It’s no surprise that some of the major events in the United States’ gay rights movement, including the 1966 “Sip In” protest at Julius’ and the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, occurred in bars. These establishments have long been places of refuge for queer people to congregate—even before the term “homosexuality” was coined in 1869.

One of the earliest known bars believed to be frequented by men seeking men was Pfaff’s, a beer and wine cellar restaurant in the Coleman House Hotel in New York City, which operated from 1859 to 1864. During its short life, Pfaff’s became a favorite haunt of the city’s Bohemian artists, writers and actors.

Among its regulars was, most notably, the famous American poet Walt Whitman. Whitman wrote about the bar in an unfinished poem called “The Two Vaults,” and he belonged to a group at Pfaff’s called the “Fred Gray Association,” which was a “loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection,” according to biographers Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price. (The association was named after John Frederick Schiller Gray, a member of the group.)

The first bar for women to explore female-female affection may have been Eve Adams' Tearoom, which operated in New York City’s flapper-era West Village from 1924 to 1926. A safe space for all women, Eve’s Hangout, as it was also known, hosted after-hours, locked-door meetings where lesbian women could mingle in private.

One of the oldest still-operational LGBTQ+ bars in the United States is White Horse Bar in Oakland, California, which first opened in 1933. In its early decades, when same-gender sex was still a felony, White Horse catered to its gay clientele in secret, enforcing a “no touching” policy for all its patrons. The policy ended in 1970 following the Stonewall riots and a week-long boycott of the bar by the Gay Liberation Front activist group.

Opened in 1933, New Orleans’ Café Lafitte in Exile also vies for the title of being the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the country. The French Quarter establishment was frequented by some early queer icons including the American playwright Tennessee Williams and writer Truman Capote.

In Europe, Denmark's Centralhjørnet, which opened in 1917, is often cited as one of the oldest operating gay bars in the world.

Queer history is often difficult to relay accurately for several reasons. Documentation related to queer history—such as letters, photographs and diaries—has historically been destroyed due to stigmatization and the long-taboo nature of the subject.

Our understanding of and the terms used to describe sexuality and gender identity have evolved over time, and much of our current concepts and lexicon (including using the term “gay” to describe homosexual people) are relatively recent constructions.