Gay st louis mo
St. Louis Gay Town Guide: What to Know if You’re Headed to the Gateway City
St. Louis is a metropolis known for many things. It’s the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, Budweiser Brewing Business, the famous Gateway Arch, and gooey butter cake, among other things. It’s also a urban area becoming increasingly well-known for its affectionate, welcoming, and continually growing LGBTQ group that adds so much to the character and ego of the metropolis itself. It’s truly a multi-cultural midwestern city where everyone can find their place.
A Look at St. Louis History
The modern-day history of St. Louis began in 1764 when French settlers established a fur-trading publish in the area. Construction of a village began the following year, and the village was named St. Louis, after King Louis IX of France. As a product of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, St. Louis officially became part of the United States. Shortly thereafter, St. Louis gained fame as the show from which Lewis and Clark embarked on their exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase territories. It was officially incorporated as a city in 1832 and grew steadily as a center of commerce and trade from that point on.
STL LGBTQ+ ORGANIZATIONS
PHONE
ADDRESS
ACLU of Eastern MO
(314) 652-3111
454 Whittier St St. Louis, MO 63108
ALIVE
(314) 993-7080
P.O. Box 28733 St. Louis, MO 63146
Band Together
4579 Laclede Ave #259 St. Louis, MO 63108
Black Tulip Chorale
(651) 955-9532
CHARIS - The St. Louis Women's Chorus
(314) 664-9340
Doorways Interfaith AIDS, Housing & Services
(314) 535-1919
4385 Maryland Ave Saint Louis, MO 63108
Equality Illinois
(773) 477-7173
17 N. State Street Chicago, IL 60602
Food Outreach
(314) 652-FOOD (3663)
3117 Olive St St. Louis, MO 63103
Gateway Men's Chorus
314-287-5669
3547 Olive St Suite 300 St. Louis, MO 63103
Growing American Youth
(314) 669-5428 (LGBT)
408 N. Euclid, Suite 210 St. Louis, MO 63108
Human Rights Campaign - St. Louis
Metro East Pride of Southwestern Illinois
(314) 686-1915
P.O. Box 794 Belleville, IL 62222
Metro Trans* Umbrella Group
(314) 349-1402
3133 Oregon Ave, St. Louis, MO 63118
Planned Parenthood
(314) 531-7526
4251 Forest Park Ave St. L
From the mid-1930s to complete of the 1970s, there was an almost continuous presence of lesbian and gay establishments here. For generations of LGBTQ St. Louisans, Grand and Olive was a favorite destination for a night out and an important setting of their social lives.
The 3500 block of Olive is in Grand Center, a neighborhood that is today home to such major cultural institutions as the Fox Theatre and Powell Hall. It is also near the main campus of Saint Louis University.
Going back as far as the preliminary twentieth century, this area was a busy business district. Its central location and proximity to several streetcar lines and major roads made it a relatively convenient gathering place for people living throughout the St. Louis area. In 1915, the St. Louis Republic called the neighborhood around Grand and Olive “a place of music and laughter and bustle and bright lights, of pretty women and carefree men.”
As far as we know, Dante’s Inferno (3516 Olive) was the first gay bar on the block. It is also one of the oldest identified gay bars anywhere in St. Louis. It opened in Parade 1936, only a limited years after the repeal of Prohibition, as a “branch” of t