A short-lived LGBTQ+ dance venue opened at 112-114 Green Street in 1972. Called Greenstreets, after the actor Sydney Greenstreet and not its address, the club boosted a 1930s décor and offered dining and dancing on two level with 20 tables. The…

When the Ports O’ Call closed, the Maui Kauai at 19 Pearl Street paid its respects to the venerable institution with an advertisement in the MCC bulletin that declared, “We’ll miss you, Ports O’ Call.” In the evenings, the Maui Kauai “turned gay,”…

Isaiah’s opened at 11 Thomas Street in 1977. In an interview published in the MCC bulletin, one of Isaiah’s owners, Arthur Desautels, explained that he liked the location near Main Street “because of its proximity to other Gay bars, which would…

With the rising visibility of gay culture throughout the country in the 1970s, a string of gay bars opened in downtown Worcester. John Coleman, a lawyer from Manhattan, opened one of the first, the Exit Two, at 282 Main Street in September 1972.…

Located at the corner of Wellington and Main Streets, the New Yorker (renamed the Ports O’ Call after 1967), provided shelter and comfort to Worcester’s LGBTQ+ community. In his 1973 story on Worcester’s gay bars for the Evening Gazette, Frank…

According to a local reminiscence, gay men frequented the Cocktail Lounge at the Coronado Hotel (74 Franklin Street on the Worcester Common) in the mid-twentieth century. In 1951, a vice squad raid pushed the gay clientele to seek a bar further from…