This pattern is a familiar one from the history of modern sexual identity formation. As in several other Western European nations (and many non-Western countries besides), the clustering of sexual minorities in Antwerp has been limited largely to the economic, social, and cultural business of (nightlife) entertainment, with lesbian and gay meeting places historically concentrating in particular neighborhoods that, moreover, have shifted over time and dissipated again. Footnote 1 Although Antwerp has come to be represented as the “gay capital” of Flanders, we will show that it never developed a full-fledged gay neighborhood in the Anglo-American tradition of the concept-that is, a neighborhood characterized by the historical clustering of a wide range of urban functions for sexual minorities (social, cultural, residential, sexual, commercial, with service and hospitality industries as well as entertainment venues). This chapter proposes to investigate what historiographers would call the “long twentieth century” of lesbian and gay neighborhoods in the specific context of Antwerp, the largest city in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Finally, the chapter zooms out again to sketch how even such a limited gay nightlife cluster in Antwerp has evaporated again in the course of the twenty-first century, leaving a landscape that is hard to map and largely virtual. This provides the framework needed for a more detailed analysis in the second part, which zooms in on an area in the immediate vicinity of the Central Station and takes as its emblematic focus one sufficiently long-term and iconic gay bar, called Café Strange. Because the larger historical context for the investigated subject remains to be written, the chapter first undertakes a substantial and panoramic survey of the emergence of gay nightlife in Antwerp during the early half of the twentieth century. Its tripartite structure is shaped by the specific heuristic conditions set by it. The chapter’s fine-grained analysis intends to reveal geographic, social, and cultural specificities for which a more detailed understanding of both the Antwerp and the Belgian contexts is necessary. The clustering of sexual minorities in the city has been limited largely to the economic, social, and cultural business of (nightlife) entertainment, with lesbian and gay meeting places historically concentrating in particular neighborhoods that, moreover, have shifted over time and dissipated again.
Although Antwerp has come to be represented as the “gay capital” of Flanders, it never developed a full-fledged gay neighborhood in the Anglo-American tradition of the concept.
This chapter investigates the historical permutations of those areas that come closest to qualifying as lesbian and gay neighborhoods in Antwerp, the largest city in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium).