About Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis

This page looks at the methodology, historical research, and technology used to create the digital humanities project: Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945 - 1992.

To explore the full site, visit:  http://library.wustl.edu/map-lgbtq-stl 

It is important to note the map reflects only aspects of LGBTQ local history with identifiable locations -- therefore omitting social events at private homes, or groups using post office boxes to maintain anonymity.

Due to time and funding limits, the dataset did not include neighboring St. Charles and Jefferson counties in Missouri, or farther regions of southern Illinois, such as Springfield.

That is not to say that these more distant portions of the region lack LGBTQ history. For example: In the 1960s Jeannette Howard Foster, a pioneer in the study of lesbian literature, was a  Lindenwood College librarian in St. Charles .

Partners  Mary Jane Barnett and Elaine “Tommie” Davis  occasionally visited St. Louis, but mostly lived further south in Cape Girardeau. They are pictured here in 1946 at the Colony Club, an East Cape Girardeau bar that also featured female impersonators through the 1950s.

Information about out-of-scope locations has been documented in the project’s working files, and we hope that future researchers will be able to expand on the project's initial efforts. 

Similarly the project is focused on the years 1945 - 1992.

LGBTQ history certainly began and was documented in St. Louis decades before 1945, and clearly continues to the present. This focus was selected to cover the end of World War II (as the region began massive economic and population changes) to 1992 -- the year St. Louis city passed a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance that “protects individuals against discrimination because of race, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, sex, color, age, religion, disability, national origin or ancestry, or legal source of income.” And although this event was not part of an activist push (rather, a procedural inclusion of updated language provided by the city’s Human Rights Commissioner), it did mark a turning point in local history.

We hope the project will spark further interest, and additional research will allow expansion both in the geography and time frame covered. We welcome  feedback  and information towards improving the map. 

The first phase of research utilized  primary sources ---documents created in the past --- to identify locations in some way related to LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people in the St. Louis metropolitan area. We included any space that in some way was described to indicate it was frequented by people outside heteronormative society. Particular efforts were made to include sites that also reflect socio-economic, class, and racial diversity. 

Few people today could name the exact street address of their favorite bar or hangout, let alone one they frequented decades ago. However, to make a map with  Geographical Information Systems (GIS)  we needed precise data — a street address or intersection of cross-streets, city, state, and zip code. To create a timeline, we also needed dates of operation for every location. 

Starting with a list of bars, restaurants, and other locations compiled by the  St. Louis LGBT History Project ,  research assistants  consulted city directories and phone books to clarify addresses. Although directories from the 19th century and early 20th century are available online, all after 1923 require consultation of the original books, available at the  Missouri History Museum’s Library and Research Center . 

Multiple spreadsheets in a shared Google Drive were used to track the years each location was or was not listed in the directory. Notes indicated when names changed, locations moved, or were listed but marked as a closed business.

An evaluation of these spreadsheets showed many, many gaps in information, especially about locations in metro-east Illinois. Also under-documented were locations dating before 1960, locations associated with women, and locations associated with transgender people.

Researchers next consulted local  gay and lesbian publications  for more locations. This involved paging through every issue of The Gay and Lesbian News-Telegraph, from 1980 - 1992 checking advertisements, article headings, and directory listings, as well as available local publications from the 1970s such as Moonstorm.

Previously undocumented sites related to St. Louis LGBTQ history were discovered through keyword searching of St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis Star-Times newspapers. Online access, via a paid subscription to newspapers.com, has only existed since 2015. Leveraging this access, we searched terms from earlier time periods, such as “female impersonator” or “dressed as a woman” or “homosexual.”

Recorded oral histories and interviews allowed us to fill in many gaps in knowledge not otherwise documented in written records. Our thanks goes to Nancy McKelvey at  The State Historical Society of Missouri - St. Louis ,  James Andris,  and  Steve Brawley  for helping us access these recordings and transcripts.

We also posed questions to followers of the  St. Louis LGBT History Project's Facebook  group. In a number of cases, older members were able draw on their memories to confirm, supplement, or even correct written records. Our thanks goes to everyone who contributed to these discussions online. Their help was invaluable.  

Further information for the map (since initial publication) has been located and documented from various sources. We have received community feedback offering additional information and correction of dates/locations. Washington University students in Andrea Friedman's  "Documenting the Queer Past in St. Louis"  course (2017-2018) conducted additional oral histories offering greater insights into local LGBTQ spaces.

And additional documents have become available, including the  digitized notebooks of Frank Kameny  archived at the Smithsonian, and the extensive  papers of Laura Ann Moore  donated to the Washington University Libraries by her partner Marlene Schuman in 2018.

For overall statistical comparison, we utilized  US Census population data  by total population and by race (white, black, and other races). Other categories of census data were utilized with an understanding of documented inaccuracies and omissions when considering LGBTQ people. The 1990 census was the first to include a relationship category of “unmarried partner” allowing people to select something other than “roommate.” However, if same-sex couples who married (even if ceremonies were not recognized by the state) indicated this status, their data was not accurately recorded. According to the  chief of the population projection  branch for the US Census, in 1990 if someone “said they were married and had a spouse of the same sex, the simple thing was to change the spouse's sex. We made them a married couple."

More accurate data on married same-sex couples was compiled in the 2000 census, however that is beyond the scope of this project. We hope future researchers and historians will build on this work to explore even more topics.

To turn this project into a dynamic map, the data table was created with GIS in mind -- so locations identified through research could be transformed into spatial data. As much as possible, addresses and intersections were geocoded against an existing North American street address dataset to create a point feature class. Where matches couldn’t be made through the geocode, locations were handpicked through comparison with other maps. An example of this are the locations in Forest Park; because they lacked precise addresses, relative locations were chosen visually. The geocoding tasks took place in ArcMap, and then data was ingested into  ArcGIS Online AGOL) .

The data table had also been formatted to enable time awareness in the map, making it possible to use time slider functions. To provide important socioeconomic perspectives, historical US Census data was obtained from the  National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) . Spatial and tabular data were then joined in ArcMap. All data and images were uploaded to AGOL, where the maps were primarily formatted.

Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis uses StoryMaps, an ArcGIS product from Esri, to provide context around the project's many maps. Development of the user interface were made iteratively by the project team through many collaborative meetings.

Four interpretive essays were collaboratively written by the project's Principal Investigators and senior research associate, who added a wider context to the map points through additional primary research and secondary scholarship. These select topics, along with a landing page, political organizing timeline, and "about" page were created as immersive 'story maps' by the project’s GIS librarian and student assistant.

The original user interface was created using map applications built in AGOL embedded into "Classic Story Map" cascade, journal, and tour templates. Project staff customized the HTML/CSS code to meet the project’s specific needs. This original (version 1) of the project published online October 2017.

With additional grant funding from the Divided Cities project, work began in late 2019 to update and move the project into the newest version of StoryMaps. A GIS graduate assistant coded race, gender, and sexuality portions of the data. And five new short "tours" of focused topics were written by the Principal Investigators:

• Connecting the Dots: A Bird's Eye View of St. Louis's LGBTQ history
• Miss Fannie's Ball: the Black drag ball tradition in St. Louis
• Mor or Less: the story of a bar, a fire, and the fight to persevere
• Bill's Bar & Zebra Lounge: creating spaces for Black LGBTQ life in St. Louis
• Forest Park: finding LGBTQ history in St. Louis's largest park

With support from the Data/GIS department of Washington University Libraries, the site was redesigned in the newest version of StoryMaps. This "version 2" of the project published in spring 2021 with a new landing page (Explore Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis), the short "tours," a redesigned political timeline, and links to the original four interpretive essays.

The "About the Project" page was updated in September 2021, and an additional interpretive essay on Religion & LGBTQ life was developed in 2021-2022, with publication in June 2023.

*Originally scheduled for 2019-2020, this work was delayed significantly due to staffing and teaching adaptations imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

When speaking in generalizations about past events and people we have chosen to use the contemporary acronym LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer). In using this combined term we have strived to remain cognizant of when and how it creates an inaccurate image of the past.

Historically, many terms have been used to describe people encompassed in this project, such as: sexual deviant, invert, dyke, fairy, female impersonator, homosexual, homophile, transvestite, transsexual. When discussing specific individuals or organizations in the past, we have used the term or words they employed at that time, even though these words may now be viewed as derogatory by some. For example, folks who might now identify as “transgender” were more likely to use the term “transsexual” in the past.  

As historian Susan Ferentinos notes in Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites, "...lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have not always understood themselves to be part of one community -- nor do they necessarily agree with that premise now. In addition, these terms are often employed as a gesture at inclusivity to bisexual and transgender people, when in reality the “community” is assumed to be gay and lesbian, and the inclusion of others is in name only. … Though often representing itself to the larger culture as a united community the LGBT umbrella in fact uneasily lumps together specific concepts, political agendas, and social experiences of distinct groups...While the labels lesbian, gay, and bisexual all refer to sexual orientation, transgender instead refers to gender identity. … The groups share some common concerns regarding discrimination and the challenges of living in a world that defines them as deviating from the norm, but in other ways their experiences of these categories differ."

We recognize that both queer and acronym variations such as LGBTQIA* are emotion-laden terms and hold different meanings and subtleties for different people. For a local take on these terms see this  St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 26, 2016 article .   

This list includes the main sources of information consulted in compiling the mapping data. For additional sources, and  further suggested reading , please consult the thematic essays which include additional sources.

Newspapers (all available via the  Washington University Libraries  unless otherwise noted)

The Current, University of Missouri St. Louis (online, UMSL Archives:  https://www.umsl.edu/services/library/university-archives/Student%20Newspaper/index.html )

The Gay News-Telegraph / The Gay & Lesbian News Telegraph (abbreviated as TGNT or LGNT)

The Evening Whirl (paper)

No Bad News (paper, Missouri Historical Society, Library and Research Center)

Outlaw / Bridge (paper)

St. Louis Argus (microfilm)

St. Louis American (microfilm, Missouri Historical Society, Library and Research Center)

St. Louis Sentinel (microfilm)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Newspapers.com)

St. Louis Star-Times (Newspapers.com)

Student Life, Washington University in St. Louis (microfilm)

Archive Collections

Bellville Public Library, Illinois

• East St. Louis City Directories
• Clippings files for local topics (AIDS)

Gerber/Hart Archives, Chicago, Illinois

• Damron, 1965 - 1992 ( also full-text online via LGBT Thought and Culture* )
• Eros Gay Guide, 1974
• Gaia’s Guide, 1977 - 1992
• Guild Guide, 1965, 1968, 1970
• Queen’s Quarterly, August 1972
• Ciao!, June 1974

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) Historical Society, San Francisco, California*     (*full-text online  via Archives Unbound )

• Periodicals and Newsletters, including Phoenix, 1966 (Kansas City), Tangents 1965, 1968 (national), Transvestia, 1961 (national)

  Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin: Beyond the Daughters of Bilitis Collection* 

Independent Voices, Reveal Digital. ( full-text online  ) 

•  Big Mama Rag 
•  Lesbian Connection 
•  ONE 

Missouri Historical Society, Library and Research Center, St. Louis, Missouri

• St. Louis City and County Directories, 1946 - 1977 [unavailable for 1945, 1949-51, 1953-54, 1957, 1962, and after 1978]
• Yellow Pages [phone book] 1981 - 1993
•  St. Louis Gay and Lesbian Community Collection (A 1422)

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, University of Southern California Libraries, Los Angeles, California

•  Laud Humphreys papers (Coll2007-012) , including Mandrake

State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO) at St. Louis, on the UMSL campus

•  Lesbian Alliance Of St. Louis, Missouri, 1972-  ), Records, 1973-1980, (S0129)
•  Sweet, Nan, Herstory Project, 1988, (S0865) 
•  St. Louis Lesbian And Gay Archives (1987- ), Collection, 1972-1992, (S0545) 

University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, Illinois.

•  American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois Division Records. 

Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections, St. Louis, Missouri

•  American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Records  (WUA00355)
•  St. Louis LGBTQ+ Research Collection  (WUA00438), including Riverfront Times, Gay Life
•  Publications - Student Groups  (WUA00248), including Subject to Change

Published primary sources

Humphreys, Laud. Out of the Closets: The Sociology of Homosexual Liberation. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1972)

Humphreys, Laud. “The Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis, 1968.

Humphreys, Laud. Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. (Chicago : Aldine Pub. Co., 1970)

National Gay Taskforce. Anti-Gay/Lesbian Victimization (Washington, D.C., 1984)

Sawyer, Ethel. “A Study of a Public Lesbian Community.” Master’s thesis, Department of Sociology-Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, 1965.

Andris, James. “GLBT History in St. Louis.” Web.  http://jandris.ipage.com/history/index.html 

Brawley, Steven. Images of America: Gay and Lesbian St. Louis (Arcadia : 2016)

Brawley, Steven. “The St. Louis LGBT History Project.” Web.  http://www.stlouislgbthistory.com/ 

Wilson, Rodney, “ ‘The Seed Time of Gay Rights’ Rev. Carol Cureton, the Metropolitan Community Church, and Gay St. Louis, 1969 - 1980” Gateway Heritage (Fall 1994) 34-47

Financial support for the creation of Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis provided by the Mellon Foundation, as part of the Center for the Humanities'  Divided Cities Initiative. 

*titles and affiliations listed as of time of participation in Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis

Andrea Friedman, Professor of History and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Washington University

Miranda Rectenwald, Curator of Local History, Washington University Libraries

 Jennifer Moore , GIS & Data Projects Manager / Head of Data Services, Washington University Libraries

 Mollie Webb , GIS Programmer, Washington University Libraries

Kate Strube, Undergraduate GIS Technical Assistant (2017)

Rachel White, Graduate GIS Technical Assistant (2019-2020)

Ian Darnell, MA

• Afton Apodaca
• Erin Barry
• Molly Brodsky
• Jennifer Chen
• Kristi Hagen
• Wendy Lu
• Karisa Tavassoli
• Brenda Thacker, MA

• Eliza Murray, UMSL graduate student (2019)
• Charles McGrath (2023)
• Jackie Feldman (2018)
• Gabe Fortress (2023)
• Izzy Hill (2021)
• Jacob Honigman (2018)

• Aaron Addison, Director of Collaborative Research & Data/GIS, Washington University Libraries
• James Andris, historian
• Steven Brawley, St. Louis LGBT History Project
• Elizabeth Eikmann and TK Smith, St. Louis University -American Studies
• Makiba Foster, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY
• Emily Jaycox, Kelly Brown, Sharon Smith, and Chris Gordon, Missouri History Museum
• Nancy McIlvaney, State Historical Society of Missouri - St. Louis
• Betty Neeley, volunteer
• Mo Speller, historian

Our thanks to the following for assistance with archived materials and images:

• Gerber/Hart Archive
• GLBT Historical Society
• Lesbian Herstory Archive
• Chris Naffziger, photographer
• Gini Morton
• Betty Neeley and Cindy Walsh
• ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives
• Reveal Digital
• Joan St. John and Chocolate Waters, formerly of Big Mama’s Rag
• St. Louis American
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Jeff Vines, photographer
• Jim Thomas, formerly of The Gay and Lesbian News-Telegraph
• World Community Center
• Judy Hart
• Sherie White
• Dawn Hummel
• Carol "Twink" Robinson
• Jeff Vines, photographer

• Bob Cohn and Mike Sherwin, St. Louis Jewish Light
• Catherine Lucy, Carondelet Consolidated Archive
• Rena Schergen, Archdiocese of St. Louis Archives
• Joe Schaedler, Jarek Steele, Kris Kleindienst, and other anonymous community members who have provided feedback on the map.
• Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library