While he just missed the heyday of the original Mrs. It’s important to honor them.” A rendering of the bar at the Wylie Hotel
“They risked their jobs, their housing, and their families in order to be who they are. King, who used to drive past the space as a high schooler back when it was MJQ, is especially cognizant of what it means to preserve one of the city’s remaining LGBTQ+ spaces in 2021, when Atlanta marks the 50th anniversary the city’s first Pride march-a gay rights protest originally attended by participants sporting brown paper bags over their heads since many feared being fired for their sexual orientation. “Given its history, it was important for us to preserve this space, along with the name.” “Being from this city, we recognize that Atlanta is always at risk of losing so much of its identity,” says Abby King, Kim King Associates President. 18 key framed on the wall in an upstairs suite), dusting off the Mrs. P’s space inside the Wylie Hotelįor the family-run real estate company started by legendary Georgia Tech quarterback Kim King in 1972 (King’s Tech #18 is slyly referenced in an antique Ponce de Leon Hotel Room No. The structure with its trademark graffitied “Cry, Cry, Cry” spray-painted in red on two sides of the building stood vacant until it was bought by Kim King Associates in 2019 and transformed into a 111-room boutique hotel by Mainsail Lodging & Development.Īfter a pandemic-related delay, the Wylie Hotel, across the way from Ponce City Market, finally opened for guests in May with Mrs. P’s became one of those transitional spaces that became more decidedly serving of the LGBTQ community.”Īfter a brief stint as the first home for after-hours night spot MJQ from 1994 to 1997, the fortunes of the former gay bar in the basement of the dilapidated Ponce de Leon Hotel floundered, until it eventually became a boarded-up eyesore on Ponce. “For some time before then, drag shows were often held at 5 o’clock happy hour at straight venues. P’s since it served as a pretty important establishment, in terms of an early decidedly LGBTQ space,” Paine continued. “It’s really exciting to see an homage paid to Mrs. “Without being forced to in any way whatsoever, the new owners and developers of the Wylie Hotel opted to embrace that history.” “It’s really humbling to see LGBTQ history being recognized in a new development like this,” says Paine. While he helped to initiate the saving of the Atlanta Eagle’s address, Charlie Paine, who grew up in Atlanta’s Druid Hills neighborhood and serves as the LGBTQ Historic Preservation Advisory Committee chair at Historic Atlanta, is also excited to see the resurrection of Mrs. P’s and the Eagle are significant, especially as two iconic gay-friendly businesses serve up last call-Einstein’s on Juniper Street shuttered after 30 years on June 1 with its sister restaurant, Joe’s on Juniper, set to follow later this year. In the ever-shifting commercial real estate realities of Atlanta’s rainbow crosswalk-adorned, LGBTQ-friendly Midtown, the preservation and restoration of Mrs. In the years following, aftera federal lawsuit alleging civil rights violations and a $1 million-plus settlement, the disbanding of the Atlanta Police Department’s Red Dog unit, and multiple officer firings, the APD has sought to repair relationships with the city’s LGBTQ+ community, including the hiring of a LGBTQ+ community liaison. Perhaps, more notoriously, during its run as the Atlanta Eagle-a gay leather bar from 1987 to 2020-the nightspot made headlines for a botched 2009 police raid, where members of the vice squad, looking for illegal drug use and acts of public sex, yelled anti-gay slurs and handcuffed patrons and employees face down on the bar floor. In the space’s brief mid-1980s incarnation as the Celebrity Club, it hosted shows featuring a young RuPaul.
Meanwhile, down the street at 306 Ponce de Leon Avenue, thanks to an initiative from preservation nonprofit Historic Atlanta, the city’s Zoning Review Board approved an ordinance this spring making the Atlanta Eagle the city’s first designated historic landmark dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.
P’s was one of the city’s first safe spaces for LGBTQ+ residents, from the time it was opened as a restaurant by Vera Phillips in 1956 until a final police raid in the early 1980s. But for an older generation of queer Atlantans, Mrs. P’s is the name of stylish new restaurant occupying the bottom floor of the just-opened Wylie Hotel at 551 Ponce de Leon Avenue. In a city notorious for knocking down large swathes of its history, on a single stretch of Midtown’s Ponce de Leon Avenue, two historic LGBTQ+ spaces are being preserved.įor folks who moved to Atlanta after the Reagan administration, Mrs. P’s in 1980Ĭourtesy of Georgia State University collection