You can’t understand New Austin without delving into Old Austin.
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Later, we confirmed from other sources that, all through the 1960s, the Manhattan was identified as a gay-friendly restaurant and that the backroom bar was still active. If they just suspected you were gay, you were called into the dean of students’ and given a choice: a lie detector test or a quiet withdrawal from the university. For instance, one could be dismissed out of hand if the administration knew for a fact you were gay. You knew everybody there, except on (Longhorn) game days, when it would fill up and there would be some fresh faces.īy the way, Wicker’s description of the treatment of UT’s LGBT community in the 1950s is harrowing. Wicker: No, you walked right through the restaurant. It wouldn’t by chance be the Manhattan deli? It was in the backroom of a deli on the avenue. He also is gay.Īmerican-Statesman: So was there a gay bar in Austin back then? We were interviewing activist and journalist Randy Wicker, who was a radical student leader at the University of Texas during the late 1950s.
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READ MORE: A winner in the 1950 Austin cafe mystery.Ī few weeks later, we stumbled on another astounding coincidence.
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READ MORE: Do you know this Austin cafe from the 1950s?Īustin Nelson, whose family design firm operates out of 905 Congress Ave., persuasively argued that their building had been the pictured Manhattan restaurant and deli. Even more, they loved guessing the name and location of the Austin cafe. Some background: Readers loved this photo from the 1950s. A living witness puts a 1950s Austin gay bar, perhaps the city’s first, in a backroom on Congress Avenue.