Paresis Hall Gay Nightlife On The Bowery

— 392 Bowery, now 32 Cooper Square —

On this site once stood the notorious Columbia Hall, one of several Bowery nightspots catering to gay men during the 1890s. Known by anti-vice crusaders as Paresis Hall, it was owned by gangster James T. "Biff" Ellison, who reportedly operated it as a male brothel. Memoirist Ralph Werther recalled the hall differently, as an "innocuous" gathering place for upper and middle class female-impersonators. The upstairs was rented to "Cercie Hermaphroditos," a club formed "to unite for defense against the world's bitter persecution" of androgynous men. Historians Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace consider this one of America's earliest documented gay right organizations. Paresis Hall figures prominently in Caleb Carr's 1994 novel, The Alienist.
Historian George Chauncey suggests that a gay subculture could exist on the Bowery because of its diverse mix of people and heavy concentration of theatres, saloons and red-light elements made it more tolerant of those outside the cultural mainstream.
-David Freeland (author Automats, Taxi Dances & Vaudeville

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