mikeyank
Long time forumite
In researching my above post, I discovered that at one time the Hotel St. George was a big gay crushing spot frequented by celebrities who lived in the neighborhood nack then. Who knew?
From NYC LGBT Historic Site Project,
“From the 1920s through the 1970s, the mammoth Hotel St. George was one of the best known centers of gay male life in Brooklyn.
Famed for its luxurious public spaces and its blind-eye to discreet same-sex relationships, it became a favored cruising ground and residence for gay men, including Hart Crane and Tennessee Williams.
Comprised of eight buildings constructed between 1885 and 1930, the St. George was for a time the largest hotel in New York City. According to historian George Chauncey, it was one of the few upscale hotels in the city that “earned a reputation for their willingness to accommodate gay men on a short- or long-term basis.” In the 1920s, both poet Hart Crane and his lover Samuel Loveman resided there for brief periods. Crane also included a sexual encounter in the men’s room of the Clark Street subway station beneath the hotel in “The Tunnel,” section of his long poem The Bridge. In the 1930s, Brooklyn College teacher David McKelvy White began a year-long courtship of a student, the future beat poet Harold Norse, taking him for dinner in the St. George’s restaurant and for swims in the hotel’s opulent salt-water pool, which historian Hugh Ryan has described as “perhaps the most elegant cruising ground in all of Brooklyn’s history.”
By the 1940s, according to one of Chauncey’s sources, the St. George “was almost entirely gay.” Among the many long-term gay residents was playwright Tennessee Williams, who lived at the hotel for several months in 1943. In 1949, Gaedicker’s Sodom-On-Hudson, the first guidebook to gay life in New York, listed the St. George as one of only two recommended sites outside of Manhattan (the other was the beach at Point Lookout). Author Truman Capote frequented the pool and steam room during the years he lived in Brooklyn Heights. Thomas Painter, a major informant for the Kinsey Institute on gay practices, lived at the hotel between 1953 and 1956, writing to Kinsey that despite its outwardly stuffy appearance, “Les fleurs du mal flourish in this hotel.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, gay guides continued to list the St. George, variously recommending the pool and baths, the ground floor bar, ground floor men’s room, lobby, and a lounge, which was renamed “The Godfather Room,” after a scene from the movie was filmed there. In August 1973, the hotel’s grand ballroom was the site of David Magazine’s Mr. and Miss David muscle and drag contests, which stretched over two nights.“
Now I know the rest of the story.
From NYC LGBT Historic Site Project,
“From the 1920s through the 1970s, the mammoth Hotel St. George was one of the best known centers of gay male life in Brooklyn.
Famed for its luxurious public spaces and its blind-eye to discreet same-sex relationships, it became a favored cruising ground and residence for gay men, including Hart Crane and Tennessee Williams.
Comprised of eight buildings constructed between 1885 and 1930, the St. George was for a time the largest hotel in New York City. According to historian George Chauncey, it was one of the few upscale hotels in the city that “earned a reputation for their willingness to accommodate gay men on a short- or long-term basis.” In the 1920s, both poet Hart Crane and his lover Samuel Loveman resided there for brief periods. Crane also included a sexual encounter in the men’s room of the Clark Street subway station beneath the hotel in “The Tunnel,” section of his long poem The Bridge. In the 1930s, Brooklyn College teacher David McKelvy White began a year-long courtship of a student, the future beat poet Harold Norse, taking him for dinner in the St. George’s restaurant and for swims in the hotel’s opulent salt-water pool, which historian Hugh Ryan has described as “perhaps the most elegant cruising ground in all of Brooklyn’s history.”
By the 1940s, according to one of Chauncey’s sources, the St. George “was almost entirely gay.” Among the many long-term gay residents was playwright Tennessee Williams, who lived at the hotel for several months in 1943. In 1949, Gaedicker’s Sodom-On-Hudson, the first guidebook to gay life in New York, listed the St. George as one of only two recommended sites outside of Manhattan (the other was the beach at Point Lookout). Author Truman Capote frequented the pool and steam room during the years he lived in Brooklyn Heights. Thomas Painter, a major informant for the Kinsey Institute on gay practices, lived at the hotel between 1953 and 1956, writing to Kinsey that despite its outwardly stuffy appearance, “Les fleurs du mal flourish in this hotel.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, gay guides continued to list the St. George, variously recommending the pool and baths, the ground floor bar, ground floor men’s room, lobby, and a lounge, which was renamed “The Godfather Room,” after a scene from the movie was filmed there. In August 1973, the hotel’s grand ballroom was the site of David Magazine’s Mr. and Miss David muscle and drag contests, which stretched over two nights.“
Now I know the rest of the story.
