John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center

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John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center

John Anderies, Archives & Library Director
Bob Skiba, Archives Curator
Jake Foster, Art Exhibitions Manager

09/15/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗗𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗰 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗵

AIDS activist and unabashed sissy Dominic Bash (1947-1993) grew up in Kensington. As a child, he was picked on relentlessly for being gay. He said "I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and taught to love one another. Yet, they couldn't love me and I couldn't live a lie."

Chris Bartlett wrote of him:

“When a neighborhood bully would pick on him, Dominic would beat up the kid’s bike with a broom. The lesson from that is the way to confront hatred is not to beat up on people but the institutions and culture that create those kinds of people.”

Jeannine Gramick, the Catholic nun who founded New Ways Ministry, and wrote Homos*xuality and the Catholic Church, says that Dominic inspired her when they were friends at U Penn, when he asked her simply, “What is the Church doing for my gay and le***an brothers and sisters?”

Dominic later worked as a hairdresser at the Abbey at 23rd and South. With his shoulder length blond hair, he’d make flamboyant public appearances in drag; he loved to be outrageous. He became the coordinator of the AIDS ministry for Dignity of Philadelphia. He visited AIDS patients several times a week to act as a sort of spiritual guide. "I just give a little nurturing, loving, and caring that they're not getting from mother church," he said. Bash served Communion during his visits, counseled the patients, and helped with other church-oriented tasks such as funeral services.

Bartlett also wrote “...when he was really angry at the Catholic Church for being dismissive of g**s, Dominic would go to the Cathedral [Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul] on the Parkway and wait for Cardinal Bevilacqua to give him condoms and talk to him about s*x education.”

In June 1992, strutting in a purple-and-pink sequined leotard and a lavender feathered boa, Dominic led Philly’s Gay Pride March from Rittenhouse Square to Penn’s Landing.

In January 1993, at age 46, Dominic Bash died of AIDS related complications. A loving memorial service was held at St. Luke's on 13th St.

09/11/2026

We’re excited to announce that we have received a grant from the William Penn Foundation in support of a major exhibition on the life and work of Philadelphia trans architect and artist Roberta Dickinson (1918-1982). Titled “Roberta Dickinson: Designing a Life,” the exhibition will take place June-August 2027 at Icebox Project Space in the Crane Arts Building.

Please see the link in the comments for the full press release and follow here at John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives to watch our preparations over the coming months!

Photo: Portrait of Roberta Dickinson at the Easel, undated. Permanent Art Collection, John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives, William Way LGBT Community Center.

William Penn Foundation
Icebox Project Space

09/08/2026

We're excited to share the Museum for Art in Wood’s (Museum for Art in Wood) open call for Queer-identifying artists working in wood to submit work to their upcoming Exhibition ‘Queering Woodcraft’.

In 2020, the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum for Art in Wood, Navva Milliken, and the Museum for Art in Wood staff brought a group of makers online under the umbrella of Queering Wood Craft (QWC). Over more than a dozen sessions, they focused on distinct aspects of the subject: education, q***r aesthetics, kinship and sensuality, resistance, and self-definition. Reflected upon together, these discussions formed a matrix of questions and ideas from which this exhibition emerges.

This call is open to q***r artists and makers who work in wood—building furniture, turning, carving, or otherwise using wood as the primary material in their work, based nationally and internationally.

The exhibition will take place at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, PA, from April to late July 2027.

Application Deadline: September 15, 2026
Check out the Museum for Art in Wood Website if you’re curious about applying!

09/04/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗘𝗥 𝗣𝗨𝗟𝗣 𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡

We have an amazing collection of the q***r pulp fiction that proliferated after World War II well into the 1980s. It occupied a crucial role in the life stories of many q***r folks coming up before Stonewall and after.

Intended to intrigue, alarm, and arouse, pulps also provided representations of q***r lives—however distorted and sensationalistic—when few others were available. Cheap enough to be disposable and for sale in bus depots, train stations, and drug stores, gay pulps came to serve as the connective tissue for a nascent LGBT community who could find their loves and lives vividly animated on their pages.

Bridging the legal decisions of the early 1960s that redefined obscenity more narrowly and opened the floodgates to unapologetic representations of q***r characters and perverse pleasures, pulps register the shifting relationships between q***r people and the law, medicine, science, and politics in mid-century America.

As historically significant as they are campy and salacious, pulps record the fears and fantasies of a postwar American culture anxiously obsessed with differentiating the normal from the deviant.

09/01/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗝𝗼𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝟭𝟵𝟵𝟭

Joe Beam was a poet, writer and activist who advocated for Black gay male voices and experiences.

In 1986, he published "In the Life," the first black, gay male anthology, because he “had grown weary of reading literature by white gay men.” He was working on Brother to Brother, another collection, when he died of AIDS in 1988, three days short of his 34th birthday. The book was completed by poet Ess*x Hemphill with the support of Beam’s mother, Dorothy.

In 1991, on the third anniversary of his passing, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode declared December 28 “Joe Beam Day” and Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey sent this memorial citation.

Ess*x Hemphill memorialized Beam in his own poem, “When My Brother Fell:”

He burned out
His pure life force
To bring us a chance
To love ourselves...

08/26/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗕𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗶 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗹𝘆𝗲𝗿, 𝟭𝟵𝟴𝟳

By 1985, half of all new AIDS cases in Philadelphia were being reported among young African American men, but mainstream media tended to focus on the white male gay community.

That year, Wes Anderson, a public health worker and Rashidah Hassan, a nurse who had worked with PCHA and its AIDS Task Force, became dissatisfied with local groups’ failure to effectively reach out to African Americans at risk of contracting HIV.

To stem the rising tide of new infections in Philadelphia’s black community, they founded Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues (BEBASHI), one of the nation’s first black AIDS service organizations. With the help of longtime gay activist David Fair, and the Philadelphia health care workers’ union 1199, they obtained funding from the city.

Bebashi worked through existing social institutions like African American churches to ensure that their education and prevention messages that would resonate with black audiences.

Today, as Bebashi Transition to Hope, the organization remains one of Philadelphia’s largest community-based providers of internal medicine and health care for the community.

08/20/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗙𝗹𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻, 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟰, 𝟭𝟵𝟳𝟵

This flyer advertised roundtrip bus tickets from Philly to D.C. to participate in the first National March on Washington for Le***an and Gay Rights, marking the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

The organizational framework and platform for the March had been worked out eight months earlier at a three day planning conference at the Friends Meetinghouse at 4th and Arch Streets in Philadelphia.

Over 100,000 protesters participated in that first March on Washington in an effort to further a national gay and le***an civil rights movement.

08/12/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗘𝗗 𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗟: 𝗚𝗮𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗿 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘄𝗹, 𝟭𝟵𝟳𝟳

In 1977, Ed Rendell toured six gay bars in Philadelphia as part of his campaign for District Attorney, making him the first city politician to publicly seek support from LGBT constituents.

Here he is that year with Mark Segal at Upstairs, a woman’s bar at 26 S Front St.

As District Attorney, Mayor of Philadelphia and Governor of Pennsylvania, Rendell has been an important political ally for the LGBT community.

If any of you can confirm that that’s Pal Joey on the left, let us know. Thanks!

- from the Harry Eberlin Photo Collection

08/05/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗖𝗔𝗠𝗣 𝗪𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗔𝗠𝗦𝗕𝗨𝗥𝗚 𝗜𝗡𝗡

Camp Williamsburg Inn, at 251 S Camac St., was a real child of the 70s. It opened in 1976 as a private club and dining room marketed primarily to gay men and closed in 1979.

The locale had a long culinary history. It had been a private dining club called the Coin d’Or for over 50 years, from 1914 to 1969, part of the charming Camac Street bohemian club scene.

Camp Williamsburg’s laid back bar and piano were downstairs with two separate dining rooms upstairs (251 and 253 Camac had been joined together since 1914). The clientele was described as “well dressed.”

The menu was vaguely continental but with plenty of 1970s iceberg lettuce and inexpensive chef’s specials that included meat loaf.

The kitchen closed at 10 but since it was a private club, the bar remained open until 3 a.m.

Camp Williamsburg Inn began floundering in early 1979, changed management, then changed ownership and finally closed. Before the end of the year, the original Deux Cheminees, run by chef Fritz Blanc opened there.

After a fire that gutted the restaurant, Deux Cheminees moved to 1221 Locust Street, a half block away. 251 Camac then operated as the Inn Philadelphia until about 2008.

It’s now the national headquarters of Delta Phi Epsilon sorority.

07/30/2026

• 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗻

This napkin from the Venture Inn at 255 S Camac St. is from the scrapbook collection of Jack Van Alstyne, the photo of Ted Wasserman surrounded by drag performers is from the Au Courant Photo Collection and the 1976 ad is from PGN.

In the 1940s and 50s, the Venture Inn was one of Philadelphia's many "musical bars" that served dinner, drinks and live entertainment in a laid back atmosphere.

By the late 50s, the Venture Inn was known as a hangout for college kids and "homos*xuals."

It didn't go from being "gay friendly" to gay until 1973, when it was bought by Hans Lang who had owned other gay bars in the city.

In 1977, the business was bought by Ted Wasserman, who would own it for the next 30 years.

By the 2000s, it was a Gayborhood classic and, because of its older clientele, was sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Denture Inn."

The Venture Inn closed in January of 2016 and Bar X, which calls itself “the Gayborhood dive bar” has operated there since 2018.

Address

1315 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA
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Telephone

(215) 732-2220

Website

http://www.waygay.org/archives

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