By Brian J Pape, AIA
The June 1969 rebellion against police harassment by the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, at the eastern end of Christopher Street, helped to launch a national gay rights movement and make Christopher Street the social and cultural center of New York’s lesbian and gay community. Today, almost all of the attention to the historic gay scene is focused on the east end of Christopher Street, but there is another important area of Christopher Street that deserves attention: the west end.
THEN: This stretch of West Street, looking northeast from its Barrow Street intersection, represents several phases of construction spanning a century of development (from 1830 to 1938) along Greenwich Village’s Hudson River waterfront. The architecture illustrates the area’s long history as a place of dwelling, industry, and commerce, much of it maritime-related, and is a rare surviving example of this once typical development pattern on Manhattan’s west side waterfront. On the far right in this 1929 photo, at the corner of Christopher Street, is the Keller Abington Hotel, with the Christopher Hotel to its left. The tallest buildings were the Keller and Bell Labs (now Westbeth) in the misty far-left background. The City of New York reserved the block of West Street between Christopher and West 10th Streets, left-center in the photo, as the site of the Greenwich (Weehawken) Market house after they sold off the Newgate State Prison grounds in 1829. A 1902 newspaper article referred to the piers between Houston and West 14th Streets as “The Farm,” stating that “for years, especially in fine weather, it has at night been the resort of outcasts, drunkards, dissolute people, and a dangerous class of petty highwaymen.” By the 1920’s, the area was called “a street of hotels.” The area with long-established waterfront taverns, losing the rough seamen and longshoreman patrons by the 1960’s, had become a nucleus for bars catering to a gay clientele (those bars that remain still draw nice crowds). The abandoned piers, especially at Christopher Street, became sites for clandestine rendezvous. Credit: NYPL Digital Collections photo from 1929 by Percy Sperr.
NOW: On this recent photograph, looking northeast from West and Barrow Streets to the Weehawken Street Historic District, we highlight the histories that once occupied this waterfront scene at the west end of Christopher Street. Credit: Brian J. Pape, AIA.
#1: 150 Barrow Street (384 West Street), built as the 6-story Knickerbocker Hotel in 1897-98 by architect Julius Munckwitz, was landmarked in 2007. From 1911-1929 it was the New Keller Hotel, then it became the Keller Abington from 1929 to 1993, at which time the city transformed the hotel into a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel for the indigent. Keller Bar, which occupied the West Street storefront (c. 1956-1998), was reputed to be NY’s oldest gay “leather” bar. Owned by the estate of William Gottlieb since then, it is finally undergoing complete restoration work for residential mixed use, complete with the iconic “hotel” corner sign. Will a Keller Bar return?
#2: 180 Christopher Street (387 West Street) was built as the Hotel Christopher prior to 1920. Remodeled as the Bailey-Holt House of supportive housing by New York City’s HIV/AIDS Service Administration (HASA) in 1986, it was the nation’s first residence for people living with HIV/AIDS.
#3: 388-390 West Street (14 Weehawken Street) was built as a one-story commercial corner building for Benjamin Gottfried in 1937; it became West Beach Bar & Grill (c. 1970-80) and then Badlands Bar (c. 1983-91), both bars catering to a gay clientele. It has been an abandoned eyesore since 1992.
#4: 391 West Street (8 Weehawken Street): this five-story neo-Renaissance tenement (ca. 1902) was built for Solomon Lent; the ground floor commercial space was first a men’s furnishings store. Waterfront Bike Shop has operated out of here for many years now.
#5: 392-393 West Street (6 Weehawken Street): Jane Jacobs wrote of this wood structure in her 1963 book: “The quaintest building in the general popular view, the old wooden building (392 West Street) is not the oldest. This is apparently the remnant of the City Market erected in 1834” (an open wooden shed once covering most of the block). The earliest documented liquors/saloon business (c. 1849-1867) in the historic district was here. Choo Choo’s Pier (c. 1972), then Sneakers (c. late 1970s-99), were bars catering to a gay clientele here. It is now used for storage.
#6: 394-395 West Street (2-4 Weehawken Street): built as three-story brick multiple dwellings (c. 1848), with commercial ground floor use, is now under William Gottlieb ownership. Charles Chabal’s Bar (c. 1950-60) and Sea Shell restaurant (c. 1960-76) preceded the Ramrod Bar (c. 1976-80) which catered to a gay clientele. Currently, Bongo bar is the tenant.
#7: 396-397 West Street (305 W. 10th Street): north of 10th Street, this three-story neo-Renaissance Holland Hotel (ca. 1903-04) was built for restaurateur/saloon operator Albert A. Adler, later named the Clyde Hotel. The Peter Rabbit (c. 1972-88), catered to a gay clientele. The Antica Venezia Restaurant, which occupied the ground floor under William Gottlieb’s ownership until Storm Sandy ruined it, is abandoned now.
#8: 185 Christopher Street (13 Weehawken Street): built in 1837 as a warehouse, it was enlarged in 1871 to be a three-story tenement building. The O’Neil family operated it as O’Neil’s Hotel and Saloon (c. 1912-1920), then as a boarding house. The Dugout Bar (c. 1985-2006), and now the Rock Bar (c. 2007), are bars catering to a gay clientele on the ground floor.
Thank you for that important information including LGBT+ history 🙂
Does anyone recall: “The Piss Pit?” from the disco 70’s in the village? It was a small and seedy gay bar on West Street,across from the old,elevated and defunct West Side Highway in the late disco 70’s. It was about 3 blocks North of Barrow Street and the old Keller hotel. It always had the faint scent of fresh urine and was quite a raunchy place. Most of the gay bars on that strip,sandwiched in between glory-hole video shops and leather gear shops were in those days. I can also recall Keller’s-Bar, Peter Rabbit’s , Badlands, The Ramrod and Sneakers-Bar,all along West Street in that four block area from the mid 1970’s to mid 1980’s. They are all long gone now and the area today is totally gentrified and straigh people have invaded our once loved and strictly gay West Village around Christopher Street.
Wow! — You must be old… I mean really old (*‿-) — You probably remember the Cock Ring on the ground level & basement of Hotel Christopher too(◔_◔). But at least you’re still alive; everyone I knew that patronized those establishments have been long deceased; of course, mostly from AIDS related illnesses ((⇀‸↼)). You’re a true survivor. I found it rather funny to see a middle-aged gay fellow visiting from Europe with a camera trying to take nostalgic pics of this world-famous area in the late 2000s; of course, every last vestige of that raunchy, gay and taboo day & night-life is gone now. The only bar that I saw still there further east on Christopher St. was Ty’s — I caught Jack Wrangler hangin’ out in there a couple times(hehe); he was such a little man(hahaha).
Listenin’ to your narrative, you sound more like one of the mundane patrons of “The Anvil”(a bit further up the street at 14th & West… or were you one of those guys that used to hang out at Wally’s sex club next to the Dugout? — Nah, probably more like the Mineshaft, perhaps?! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The strip on West Street between Barrow Street and West 10th Street in the 70’s and 80’s in the W.Village was notoriously seedy and licentious. In the disco late 70’s,until around 1985,across from the derelict and elevated old West Side Hwy. It attracted mostly rowdy black gays and the homeless, transvestite prostitutes, leathermen,drug-addicts,male hookers and the small bars that lined the street were Keller’s Bar,under the flea-bag Keller Hotel, Badlands on the corner of CHristopher and West Sts,moving North there was Peter Rabbits Bar,Sneakers Bar and a porno video store.Today,it has been cleaned-up and gentrified and houses a high-end wine shop,nice restaurant,clothing boutuques,a cafe’and and the clientele,like the rest of this section of the West Village is no longer exclusively gay as it once was. These days it is a more eclectic mixture of preofessionals that are predominately straight with some respectable gays in the mix for good measure a great NYC village vibe!
Christopher Molinaro: Nothing could be further from your stereotyping and patronizing. Keller’s was not a seedy bar, but one of the few bars that catered to a Black clientele — it had a great jukebox, and all were welcome of any race (even Robert Mapplethorpe who used to troll the bar in search of muscular Black men whom he would take back to photograph and have sex with them while he hurled racial epithets at them). One the corner was The Ring, a great disco that I often went to, and there was nothing seedy about it. Badlands was another neighborhood bar that was popular with, again, all races. Much later in the 1990s it became a porno shop. Next was Sneakers, a sports bar that fielded its own gay softball team. Next was the Ramrod, a leather/western bar where two patrons were killed and six injured when a psychotic former Transit cop emptied two extended-round Uzi’s into the bar. Next was Peter Rabbit, a great hangout for Hispanic men that had yet another great jukebox. I would MUCH prefer these great bars, who were not at all seedy, to the paint-by-numbers wine shop, yuppified cafes and “boutiques” patronized by wealthy clueless nouveau riche arrivistes who have no sense of history of this storied section of the Village and have gentrified it out of existence. If that is your idea of “respectable,” you may keep it. Please learn your history.