Columbia Hall, commonly known as Paresis Hall, was a brothel and gay bar in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in the 1890s. Located on the
Bowery
The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. ...
near
Cooper Union, the Hall was managed by
James T. Ellison, and took its common nickname from
a general term for syphilitic insanity. The building contained both a bar and a beer garden on the ground floor, with two floors of rooms above that were rented out. One was permanently held by the
Cercle Hermaphroditos, an early
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
organization, who stored clothing there due to the illegality of and public hostility to dressing in women's clothing. Paresis Hall was particularly renowned and reviled even at the time, and was a common target for both police activity and religious protests. Despite this, evidence suggests it was active until at least 1899.
See also
*
LGBT culture in New York City
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
{{sex-stub
Brothels in New York (state)
Defunct LGBT drinking establishments in New York City
Defunct LGBT nightclubs in New York (state)
LGBT places in the United States