The Garden of Allah was a mid-20th century
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...
that opened in 1946
in the basement of the Victorian-era Arlington Hotel in
Seattle's Pioneer Square. It was Seattle's most popular gay cabaret in the late 1940s and 1950s
and one of the first gay-owned
gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term ''gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT communities.
Gay bars once served as ...
s in the United States.
Prior to becoming a cabaret, the space had been a speakeasy, during
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
, and then a tavern.
The Garden catered to all factions of the LGBT community, though heterosexual patrons, tourists and military personnel on leave also visited. Acts were primarily
female impersonation
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and part of ...
, though some
male impersonators also performed; the former sometimes included striptease. One act was the professional female-impersonation Jewel Box Revue,
though that act was largely geared to and supported by hetero people.
Patrons report that the cabaret became like a "family" or "support group",
and Don Paulson, author of ''An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle'', noted that he believes the sense of community and group consciousness produced by the Garden was what made the
gay rights movement
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Some focus on equal rights, such as the ongoing movement for same-sex marriage, while others focus on liberation, as in the ...
of later decades possible.
The Garden closed in 1956, when a combination of a rate raise from the musicians' union and a raise in city taxes on locales that provided both entertainment and alcohol put it out of business.
References
External links
Queer History in Seattle, Part 1: to 1967 Historylink.org
and a small amount of other information, on the site of the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society.
Photograph of the Arlington Hotel, ''c.'' 1900 from the University of Washington collections
Photograph of the Arlington Hotel, ''c.'' 1913 from the University of Washington collections
1946 establishments in Washington (state)
1956 disestablishments in Washington (state)
Cabaret
History of Seattle
LGBT culture in Seattle
{{LGBT-stub