The Warehouse

History

Bronx nightlife venues for LGBT people of color date to at least the early post-Stonewall era, when the bars Apartment, at 508 Willis Avenue, and Faces, at 2003 Jerome Avenue, appeared in the 1973 Gayellow Pages. For six years beginning in 1994, Gay Men of the Bronx (GMoB) co-founder Charles Rice-González authored bi-monthly “Club Scene” reports in GMoB’s newsletter as part of the group’s mission to counter the isolation of gay men in the borough. Perhaps the most iconic of these clubs was the Warehouse in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx.

The idea for the Warehouse was conceived by Mike Stone, an influential club promoter at Manhattan venues such as Studio 54 and Bond International Casino. In early 1997, Stone learned about the Bronx building, a warehouse a block off the Grand Concourse, from people he knew who were renting it as an event venue. Knowing that Black gay men in the city were in need of a large club space following the closures of the Paradise Garage (building demolished) and Better Days (316 West 49th Street), in Manhattan, Stone asked long-time friend and veteran club promoter Charles Jackson to join him on his new venture in the Bronx. In creating their underground dance space, the pair was influenced by their experiences at those clubs and parties at the Loft and the Gallery (132 West 22nd Street; later, 172 Mercer Street), also in Manhattan.

The Warehouse – so named by Stone because of its cavernous, industrial feel (and not for its famed Chicago predecessor) – held its first party, a Better Days reunion, on Memorial Day weekend 1997. The packed crowd inspired a second party of around 800 people on Gay Pride weekend the following month. Weekly Friday and Saturday night parties, geared toward gay men of color but welcome to all, became popular.

Jackson’s team handed out Warehouse flyers around the country on Pride weekends. The Warehouse became so renowned that people came directly from the airport to dance there. Crowds sometimes reached around 2,000 people and lines went around the block. The club’s location in a non-residential industrial area meant that disturbing neighbors with noise was not an issue; parties starting at 11 p.m. could continue until late morning the next day, sometimes until 11 a.m. (other clubs had to close at 4 a.m.).

The main dance space was on the second floor. It featured high ceilings, a stage, a long wood island-bar lit by fake Tiffany lamps and Christmas bulbs, and an outdoor patio. A sound system of about four stacks of speakers was custom built around a wood dance floor. At one side of the lounge was Junior’s Hotspot, where Lester Richards sold chicken wings and collard greens. Resident DJ Andre Collins, who grew up in the Bronx’s Gun Hill Houses and was prominent in Manhattan’s dance music scene, likened the sound and the space’s “raw” feeling to the Paradise Garage. A popular track, which Collins called the Warehouse’s theme song, was the Noize Boyz’s “The Chant of Voodoo” (1997). Events also included balls hosted by Kevin Omni, founder of the House of Omni.

Soon after opening, Stone wanted to turn the ground floor into a second room for house music. Jackson, however, saw the potential of attracting a younger crowd by using the space for hip-hop and R&B, featuring resident DJs MK and Unknown. Meant to hold 60 people, around 300 squeezed into the room. Clubgoers included “homo thugz,” Black men in urban wear who followed the B-boy image and had sex with other men while keeping their sexual identity on the down low. As Jackson explained to the Village Voice in 2000, “There’s still a lot of gay bashing out there. If you dress thug style, nobody’s gonna bother you, because thugness and realness is an ultimate man.”

In 1998, Stone helped plan events for the first Bronx Pride; afterward, attendees walked down the street to the Warehouse. When Stone became ill, Jackson’s friend Michael Haynes, of the House of Ebony, helped run the club. Despite the Warehouse’s popularity, it closed in 2006 after losing its lease. Stone died the following year. Bringing together generations of Black gay men and mixing multiple genres of music, the Warehouse was later described by Haynes as “such a combination of all the different parts of the culture.”

Entry by Amanda Davis, project manager (December 2024), with preliminary research by Cecelia Halle, project consultant.

NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.