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…

When the old Bancroft Hotel reopened as the Worcester Sheraton, this stylish cocktail lounge attracted gay bar hoppers with its swanky décor.

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.…

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…

David Marshall, who had invested in the Mailbox and other gay bars, went on to establish Club 241 at 241 Southbridge Street, which quickly became one of the centers of gay life in Worcester for over a decade. A lavish opening party took place on…

The Loft first offered regular LGBTQ+ nights before becoming a full-time gay night club. It changed its name to A-Men and then moved to Foster Street.