TheHeidelberg

Heidelberg postcard, undated. The back reads: ''Heidelberg Diningroom & Lounge. 1479 Dresden Row. German Specialties: schnitzel, sauer braten, schwarzwalder tarte, haxe rotkraut, etc. Weekly noon cold & hot buffet at family prices in the lounge. Catering for private office parties & social functions. Party trays: sandwiches, cold treats.''

Gay hangout in the mid to late '70s.

The entrance on Birmingham St, with the restaurant one flight of stairs up. Had a jukebox.

It also had membership cards at one time, as did Rumours. It also had a disc jockey, Lynne, who ran TheStockade, an after-hours bar in back of a restaurant on Windsor at Almon that also featured three black drag queens singing Dirty Old Man.

1970s

Notes

NilsClausson writes: I think it was a lounge frequented by gays and not a club. Until the Turret opened, there were no gay bars or lounges in Halifax, and so gays frequented sraight bars to drink, and I think the Heidelberg was one of them. If there is or was a hotel between Spring Garden Road and the Citadel, then the bar in it might have been called the Heidelberg; the area around it was called TheTriangle (3 streets formed the sides of a triangle) and it was a very cruisy area. John Marr tells me that the the Heidleberg Restaurant and Lounge, owned by Heinze Morstadt, was located on Dresden Row on block south of the Dresden Arms Hotel, but on the opposite side of Spring Garden Road. I recall going to it either just before I left Halifax in 1976 or during my visit later that year (at Christmas) or in the summer of 1977. JohnMarr wrote to me in an email, "It has a history of deciding to be a gay bar, then changing quickly to having bouncers telling us to go away, then changing back when the money looked good."

John Jayne writes: Well the rumours were true, the Maitre'D there was gay and all the servers and bus boys. Now here's a story about the Maitre'd the kitchen where I worked. He had to come down a flight of stairs to report to the owners and give them the paperwork. One day he came down and one of the Chef's, who was Hungarian, told him he had a gift for his birthday. Then the Chef goes to the bread oven opens the door and pulls out a large aluminum tray and on it was an enormous size bread made in the shape of a penis complete with poppy seed for pubic hair and some red food color at the end of it. He smiled and said "thank you so much it's what I always wanted." The cooks I worked with, myself included, laughed so hard we had to take a break.1

This page is in the GayBars section of the HistoryProject.