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Women's Rooms: A Lesbian Geography of the Village

Five rooms across seven decades, from a Mafia-run pre-Stonewall bar to the last lesbian rooms still open.

For more than seventy years, queer women mapped their own city onto a handful of West Village blocks and, eventually, across the river. This trail reads that geography in time: the policed butch-femme bar of the 1950s, the feminist-era haven, the 1990s bars built on its lineage, and the two rooms (one in the Village, one in Park Slope) still open.

  1. 1

    Sea Colony

    restaurant c. 1950; lesbian bar by 1955–c. 1966 · West Village, Manhattan

    Pre-Stonewall working-class lesbian bar (by at least 1955 to c. 1966; the space opened as a restaurant c. 1950) across three Eighth Avenue rowhouses, documented in Joan Nestle's essays.

    Closed
  2. 2

    The Duchess

    1972–1982 (as The Duchess); successor bars at same address through c. 1993 · West Village, Manhattan

    The defining lesbian bar of 1970s New York, at 70 Grove Street: Mafia-free, feminist, and lost to a liquor-license fight and a 1982 police closure.

    Closed
  3. 3

    Henrietta Hudson

    1991–present · West Village, Manhattan

    Opened 1991 on Hudson Street, built by community labor; now the city's longest-running lesbian bar.

    Active
  4. 4

    Cubbyhole

    1994–present (bar on this site since 1987 as DT's Fat Cat) · West Village, Manhattan

    West Village room operating since 1987, renamed Cubbyhole in 1994 when it absorbed the earlier Cubby Hole's lineage.

    Active
  5. 5

    Ginger's Bar

    2000–present · Park Slope, Brooklyn

    Brooklyn's oldest surviving lesbian bar, opened St. Patrick's Day 2000 in Park Slope's 'Dyke Slope.'

    Active