pennsylvania was probably the most tolerant colony in general, and its relatively light penalties for sodomy reflected that ethos, though other crimes that were perceived as being of a moral nature, such as adultery, fornication, and lying, were criminal there (but not in other colonies or in England) and could have severe sentences. The death penalty for sodomy was abolished by a 1676 English law that applied the ultimate sanction only to murder. Later statutes did apply the death penalty, but only to cases of "buggery" by "negros." In 1718 it was once again applied to whites as well. True to its original position, Pennsylvania, after joining the union, became the first state to revoke the death penalty for sodomy. Obviously, there are many gaps in the LGBT record. One topic that bears investigation is the role of sexual minorities among Pennsylvania Germans. According to the 1790 census, this group made up 31 percent of the new state's population, just slightly less than the Anglo-American plurality.

Two events, one obscure, one well-known, typify the place of gay men in late-nineteenth-century Philadelphia (and are emblematic of the larger American experience). A young effeminate man was sent by his mother to the Insane Department of Philadelphia's public hospital in 1886 largely because he was suffering from extreme delusions. What is unclear from the report of the case is whether or not it was the delusions that got him there or the fact that he was inclined to masturbate and fondle or fellate other men. This example of the medicalization of a lower-class individual stands in contrast with the meeting of two gay artistic titans. Oscar Wilde was not yet at the pinnacle of his career when he visited the United States in 1882, but he was well on his way. At first the American poet Walt Whitman was not particularly interested in Wilde. Wilde, however, extravagantly praised him in a public speech in Philadelphia, and Whitman invited him to Camden, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. They talked of prosody, the future of literature, and the contrasts between the United States and England. For his part, Wilde was deeply moved by visiting "the grand old man," and, according to his companion, was mostly deep in thought on his trip back to Philadelphia.

Whether or not Whitman's presence nearby was responsible, Philadelphia seems to have had more than its share of artists who were either attracted to members of the same sex or whose work was homoerotically charged. Whitman's close relationship with the artist Thomas Eakins is well documented, not least in Eakins's portrait (said to be Whitman's favorite) and photographs of the poet. The Charlotte Cushman Club, founded originally by the famous nineteenth-century actress, provided hotel space for visiting actresses and other social venues for lesbians beginning in 1907.

The record broadens and grows much more detailed after 1900. With it comes a broader perspective on LGBT life. Clues to the lives of ordinary people become more abundant. Rittenhouse Square in central Philadelphia is mentioned many times in various early-twentieth-century sources as being a location for gay cruising and socializing. Social workers and newspapers began to note the growing presence of gender nonconformists. Even various LGBT folk customs are recorded, including dress habits, cruising techniques, and argot. One of historian Jonathan Ned Katz's more striking examples involves a straight detective and his friends being solicited on a Philadelphia street by a male cross-dresser. Though some early-twentieth-century writers were struck by the differences that were displayed by inverts in various U.S. cities, the detective recognized their commonalities.

Katz also made translations of relevant passages from pioneer scholar and activist Magnus Hirschfeld's monumental The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914). In the early twentieth century, Hirschfeld comprehensively covered what was known about homosexuality in his day. In addition to surveying the literature, he did a world tour to discover what he could. In the United States, he was told that Philadelphia had a hidden but active world available to sexual minorities. A letter he received from a Colorado professor corroborated this perception in describing a Turkish bathhouse frequented by about sixty homosexuals in Philadelphia every Saturday night.

The scattered references to same-sex desire continued through the 1930s and deserve fuller investigation. One of the most intriguing is a photograph of Ray St. Clare and Sepia Mae West that appeared in the Philadelphia Tribune, the city's African American newspaper, on 13 February 1936. Headlined "Funny what love will do," its subject is a couple in wedding attire. Sepia is described in the caption as being one of Philadelphia's most prominent female impersonators. Evidently, the wedding was the "largest ever given in any nite [sic ] club." There are accounts of similar ceremonies from that era and for the next few decades as well.

World War II was a dividing line in Philadelphia, just as it was elsewhere in the United States. Though not as important an embarkation point for returning veterans as New York City, New Orleans, and San Francisco, it was nonetheless a large navy and army city with enough of an institutional and commercial base to provide support for LGBT returning veterans. The focus of the emerging LGBT community was in Center City, where most of the nightlife was concentrated. Though some LGBT bars were established before the war, many more can be documented from the 1950s and later periods. The majority of them were in Center City, but some were located in North Philadelphia, a predominantly African American neighborhood; on the docks; and even in some suburbs.

Characteristically, many late-night restaurants catered to the LGBT bar crowd. The most well-known of these was Dewey's, which in 1965 was also the site of one of the first, if not the first, demonstrations for equal treatment of LGBT people in a commercial establishment. The management there refused to serve LGBT people, fearing they drove away other customers. A local activist group, the Janus Society, sponsored two sit-downs, the first leading to several arrests.

Walt Whitman remained controversial even long after his death in 1892. John Wanamaker, the department store founder, refused to stock Whitman's work early in the twentieth century, but the poet did not really become an irritant until mid-century. A new bridge spanning the Delaware River (separating Philadelphia from New Jersey) was scheduled to be named for him. For the burgeoning conservative Roman Catholic movement of the 1950s, it was a disgrace to name the bridge after someone these Catholics thought degenerate. There were, however, also pressures supporting the name. Several scholars wrote to the river's governing body in favor of Whitman's name, and some religious officials did so as well. The two-year controversy had ended by 1957, the year the structure opened as the Walt Whitman Bridge, but it was long remembered by Philadelphians. Subsequently, Whitman, by virtue of having the bridge named after him, became a source of pride for gays. Three decades after the bridge's completion, a public service announcement produced by the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force presented a young man (with the bridge prominently in the background), who, shortly after coming out, wondered why his teachers had never told him that Whitman was gay.

During the 1960s, there were more important developments than the bridge controversy. The establishment of several LGBT activist organizations during that decade provided staying power, visibility, and continuity for the community that enhanced its long-term viability. Of course, they created tension as well. The Mattachine Society came to the city in 1960, about a decade after its founding in Los Angeles. Ultimately, the local group changed its name to the Janus Society of the Delaware Valley. Over time, Philadelphia was distinguished in at least two ways from the homophile movement elsewhere. At least in the early years, there seemed to be better relations between men and women there than in other cities. And ultimately, those attached to the movement by the mid-1960s became more radicalized than was the norm. After conflicts developed between men and women, most lesbians left the Janus Society to devote their energies instead to a revived Mattachine chapter, a chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, and a local Homophile Action League. The most visible signs of radicalization in Philadelphia, if the sit-ins at Dewey's are not provocative enough, were the protests at Independence Hall, Philadelphia's global symbol of freedom, on the Fourth of July from 1965 through 1969.

The social life of LGBT people was also enlarging considerably. Spruce Street was becoming the "main street" of "the life" in the city. Most of the bars and restaurants were there or nearby. The Allegro, between Broad and Fifteenth, was very popular for more than two decades until it closed in 1983. The corner of Spruce and Broad Streets was the LGBT assembly point for the New Year's Mummers Parade, a major Philadelphia event. Henri David's drag parties were well known. Henry McIlhenny, who was from a wealthy and socially prominent Philadelphia family, held famous gay parties at his mansion just off of Rittenhouse Square. Atlantic City became, more than ever, a resort destination with a "gay beach" for Philadelphia men and women. The annual June parades celebrating LGBT pride became regularized in the early 1970s.

Philadelphia during the 1960s and 1970s also had one of the most repressive police commissioners in the country. Frank Rizzo, who later became mayor, was notorious for turning a blind eye to violations of everyone's civil rights. For sexual and gender minorities, police abuse took the form of the usual tactics of raiding bars and petty harassment of any street activity that could be considered a misdemeanor, no matter how insignificant. The police were especially virulent on the so-called merry-go-round, a cruising circle that was partly located on Spruce Street, near Schuylkill River Park. So closely is the park identified with the LGBT community that many people, including straights, still know the park as Judy Garland Park, after the gay icon.

The Eromin Center ("Eromin" for erotic minorities) was established in 1973. It was a clearinghouse to serve the psychological needs and sexual health concerns of LGBT people and was one of the first of its kind. With an outpatient clinic that provided group and individual therapy, among other services, its importance to the community was greater than the numbers it served (which were considerable). In a sense, it was like a glue for the community and a safety net. It lasted until the late 1980s. About the same time, an early manifestation of an LGBT community center occupied a small building on Kater Street, near Fifth. Another locale for service was the Christian Association on the University of Pennsylvania campus. During the 1970s and 1980s it housed a peer education group for LGBT people and was also the venue of an annual cultural festival that drew performers and speakers from all over the world.

AIDS consumed most of the community's energies in Philadelphia, as it did elsewhere, in the 1980s and after. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was the locus of action on a variety of fronts. It applied pressure on medical and social service institutions in the city to provide for people with AIDS. Once governmental and private organizations were established, ACT UP held them to account on a variety of points, including race, gender, and class issues. In Philadelphia its protest function was most dramatically evident on 12 September, 1991, when an estimated 7,500 people from many constituencies demonstrated outside the Hotel Atop the Bellevue, where President George H. W. Bush was attending a Republican fund-raising dinner. When ACT UP protestors staged their signature die-in, an ersatz coffin inadvertently fell over the barricades. The police then charged the crowd with night-sticks and arrested eight protesters. A civilian panel condemned the police tactics. The city itself would settle a separate federal suit filed by ACT UP on behalf of fourteen people and five other groups who alleged that the police had violated their civil rights during the demonstration.

Though not a project of ACT UP in the formal sense, AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya's Critical Path AIDS Project was a cutting-edge adjunct to the group's work. His long, creative, activist credentials were put to good use in the struggle against AIDS. Critical Path was a newsletter for those with AIDS that combined practical information with serious scientific articles. Recognizing that "information is power," Kuromiya was among the first to use the Web to disseminate information about AIDS, and www.critpath.org became internationally famous. Though the print version ceased when Kuromiya died in 2000, the Web site continued to be maintained.

Early-twenty-first-century Philadelphia has a large LGBT population, and though it is not as prominent on the national scene as the LGBT communities in many other cities are, it is substantial enough to support a variety of institutions and activities. The "gayborhood," as it has come to be called here, is centered east of Broad Street, on Thirteenth Street, between Walnut and Pine.

The William Way Community Center was founded in 1996 and in 1997 purchased the Engineers' Club building in Center City. Even before purchasing the building, the center had been awarded a $300,000 grant by the federal government's Department of Housing and Urban Development, for renovations. The four-story building houses the Philadelphia LGBT Library and Archives and has offices for more than ten organizations, in addition to sponsoring its own support and social service groups. Today nearly three thousand people use the building each month.

Another center serves the LGBT community at the University of Pennsylvania. Founded in 1982, it became the first such center in the nation to have its own building. David Goodhand and Vincent Griski met at the university in 1983 and became early Microsoft employees. In 2000 they made a substantial gift to the university. The university administration decided to use the funds to provide a committed building to the center.

The Equality Forum began as Pridefest America in 1993 and is held every year in late April and early May. Programming has included seminars on the entire gamut of LGBT topics, from the arts and cinema to political and health issues. Performances and exhibits of all kinds are also part of its mission. Over the years, it has gone from a three-day to a week-long event.

Philadelphia has long languished, caught in an awkward place in the Northeast Corridor. With the nation's financial capital to the north, its governmental capital to the south, and its star on the national stage long past, the city could have easily gone into irreversible, permanent decline. That it has not done so is due, at least in part, to the vibrant LGBT population that has made up a large part of the city's urban center for more than fifty years.

Bibliography

Azzolina, David S. "The Circle Always Grew: Folklore and Gay Identity, 1945–1960." Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996.

Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1988.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary. New York: Harper, 1983.

——. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A: A Documentary History. New York: Meridian, 1992.

Nickels, Thom. Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002.

Philadelphia Gay News, 3 January 1976–3 December 1982.

Stein, Marc. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945–1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Weigley, Russell F., ed. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. 2d ed. New York: Norton, 1982. The best history of the city.

David Azzolina

see alsobarber, samuel, and gian carlo menotti; bentley, gladys; cornwell, anita; cushman, charlotte; drum; eakins, thomas; erickson, reed; gittings, barbara, and kay tobin lahusen; hart, alan; homophile movement demonstrations; janus society; kuromiya, kyoshi; locke, alain; polak, clark; radicalesbians; rights of association and assembly; tsang, daniel; whitman, walt; wittman, carl.