Appendix II – Historical Highlights
Burnside Triangle Walking Tour*
September 2002

Buick Café, 1239 SW Washington
•	Lesbian meeting place from at least the 1940s. The 1940s witnessed a growth in urban lesbian communities as a result of the World War II. The war brought women to West Coast cities, as both military personnel and war industries workers.
•	A city police report from the period noted that “these women are reported to attempt their pick-up at the Music Hall and in case of failure before the Hall closes, they then retire to the Buick and look for other prospects.”
•	The report also noted that “these women were recently ousted from San Francisco for their actions and are apparently confirmed lesbians.”

Rich’s Cigar Store, 724 SW Alder
•	One of only two stores in town that would sell the homophile publication, The Mattachine Review, beginning in the 1950s. “Homophile” refers to support for homosexual civil rights prior to the emergence of gay liberation and lesbian feminism in the late 1960s.
•	The Mattachine Review was the newsletter of The Mattachine Society (1951-1961), the first major organization to work for gay and lesbian civil rights in the United States.. 
•	The Mattachine Review, which was often passed from friend to friend, afforded homosexual men in Portland access to information about the activities of Mattachine Society groups around the country during a conservative period in American history – the height of the Cold War and the McCarthy trials in the U.S. Congress. 
•	In the United States during this period -  in addition to facing criminal trials and harassment by police - gay and lesbian citizens could be fired from their jobs, forced out of their homes/apartments, and in the worse-case scenario, be forcibly committed to mental institutions if it were discovered that they were homosexual. Thus, most lived closeted, double lives.  
•	During the fifties, several landmark cases in the U.S. Supreme Court loosened the mailing of “obscene” material. This led to an increased circulation in erotic pulp fiction and magazines in the U.S. Mayor Terry Shrunk, former Multnomah County Sheriff, organized a para-governmental commission to pressure Portland magazine stores to store carrying so-called “filth” (i.e., The Mattachine Review). Rich’s Cigar store was one of only two stores that declined to support Shrunk’s “Decency in Literature” campaign. 

Medical Building, NE corner of Park and Alder
•	In Nov. 1912, Dr. Harry A. Start was arrested for sodomy after a young man, Andrew Borland, jumped out of Start’s fifth floor office to a roof connecting the building with the adjoining Pantages Theatre. 
•	Following the 1912 same-sex vice scandal, physician Harry Start, attorney Edward McAllister and store clerk Edwin E. Wedemeyer were convicted of sodomy. Their convictions were later overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court on technical grounds. Without a grandfather clause, the new sodomy stature of 1913 was not legally binding for charges from 1912.
•	However, this Supreme Court ruling did little to mitigate the social stigma of the scandal.
•	William H. Allen attempted suicide, but recovered. He was never brought to trial.
•	Edward J. S. McAllister attempted to continue working as an attorney. However, as a result of social ostracism no one would practice law with him. McAllister then moved to Myrtle Creek in Douglas County and became a farmer. The Myrtle Creek Mail noted in McAllister’s obituary that he “had known tragedy, persecution, and disappointment.” (d. 1926). 
•	Having concluded that McAllister had been stripped of his membership simply because he was homosexual, the Multnomah Bar Association posthumously voted to reinstate him on June 17, 2000. He was the first member to be reinstated in the association’s 94-year history.
•	 Harry Start was subsequently unable to rent office space in Portland and had his state medical license revoked. Leaving creditors in Portland, he went to China and worked with the government of provisional president Sun Yat-Sen. Start’s wife committed suicide in August 1913 before arrangements could be made for her to join him in China. Mrs. Start had supported her husband throughout the scandal and subsequent trial. 

Hotel Oregon, SW Broadway & Stark
•	Home to lesbian physician and activist Marie Equi during the 1920s
•	Equi doctored to poor, indigent, and immigrant classes in Portland, providing abortions and medical care to women in difficult circumstances. Given the poverty of her patients, she only charged them what they could afford. Her medial offices were located in the Lafayette Building, Sixth and Washington.
•	As a pacifist, Equi opposed America’s entry into World War I. When the federal government tried her on treason charges, Prosecutor Barnett Goldstein used Equi’s lesbianism against her. Goldstein referred to Equi as an “unsexed woman” and Special Agent William Byron called her a “an anarchist, a degenerate, and an abortionist.” 
•	In contrast to the federal government, prominent Portlanders and Oregonians supported Equi. Governor Oswald West and the editor of the Oregon Journal offered to testify on her behalf.  
•	Equi was ultimately convicted under a recently updated espionage act that “forbade criticism of the U.S. government, the constitution, the military, the flag, navy or uniform.” She subsequently served nine months in San Quentin prison in California.
•	In March 1927 the Oregon Journal, recognized Equi as “One Good Samaritan.”

 Tel & Tel, 820 SW Oak 
•	Originally the Linton Trolley waiting room
•	Opened in 1957, owned by Robert Saunders (1957-1962)
•	Known as Derek’s (1963-1965), then the Annex
•	Robert Hoblit named it the Family Zoo in 1971
•	The site has a long gay history, dating back to a least WW II when it was drop-off site for GI’s.
•	Popular with the upper classes during the 1960s. During this period Derek’s attorney Jim Davis argued before City Council that a gay club was not a “disorderly/dirty premise” (the statute used to deny gay establishments liquor licenses), and that gays had a constitutional right to be served liquor

Just Out, 9th North of Stark
•	Former office of Portland and Oregon’s GLBT biweekly newspaper established in the 1980s (now located on the eastside near the Burnside Bridge).

19) The Music Hall, 413 SW 10th
•	Opened in 1937 by Russian Jewish emigrant Paul Schneiderman, the hall originally showcased vaudeville acts.
•	Around 1947, Paul’s son Leonard booked a San Francisco female impersonator troupe. It quickly became one of the city’s most popular gay and lesbian nightclubs featuring both male and female drag performances and musical acts. 
•	Since the late 1940s and early 1950s was an era that pre-dated canned music and lip-synching, the drag performers sang their own songs. 
•	Notes from a February 1949 Vice Report (Women’s Protection Division) on the music hall:
•	“The Master of Ceremonies appeared to be a man; but later in the evening announced she was a women.” 
•	“Sgt. Warren of the Detectives said we would probably have to go there several times until we were better known before we would be accosted.”
•	“The most vulgar part of the show was a take-off on Mae West; which was done by one of the impersonators and this act was the so-called highlight of the entire performance. The dirty stories were told in a very suggestive tone of voice and facial expressions [sic].”

Conclusion

•	The Burnside Triangle has been a place were gay, lesbian, bi, and trans folks have lived,  worked, and socialized for at least 100 years.
•	Over the course of the 20th century, we have witnessed historical realities and social changes affecting the GLBT community in Portland.  
•	Prior to World War II, homosexual men and women created communities and geographies in spite of the great odds against them. The lives of long-time couple Marie Equi and Harriet Speckart and the many men caught up in the 1912 same-sex vice sandal are testaments to this earlier time.
•	 World War II was a watershed for gay and lesbian communities across North America. The migration of people to the cities afforded gays and lesbians the opportunity to create more visible - though still highly marginalized - cultures and spaces.
•	The 1950s and early 1960s was a transitional period, with the small-scale homophile movement (the gay Mattachine Society and the lesbian Daughters of Bilitis) laying the foundational for the later, larger-scale Gay Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Movements of the late 1960s and 1970s.
•	In Portland as in other major cities, the bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and cafés have long played a major role in the history of the queer community. They have provided spaces for gays, lesbian, bisexuals and trans folks to socialize. Their presence has challenged public perceptions. And  the bar owners and managers were some of the first gay leaders to publicly challenge restrictive city laws, and the coercive practices of police and city officials. 

References – Portland 

A Walking Tour of Downtown Portland:  A Century of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Historic Sites. Portland: The Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, 1999.

Boag, Peter. “Sex and Politics in Progressive-Era Portland & Eugene: The 1912 Same-Sex Vice Scandal.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 100:2 (Summer 1999): 158-181.

Painter, George. “Justice Finally Realized: The Case of Edward McAllister.” The Oregon State Bar Bulletin (April 2001). www.osbar.org/2practice/bulletin/01apr/toc.htm [July 12, 2002]

References – General 

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Hogan, Steve and Lee Hudson. Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998.

Marcus, Eric. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990, An Oral History. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992.

Martinac, Paula. The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

Miller, Neil. Out of the Past: Gays and Lesbians from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1995.