In the tearooms and speakeasies of this district, lesbians and gay men from throughout the city and the Midwest met and socialized with localĪnd with heterosexuals bent on obtaining a glimpse of gay life. The lesbian presence in the city was less visible during these years, in part because many working-class lesbians “passed” as men in order to gain access to better-paying jobs ChicagoĬarried occasional sensationalized stories about local “men,” many of them “married,” who had been unmasked as women.īy the 1920s, a visible lesbian and gay enclave was well established in the Near North Side bohemian neighborhood known as Of Chicago noted the presence of “whole groups and colonies of these men who are sex perverts,” many of them working as During the early years of the century, much of this subculture was centered in the Levee, a working-class entertainment andĬatered to gay men and featured female impersonation acts. The anonymous and transient character of these neighborhoods permitted the development of Chicago's lesbian and gay subculture.
As one of the busiest industrial centers and transportation hubs in the United States, Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century attracted thousands of single women and men with new employment opportunities and nonfamilial living arrangements in the lodging-house districts of the
