New York City famously had the Stonewall Inn and Club 82. In Boston, there was Sporters and The Other Side. The history of mid-20th century LGBTQ+ bars and hotspots in these cities has been well documented. But the history of Springfield, which also had a bustling LGBTQ+ nightlife, has largely gone undocumented, according to Anne Wheeler, a Springfield College professor who started The Western Massachusetts LGBTQ+ Oral History Project.
“Gay history is oral history and as some of my friends died, I realized the history was being lost,” said 77-year-old Bob McCarroll, a gay West Springfield native who has spent much of his life Western Massachusetts. He added, “I didn’t want that to keep happening.” He reached out to Wheeler after receiving her name from a colleague at Springfield College. The two decided to embark on a quest to document and archive the memories of those who experienced what it was like to be an LGBTQ+ person in the 1940s-1980s.
“What you uncover is this whole history,” said Wheeler. “There were all these gay bars. You could have gone out on a Saturday night and started at the Arch [Café on Main Street] and visited all these places in that area,” including The Stanchion II, Duryea Room, Cabaret Lounge, The Pub and The Arbor Lounge. The LGBTQ+ social scene was not limited to Springfield. Bars, clubs and LGBTQ+ organizations could be found in several communities in the Pioneer Valley, including Chicopee, Hadley, Amherst and Northampton.
McCarroll pointed out that Western Massachusetts is not the only place in the northeast where LGBTQ+ history is being forgotten. “New York City and Boston were major centers,” of LGBTQ+ life, he said. “Cities the size of Springfield and Hartford and Worcester are probably equally less well known.”
Part of the difficulty documenting the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in the mid-twentieth century is the inherent secrecy required, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. Wheeler said, “Before there were bars, there were house parties.”
In 1965, McCarroll went to college in Virgina, and later attended Rutgers University in New Jersey. In college, he joined a social organization, the Rutgers Student Homophile League. When he moved back to Western Massachusetts, a friend introduced him to the Student Homophile League at the University of Massachusetts.
McCarroll said he was “socially out” as a gay man, visiting gay bars with a gay social circle. However, no one in his family or at his job knew. “I would have been fired,” McCarroll said of his job at the Springfield Planning Department, where he worked for 30 years.
One of the first bars McCarroll frequented was the Arch Café. He recalled, “There were clearly some non-gay people who knew it was a gay bar, but how many? I have no idea.”
Interviewing people who experienced life as an LGBTQ+ person across four decades will allow Wheeler to record, not just memories, but the history of LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion in the wider communities. While some stories are documenting people who lived with a level of fear and hid a part of themselves from those around them, she has also recorded stories from people who were “coming out to families and buying houses with partners,” and those who were “starting to live their everyday lives as gay people.”
By the early 1970s, the Arch Café was widely known to be gay bar. On Sept. 12, 1973, the building was destroyed in a bombing. The Union Station property now includes the site where the bar stood. Other bars and clubs came and went over the decades.
Today, bars and clubs that specifically cater to LGBTQ+ customers are largely gone from Western Massachusetts. “Society has become more accepting,” said McCarroll. In New England, at least, gay people are not so self-segregating. Young people are more likely to go to mixed spaces and spend time with friends there.” Finding partners, one of the primary purposes of the gay bars of the 20th century, can now be done online, he said.
“I coordinate a gay social group called ‘The Martini Club’ that meets at various restaurants for a ‘happy hour,’” McCarroll said. “That type of thing would not have happened in the ‘70s. We would not be welcome, maybe not even up into the ‘90s.”
Does McCarroll think something is missing now that there are few social establishments left specifically for the LGBTQ+ community? “I have friends who lament that there’s really nothing like that anymore,” he said. “The gay bars brought people together. They provided a place where you meet a bunch of gay folks, and you might meet a smaller group of people you became friends with. Now, would I like to go back to the 1970s where you could be fired for being gay? No, I would not.”
Those who wish to share their memories for The Western Massachusetts LGBTQ+ Oral History Project can email Wheeler at awheeler2@springfieldcollege.edu.
