ニューヨークのクィアランドマークの簡潔な歴史

During the Covid pandemic, New York-native Marc Zinaman embarked on a personal project. Sparked by his interest in Studio 54, the fabled nightclub associated with 1970s disco, he decided to research all of the urban addresses connected to New York’s historic queer scene. “That initial curiosity morphed into a daily ritual,” says Zinaman. “Every morning, I’d research two to three places, tracking down addresses, years of operation, old photos, whatever scraps of history I could find. My daily habit turned into an obsession. Before long, I stepped back and realised I’d mapped nearly 1,000 locations.”

Zinaman’s tireless pursuit to map all of New York’s queer venues has resulted in the book Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places, an impressive collation of his extensive research, dating back to venues from the late 19th century until the present day. The project coincided with the launch of his popular Instagram account, which shares his journey into New York’s queer history.

The book is a monumental homage to the city’s LGBTQ+ past and all the inhabitants who brought queerness out of the shadows. It’s a must read for those interested in the history of subcultures – and, more importantly, the up until recently, obscured queer history of the city that never sleeps. 

Dazed spoke to Marc Zinaman to find out more about the history of these iconic landmarks, from Studio 54 to the Crazy Horse Cafe and Max’s Kansas City.

189 Bleecker Street 

“Sometimes queer spaces are forged in history simply because of the well-known people who frequented them. The San Remo was definitely a gathering space for numerous LGBTQ+ literary and artistic intellectuals we celebrate today – James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, among others, all drank there on the regular,” says Zinaman. Opened in 1925, the working-class Italian restaurant and bar, nicknamed the ‘Remo’, became the favourite hangout of the Beat crowds, many of whom were LGBTQ+ writers. 

“Whether it was truly a safe space is probably more complicated. I’d say it was more of a kind of social refuge, where bohemianism and queerness just coexisted and even overlapped. But like many venues of that era, it wasn’t openly affirming in the way we think of LGBTQ+ spaces today. So ‘safety’ was more conditional and depended on discretion, reputation, and – in this case – on your proximity to privilege. And like many bars in mid-century New York, San Remo reportedly had mob ties as it was owned and run by the Mafia-connected Santini family. The Santinis weren’t exactly friendly to the gays, but just put up with them because their money was good.”

149 Bleecker Street 

During the postwar era, neighbourhoods of Lower Manhattan, in particular Greenwich Village, flourished as bohemian, queer centres. Between 1965 and 1968, Crazy Horse Cafe on Bleecker Street fronted as a downstairs café but simultaneously operated as an upstairs drag bar. It became renowned for its famous female impersonators and cross-dressing performers, in particular Pudgy Roberts, who billed himself as the “world’s funniest comic stripper”.

As Zinaman tells Dazed, Crazy Horse embodied the transition between concealed, underground queer spaces, to more audacious, avant-garde venues that openly and staged sexual and gender fluidity. “Crazy Horse operated as a performance venue and cultural hub where drag, camp and satire collided. It reflected a growing boldness and fluidity in how people expressed their identities… so in that sense, Crazy Horse helped pave the way for a more visible, vocal, and culturally influential drag and trans community that we see really begin to emerge at the end of the decade and with the nascent queer liberation movement.” 

51-53 Christopher Street

One of the most famous New York queer landmarks due to the Stonewall Riots, which was a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, the Stonewall Inn is still alive and running today. “The 1969 Stonewall Uprising marked a turning point – not necessarily the start of LGBTQ+ activism, but a moment when the struggle became more visible, more organised, and more defiant,” explains Zinaman. 

“My book tries to point out that the Stonewall Inn which stands today is far from the original site of the event. It’s still a functioning bar – albeit a completely new one – but it’s also a national historic landmark and museum. So a lot of time, money, and intention has gone into making Stonewall one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of queer resistance today – not just in New York City but across the globe.”

However, as Zinaman explains, the changing identity of Stonewall has also received some resistance. “But for some, it has become too commercialised and feels more like a tourist destination than a grassroots political hub. So I think while its symbolic weight hasn’t diminished, it does exist in tension with the way today’s queer activism feels more intersectional, digital, and decentralised.”

213 Park Avenue South

Featured prominently in Patti Smith’s beloved memoir Just Kids, Max’s Kansas City, according to Smith, once formed part of the Lower East Side’s ‘Bermuda Triangle’. The three bohemian venues within walking distance to one another were Brownie’s restaurant, Andy Warhol’s Factory and of course Max’s. Attracting a mixed crowd, the nightclub and restaurant was a glam rock, new wave watering hole for the city’s creatives. Zinaman says, “Like San Remo, Max’s was a creative nerve center, where artists, writers, musicians and misfits collided.” Making an appearance in Warhol’s book High On Rebellion, the artist wrote: “Max’s Kansas City was the exact spot where Pop Art and Pop Life came together in the sixties – teenyboppers from sculptors, rock stars and poets from St. Marks Place, Hollywood actors checking out what the underground actors were all about…. everybody went to Max’s and everything got homogenised there.” 

“To me, its magnetic energy came from the way it blurred the lines between art, nightlife, queerness, and rebellion and shattered expectations as to what a single gathering space could be,” says Zinaman. “Like San Remo, it was also, of course, defined by its brilliant patrons – everyone from Patti Smith to Candy Darling to John Waters passed through those doors, and it wasn’t a place where you had to perform respectability. In fact, the more daring you were – onstage, in conversation, in how you dressed or danced – the more the place seemed to light up around you, which is why I think the legendary Wayne County could hold court there.”

835 Washington Street 

Located in the Meatpacking District, Mineshaft was a gay, BDSM bar and sex club that operated between 1976 and 1985. Adopting a strict dress code – no colognes, suits, ties, disco or drag dresses – the venue required that its punters wear leather cowboy attire or motorcycle gear (or not much at all). Among its frequenters was the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who took many pictures there and was given the honorary title of ‘Official Mineshaft Photographer.’

“I believe Mapplethorpe’s visits to the Mineshaft are fairly well-documented, both in biographies and in the vast body of photographic work he left behind” says Zinaman. “He certainly participated in activities, but he was also quite often there just as a voyeur, prowling the club for models to photograph. He was fascinated by Mineshaft’s dress codes, its rituals, and just the extremes of the space, and the club informed much of his photography, especially his BDSM-themed portraits and X Portfolio. I think his relationship to Mineshaft says a lot about how art and transgression began to intersect with sexuality and nightlife in 1970s New York, which we then see continue on into the ‘80s at spaces like Club 57, Danceteria, and the Pyramid.” 

254 West 54th Street

A club so famous it has inspired documentaries and films, Studio 54 was once the epicentre of 1970s disco and came to define an entire era. Opening in 1977, the club coincided with the apex of disco, and its regulars featured stars such as Andy Warhol, Halston, Grace Jones, Liza Minnelli, Donna Summer, Sylvester and Bianca Jagger. In 1978, it closed its doors when it was raided by the IRS.

“Studio 54’s theatricality set it apart from any other venue. The club wasn’t just decorated – it was staged with theatre lighting, confetti drops and giant set pieces… So it was more of an immersive fantasy” – Marc Zinaman

According to Zinaman, Studio 54 became iconic because of how carefully the club and its guest list was curated. “Its now legendary velvet rope policy wasn’t necessarily about exclusivity – it was more of an art form, about crafting a very deliberate mix of people to be in the room. I think Steve Rubell once described it as like casting a play every night. So yes, you’d have models and celebrities and Wall Street guys but you’d also have downtown artists, drag queens and kids from the ballroom scene all commingling on the dancefloor.”

“As a physical space, I think Studio 54’s theatricality set it apart from any other venue. The club wasn’t just decorated – it was staged with theatre lighting, confetti drops and giant set pieces that could move about the space, like the now iconic moon-and-cocaine-spoon. So it was more of an immersive fantasy. Crucially, much of that vision came from queer creatives like Rubell but also from the lesser credited people he hired, like set designer Richie Williamson, interior designer Ron Doud, and sound designer Richard Long.”

101 Avenue A

The Pyramid cocktail lounge became known as the city’s hottest cruising bar. One of the biggest performers to emerge from Pyramid was RuPaul, who even lived in the venue’s basement in the 1980s. 

“RuPaul has had so many careers at this point and today he comes off as pretty perfectly polished. So I think it can be easy to forget – and would have been incredible to see live – some of Ru’s earliest and most boldly experimental work, when he was just starting out at places like Pyramid,” says Zinaman. “But thankfully, Ru’s pal and documentarian Nelson Sullivan took many incredible videos during this time period, so we can at least watch and relive some of these wild, early Ru moments on Youtube, which I highly recommend people do.”

531 West 19th Street 

Responsible for the emergence of Vogueing in the 1980s, the Harlem ballroom scene was once brought to life by Tracks, which hosted Paris is Burning IX – part of a series of balls that later lent its name to the 1990 documentary by Jennie Livingston. The balls were a huge part of Black and latino queer culture, where drag acts and dancers (known as ‘queens’) walked for trophies and prizes, each one representing the house they belonged to. Due to the Aids crisis, much of this scene – like other LGBTQ+ venues – sadly lost its momentum in the late 1980s, as many of its regulars fell victim to the virus. 

“Alongside places like Paradise Garage and Roseland, Tracks – a massive, multi-room nightclub in the Meatpacking District – was one of the earlier venues that helped bring the ballroom scene and voguing out of just Harlem and into the downtown clubs. It hosted balls, runway competitions and voguing battles that drew major figures from the scene, including members of legendary houses like LaBeija, Ninja, and Xtravaganza. What helped set Tracks apart was its sheer size and openness – it had the space for big, theatrical performances and it drew a mixed crowd, so that helped bridge gaps between downtown Club Kids, queer youth of color, and the emerging vogue stars.”

126th East 14th Street 

According to Zinaman, the regulars of the club Palladium described it as “a kind of high-glam, high-energy spectacle that was as much about being seen as it was about dancing”. Opened in 1985 by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager – the creators of Studio 54 – the club was in a 1920s movie palace, with a cavernous interior that featured large-scale murals by artists like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “That blend of club culture and contemporary art gave it a truly unique vibe,” says Zinaman. “Marsha Stern, who I interviewed, worked at Palladium as a lighting engineer and she talked a lot about all of the club technologies that Palladium innovated, including these giant custom-built video arrays that would manoeuvre around and play music videos throughout the night – right when MTV was just becoming a thing.” 

The Palladium scene was a continuation of the Studio 54 energy, but “filtered through a late 80s and early 90s down lens,” says Zinaman. “The Palladium crowd and its energy was also eclectic – models, Wall Street types, Club Kids, drag performers, college students and celebs all rubbing shoulders.” Palladium wasn’t only a place to dance, but a destination to be seen, to impress and to shock. In 1997, the club closed and was converted into NYU campus housing.

Marc Zinaman’s Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places is published by Pengin Random House and is a available here.

During the Covid pandemic, New York-native Marc Zinaman embarked on a personal project. Sparked by his interest in Studio 54, the fabled nightclub associated with 1970s disco, he decided to research all of the urban addresses connected to New York’s historic queer scene. “That initial curiosity morphed into a daily ritual,” says Zinaman. “Every morning, I’d research two to three places, tracking down addresses, years of operation, old photos, whatever scraps of history I could find. My daily habit turned into an obsession. Before long, I stepped back and realised I’d mapped nearly 1,000 locations.”

Zinaman’s tireless pursuit to map all of New York’s queer venues has resulted in the book Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places, an impressive collation of his extensive research, dating back to venues from the late 19th century until the present day. The project coincided with the launch of his popular Instagram account, which shares his journey into New York’s queer history.

The book is a monumental homage to the city’s LGBTQ+ past and all the inhabitants who brought queerness out of the shadows. It’s a must read for those interested in the history of subcultures – and, more importantly, the up until recently, obscured queer history of the city that never sleeps. 

Dazed spoke to Marc Zinaman to find out more about the history of these iconic landmarks, from Studio 54 to the Crazy Horse Cafe and Max’s Kansas City.

189 Bleecker Street 

“Sometimes queer spaces are forged in history simply because of the well-known people who frequented them. The San Remo was definitely a gathering space for numerous LGBTQ+ literary and artistic intellectuals we celebrate today – James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, among others, all drank there on the regular,” says Zinaman. Opened in 1925, the working-class Italian restaurant and bar, nicknamed the ‘Remo’, became the favourite hangout of the Beat crowds, many of whom were LGBTQ+ writers. 

“Whether it was truly a safe space is probably more complicated. I’d say it was more of a kind of social refuge, where bohemianism and queerness just coexisted and even overlapped. But like many venues of that era, it wasn’t openly affirming in the way we think of LGBTQ+ spaces today. So ‘safety’ was more conditional and depended on discretion, reputation, and – in this case – on your proximity to privilege. And like many bars in mid-century New York, San Remo reportedly had mob ties as it was owned and run by the Mafia-connected Santini family. The Santinis weren’t exactly friendly to the gays, but just put up with them because their money was good.”

149 Bleecker Street 

During the postwar era, neighbourhoods of Lower Manhattan, in particular Greenwich Village, flourished as bohemian, queer centres. Between 1965 and 1968, Crazy Horse Cafe on Bleecker Street fronted as a downstairs café but simultaneously operated as an upstairs drag bar. It became renowned for its famous female impersonators and cross-dressing performers, in particular Pudgy Roberts, who billed himself as the “world’s funniest comic stripper”.

As Zinaman tells Dazed, Crazy Horse embodied the transition between concealed, underground queer spaces, to more audacious, avant-garde venues that openly and staged sexual and gender fluidity. “Crazy Horse operated as a performance venue and cultural hub where drag, camp and satire collided. It reflected a growing boldness and fluidity in how people expressed their identities… so in that sense, Crazy Horse helped pave the way for a more visible, vocal, and culturally influential drag and trans community that we see really begin to emerge at the end of the decade and with the nascent queer liberation movement.” 

51-53 Christopher Street

One of the most famous New York queer landmarks due to the Stonewall Riots, which was a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, the Stonewall Inn is still alive and running today. “The 1969 Stonewall Uprising marked a turning point – not necessarily the start of LGBTQ+ activism, but a moment when the struggle became more visible, more organised, and more defiant,” explains Zinaman. 

“My book tries to point out that the Stonewall Inn which stands today is far from the original site of the event. It’s still a functioning bar – albeit a completely new one – but it’s also a national historic landmark and museum. So a lot of time, money, and intention has gone into making Stonewall one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of queer resistance today – not just in New York City but across the globe.”

However, as Zinaman explains, the changing identity of Stonewall has also received some resistance. “But for some, it has become too commercialised and feels more like a tourist destination than a grassroots political hub. So I think while its symbolic weight hasn’t diminished, it does exist in tension with the way today’s queer activism feels more intersectional, digital, and decentralised.”

213 Park Avenue South

Featured prominently in Patti Smith’s beloved memoir Just Kids, Max’s Kansas City, according to Smith, once formed part of the Lower East Side’s ‘Bermuda Triangle’. The three bohemian venues within walking distance to one another were Brownie’s restaurant, Andy Warhol’s Factory and of course Max’s. Attracting a mixed crowd, the nightclub and restaurant was a glam rock, new wave watering hole for the city’s creatives. Zinaman says, “Like San Remo, Max’s was a creative nerve center, where artists, writers, musicians and misfits collided.” Making an appearance in Warhol’s book High On Rebellion, the artist wrote: “Max’s Kansas City was the exact spot where Pop Art and Pop Life came together in the sixties – teenyboppers from sculptors, rock stars and poets from St. Marks Place, Hollywood actors checking out what the underground actors were all about…. everybody went to Max’s and everything got homogenised there.” 

“To me, its magnetic energy came from the way it blurred the lines between art, nightlife, queerness, and rebellion and shattered expectations as to what a single gathering space could be,” says Zinaman. “Like San Remo, it was also, of course, defined by its brilliant patrons – everyone from Patti Smith to Candy Darling to John Waters passed through those doors, and it wasn’t a place where you had to perform respectability. In fact, the more daring you were – onstage, in conversation, in how you dressed or danced – the more the place seemed to light up around you, which is why I think the legendary Wayne County could hold court there.”

835 Washington Street 

Located in the Meatpacking District, Mineshaft was a gay, BDSM bar and sex club that operated between 1976 and 1985. Adopting a strict dress code – no colognes, suits, ties, disco or drag dresses – the venue required that its punters wear leather cowboy attire or motorcycle gear (or not much at all). Among its frequenters was the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who took many pictures there and was given the honorary title of ‘Official Mineshaft Photographer.’

“I believe Mapplethorpe’s visits to the Mineshaft are fairly well-documented, both in biographies and in the vast body of photographic work he left behind” says Zinaman. “He certainly participated in activities, but he was also quite often there just as a voyeur, prowling the club for models to photograph. He was fascinated by Mineshaft’s dress codes, its rituals, and just the extremes of the space, and the club informed much of his photography, especially his BDSM-themed portraits and X Portfolio. I think his relationship to Mineshaft says a lot about how art and transgression began to intersect with sexuality and nightlife in 1970s New York, which we then see continue on into the ‘80s at spaces like Club 57, Danceteria, and the Pyramid.” 

254 West 54th Street

A club so famous it has inspired documentaries and films, Studio 54 was once the epicentre of 1970s disco and came to define an entire era. Opening in 1977, the club coincided with the apex of disco, and its regulars featured stars such as Andy Warhol, Halston, Grace Jones, Liza Minnelli, Donna Summer, Sylvester and Bianca Jagger. In 1978, it closed its doors when it was raided by the IRS.

“Studio 54’s theatricality set it apart from any other venue. The club wasn’t just decorated – it was staged with theatre lighting, confetti drops and giant set pieces… So it was more of an immersive fantasy” – Marc Zinaman

According to Zinaman, Studio 54 became iconic because of how carefully the club and its guest list was curated. “Its now legendary velvet rope policy wasn’t necessarily about exclusivity – it was more of an art form, about crafting a very deliberate mix of people to be in the room. I think Steve Rubell once described it as like casting a play every night. So yes, you’d have models and celebrities and Wall Street guys but you’d also have downtown artists, drag queens and kids from the ballroom scene all commingling on the dancefloor.”

“As a physical space, I think Studio 54’s theatricality set it apart from any other venue. The club wasn’t just decorated – it was staged with theatre lighting, confetti drops and giant set pieces that could move about the space, like the now iconic moon-and-cocaine-spoon. So it was more of an immersive fantasy. Crucially, much of that vision came from queer creatives like Rubell but also from the lesser credited people he hired, like set designer Richie Williamson, interior designer Ron Doud, and sound designer Richard Long.”

101 Avenue A

The Pyramid cocktail lounge became known as the city’s hottest cruising bar. One of the biggest performers to emerge from Pyramid was RuPaul, who even lived in the venue’s basement in the 1980s. 

“RuPaul has had so many careers at this point and today he comes off as pretty perfectly polished. So I think it can be easy to forget – and would have been incredible to see live – some of Ru’s earliest and most boldly experimental work, when he was just starting out at places like Pyramid,” says Zinaman. “But thankfully, Ru’s pal and documentarian Nelson Sullivan took many incredible videos during this time period, so we can at least watch and relive some of these wild, early Ru moments on Youtube, which I highly recommend people do.”

531 West 19th Street 

Responsible for the emergence of Vogueing in the 1980s, the Harlem ballroom scene was once brought to life by Tracks, which hosted Paris is Burning IX – part of a series of balls that later lent its name to the 1990 documentary by Jennie Livingston. The balls were a huge part of Black and latino queer culture, where drag acts and dancers (known as ‘queens’) walked for trophies and prizes, each one representing the house they belonged to. Due to the Aids crisis, much of this scene – like other LGBTQ+ venues – sadly lost its momentum in the late 1980s, as many of its regulars fell victim to the virus. 

“Alongside places like Paradise Garage and Roseland, Tracks – a massive, multi-room nightclub in the Meatpacking District – was one of the earlier venues that helped bring the ballroom scene and voguing out of just Harlem and into the downtown clubs. It hosted balls, runway competitions and voguing battles that drew major figures from the scene, including members of legendary houses like LaBeija, Ninja, and Xtravaganza. What helped set Tracks apart was its sheer size and openness – it had the space for big, theatrical performances and it drew a mixed crowd, so that helped bridge gaps between downtown Club Kids, queer youth of color, and the emerging vogue stars.”

126th East 14th Street 

According to Zinaman, the regulars of the club Palladium described it as “a kind of high-glam, high-energy spectacle that was as much about being seen as it was about dancing”. Opened in 1985 by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager – the creators of Studio 54 – the club was in a 1920s movie palace, with a cavernous interior that featured large-scale murals by artists like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “That blend of club culture and contemporary art gave it a truly unique vibe,” says Zinaman. “Marsha Stern, who I interviewed, worked at Palladium as a lighting engineer and she talked a lot about all of the club technologies that Palladium innovated, including these giant custom-built video arrays that would manoeuvre around and play music videos throughout the night – right when MTV was just becoming a thing.” 

The Palladium scene was a continuation of the Studio 54 energy, but “filtered through a late 80s and early 90s down lens,” says Zinaman. “The Palladium crowd and its energy was also eclectic – models, Wall Street types, Club Kids, drag performers, college students and celebs all rubbing shoulders.” Palladium wasn’t only a place to dance, but a destination to be seen, to impress and to shock. In 1997, the club closed and was converted into NYU campus housing.

Marc Zinaman’s Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places is published by Pengin Random House and is a available here.