Queerty has an interesting excerpt from Justin Martin’s new book, Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians, in which he suggests that in the mid-1800s, Pfaff’s in Manhattan may have been America’s first gay bar.

Pfaff’s Beer Cellar, located on Broadway near Bleecker in Greenwich Village, was known for its literary and artistic clientele, including Walt Whitman.

But you may not be familiar with another bar, Pfaff’s, that operated some hundred years before Julius’ sip-in and played host to some of the city’s most noted artists and bohemians. It had two rooms to cater to a diverse clientele, but one was always filled with gay men.

It’s always tough to call anything the “first” of anything (it’s a claim that many find a way to feel entitled to), but Pfaff’s may very well be the first gay bar in America. Of course, in the mid-1800s, “gay” didn’t mean the same thing as it does now, and even “homosexual” hadn’t made its way into the popular lexicon, so it’s all a matter of semantics.

— Queerty, September 23, 2014

At the same time, San Francisco’s bars were all almost completely men: 90% of the City’s population at the time was male. That doesn’t make them gay bars, of course. But it was still important for some men to assume the role of women — at least for dancing — using a costuming code that more than a century later would be revived in the gay community.