Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We're doing something
really special today, heading straight into Washington,
D .C. The year is 1919, and we are looking at
this incredible collision of art, rebellion,
and survival. Taking place in an underground
speakeasy mere blocks from the White House, no
less. Right. We've gathered this fascinating
stack of sources, you know, historical accounts,
personal diaries, contemporary newspaper clippings.
And we're extracting the absolute best nuggets
of history about a place called the Crazy Cat
Club. Our mission today is to really explore
how a specific group of marginalized individuals
built a sanctuary right in the shadows of the
nation's capital. Yeah. And if you are interested
in prohibition, speakeasy history or 1920s bohemian
culture, this is exactly the deep dive for you.
It's a remarkable piece of history. I mean, we
all know the general narrative that Prohibition
pushed drinking underground. Sure, the classic
Roaring Twenties story. Exactly. But the timeline
and the intensity in Washington, D .C. were completely
unique. The district didn't actually wait for
the 1920s. They were hit early. Very early and
incredibly hard. By the 1917 Shepard Bone Dry
Act. Which is a crucial piece of context for
anyone trying to understand the atmosphere of
the city at that time. Because overnight, that
act mandated the closure of 267 bar rooms. And
nearly 90 wholesale establishments. Right. It
threw over 2000 people out of work and instantly
erased half a million dollars a year in district
tax revenue. We aren't just talking about a gradual
shift in social habits here. No, this was an
immediate draconian eradication of the capital's
official drinking culture. And when you create
a sudden vacuum like that. Especially in a city
so densely populated by government workers, military
personnel and artists. The resulting underground
scene doesn't just, you know, replicate the old
bars. It mutates into something entirely different.
The clandestine spaces that flourished weren't
just about sneaking a drink. For the bohemian
and LGBTQ communities in D .C., these spaces
became a necessary fortrel. OK, let's unpack
this origin story because it starts with two
individuals who perfectly embody that. post -war
displacement. Right, January 1919. Exactly. We
have two broke, essentially homeless World War
I veterans crossing paths. John LaDrew Stifler,
who was a classically trained Russian ballet
dancer. Which is just an amazing detail on its
own. It really is. And he had served in the engineering
corps. He meets John Don Allen. And Allen was
a former hula dancer who had served in the Lafayette
Artillery Company. Which, for context, the Lafayette
Artillery was part of the broader tradition of
American volunteers. who went over to fight for
France before the United States officially entered
the First World War. So both of these men have
seen the world. They have. They've endured the
devastation of a global conflict. And they return
to a capital city that has completely outlawed
their social spaces. And they're artists by trade.
They have absolutely no money. But they decide
to take this massive leap of faith and open a
coffee house and art club. And the location they
choose is brilliantly grim. It really is. They
find an address at 3 Green Court, and this is
situated in an economically depressed, dangerous
area colloquially known as the Latin Quarter.
It wasn't exactly a glamorous storefront. No,
not at all. It was an old livestock stable that
had briefly been converted into a very early
car garage. So if you were a patron trying to
find this place, you'd be walking down a narrow
red brick alleyway in the dark. Just looking
for this inconspicuous iron bar door. And what's
fascinating here is how the entrance alone set
the tone for the entire experience. They painted
a sign on that door featuring the cartoon character
Crazy Cat getting hit by a brick. And above it,
written in chalk, was this play on the famous
warning from Dante's Inferno. Right. Instead
of, all hope abandon ye who enter here, they
wrote, all soap abandon ye who enter here. And
they actually misspelled the word soap. Which
just adds to it. It was this deliberate rejection
of... pristine high society norms right at the
threshold. I really want to focus on the sensory
experience of walking through that door because
it sounds intense for anyone visiting. Oh, absolutely.
The sources describe patrons having to navigate
through a ground floor littered with old lumber.
Just tripping over wood in the dark. Yeah, and
then climbing a rickety winding staircase just
to reach the main room. And because it used to
be a garage, the lingering smell of gasoline
was apparently overwhelming. To combat that chemical
stench, Stifler and Allen burned heavy, thick
incense constantly. So picture yourself arriving
in this space. You're surrounded by smoke. The
air is thick with incense and gasoline. And the
room is covered in cobwebs. The only lighting
came from candles that were stuffed into old,
rusted tin cans. But illuminating the walls were
these gaudy, wild paintings done by futurist
and impressionist artists. It sounds like an
absolute sensory overload. But the contrast between
that physical grime and the emotional atmosphere
inside is striking. It was a place of joyous,
uninhibited freedom. Contemporary accounts say
people went there with no one to see and no one
to care who saw. But, you know, a sanctuary of
that scale still needs someone to physically
build out the vision. Shortly after opening,
they brought in a third co -proprietor to help
manage the aesthetic range. They did. By February
1919, a 21 -year -old engineering student named
Cleon Throckmorton joins the team. Throck to
his friends. He was taking classes at Howard
University and had a deep passion for theatrical
scenic design. And he's the one who took this
grimy stable and elevated it into a bohemian
wonderland. He really did. He added an outdoor
courtyard and strung it up with paper lanterns.
He even built a literal treehouse cafe out of
wooden planks in the courtyard, which patrons
had to access by climbing a ladder. Having waiters
run around, serving illicit liquor and coffee,
climbing up and down a ladder. While wearing
shirts painted with a bright magenta and orange
crazy cat. It begs a strategic question, though.
With the police actively cracking down on illicit
venues, wasn't it a massive risk to build a literal
treehouse and wear brightly painted uniforms?
That doesn't exactly scream inconspicuous speakeasy.
It was a massive risk, but that was precisely
the point. The flamboyance was the appeal. A
rejection of the idea that they had to cower
in the dark. Exactly. But the risk wasn't just
from law enforcement. What's fascinating here
is the psychological resilience of the patrons
when you consider the physical danger surrounding
the club. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Mere weeks after they opened. A serial attacker.
Dubbed by newspaper headlines as a maniac assailant.
Began violently strangling women in the dark
alleyways around Green Court. The media frenzy
at the time was intense. The police were throwing
out citywide dragnets, the public was terrified,
and the assailant was completely eluding capture.
Yet the sources explicitly note that patrons
continued to crowd into the Crazy Cat Club. The
desire for community and cultural connection
in that treehouse was apparently stronger than
the fear of a literal strangler in the alley
outside. It speaks volumes about the isolation
these people felt in their daily lives. They
were willing to risk violence just to be in a
room. room where they could be themselves. And
honestly, the inside of the club wasn't exactly
a tranquil safe haven either. No, not at all.
The environment was notoriously chaotic. The
crazy cat was famous for its riotous hot jazz
performances, which a 1920 crime reporter rather
colorfully described as rude, un -Bohemian cacophonations.
I love that phrase. And the anecdotes from the
floor of the club are bizarre. There are reports
of dead cats being left on the floor as pranks
for drunk patrons to trip over in the dark. Just.
Wild. And at one point, a distraught Frenchman
walked into the bar, sat down in the middle of
the chaos, and began intensely sketching the
face of his recently slain wife on a rough piece
of burlap. While people just watched. Yeah. And
then, of course, there were the brawls. The brawls
were frequent. And they inevitably drew the attention
of the authorities who legally branded the venue
a disorderly house. Naturally. The police raided
the establishment multiple times. During one
particularly severe raid, a gunshot actually
went off inside the club. triggering a massive
free -for -all. And the police swooped in and
arrested 25 people, 22 men and three women. Looking
at the demographics of the people arrested in
that raid provides a really interesting cross
-section of D .C. society. You had your self
-styled bohemian artists and poets, but you also
had straight -laced federal bureaucrats. Try
to put yourself in their shoes for a second.
You were a federal worker under the Woodrow Wilson
administration. You spend your day pushing paper
in a highly rigid conservative government office.
And then by night, you are dodging police raids
in a candlelit, gasoline -scented stable while
a jazz band plays and someone fires a revolver.
The psychological toll of maintaining that double
life must have been immense. It was immense.
And it highlights why they needed the Crazy Cat
Club to begin with. The club wasn't just a place
to blow off steam. For many, it was the only
place they could express their true identities.
Which brings us to the very name of the establishment.
Right, the crazy cat. The branding wasn't just
a quirky aesthetic choice. It was a highly specific
coded signal. Exactly. I want to dig into that.
Why base an entire underground speakeasy on a
syndicated newspaper comic strip? What was it
about George Harriman's Crazy Cat that resonated
so deeply with this particular crowd? Well, if
we connect this to the bigger picture of early
20th century media, comic strips held significant
cultural weight. They were massive. And Crazy
Cat was particularly avant -garde. The narrative
centered on a surreal love triangle between a
male dog, a male mouse, and Crazy Cat. But the
crucial element here is that Crazy Cat was famously
androgynous. Yes. George Harriman... The creator
explicitly stated that the cat wasn't a he or
a she, but rather a spirit or a pixie free to
exist outside the binary. So by naming the club
after a gender fluid icon and painting that character
on the waiter's shirts, Stifler, Allen and Throckmorton
were sending a neon bright beacon to the LGBTQ
community. They absolutely were. The founders
actively promoted a philosophy they called unperverted
impulse. Which was essentially their era's terminology
for. free love, and radical acceptance. It quickly
became a vital underground nexus for homosexual
and polysexual individuals. This was a monumental
shift. It really was. I mean, the gay community
in Washington, D .C. certainly had earlier gathering
spaces. Like the underground rag balls hosted
by former enslaved man William Dorsey Swan in
the late 19th century. Right. But the Crazy Cat
Club offered an integrated, highly visible, yet
protective bubble during the heightened suppression
of the Jazz Age. It was an intellectual and social
haven where marginalized people could meet and
organize without immediate fear of public exposure.
The sources contain a deeply humanizing anecdote
that perfectly illustrates how this network operated.
Yeah, from the diary of a man named Jeb Alexander.
Who was a gay D .C. resident and a federal bureaucrat.
In August of 1921, Jeb described sitting on a
bench at night in Lafayette Square, which is
right behind the White House. He's cruising for
companionship in the humid summer air. Two youths
walk by, and one of them sings a line from the
popular song, All By Myself. Jeb smiles at them,
they strike up a conversation, and they ask him
if he knows a place where they can find some
excitement. And Jeb doesn't hesitate. He gives
them detailed directions to navigate the alleyways
and find the crazy cat club. He points them toward
the sanctuary. But the heartbreaking nuance in
Jeb's diary is... his own relationship with the
club. Yeah, he notes that his partner loved attending,
but Jeb himself rarely went. Because the Crazy
Cat wasn't just a queer space. It was a highly
intellectual bohemian space filled with professors,
artists, and vocal atheists. Jeb actually wrote
that he felt he lacked the culture to fit in,
worrying he would make a fool of himself by his,
quote, backwardness. It paints a picture of a
space that was incredibly diverse, but also intellectually
intimidating. You have hot jazz brawls, queer
youths finding themselves, government workers
blowing off steam, and highbrow artistic debates
all clashing together under a leaky stable roof.
And moving through the center of all that chaotic
energy were figures like Catherine Mullen. Catherine
Mullen is a fascinating case study of the type
of artists the club incubated. She started frequenting
the Cat when she was just 18 years old. She was
an artist, a costume designer, and a stage performer
who played the ukulele and sang. The local promoters
billed her as the girl with the million dollar
legs. But her talents went far beyond modeling
or singing. She was actually a renowned expert
in women's saber fencing. Putting on public exhibitions
of the sword. She eventually becomes Cleon Throckmorton's
muse. And they marry in January 1922. It seems
like the club was a magnet for these incredibly
dynamic, multi -talented women who were... Completely
defying the traditional gender roles of the era.
Absolutely. She was the quintessential flapper.
And her trajectory, along with Throckmorton's,
connects the Crazy Cat Club to much larger artistic
movements. For many of the artists who gathered
in that D .C. stable were closely associated
with Provincetown players. For context, the Provincetown
players were an incredibly influential theater
collective based out of Massachusetts and New
York. They essentially birthed modern American
drama, launching the careers of playwrights like
Eugene O 'Neill. And The Cat was the premier
Southern outpost for that level of the cultural
avant -garde. It was. So what does this all mean?
We have an establishment that is wildly successful,
culturally significant, and serving as a vital
sanctuary for multiple overlapping marginalized
communities. But the timeline shows it didn't
last long at all. By June 1922, just over three
years after they opened, the club shuts its doors.
Was it the police raids that finally brought
it down or the economic strain? Surprisingly,
it was neither. The closure of the club is remarkably
mundane compared to its dramatic existence. Fizzled
out. Despite its massive popularity, the three
founders simply outgrew the space. Their artistic
ambitions outpaced what a D .C. alleyway could
offer. And they began spending more time pursuing
larger theatrical and artistic projects in other
cities. The official end of the Crazy Cat Club
is marked by a simple newspaper listing auctioning
off the club's fixtures and kitchen equipment.
I have to mention the specifics of that auction
listing because it perfectly encapsulates the
absurdity of the venue. It's a canoe. Among the
pots and pans, they were officially selling off
a square piano in a canoe. A canoe. sitting inside
a second -floor speakeasy accessed by a rickety
staircase. It's unbelievable. By 1925, the old
livestock stable was completely demolished and
replaced by an industrial building. But the story
doesn't end with the demolition. No, the people
who built the cat took that energy with them.
Let's track where these founders went, starting
with John Lidry Stifler. Stifler's post -cat
career is a testament to how these cultural seeds
scattered. He left DC and opened a dance studio
in Chicago. He eventually performed in a musical
stage adaptation of Crazy Cat, which was actually
attended by the comics creator George Harriman.
Talk about full circle! Stifler then moved to
New York City to dance on Broadway. In 1924,
he performed in the musical I'll Say She Is,
which was the historic debut show for the Marx
Brothers. He even spent time taking harp lessons
directly from Harpo Marx. That is an incredible
trajectory for a formerly broke veteran who was
serving cider in an old stable. And John Don
Allen followed his own artistic path. moving
up to Provincetown, Massachusetts. To formally
study painting and hone his craft alongside the
theater collective we mentioned earlier. But
Cleon Throckmorton's impact on American theater
is arguably the most profound of the three. It
really is. Throckmorton moves to New York and
becomes one of the most prolific scenic designers
in Broadway's history. He and Catherine Mullen
took many of his original sketches from the Crazy
Cat Club, which ended up hanging in Greenwich
Village restaurants for decades. Throckmorton's
Greenwich Village apartment morphed into this
massive after -hours salon. It hosted literary
and theatrical legends like Eugene O 'Neill,
Noel Coward, and E. Cummings. That same salon
even raised funds for the Republican faction
during the Spanish Civil War. He took the blueprint
of the Crazy Cat Club and scaled it up to influence
the entire New York art scene. And we cannot
gloss over Catherine Mullen's exit from that
marriage because it was as fiercely independent
as her fencing exhibitions. In 1926, she sued
Throckmorton for divorce after catching him in
an affair in their apartment. The woman involved
was likely the silent film actress Juliet Brennan,
who happened to be the niece of the director
of the very first Great Gatsby movie. Mullen
didn't drag out a bitter legal battle. She didn't
contest the divorce, and she explicitly asked
the courts for zero alimony. She simply washed
her hands of the situation, eventually reburied,
moved back to the Midwest and dedicated her later
years to working as a speech specialist for children.
She lived a full life, passing away at the age
of 91 in 1994. It is a profound legacy. You have
this brief three year window in a filthy D .C.
alleyway that acted as a pressure cooker. Incubating
artists and marginalized voices. who then scatter
across the country to shape Broadway, modern
art, and education. But there is an even more
poetic legacy left behind in the physical footprint
of the club. Yeah. Because you'd think the demolition
of the stable in 1925 erased it from the map
completely. The original stable was erased, yes.
But if you walk down Green Court today, the surviving
building immediately adjacent to the exact site
of the bygone speakeasy. is currently home to
a venue called the Green Lantern. And the Green
Lantern is a vibrant, operating gay bar. Precisely.
Nearly a century after Stifler and Allen opened
their iron bar door, that exact same narrow alleyway
remains a sanctuary and a dedicated space for
the LGBTQ community. The physical architecture
of the Crazy Cat Club is completely gone, but
the spirit of the space, the cultural energy
it established in that specific geographic coordinate,
somehow survived the wrecking ball. That is a
staggering realization. So when we look back
at the source material, what do we have? A city
reeling from the shock of early prohibition.
Three veterans build a coffee house in a back
alley stable reeking of gasoline. They survive
constant police raids and the terrifying presence
of a local strangler. To forge an unparalleled
haven of radical acceptance, they utilize a gender
-fluid comic strip cat as a beacon, calling in
artists, intellectuals, and queer individuals,
and giving them a space to simply exist without
fear. It was a flash in the pan. Just 30 -something
months. But the ripples of what happened there
shaped American culture for decades to come.
This raises an important question for you listening
right now. We have a tendency to view history
as something static. carved in marble and placed
behind glass in grand museums but the crazy cat
club was rickety dirty and entirely temporary
buildings are temporary but the cultural energy
they incubate is permanent So look at your own
city today. Look past the monuments, the official
plaques, and the main streets. Where are the
dark alleyways, the rickety stairs, or the ignored
basements that are currently incubating the cultural
revolutions of tomorrow? The people who will
shape the next century of art and society aren't
in the boardrooms. They are probably crowded
into a room right now, hiding from the world,
just trying to find their people. That is a phenomenal
perspective to leave on. Thank you so much for
joining us on this deep dive into the Crazy Cat
Club. We hope this exploration inspires you to
keep your eyes open, look down those narrow alleyways,
and keep seeking out the hidden histories all
around you.