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Letters — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
At 22nd and South Streets, Letters was part of Philadelphia’s gay nightlife during the 1970s and 1980s, when queer bars could be found well beyond the cluster of establishments that would eventually become today’s Gayborhood.
South Street in those years was a very different place—scruffier, cheaper, and filled with independent bars, restaurants, record stores, artists, musicians, and assorted outsiders. A gay club fit naturally into that mix. Letters offered another place for Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community to drink, dance, cruise, and find one another during an era when dedicated queer spaces still carried enormous importance.
Its location is particularly interesting. While gay nightlife increasingly flourished around 13th, Locust, Chancellor, and Quince Streets, Philadelphia also had gay bars scattered across Center City and surrounding neighborhoods. Places like Letters remind us that the city’s queer geography was once much broader and less neatly defined than the modern Gayborhood suggests.
