Clam House, Connie's Inn, and the Ubangi Club | W. 132nd St. & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Continue walking west on W. 130th St. until you reach Adam Clayton Powell at the next block. Turn right onto Adam Clayton Powell. Continue heading north until you reach the construction site and scaffolding at the intersection of W. 132nd St. and Adam Clayton Powell. This site is where Connie’s Inn, the Clam House, and the Ubangi Club once stood, adjacent to the demolished Lafayette Theater.

By Alyssa Greene

The Clam House, Connie’s Inn, and the Ubangi Club all served as vibrant establishments in Harlem’s nightlife and queer history. All speakeasies during Prohibition, they stood adjacent to the Lafayette Theater; all have since been torn down.

Prohibition was a federal ban on the sale, production, and importation of alcohol in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933. Speakeasies were incredibly profitable establishments that sold alcohol illegally. During Prohibition, speakeasies flourished. It is estimated that there were between 30,000 and 100,000 in New York City alone.

Nightclubs like Connie’s Inn, founded by German immigrant Conrad Immerman in 1923, showcased jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters. Although the club featured African American artists, it only allowed white patrons. Immerman and his brothers eventually moved Connie’s downtown. In 1934, the Harlem site reopened as the Ubangi Club.

In the blues scene of the 1920s, people could more openly express their queerness. In Harlem, queer artists still faced harassment from both civilians and police, but overall, they experienced a degree of freedom extremely rare in the U.S. at that time. Singers such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Gladys Bentley sang about same-sex affairs even though it was possible to be criminally prosecuted for such behavior. Bentley, an openly lesbian singer, pianist, and performer, appeared at the Clam House and the Ubangi Club. When she heard that the Clam House needed a male pianist, she began dressing in men’s clothing. Her act, performed in a tuxedo, took off: while flirting openly with women in the crowd, she sang about “sissies” and “bulldaggers” and affairs she’d had with women. In 1931, she married a white woman in a public ceremony in New Jersey; little is known about the woman she married. Later in life, as persecution of LGBTQ people intensified in the McCarthy Era, Bentley legally married a man and renounced her lesbianism.

In 2013, the building that housed the Ubangi Club was demolished. Like many other places important to the Harlem Renaissance, the building was never made a historic landmark, and so, efforts to preserve it in the face of urban development were far more difficult. Fewer sites are protected in Harlem than in other parts of Manhattan: as of 2015, only 3.6 percent of Central Harlem is designated for historical protection in comparison to 26 percent of the Upper West Side and 45 percent of the West Village.

*Editorial addition made by Nicole Marie Gervasio in July 2017:

Ma Rainey, “Prove it on Me Blues”

I went out last night, had a great big fight
Everything seemed to go wrong
When I looked up, to my surprise
The gal I was with was gone

Folks say I'm crooked
I don't know where she took it
I want the whole world to know

I went out last night with a crowd of my friends
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men
It's true I wear a collar and a tie,
I like to watch the women as they pass by

They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
They sure gotta prove it on me

Click here to listen to Ma Rainey's song.