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The old familiars have disappeared, among them the Crossroads Market, Union Jack and The Bronx - pushed out by rising rents. These days, the gayborhood is beginning to disappear, on the verge of becoming a long stretch of big-box apartments and chain eateries dotting Cedar Springs Road.
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Over time, the gay community found a home out in the open along Cedar Springs - amid the “bohemian atmosphere and picturesque architecture,” described on the historic marker. Childers wrote about how in 1964 alone, the Dallas Police Department’s Special Services Bureau arrested 460 people for being “perverts.” Ervay St., on Wood Street just across from what is now the central library.įor years, downtown was filled with wink-and-nod clubs because it was illegal to be gay in Dallas. In 1947, Club Reno opened nearby at 316 S. To get the marker, Childers wrote about how in the 1930s, gay men would meet downtown in the shadow of the Magnolia Petroleum Building at Commerce and Akard streets - “Maggie’s Corner,” as it was known. The young generation handed all of these rights, we hope they will stop and enjoy reflecting on the brave people who chose to identify as early as the 1950s,” when gay men were depicted in this very newspaper as “sex perverts” out “corrupting the morals of dozens of Dallas teenagers.” The intersection had been known as “The Crossroads” since the late 1960s, but its legacy was forever cemented in 1980 with the opening of the namesake market there that became the community’s bookstore and meeting place.īy putting the marker there, Emery said, “we hope it can instill some pride in young people - in all people, gay and non-gay, to know the city in which they live has bravely been forward in standing up for decades. For decades it has been a place where men and women gather to celebrate when the news is good and come for help when things get bad.Ĭedar Springs at Throckmorton Street, where JR’s sits, has always been especially important. We know it as the “gayborhood,” or what’s left of it - the Resource Center, JR’s, Sue Ellen’s, Station 4 and the Round-Up Saloon. For most Dallasites, the city’s LGBT history begins and ends in Oak Lawn, along Cedar Springs Road, where people march in parades and in protests.