Chicago gay life

As one of the busiest industrial centers and transportation hubs in the United States, Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century attracted thousands of single women and men with new employment opportunities and nonfamilial living arrangements in the lodging-house districts of the Near North and Near South Sides. The anonymous and transient character of these neighborhoods permitted the development of Chicago's lesbian and gay subculture. During the early years of the century, much of this subculture was centered in the Levee, a working-class entertainment and vice district. Here, several saloons and dance halls catered to gay men and featured female impersonation acts. By , the Vice Commission of Chicago noted the presence of “whole groups and colonies of these men who are sex perverts,” many of them active as department-store clerks in the Loop. The lesbian presence in the city was less visible during these years, in part because many working-clas