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The Gilded Grape — New York City Gay, Trans & Drag Bar Tee
In 1970s New York, The Gilded Grape was one of those places where the people pushed to the edges everywhere else could take center stage.
Located at 719 Eighth Avenue near Times Square, the Gilded Grape became a celebrated hangout for trans women, drag queens, gay men, performers, hustlers, and other assorted creatures of nighttime Manhattan. By the mid-1970s, it was particularly important as one of the relatively few nightlife spaces where trans women and drag performers could gather openly.
And the crowd was extraordinary. The Grape was especially popular among Black and Latino trans women and queens, with performers, personalities, and neighborhood regulars mixing together in a room that could be glamorous, rough, theatrical, and completely unpredictable.
The club even crossed paths with Andy Warhol. In 1974, people from Warhol’s circle went to the Gilded Grape looking for subjects for what became his Ladies and Gentlemen series. Several of the trans women and drag performers recruited there were photographed as Polaroids and transformed into Warhol’s brightly colored paintings and screenprints.
The Gilded Grape operated through much of the 1970s, closing in 1977. Its spirit continued shortly afterward with G.G. Barnum’s Room, whose initials were a deliberate reference to the Gilded Grape.
It’s a wonderful little piece of pre–Studio 54 New York queer history: Times Square still dirty, disco just taking over, and trans women and drag queens creating their own nightlife long before the rest of the culture figured out how fabulous they were.
