From the 1940s through the ‘60s, there was the Kitty Hawk Tavern. In the 1970s, there was the Admiral’s Galley.
Both were located in the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, built in the 1920s, on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh. Both were gathering spaces for the City of Oaks’ queer residents and visitors before being out was widely socially accepted.
A new report from the City of Raleigh’s Historic Development Commission (RHDC) takes a comprehensive look at spaces across the city that are of historic significance to the local LGBTQ community. Started in 2019, the research draws on community meetings, online surveys, archival records, photos, and oral histories with the goal of identifying, contextualizing, and documenting sites that were historically important to Raleigh’s LGBTQ population.
“This project is the first of its kind in the state,” a summary of the report states. “It is a first step and not a comprehensive history of Raleigh’s LGBTQIA+ communities.”
Consultants who worked on the project used the early 20th century as a timeframe to start their research, with a particular focus on the period beginning in the 1970s—the advent of the gay liberation movement—to the early 1990s, through the end of the AIDS crisis. Findings include a general history of the city’s various gay communities, a list of more than 200 “LGBTQIA+-identified” places throughout city limits, evaluation of 20 sites that could be designated as local landmarks, and recommendations for further research.
Before the 1970s, the report notes, “there were almost no safe spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community.” But venues such as the Kitty Hawk Tavern, “a bar where gay and bisexual men met among the crowd,” and the Admiral’s Galley, “a secret bar in the basement of the hotel frequented by gay men in the 1970s,” provided spaces where queer residents could congregate.
By the 1970s, local activists began organizing and civil rights advocacy groups emerged. LGBTQ advocacy continued through the 1980s, though it faced intense pushback from conservatives. By 1990, the AIDS epidemic was taking a devastating toll on the queer community, and new organizations offered services and support to the people who were impacted.
Community spaces emerged across the city to support queer advocacy during this period.
Towards the end of the 1970s, a 1917 bungalow on Hawthorne Road, near NC State’s main campus, opened to house the Women’s Culture Collective Coffeehouse, a lesbian-focused group that emerged in the early years of the gay liberation movement. Beginning in 1991, a small office building on West Johnson Street (off of Glenwood South) was home to the Gay and Lesbian Helpline of Wake County. And, also in 1991, the iconic Legends Nightclub opened in a brick building, built in 1958, in downtown’s Warehouse District. The club, known for its drag performances, will relocate from its longtime home later this year.
The RHDC will present the report to the Raleigh City Council at its meeting on Tuesday. The report recommends evaluating a total of 20 spaces—including those mentioned above, plus Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Nash Square, and the Rialto Theater, all significant to the queer community, among others—for designation as historic landmarks or other recognition.
The report also recommends ways to further the research and recognize the city’s LGBTQ history, and acknowledges the challenges inherent in doing so. Many of the community’s historic spaces were secret, for peoples’ protection, and early news stories about such spaces were often sensationalized.
“Much of Raleigh’s LGBTQIA+ history is not written down or visible on the outside of a building,” the report summary states. “Living as an open member of the LGBTQIA+ community is still not an option for many people. This fact may have limited engagement and information sharing with a public project. Documenting spaces tied to groups beyond white men was difficult. This reflects larger societal patterns and influences within the LGBTQIA+ community.”
Read the full report here and click here for the project summary.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Follow Raleigh Editor Jane Porter on X or send an email to jporter@indyweek.com.