Columbia Hall or as it was called Paresis Hall at fifth street and Bowery in New York City was considered in the 1890s and probably today as a den of iniquity. It was a “Fairy Resort”, an all male brothel. It contained young hustlers from ages 14 to 21 years old. The boys often would dress up in a feminine manner including makeup and they would take their tricks to the upper floors or to the basement for their rendezvous.
During the 1890′s the area around fourteenth street was the early Tenderloin section to the theater district a few blocks away. The area boasted no fewer than six other “Resorts”. Paresis Hall being the busiest, Little Bucks, Manilla Hall, The Slide and the Sharon Hotel (Cock Sucker’s Hall) just to name a few.
To most people of the era these places were seen as an abomination to man, a pervert’s paradise. But to the men that gathered there it served as a crucial institution in which to forge an alternative social order. This was a place they could be themselves and camp it up.
The name Paresis is a medical term for insanity which outsiders thought men might acquire at the hall from syphilis or simply from associating with fairies. The former Columbia Hall (Paresis Hall) is now home to the Village Voice newspaper (home to writer Michael Musto).
Former Columbia Hall (Paresis Hall)
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