If you’re at all interested in queer women’s urban spaces or lesbian history, then Eve Adams is a name you should know. Born in 1891, Adams (also known as Eva Kotchever) was a trailblazer who carved out revolutionary spaces for queer women in 1920s Greenwich Village.
During a time when it was both culturally and legally dangerous to be openly gay, she opened Eve’s Tea Room, one of New York City’s earliest known lesbian gathering spots. Eve’s Tea Room, where “Men [were] admitted but not welcome,” became a sanctuary where sapphic women could freely express their love and identities.
Eve Adams also boldly wrote Lesbian Love, one of the first ethnographies of lesbians in the US, at a time when merely representing non-heteronormative identities was a radical and criminalized act.
Despite her courage in setting critical precedents in the fight for queer safe spaces and standing up to a world that criminalized her very existence, Eve Adams has largely been erased from public memory.
Today, we honor her as a pioneer in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights and a central figure in sapphic history.
This is her story.
Who Was Eve Adams & What Was Eve’s Tea Room?
Eve Adams [Polish: Chawa Zloczewer] was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. She came to the United States in 1912, seeking a better life. For a time, she traveled around selling radical publications. Following a brief stint as the co-proprietor of “The Grey Cottage,” a Chicago tearoom that catered to leftists and intellectuals, Adams opened her own establishment at 129 MacDougal Street in 1924 in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village (today one of NYC’s gay neighborhoods).
By 1925, her spot had become “Eve’s Tea Room” or “Eve’s Hangout.” The nature of its clientele seems to have been an open secret to the locals of Greenwich Village. Robert Edwards, editor of The Quill (and Adams’ personal enemy), noted that the tearoom was a place “Where ladies prefer each other. Not very healthy for she-adolescents nor comfortable for he-men.” Despite this reputation, biographer Jonathan Ned Katz has suggested that Eve’s Hangout attracted customers of all genders and sexual orientations— including macho straight men enticed by the prospect of poetry readings.
But Adams, like the target demographic of her tearoom, was a “known Lesbian.” Her gender presentation was what we’d now describe as masc, meaning she didn’t pass for straight. As a result, moralists pointed to her visible differences from conventionally feminine women to imply that she was a bad influence. Variety magazine called her a “self-confessed ‘man-hater,” a woman who “effected masculine attire” and whose presence supposedly signaled an epidemic of “mannish ladies” in the Village. The Daily News in 1927 described her—using language that reads like something out of a Chappell Roan song— as “Red-headed Eve Adams, one of Greenwich Village’s most famous and ultra-modern maids.” This portrayal made Adams out to be fiery, sexy, and dangerous, ready to pounce on young women who wandered into her tearoom. Behind these broad, negative stereotypes, the real Eve Adams is hidden; there’s no room for a lesbian who isn’t either a wannabe man or an over-sexualized woman.
The First Book About Lesbian Community in the USA
Adams herself fought back against these reductive portrayals through her writing. In 1925, she published a book of stories called Lesbian Love. Adams said the book was “based on true facts and living characters today,” and it documented the lives and encounters of contemporary women. In its pages were lesbians of all types—masc, femme, and everything in between—going about their daily lives and relationships. Katz calls this “groundbreaking” book “the earliest portrait of the lesbian community released in the United States by a lesbian author.”
In her book, Adams dared to represent what had been considered unrepresentable. And it was a bold move for 1925 when simply acknowledging non-heterosexual relationships could be construed as corrupting public morals. Partly for this reason, the book’s intended audience was small. Adams only had 150 copies printed, and she explained that it was meant for “private circulation only, particularly among the artists and poets of Greenwich Village.” The book was never supposed to reach beyond the bounds of a friendly audience. But soon it would—through a mistake that would change Adams’ life forever.
Trouble in the (West) Village
In the early 1900s, Greenwich Village was known as an enclave for bohemians and free-thinking artistic circles. After World War I, queer New Yorkers flocked to the neighborhood as a place that promised relative safety and open-mindedness. Queer speakeasies flourished. Yet they were always vulnerable. In 1925, a police crackdown gutted many of them. Eve’s Tea Room survived, but not for long.
In the summer of 1926, the police department received a complaint about Eve’s Tea Room. They sent policewoman Margaret Leonard from the Women’s Bureau to investigate. She posed as a customer for three consecutive evenings in June. Disguised as a lovely young college student, Leonard mingled with the other customers and made small talk. Her real goal, though, was to make the acquaintance of the tearoom’s owner. She was successful.
On her second day at the tearoom, Leonard spoke with Adams. On the third day, she and Adams went out on a date. And when they returned to the tearoom, Leonard, now in the company of additional police officers, placed Adams under arrest for obscenity and disorderly conduct, after which she was sentenced to a women’s penitentiary. The obscenity charge for the publication and possession of Lesbian Love. Adams insisted that the book was “not in any way immoral, indecent, or vulgar,” but officials claimed that it exhibited “moral turpitude.” The disorderly conduct charge was essentially for flirting with a policewoman. This is where the story gets murkier.
The Trial of Eve Adams
The story of Eve Adams’ arrest hinges on what happened on that third night, recorded in testimony during her deportation hearing in late 1926. Both Adams and Leonard took the stand, but their stories of the evening differed dramatically. They agreed on the basic timeline: they attended a theater show, had dinner, stopped by Adams’ room, and finally returned to Eve’s Tea Room, where police arrested Adams. From there, the similarities end. Adams described an innocent evening with a new acquaintance, while Leonard painted a picture of sexual aggression.
Leonard accused Adams of groping and kissing her during their taxi ride from the theater to the restaurant. She also testified that later, in Adams’ room, Adams presented her with a copy of Lesbian Love, bolted the door, and tried to assault her: “Facing me, she slid her hands under my arms and thrust me on my back on the bed. Of course, I warded her off and asked her if she was crazy.” Leonard made sure to emphasize her own innocence, even claiming that a man at the tearoom had to explain what a lesbian was—despite confidently asserting that she could tell Adams’ establishment was full of “degenerates” as soon as she walked in. She added that Adams had paid for everything and offered to take her “on a vacation to Chicago” and shower her with gifts.
Adams did not deny offering Leonard a copy of her book. However, in her account, they had split the bill at dinner, and Leonard was actually the one who paid for the theater. More importantly, Adams insisted that she had never bolted her door and that Leonard had never even sat on her bed—she had simply stopped by her room to write some letters. The records of the hearing don’t indicate any efforts to verify the accuracy of these respective testimonies. In the end, Adams was treated as the predator Leonard had described.
The humiliation didn’t end there. Adams was repeatedly accused of prostitution, with officials suggesting that she both ran a house of prostitution and engaged in the trade herself. Adams denied ever exchanging sex for money, and her uncle testified on her behalf, bluntly stating, “I surely do not believe that she is guilty of prostitution.” Although she was never formally charged with prostitution, the damage was already done. This line of questioning blurred the line between her lesbian identity and the exploitation and corruption of young women. Likewise, her “attempted indecent act” on Leonard had already secured a conviction for disorderly conduct. By the end of the hearing, Adams was labeled a “degenerate” and morally problematic.
Deportation, Life in France, and Death
Adams’ identity placed her on the wrong side of the law, marking her as a criminal. Even worse, she was now at risk of deportation back to Poland. Her “morals” (a thinly veiled reference to her sexuality) were cited as a reason she had to leave the United States. In 1926, Variety reported that Adams was to be “deported back to Poland as an undesirable when liberated [from prison].” A year later, The New York Daily News curtly noted, “The morals of this 35-year-old woman… were not what this country demands from a would-be citizen[.]” According to these accounts, her sexuality rendered her pathological. Immoral. Unfit to be an American.
In December 1927, just four years after signing her Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen, Adams was put on a ship back to Poland. She spent the next decade and a half in Europe, returning to her old trade of selling illicit books and magazines. She settled in France, living first in Paris and then in Nice with her partner, Hella Olstein Soldner.
But Europe was not safe for Adams either. Her lesbian identity had made her a target in the United States; now, her Jewish identity placed her in even greater danger as the Nazis extended their reach across Europe in the early 1940s. The Nazis arrested Adams in Nice and deported her to Auschwitz along with Soldner, who was also Jewish. Adams was killed in the concentration camp on December 19, 1943.
Eve Adams’ Legacy
It’s a dark irony that Adams made her career in the United States by creating safe spaces for queer people and other marginalized groups. For her—a lesbian, an immigrant, and a Jewish woman—no place was truly safe.
Adams’ journey was tragically cut short, yet her contributions to queer history remain powerful. The challenges she faced are far from a distant past. Her story holds up a mirror to today’s world, reminding us of the courage it takes to create spaces for acceptance amid resistance. Debates over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law continue to make queer identity a target for moral and cultural scrutiny. Meanwhile, public rhetoric around immigration continues to question who is “desirable” and who, like Adams, is deemed unfit.
In the face of prejudice, Adams built a community and offered sanctuary to those who, like her, wanted a place to be themselves. A century after she opened her Greenwich Village tearoom, her influential contributions and the seeds she helped plant have compounded. For instance, today, New York is the city with the most lesbian bars in the world.
Eve Adams’ story serves as a testament to resilience and a reminder that, even in hostile times, people like her pave the way for a more inclusive world.
Sources and Further Reading
- “Birth of Eva Kotchever, Founder of Lesbian Literary Salon Eve’s Hangout,” Jewish Women’s Archive, https://jwa.org/thisweek/jun/27/1927/eva-kotchever-founder-lesbian-literary-salon-eves-hangout-arrested
- George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books, 1994. [reissued 2008] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Gay_New_York/TCLLBQAAQBAJ
- “Eve Adams Uses One-Way Ticket,” Daily News, December 8, 1927, p. 16.
- “Eve’s Hangout,” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/eve-addams-tearoom/
- “The Founder of America’s Earliest Lesbian Bar was Deported for Obscenity,” Atlas Obscura, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-was-first-gay-bar
- Jonathan Ned Katz, Eve Adams Archive, OutHistory, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/eaa/ead
- Jonathan Ned Katz, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams. Chicago Review Press, 2021. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Daring_Life_and_Dangerous_Times_of_E/OAb3DwAAQBAJ
- “Modern Eve Adams Driven from Eden,” Daily News, December 7, 1927, p. 4.
- Record of Eve Adams Deportation Hearing, 1926, https://outhistory.org/files/original/b71a0b591e15d30b26b7b8d896185248.pdf
- “Trump on immigrants: ‘We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,’” Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/trump-immigrants-crime-00182702
- Variety, June 23, 1926, https://archive.org/details/sim_variety_1926-06-23_83_10/page/35/mode/1up
- Variety, July 7, 1926, https://archive.org/details/sim_variety_1926-07-07_83_12/page/33/mode/1up?q=%22eve%27s+tea+room%22
- Variety, July 28, 1926, https://archive.org/details/sim_variety_1926-07-28_84_2/page/37/mode/1up?q=%22eve%27s+tea+room%22
- “What Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ settlement changes and what restrictions remain,” PBS, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-floridas-dont-say-gay-settlement-changes-and-what-restrictions-remain
About the Author:
Katherine Hobbs is a writer and public historian based in Los Angeles, CA. Her writing has appeared in Smithsonian, Public Books, and other academic and popular venues. She has a Ph.D. in English (Victorian Literature) from UC-Berkeley.
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