Police Raids on Costume Balls at Manhattan Center

History

By the 1930s, as the visibility of the LGBTQ community in New York City increased, the police and the legal system cracked down on cross-dressing and gender non-conformity in public and private, using a nearly century-old vagrancy statute. In 1935, for instance, the manager of Stewart’s Cafeteria in Greenwich Village was convicted for allowing certain behaviors to occur, and much of the court testimony concerned patrons’ gender-variant presentation.

Police raided a private costume ball at Manhattan Center in 1939, and 99 men were arrested for dressing in drag. This policing of cross-dressing continued into the 1960s. At a costume ball at the same location 23 years later, in 1962, 44 men were arrested for dressing in drag. There is no way of knowing if any of these individuals would today consider themselves transgender or gender non-conforming.

1939 Raid
The New York Sun on October 21, 1939, carried an article titled “99 Men in Skirts Arrested in Raid.” Lt. Hugh McGovern, after conferring with a Night Court magistrate, led a group of plainclothes policemen in a raid on the seventh-floor ballroom of Manhattan Center at 1:30 a.m. that day. As reported, the event underway was the Sixteenth Annual Keansburg-Mandalay Reunion and Costume Ball. All of the men arrested were in drag. Some other men managed to get to the fifth floor, where they were able to change into their street clothes and escape.

A large crowd outside witnessed the men being escorted into six patrol wagons. One photograph exists of some of the men in one wagon. The newspaper claimed that since they were to be charged with vagrancy, the “offence” needed to be committed on the street, so the police parked the wagons farther away so that those arrested had to walk a distance to them. They were taken to the 14th Precinct Station House, 136 West 30th Street, where friends of those arrested were denied entry to provide bail or clothing.

The men were charged with vagrancy under New York State’s Code of Criminal Procedure Section 887, Subsection 7, which dated back to 1845 and was one of the oldest such laws in the country. This law made it illegal to appear in public with one’s “face painted, discolored or concealed, or being otherwise disguised, in a manner calculated to prevent his being identified.” While the statute had no explicit references to clothing, New York police and the courts used it often to punish cross-dressing and gender-non-conforming presentation.

According to the arrest records in this case, two of the detained men were 19 years old, 78 men were in their 20s, fourteen in their 30s, and five in their 40s. The harsh penalty imposed was ten days in the Workhouse, which had recently been moved to Rikers Island. There is no indication why each man had his conviction’s “Execution Suspended” (as stamped in the record book), but it is likely that a judge threw out all the charges. This may have been one of the actions taken amidst a “clean up” of New York during the World’s Fair under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

1962 Raid
On October 26, 1962, the National Variety Artists’ Exotic Ball and Carnival was held in the grand ballroom of Manhattan Center. This fraternal organization had been formed in 1916 to support vaudeville performers. An annual event since 1937, the Halloween ball was attended by some 2,000 people, and a large crowd on the sidewalk cheered as the costumed guests arrived. New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy happened to be attending another event at the Center, and he personally found the spectacle “disgraceful.” He then led four members of his “Confidential Squad” to conduct a raid of the ball at 10:00 p.m. Forty-four men in drag were arrested — 38 were charged with disorderly conduct under the same statute as the 1939 raid, while six were charged with indecent exposure (wearing bikinis). Curiously, the New York Times reported that detectives insisted that “no policemen had been disguised as women in the operation.” About a dozen photographs of the arrests were taken by a Hearst International News Service photographer.

All of those arrested were taken to the same police station on West 30th Street as in 1939. Several days later, a judge dismissed the “masquerading” charges against 43 men, stating that there had been no violation of the statute and that the event was actually a legitimate masquerade party. A Black 19-year-old was still detained for indecent exposure. Newspapers across the country and Canada, as well as in Europe, carried the story. The New York Amsterdam News published the names of the men who were arrested.

The City stopped raiding costume balls in 1965, and Section 887 was repealed in 1967. Queens (later Queens Liberation Front), a transgender and drag organization led by Lee G. Brewster, along with Dick Leitsch, president of the Mattachine Society of New York, achieved the legalization of drag balls in 1970.

This building was originally the Manhattan Opera House, built by Oscar Hammerstein I and opened in 1906. It was purchased and remodeled in 1922 by the Scottish Rite Masons as its temple. In 1927 Warner Brothers leased it for a sound stage, and in 1938 it became the Manhattan Center, a multi-purpose venue with several event spaces.

Entry by Jay Shockley, project director (January 2026), with thanks to Brian Ferree and Julia Bucci for research assistance.

NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.