West village gay bars nyc
Shortly after midnight on July 26, 1928, a half-dozen detectives showed up at this hub of the “village intelligentsia” and declared everyone under arrest. One police raid in particular caused such a sensation that it made headlines in more than half a dozen newspapers in New York state. And by that token, if you can stand to remain here long enough, everybody you ever hoped to see, and a lot you hoped you wouldn’t, will come in.” The establishment was so packed that the patrons who managed to bring their cups to their lips “one time out of three tries” deserved prizes, the authors felt.īy 1932, prohibition enforcers had already padlocked Julius’ four times. “A madhouse without keepers,” the entry about Julius’ in The Speakeasies of 1932 reads, “It is to New York what Cafe Dome is to Paris. Around this time, it began to be known as Julius’ - either in honor of the owner’s dog or a popular bartender from the previous establishment, no one is quite sure. In 1919, the tavern in this location - possibly named “ Seven Doors” or “ John and Andy’s” - became a speakeasy after the Volstead Act was passed. He also erected a two or two-and-a-half story building in the rear in 1845, per a National Register of Historic Places document. By 1839, McCandless had also bought the lot from a son of Whittemore’s, shortly after the former owner’s death in 1838 he remained in this location until his own death in the 1880s. Longworth’s New-York Directory of 1834-35 notes that a grocer named William White lived at the corner of 18 Factory Street and 27 Amos Street (now West 10th Street), and in 1837-38, an Irish immigrant, the grocer Adam McCandless, was running his dry-goods store from that address. On the same block stood Whittemore’s carding factory it produced textile equipment for the weaving industry and became the namesake for “Factory Street,” which was eventually rechristened “Waverly Place” in 1833. It was one in a row of ten frame houses with brick fronts that lined the block, and the only one that remains. In 1826 he erected the first building in the lot where Julius’ is now located.
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Whittemore, a rich and influential New Yorker, banker and one-time state assemblyman, came to own the block in 1822. By 1794, Abijah Hammond became owner of the part of the farm where, about 50 years, hoary Julius’ now stands. Property records show that a David Mallows acquired part of it from a trustee of one of Warren’s son-in-laws, the Willoughby Earl of Abingdon, whose name is still in Abingdon Square Park. While Warren eventually returned to England for good to be a Member of the Parliament and is buried in Westminster Abbey, his estate in Greenwich Village was divided between his three daughters. The land Julius’ stands on was once the undivided Greenwich Farm, the west portion of which belonged to Sir Peter Warren, a decorated Vice Admiral of the British Navy who owned 300 acres of it by 1744. Over the decades, patrons, guidebooks, and newspapers have raved about its good food and drink, especially the “peerless” hamburgers. Its past visitors include many of the Village’s famed gay celebrities, such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Edward Albee and Rudolf Nureyev.ĭespite the star factor, Julius’s fame is a quiet one stemming from a homeyness that has over time made different kinds of people feel welcome and in good company. Together, they reveal overlapping vignettes of the establishment’s many colorful past lives. The framed, yellowing photos - many of them signed - depict race horses, sportsmen, one-time celebrities, and newspaper clippings about Julius’ and LGBTQ activism in New York. “Things go up, they never come down,” says Joseph Lyons, one of the managing hands, as he energetically tells me bits of the stories layered in the picture frames that crowd together to form the decor of Julius’. On April 21, 1966, three years before the riots at Stonewall occurred a block away, a gay rights milestone gave the West Village bar its status as legend, paving the way for the city’s legitimate LGBTQ establishments. Even Prohibition, during which the tavern transformed into a bustling speakeasy, had minimal impact on Julius’ operations. It bore the name Julius’ sometime in the 1920s. On the quiet corner of West 10th Street and Waverly Place, one of New York’s oldest watering holes has been operating since around 1864. Courtesy Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. The building in 1969 and 50 years later in 2019.