Midway College

Midway College

Location: Midway, Kentucky, USA

Opened: 1847

Closed: 2016

The die-off of women's colleges continues. And once again, how alumnae feel about it is ignored.

From Inside Higher Ed:

Midway U Will Become Completely Coeducational

May 17, 2016

Midway University announced Monday that it will admit men to all programs. The Kentucky institution was founded as a women's college and already admits men to online, graduate and evening programs. The change will admit men to residential undergraduate programs that have until now remained for women only. The announcement from the university, which was until 2015 known as Midway College, noted the difficulty of attracting young women to single-sex colleges, and said that the undergraduate programs need more students.
On the college's Facebook page, many alumnae criticized the move. Wrote one: "As a second-generation Midway College graduate, I am very sad to hear that the Midway I knew and loved will never be the same again. And I am afraid this is not a good change."

Lounging room for ladies, Louisville & Nashville Railroad

San Antonio Express, June 20, 1925

Lounging room for ladies, Louisville & Nashville Railroad

Location: Ran between New Orleans, Louisiana, Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Open/Closed: 1920s

As a student of history, I know very well that access to a transportation service like this, especially in this location (the American South), was stringently regulated by race and social/economic class.

But there is a part of me that is easily seduced by the golden age of railroads--I freely admit it. Especially in the hot summer months, I can easily find myself fantasizing what this kind of journey by train could have been like.

And then under the description of the Pan-American, I see a reference to a "lounging room for ladies."

Now I'm really imagining good times!

I have seen references to ladies lounges in hotels of this era, but never one on a train. I have seen references to smoking cars, which were almost always reserved for men with few exceptions. (An earlier post on a smoking car for women--for some inexplicable reason--is one of our most popular posts.)

So as I swelter in front of my computer, I am drifting back to 1925 and shuttling off on a night-bound train out of New Orleans. I had just settled into a seat in the lounging room for ladies, when a mysterious woman in a black cloche hat strolls into the car and eases into the seat beside me....

PCM Homeless Shelter for Women and Children

PCM Homeless Shelter for Women and Children

Paducah Housing Authority

Location: Paducah, Kentucky, USA

Opened:1990

Closed: May 2014

With changing funding priorities and cuts for programs that benefit women and children, we are seeing the elimination of more and more programs of this type.

From the Paducah Cooperative Ministry website:

Housing Authority Terminates PCM Homeless Shelter Lease Agreement

Paducah, KY – The Housing Authority of Paducah notified Paducah Cooperative Ministry that they must terminate the lease agreement that has allowed the use of seven public housing rental units as a homeless shelter for women and children. This action abruptly ended a 24-year partnership between the two agencies in providing shelter space to homeless individuals.  According to Housing Authority Executive Director, Cal Ross, the closure is necessary due to changes in HUD regulations.

“The summer months are when our shelter population is at its highest,” said PCM Executive Director, Heidi Suhrheinrich, “Many families can exist temporarily doubled up with other families or friends during the school year, but the pressure of so many people under one roof often explodes with the onset of summer vacations.  We just don’t know where these folks are going to go. We need a solution as quickly as possible.”

According to Suhrheinrich, PCM has been unable to assist homeless women and homeless women with children since receiving the May 6^th Housing Authority directive not to accept any new clients, “PCM has already had to turn down 11 single women and 13 mothers with a total of 29 children.”

In 2013, PCM served 63 single woman as well as 42 mothers accompanied by 79 children.  In addition to providing a safe place to sleep, PCM seeks to break the cycle of homelessness by providing support services and counseling in the areas of mental health, landlord/tenant relationships, money management, parenting and life skills education.  The PCM Shelter is the only shelter in the eight county Purchase Area that houses homeless single women (emphasis added).  Only one other regional shelter serves single mothers with children.  PCM routinely receives referrals from area agencies including McCracken County High School, DCBS Family Support Office, Paducah City Schools Homeless Resources program, Probation and Parole, the Four Rivers Behavioral Health Crisis Unit and others.

“Unfortunately, the problem of homelessness does not end with the closure of the PCM Shelter; homeless women and children will return to the street because there is nowhere else to go,” said Suhrheinrich, “the closing of the shelter is not just a PCM concern, but a community concern.”

Suhrheinrich asks for help and input from the community on other possible spaces in which the shelter might operate.

Tink's Pub

Tink's Pub

Tink's Pub

Location: 22 South Preston Street, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Opened: 2001

Closed: January 1, 2012

Here's a bare bones description of Tink's Pub from gaybarlouisville:

Tink's Pub is located at 2235 South Preston Street and is a lesbian bar that welcomes everyone. They have billiards, weekly events and drag shows.

Well, that's pretty straightforward. Other reviews make it sound like a more "mixed" kind of place. Like this one from GayCities:

Tink's Pub interior

One of the oldest clubs in Louisville
A friendly neighborhood bar where people feel comfortable to "come as you are." No expensive cover charges or fancy dress codes. Just people, drinks and a place to unwind.

This review from ehow comes somewhere down the middle:

Tink's Pub is a lesbian bar that opens its doors to the general public. Tink's has free pool on Tuesdays and karaoke on Wednesdays. Mondays have happy hour during opening hours. Tink's also has weekly events such as drag shows.

I think what this suggests is that we no longer have any consensus on what "lesbian bar" means anymore. But I digress....

Patron reviews were mixed, as they generally are. On the plus side was Bonnie M. in December 2008:

Tinks is a friendly little place to go, have treated Erica and I very nicely :) if you want a place to go where you can talk, then I recommend Tinks :)

And then on the minus side was (a rather snotty) MammyGraham in July 2010:

Ridonculous

Ok, so the place was a total train wreck, but I'm no snob, so I was willing to have one drink at this place. But then the dude at the door says it's $5 cover. Say what? $5 for a run-down, dyke-infested shit hole? So I left without having a drink; something I never do.

Regardless of Tink's merits (or lack thereof), she became the latest lesbian bar death this past New Year's Eve. I'm starting to think there are more spotted owls than lesbian bars these days. From Louisville.com:

Louisville's only lesbian bar to close New Year's Eve [LGBT]

December 30, 2011 - 9:00am

by Travis Myles

After several lives over the years, Tink's Pub, a local lesbian bar, will once again close its doors after one last hooray on New Year's Eve.

The current incarnation, located at 2235 S. Preston, has been a central Louisville staple for ten years. The bar, which boasts that every night is ladies' night, has provided a great gathering space for ladies (and lots of men too) to shoot pool, play music in the jukebox, play video poker, throw darts, and sing karaoke. It also offered the occasional drag king show.

The owner had hoped that someone would offer to buy the bar before its closing, but no deal has been confirmed as of yet.

Saturday night's final celebration is themed "Cheers! to Ten Great Years!" The bar will be open its normal hours of 4:00 PM to 4:00 AM. Fans of the bar can post memories and messages on the bar's official Facebook page.

This obituary from Leo Weekly provides even more detail:

December 14, 2011

And then there were four

Louisville’s LGBT community loses two gay bars in one month

By Anne Marshall

In a dark, crowded room adjacent to an empty dance floor, a cover band growls out “Son of a Preacher Man.” Clusters of women in blue jeans sway and sing along. Soulful riffs blend with tipsy laughter. The bar strives for a jazz club vibe with candlelit tables draped in black, but the feel is more like a house party.

Tonight is one of the last Saturday nights for Tink’s Pub on Preston Street, Louisville’s only lesbian bar. After 10 years, owner Stacy Grigsby has decided to shut down, with one final bash planned for New Year’s Eve. She says in the last three years, business has dropped by about a third. So after a few years of hanging on, Grigsby has decided it’s time to retire. She’s hopeful another gay-friendly individual will buy the bar before the end of the month.

Since the announcement was made two weeks ago, supporters have relayed heartfelt farewells on the Tink’s Facebook page and to Grigsby in person.

“I didn’t realize how devastated people would be,” she says. “I feel like I’m letting down the community.”

Even those saddened by the news don’t fault Grigsby for a personal financial decision. But there is disappointment felt in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. Especially since the impending closure of Tink’s coincides with the end of Starbase Q, a gay bar on West Main Street. After seven years, its last night was Nov. 30. The owner of Starbase Q, Brian Travis, did not respond to LEO’s attempts to reach him.

“The city is losing two bars that I think it will miss,” says Holly Knight, a friend of Travis and host of a transgender talk show filmed at Starbase Q for several months. The closure came without notice. Her show, broadcast on YouTube, is now on hiatus. Knight remembers just a few years back when Starbase Q was packed even on weeknights, like Wednesday’s karaoke night.

“You couldn’t even walk in,” she says. “Then, gradually, there got to be a point where there would only be 30.”

Crowds had dwindled on weekends as well, she says, unless there was a special event.

And while a bad economy is at least partly to blame for Tink’s and Starbase Q shutting their doors, LGBT community leaders also point to a convergence of social change affecting gay bars. Technology has made it easier to meet people of all sexual orientations online, meaning gay bars no longer act as the only outlet.

Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, says that nationwide, gay bars have emerged as unintended collateral in the fight for acceptance. As more non-gay establishments welcome LGBT customers, creating friendly environments, the segregated model becomes somewhat antiquated.

“It’s very bittersweet. On the one hand, acceptance is increasing. There may be, in many people’s minds, a feeling that there is less of a need for specific lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender spots,” Hartman says. “We’re losing some of our history when we’re losing these places.”

It’s one reason Hartman is working with Preservation Louisville to mark significant locations in the city’s LGBT history.

“What we’ve found is that so many of these early spots were indeed bars,” Hartman says. “These safe gathering spots were nightlife hubs where folks could come and commiserate and not fear.”

Four gay bars remain open: The Connection, Tryangles, Marty’s Tavern and Teddy Bears. Longtime followers of Louisville’s LGBT culture say that’s the fewest number of local gay bars in decades.

Fleur de Lez is a lesbian social group that meets up for monthly happy hours. This month, organizer Zanne Koehne chose Tink’s — one last time. Gathered at a table in the well-worn billiards room, the young women chat about the loss of the city’s lone lesbian bar.

“I think some people want a little flashier, a little fancier,” Koehne says. “This is a hole in the wall. But it’s a fun hole in the wall.”

Several years ago, the bar drew a younger crowd, many from University of Louisville. But over the years, faces aged. Younger customers found new spots as other more mainstream bars in town increasingly offered sporadic “gay nights.” Still, Tink’s is a staple that many in this group say will leave a gap.

“I have no problem with gay or straight boys,” says Stacy Staggs. “But I like Tink’s because I’m bound to run into lesbians. And I like lesbians.”

Chris Riffle recently moved back to Louisville from Portland, Ore., a progressive city that she says just lost a decades-old lesbian bar.

“I think it’s because people are assimilating into mainstream culture,” Riffle says. “They don’t need that underground place to go to be a lesbian.”

Still, LGBT-friendly bars play a critical role. Holly Knight says when men and women decide to come out into their “authentic self,” the most likely place they’ll turn for support is in a spot where they’re sure to find similar people.

“I think these bars are more than just bars,” she says. “They’re safe places.”

Knight says Starbase Q had become that secure space for Louisville’s transgender and transsexual population. Overall, she feels Louisville is a very tolerant, hospitable city, but the threat of harassment and the fear of losing employment over an alternative lifestyle is real.

“I’m not saying every gay person needs to go to a gay bar to buy drinks and support it,” she says. “But I think gay bars are important in that way.”

Louisville’s gay bars date back to the 1930s, according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville. Many were in hotels, including the Beau Brummel at the Seelbach and the Beaux Arts at the Henry Clay Hotel.

These first bars were gay-friendly but not actually designated as “gay bars.”

But in 1953, Louisville’s first prominent gay bar — the Downtowner — opened on Chestnut Street. (It eventually burned down and relocated to the property that now houses The Connection.) Cate Fosl, director of the U of L Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, completed an oral history on LGBT culture in Louisville. She says the Downtowner was the target of the city’s first gay rights protest in 1970 by a group that came to be known as the Gay Liberation Front.

“Even though they had cross-dressing performers, they wouldn’t allow cross-dressing by bar patrons,” she says.

In the late ’70s, Mother’s Brew, a lesbian and feminist bar located at the current site of the Kentucky Convention Center, also became a hotbed for activism. Local community activist David Williams, who founded U of L’s Williams-Nichols archive stocked with local LGBT history, says gay- bar owners were reluctant to support the movement at the time. They worried acceptance would diminish their customer base.

“They didn’t come around until the ’80s,” Williams says. It was in the ’80s and ’90s that the number of gay bars multiplied, mostly in the downtown corridor, with as many as 10.

“Frankly, what I think started killing off bars is the Internet,” he adds. “The bars were about the only place where gays and lesbians would feel safe meeting new friends and possible love.”

In the late ’90s, that changed with the advent of dating websites and chat rooms. Williams doubts, though, that gay bars will become entirely a relic.

“There’s still quite a lot of folks in the gay and lesbian community who are shy about being seen in public as a gay or lesbian person,” he says. “So there is always going to be a need for a gay space, a lesbian space.”

The bar industry is notoriously fickle, and the recession has only made it harder to endure. Some argue there are just not enough patrons to support eight or nine gay bars in tough economic times.

Williams predicts it won’t be long before another gay bar opens. Still, as someone who’s followed the history of LGBT in Louisville, it’s hard not to take note of this particular moment.

“It fluctuates. But we’re back down to where we were 30 years ago,” Williams says. “It’s a bit surprising.”

To read more about the aforementioned Mother's Brew, see here.

Photo: Exterior of Tink's Pub  and interior

Hocker Female College

Hocker Female College (1908)

Hocker Female College

Location: North Broadway, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Founded: 1869

Closed: 1932

Unlike Miss Seward's School (featured below), Hocker Female College was founded by a man (James Monroe Hocker Sr.), and its first principal was a man as well (Robert Graham). I have yet to find any women's names associated with the founding of this school.

The first campus building was simply converted over from one of Hocker's many luxurious homes (Hocker made his fortune in banking). According to one authority, the school was started "because it was felt there was a need for a school of higher education with Christian values and scientific principles for the young women of our country."  Hocker Female College was set up as a "Christian preparatory school and college for women" and was closely associated with the Disciples of Christ Church.

Hamilton College (1904)

In 1877, Hocker decided to relinquish control of the school and sold it to a "joint stock company" with an all-male board of trustees. The school was then renamed Hamilton Female College in recognition of William Hamilton, a College trustee and major benefactor.

By 1889, Kentucky University (later Transylvania University) had become a major stockholder in the college, and by 1903, it had assumed total administrative control (basically a hostile takeover?). After that, Transylvania downscaled Hamilton College into just a junior college for women which was affiliated with Transylvania. The college was closed in 1932, after suffering declining financial support and enrollment for a number of years.

The main building survived as a women's dormitory at Transylvania--the one last remaining shred of womyn's space--until it was demolished in 1962.

The only remaining building from Hamilton College is the Graham Cottage Alumni House, the alumni reception center on the Transylvania campus. Built in 1863 for James M. Hocker, it became the home of Robert Graham in 1869.

I'm sure there were women who cherished their student days at Hocker/Hamilton, and that many of them forged life-long connections with their classmates and teachers. But for the most part, this appears to be the kind of "womyn's space" where men and male-dominated institutions played out their power-and-control games from the very beginning. As a pawn in these power struggles--and with little apparent or organized female investment in the outcome--the school was essentially doomed from the start.

Mother's Brew

Mother's Brew

Location: Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Founded: 1975?

Closed: 1978

Mother's Brew was one of the rare lesbian bars founded by a collective, the Lesbian Feminist Union (1974-1979).  Mother's Brew has also been credited with being the first lesbian bar in Louisville. Two women are generally cited as being central to the organization and management of Mother's Brew: Jade River and Falcon River.

In an interview, Jade explains something of Mother's Brew's beginnings:

I was a member of the Lesbian Feminist Union. We opened the only women’s only bar in, like, I don’t know, there were some on the East Coast and some on the West Coast, and the one we had in Kentucky. We opened a bar called Mother’s Brew. Because my family had run their own businesses, I was like, “Well, if you want a business, you just incorporate and sell stock and open your business.” So I talked all these women into each buying a share of stock and we opened a lesbian bar. And that bar served as kind of. . . The Lesbian Feminist Union held their meetings there. And it was closed; we did not allow men in; this was part of the response by the lesbian feminist community at that time was to be separatists; to isolate so that we could really focus on how would it be if we weren’t responding to traditional male expectations for women. So this was a very separatist period. I didn’t know lesbians who hung out with men. There wasn’t a whole lot of trans--of crossover between the lesbian population then. And we were also, it was not okay to be out at this point. It was very closeted because we were in Kentucky, you could lose your job, you could lose your house, you could lose your kids, because you were a lesbian. So there was a lot of fear and a lot of safety by just being around other lesbians.

Both Jade and River continue to be active leaders in Goddess religion.

Mother's Brew was also homebase to the band River City Womin (1974-1978). In a chapter on Louisville's Lesbian Feminist Union, Kathie D. Williams quotes one anonymous woman on hearing the band for the first time:

I had heard of River City Womin and the bar [Mother's Brew] but I had never seen either. The first time I walked through the doors of the Brew and saw four strong, confident women performing love songs to other women, I cried. I had felt so alone, like I was the only one. I stood and listened to those songs as if I had never heard music before. I guess maybe I hadn't, at least not music for me. I returned everytime they played. The energy was incredible.

According to John E. Kleber, Mother's Brew functioned more like a lesbian cultural center than as a standard-issue bar:

In addition to featuring live music by a local female band, River City Womyn [sic], Mother's Brew hosted nationally known musicians, sponsored lectures by early lesbian leaders such as Rita Mae Brown and Kathie Sarachild, and housed a resource center that provided women with information about the development of lesbian activism. The Brew also influenced another signficant development of lesbian culture in Louisville--softball. Softball teams were often sponsored by local bars or women-owned businesses. Mother's Brew sponsored the city's only all-lesbian team, the Matriarchies.

Other functions housed at Mother's Brew were a feminist library, a "safe room" where battered women could shelter for a few days, and an art gallery.

Some of the nationally known musicians who appeared at Mother's Brew included Maxine Feldman, Alix Dobkin, Holly Near, Meg Christian, Cris Williamson, and the Reel World String Band--a veritable who's who of 1970s womyn's music. Here's a review of a 1977 Alix Dobkin concert by a Lesbian Feminist Union member:

The Alix Dobkin concert at Mother's Brew was a not-to-be-believed combination of high flying, full Moon light bathing, Dykenergy. Over 200 women attended the concert and were exposed to a woman who lives out the statement, "The Personal is the Political." Alix speaks and sings directly of her life and politics and makes no apologies for either. As an energetic woman-loving woman, she is a great spokesperson for our movement. The energy of her message will not soon be lost. The power of the evening continued with our River City Womin.

As Falcon River reflects, "We did our part to subvert the dominant paradigm in a very hostile environment, in very hostile times."

Try as I may, I have not been able to determine the exact address for Mother's Brew, nor find any photos or illustrations related to the place. So I have settled for the cover from Alix Dobkin's 1975 album, Living with Lesbians.

Update 1/25/2012: I was reading an article on the recent closing of Tink's Pub, a newer lesbian bar in Louisville, and it was mentioned in passing that Mother's Brew was located at the current location of the Kentucky Convention Center. The Convention Center address is 221 South 4th Street, near Market Street.