Inside the stacks of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center. | Photo: Michael Bixler

From the moment I walked into the LGBT archives at the William Way Center, I was in love. I pored over everything–the newspapers, the political buttons, the posters, the T-shirts, and even all of the corporate records. What I found most compelling, however, were the small, personal collections that documented the lives of everyday LGBTQ+ folks in the Philadelphia area. They showed me how, even when America was the most unwelcoming toward anyone who was outside the norm, when gay people were portrayed as “deviants who lived miserable lives in the shadows,” queer Philadelphians were creating loving relationships, strong, supportive communities, and claiming urban spaces as their own. For historians, uncovering and celebrating these stories and these spaces means dealing with unique problems.

Queer history is often intentionally ignored, destroyed, denied, or hidden, even by queer people themselves in their effort to remain hidden and safe. Gay spaces can be invisible to the general public. In 1962, Philadelphia Magazine was the first mainstream publication in the country to publish an article about its city’s “gay ghetto” (the term “Gayborhood” wouldn’t appear for another 30 years), with its bars, hangouts, and cruising spots. The article took the form of an exposé called “The Furtive Fraternity,” its title emphasizing the fact that LGBTQ+ Philadelphians inhabited a hidden parallel urban landscape that was mostly invisible to those not in the know. Queer people learned about these spaces by word of mouth, from friends or from printed gay guidebooks that began appearing as early as the late 1950s. These guides would tell the traveler or local who was welcome where–much of the city’s “gay ghetto” was seen as a white male enclave that excluded women and people of color.

Top: Standing room only. The crowd at Woody’s celebrating the gay bar’s 3rd anniversary in 1983. Bottom: Dancing the night away at Mamzelle’s, a lesbian nightclub located on the second and third floor above The Bike Stop on Quince Street. | Photos courtesy of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center

The Philadelphia Magazine article was groundbreaking for the Quaker City. Unlike New York tabloids, which loved to print lurid stories about “debauchery and perversion,” genteel Philadelphians tolerated such goings-on here. They just didn’t talk about them. An exception was the sporadic queer content that appeared in Black newspapers like the Philadelphia Tribune, something the Philadelphia Inquirer wouldn’t touch. This hyper-discretion in the Philadelphia press means a lot of reading between the lines and decoding for LGBTQ+ researchers and historians.

Often overshadowed by its bigger and louder sibling, New York, Philadelphia’s queer accomplishments shine.

Every year on the Fourth of July, from 1965 to 1969, Philadelphia hosted the Annual Reminders in front of Independence Hall. These were the first planned annual demonstrations for gay rights in the country. In the early 1970s, activist groups began pushing for a city gay rights amendment, which would finally pass in 1982 and be amended to include gender identity in 2002. The 1970s also saw the proliferation of LGBTQ+ activist groups. In 1976, the award-winning Philadelphia Gay News began publishing, and the Gay Community Center of Philadelphia opened its doors on Kater Street off of South Street.

A jean jacket donated to the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives displays buttons from The Blue Parrot, The Bike Stop, Westbury Bar, The Post, and other local LGBT bars. | Photo: Michael Bixler

Gay-owned bars and businesses proliferated–along Spruce and Locust Streets from Rittenhouse Square to 11th Street, along South Street on both sides of Broad Street, in Old City, in Queen Village, and with a string of Black gay bars along Filbert and Arch Streets where the Pennsylvania Convention Center sits now.

In the 1980s, the community pulled together to fight the AIDS epidemic. Grassroots activists formed dozens of organizations to fight a threat that the federal, state, and local governments were doing nothing about. In 1988, the Philadelphia chapter of ACT UP was formed to protest that lack of governmental response.

In 2002, the city saw its first Trans Health Conference and, in 2011, its first Trans March. In 2007, the City put up 36 rainbow street signs in the Gayborhood to mark it as a place of diversity and inclusivity.

Today, when many gayborhoods across the country seem to be disappearing, Philadelphia’s Gayborhood is thriving thanks to the unflagging political action of its LGBT community.