Post-gay: On Archive, Exhibition and Ghosts

Keith Benes, Samantha Goembel, Andrew Gunther, XiaoFeng Jiang, Alexander Johnson, Marietta Koeberle, Leo McDowell-Chmelar, Serena Minix, Zoe Nye, Paul Owusu, Joseph Privatera, Boubacar Sow, Taylor Stewart, Christopher Sweeney, Gabriella Zayas, 2021.

Post-gay: On Archive, Exhibition and Ghosts features work by University at Buffalo Master of Architecture students, completed during the Fall 2021 Inclusive Design Graduate Research Studio of the same name.

The studio focused on a collection of buildings in Buffalo that, at one point in their histories, served as a queer gathering space, but now either sit abandoned or have assumed other functions. Together, the studio engaged a two-phase methodology to imagine a future for these buildings that memorializes their past and challenges existing limits in the scope of “inclusive design,” through archive and exhibition.

In Phase I: Container, each student became acquainted with one building, understanding its exterior as a container for the forgotten histories of marginalized individuals. Students directly engaged the buildings through field measurement and observation, as well as resources such as the Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York, from which they each identified one object for exhibition in Phase II.

In Phase II: Contents, each student redesigned the interior of their building to imagine its shell reappropriated for a new program: an inclusive exhibition for the Madeline Davis Archive. Each student took a stance on inclusive design that moved beyond preconceptions of mobility and access, addressing broader notions of inclusivity ranging from race to gender. The final deliverable was a comprehensive building design that houses the Madeline Davis Archive, with particular emphasis on the physical display of the forgotten histories of the ghosts that linger within the traces of a renegotiated interior condition.

132 Gennesee St.

XiaoFeng Jiang

Club 132 was located at the corner of the intersection between Genesee and Oak St. It was a gay bar in 1959, operated by Charles J Giardina. It is the only bar in town that permitted same-sex dancing at that time. Unfortunately, the bar lost its liquor license after two years of opening for selling liquor to minors, as evidenced by a newspaper clipping found in the Madeline Davis Archive. The bar closed in 1961 and is currently slated for redevelopment as a part of the Genesee Gateway Development.

Because the only evidence of Club 132 was found in a single newspaper archive, the building is re-imagined as an archive and exhibition of queer print media such as newspapers, magazines, and posters. The different perspectives of space are created by various angles of walls and glass façade exterior. When approached on the street, the different exhibition collections can be seen in the same spot with different perspectives due to the angled walls, revealing queer history in print to the public on the street.

733 Main St.

Andrew Gunther

733 Main St. was once home to the gay club Café Rumors. However much like the name, all the remains of the club are just rumors of its existence with little to actually find about it. The only evidence of it in the Madeline Davis Archive is an employee T-Shirt.

An imagined future for the building, the Rumors Archive of Verbal and Written Histories draws pedestrians in with the beginning of a rumor. As you enter, you can try to follow the story on glass pillars that you can only see from just the right angle. Or, you can get lost in the rumors and begin to get the story twisted in a new one. It’s this flow of history that draws you through the space, from rumor cluster to rumor cluster. Along the way, one can find an archive of bound rumors and articles of history. One of the unisex restroom finds itself allowed to be peaked into from the first flow in the effort of following a rumor. Private begins to become public, where typical back-of-house space such as offices and restrooms are put on display.

31 Johnson Park

Zoe Nye

31 Johnson Park was formerly known as Buddies, active primarily from the late 80s to the early 2000s. Buddies had a sports bar-like atmosphere where many hockey fans would gather. Buddies was also a stop on the Gay Pride Parade in Buffalo in the 90s. The building is still in good condition as it is used today as a restaurant called 31 Club.

The decorative facade acts as a contradiction to the masculine sports bar atmosphere of the original Buddies. Since I embraced the decorative exterior, I wanted to focus on queer fashion and costume on the interior. The facade becomes the ‘clothing’ of the exterior with the addition of false entrances. Entering from these more hidden entrances, there are a series of stages and platforms on the interior. The stages at the center allow people to gather and watch performances, while the cases and platforms that are around the edges will showcase more permanent exhibitions of queer fashion. The original building had these very public patios which I chose to add back in as more private enclosed patios. On the second floor, there are a series of openings to below that follow the shape and orientation of the stages below. On this floor are workstations and tables for sewing, sketching, and collaborating to take place to provide for the program below.

761 Main St.

Samantha Goembel

Big Daddy’s Company Store Inc. was located at 761 Main St in Buffalo, NY in the early 70’s. Big Daddy’s was known for being “The Toronto Bar with Buffalo People”. Even though it was only active for a few years, we can speculate that this small building had a large impact on Buffalo’s queer history. The current occupant of 761 Main is M Steffan's Sons Inc, a family-owned leather repair shop. 

The proposal focuses on breaking the symmetry of the container (exterior) and its contents (interior) both architecturally and programmatically. The front half of the building off of Main St and the second-floor houses artifacts of the Madeline Davis Archive. The back half is home to cruising spaces accessible from a back door and a second door disguised as a cabinet in a restroom. Each room has a different texture and theme. There is a steam room/sauna, a ‘bubbly’ soft room, and a rigid room, each with nooks to accommodate the body. Below the cruising spaces in the basement is an underground club incorporating each of the three textures. 

684 Michigan Avenue

Keith Benes

From 1935 to 1938, Downs’ bar served gay men discreetly on Buffalo’s East Side. Today, the building which served as one of the city’s earliest gay meeting spaces is gone. The histories of its customers live on only entwined in heteronormative family, church, and business histories. In a neighborhood which has failed its queer populace, this project proposes to reappropriate a neoclassical former bank which stood neighboring Downs’ bar and remains today.

Inside, familiar tropes of western art and architecture are perverted to create a distinctive queer space. The primary exhibition hall is a barrel-vaulted space where sense of scale is warped by an oversized entablature which surrounds and intrudes into the space. As on the exterior, the entablature is broken to accommodate various thresholds and apertures. Michelangelo’s iconic Statue of David is repeated throughout the space at different scales. The statues are broken or modified to draw attention to inscribed stories of LGBTQ history.

437 Ellicott St.

Christopher Sweeney

437 Ellicott Street has a small window of queer history inside its walls. In the early 80’s, what now is called Toutant, used to be referred to as the Swan Club. This building has had many lives, but so did its neighbor. Next door, adjacent to 437 Ellicott, there used to be a popular bakery. Unfortunately, due to negligence, this historical property had to be torn down in 2019. As this building is demolished, it questions what can be discovered as the layers of these histories begin to peel away. The removal of this building has shined new light on to what used to exist at 437.

In the LGBTQ community, there is a similar history of erasure. As queer spaces popped up and disappeared, much of their histories was covered up. The Swan Club for example, has little record of its existence other than word of mouth and rubble left on site. What happened to those forgotten voices of those that frequented the Swan Club? Did their histories die with the Swan Club too?

437 Ellicott is reimagined as exhibiting physical fragments of demolished queer spaces in Buffalo, alongside the names of those who died during the AIDS epidemic, pulled from The Madeline Davis Archive’s record of the AIDS alliance and the AIDS Watch Newsletter, both of which existed during the time of the Swan Club.

85 Chippewa St.

Marietta Koeberle

In 1983, 85 Chippewa was Bradford’s Bar and Grill. In its life, Bardford’s was known for its good food and live music, as well as being the primary queer gathering space on Chippewa. After Bradford’s closed in the late-80s and the building changed ownership, the space became a popular cop bar, as currently evidenced by original ceiling tiles that have bullet holes in them. Around the same time, masculine wood paneling was added to the exterior of the building.

This project focuses on the tension between this once queer hidden gathering space that had its history deliberately covered up and replaced by a masculine cop bar. The building itself is re-imagined as an installation. On the ground there is a way-finding system of painted ceiling tiles that guide you through the exhibition where there are displays lining walls and extrusions that interrupt the tiles. As one moves through the different levels, various spaces are reveled that are only accessible if you know the way of the exhibit path. Along the path there are moments where wood paneling from the facade is revealed on the interior and becomes occupiable. The result is a tension between the between the two spaces of the queer exhibit and the masculine, wood-paneled spaces, which speaks to the gendered tension of the building’s history.