Julius'

Overview

Often cited as New York's oldest continuously operating gay bar, a West Village tavern where the Mattachine Society staged the 1966 'Sip-In,' an act of civil disobedience that established the legal right of gay people to be served in licensed premises, three years before Stonewall.

The building at 159 West 10th Street and Waverly Place dates to 1826 (some sources say 1840s construction), housed as a dry-goods store before becoming a tavern. The bar took its present name around 1930, attributed variously to a Prohibition-era bartender named Julius or, more colourfully, to the original owner's basset hound, whose breed's brass-cast footrests still line the bar's base. Its liquor license, No. 120, was issued June 30, 1934 under the name 'Julius' Restaurant.' During Prohibition, seven exits and a basement tunnel reportedly allowed patrons to evade raids. By the 1950s Julius' drew a mixed but heavily queer clientele: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Rudolf Nureyev were among its regulars. Management was not always welcoming (staff reportedly harassed gay patrons through the early 1960s) but the bar's low-key, unpretentious atmosphere and proximity to other Village haunts made it a de facto anchor of the nascent gay West Village. It survived Mayor Robert Wagner's 1964 pre-World's Fair sweep of queer establishments, a purge that shuttered many competitors. On April 21, 1966, four members of the New York Mattachine Society, Dick Leitsch (chapter president), Craig Rodwell (vice president), John Timmons, and Randy Wicker, entered Julius' as their fourth and final stop on a planned 'Sip-In,' modeled explicitly on the civil-rights sit-ins of the South. Accompanied by Village Voice photographer Fred W. McDarrah and reporters, they identified themselves aloud as homosexuals and requested drinks. The bartender covered the glasses with his hand and refused, saying, 'I think it's against the law.' McDarrah's photograph (Leitsch's hand reaching toward the covered glass) became iconic; it still hangs on the wall at Julius' today. The New York Times ran the story under the headline '3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars.' The Mattachine Society had the media spectacle and the legal pretext it needed: the New York City Commission on Human Rights intervened, the State Liquor Authority revised its policy, and a 1967 court ruling established that same-sex socializing did not constitute illegal 'disorderly conduct.' Gay people could legally be served in bars, one of the conditions that produced the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion one block away. Julius' was listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places in December 2015 and on the National Register of Historic Places on April 21, 2016, precisely fifty years after the Sip-In, becoming one of the first ten LGBTQ-related sites on that register. In December 2022, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building an individual NYC Landmark in a unanimous vote. Helen Buford and her late husband Eugene purchased Julius' around 2000; after Eugene's death she has run it alone. The interior retains its vintage character: barrel-table seating, wood-paneled walls, and a jukebox. From 2008 through 2024, filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell co-hosted a monthly dance party called Mattachine at Julius', co-founded with Amber Martin, P.J. DeBoy, Paul Dawson, and Angela DiCarlo; the party honored a living queer icon each month (Dick Leitsch himself among them).

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