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Patrick’s Day 2020 due to COVID-19, and it remained closed through Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, the bar closed down a few days before St. Helen and Eugene Buford purchased Julius’ in 2000, keeping both the spirit and the look of the historic bar intact. In 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the “sip-in”, Julius’ was placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its role in “an important early event in the modern gay rights movement.” However, that designation is meant to protect the building, but not the business.
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Due to the publicity stirred by the “sip-in,” the New York State Supreme Court ruled one year later that simply being gay was not considered indecent behavior. Their protest was later deemed a “sip-in,” inspired by the civil rights sit-ins of the early 1960’s. In April 1966, four gay men entered Julius’, declared they were homosexual, and demanded to be served despite state law. Over the following decades, Julius’ began attracting more and more local residents of the Village, including gay writers, artists, singers, and Broadway actors.Īlthough New York State Liquor Authority regulations in the mid-1900’s prohibited serving drinks to “known or suspected homosexuals,” whose very presence was considered “disorderly behavior,” Julius’ became a popular hangout for queer luminaries like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Rudolf Nureyev, according to NBC. After initially serving as a dry goods store in the 1840’s, the building was turned into a tavern in the 1860’s, and it became a speakeasy during Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920’s. Julius’ Bar on West 10th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village is one of the few remaining gay bars from before the historic 1969 Stonewall riots. The owners of one of New York’s most iconic gay bars says the establishment is at serious risk of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.