Interview with Doctoral Visiting Fellow Max Gaida

Every academic year the German Historical Institute invites a select group of doctoral and postdoctoral scholars to hold visiting fellowships at the institute and spend part or all of the year working on their research and being part of the institute’s scholarly community. We sat down with one of this year’s visiting fellows, Max Gaida, a doctoral student in American history at the University of Cologne, to learn more about his work. His project, “From Red Light to Rainbow: The Politics of Sex and Space in Philadelphia’s Urban Crises,” examines the history of Philadelphia’s LGBTQ community from the mid- to late- 20th century.

How would you describe your project?

My dissertation is a history of Philadelphia’s gay neighborhood—which is officially known as the “Gayborhood”—and how it developed in the location where it now exists, focusing on the period from the 1950s to the 1990s. Philadelphia is fairly unique among big cities in how central its gay neighborhood is, adjacent to the city’s biggest office buildings, the City Hall, and other important landmarks. The Gayborhood is officially defined by the city (as an area about one-tenth of a square mile in area), mentioned in convention visitor guides, highlighted in tourist literature, and even recognized on the city’s street signs. My project asks: how did a group which was marginalized and socially rejected in the 1950s manage to stake a claim on such a centrally located part of the city over the decades that followed?

How did you come to your research topic and what kinds of sources are you using?

I knew when I began graduate school that I wanted to write about urban history. While I grew up in Germany, I have grandparents who lived in suburban northern New Jersey but vehemently rejected anything having to do with New York City, despite how close it was. I was very interested in exploring the roots of such strong anti-urban feelings, and over the course of my studies I became intrigued by the idea of looking at anti-urbanism through the lens of the history of sexuality. Thanks to a collaboration between my school (the University of Cologne) and Temple University, in Philadelphia, I was able to do some initial research into the city’s history and became interested in exploring how the Gayborhood became integral to Philadelphia’s definition of its identity.

Since then, in addition to the Urban Archives at Temple University, many of my most important sources have come from the archives of the William Way LGBT Center in Philadelphia. I’ve been doing oral history interviews to help fill in some of the gaps in the archival record and I also use urban planning records and reports. 

What are some of the most interesting concepts to emerge from your research?

The importance of space is critical to my account. Philadelphia’s queer community didn’t necessarily grow into the Gayborhood so much as it was forced into it. In the middle of the twentieth century, there were many bastions of gay life scattered throughout Center City (Philadelphia’s downtown). As Philadelphia underwent the urban crisis which many American cities experienced during the 1960s and 70s, a variety of policy decisions and social trends pushed and priced queer people and organizations out of these other locations. For example, South Street, at the southern edge of Center City, was for a long time expected to become the corridor for a highway extension, which led to a lack of investment and upkeep that made it an affordable community for artists and queer people in a variety of low-paying and casual jobs. When the highway proposal was defeated (in one of the many “freeway revolts” that took place throughout the country in the late 1960s) it suddenly became an appealing target for real-estate developers, who moved in and made it too expensive for its existing residents to stay. 

In the aftermath of the urban crisis, the commercialized sexuality that could be found in Philadelphia’s central neighborhoods became both a signal of urban decay but also part of their allure. In contemporary newspaper reporting, for example, you can read sensationalist but not necessarily demeaning accounts of queer life in downtown Philadelphia. One article even provided a map labeling different parts of Center City and explaining how they catered to different segments of the queer community. The sexualization of the city both repelled and attracted people: residents and visitors would say they were not happy about the noisy gay bars, or the presence of local “cruising grounds” for casual sex, but they liked the restaurants and discos that also arrived as the Gayborhood developed.

Aside from my dissertation, and potentially a future monograph, on the history of the Gayborhood, I have also been at work on generating something which is more encyclopedic in nature as a public history resource on Philadelphia’s queer community, based around on a map of the city. [[See illustration.]]

To what extent has the Gayborhood been a place for the full spectrum of the queer community?

Part of the history I am exploring is to what extent the Gayborhood has been a place largely defined by and for gay white men. As I mentioned, there were multiple locations where queer life flourished throughout Center City, but redevelopment often led to the eradication of bars and gathering places and other spots tied to the city’s queer people of color which then did not become reestablished in the Gayborhood. Queer women in Philadelphia also had a different relationship to the Gayborhood: they were always less likely to live in the Gayborhood or in other parts of downtown than queer men, and thus they developed their own organizations which were not necessarily as focused on the central city.

That said, women were important participants in many different forms of queer political organizing based out of institutions located in the neighborhood. For trans women, the Gayborhood offered relative safety from the late 1960s onwards, providing strength in numbers and a degree of tolerance among the strip’s other sexual margins. At the same time, gay bars often excluded them, and their heightened visibility on the streets made them targets of policing, violence, and persistent derision in the city’s papers. Overall, the Gayborhood’s formation reflected uneven negotiations among queer people, each engaging in the area in distinct ways which sometimes reinforced and sometimes challenged whom the neighborhood ultimately served.

What are you focusing on during your fellowship?

I am in the midst of writing my dissertation, but there are a couple of important figures from Philadelphia whose papers are held at archives here in Washington, such as the gay newspaper publisher Mark Segal and the lesbian activist Barbara Gittings, which I will be researching. I am also still visiting Philadelphia frequently to conduct oral history interviews with people who were involved in the emergence of the Gayborhood.

How have you enjoyed your time in Washington so far?

As an urban historian, it has been a great experience to visit Washington. It is striking how familiar Washington’s landmarks are, through their representation in popular culture, and the city has a fascinating urban form. Seeing important buildings and stunning architecture is great, but it is also fun getting to explore the city neighborhood by neighborhood. I also deeply appreciate being part of the GHI community and the institute’s support for a wide range of research, including my own project.