The Lehigh Valley’s last LGBTQ club closed over the summer, but efforts now are underway to bring it back.
A patron of the former Vogue Lounge, paramedic Chris Sholley, has started a movement to raise money to buy and reopen the club.
The club at 28 N. 10th St, also known as Stonewall, announced its closure in late August.
Sholley said it was a safe space that allowed for self-discovery, and meant that people didn’t have to drive outside the Lehigh Valley to find something similar.
“It just makes you feel like you can go there, just be yourself, let your hair down,” he said. “Finding yourself like that, you can’t do that in a straight area sometimes. … I’ve been with a group of friends that were gay in … a straight club actually, and you bumped into somebody wrong and they reacted differently, sometimes violently … just because they thought you were hitting on them or something. It just doesn’t give you that comfortability of just having everybody that’s gay around you just accept you for who you are.”
Sholley said he hopes to raise enough money to secure a Small Business Administration loan to buy the property, secure the liquor license and cover initial operating costs. He also wants to make repairs to the roof; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; plumbing; and walls; and would like to update the bathrooms and add an elevator to be fully accessible.
To help raise funds, a “reunion night” event will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Event Center at Shepherd Hills Golf Club at 1160 S. Krocks Road in Lower Macungie Township. It will feature drag queens such as Eileen O’Brennan and Estella Sweet as well as DJ David Petrilla. The fundraising effort also includes a GoFundMe page and apparel.
The Allentown property that housed the Vogue Lounge was built in 1916; the club opened in 1972. Richard and John Smith owned the property from 2005 until the club, then known as Stonewall, closed in 2021 and the building was sold to 28-30 N 10th Street Landholdings LLC, which Lehigh County property records still list as the owner.
The club reopened in 2022 as the Vogue Lounge, said Jack Monteiro, who became a customer in 1985 and then started working at the club in 1993, going from cleaning glassware and supplying the bartender to becoming bartender himself.
“Growing up, especially in the ’80s, most of us, if you were gay, you were in the closet,” Monteiro said. “So you basically were in the closet with your family. You were in the closet at work or school, your college. You were in the closet, so … that was the one place where you could be yourself. So yeah, it was like going home. Once you got there, you just felt like you belong there.”
The LGBTQ+ club Vogue Lounge, also known as Stonewall, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Allentown. A former patron has launched an effort to buy and reopen the club, which closed in late August after over 50 years of operation. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)
The LGBTQ+ club Vogue Lounge, also known as Stonewall, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Allentown. A former patron has launched an effort to buy and reopen the club, which closed in late August after over 50 years of operation. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)
The LGBTQ+ club Vogue Lounge, also known as Stonewall, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Allentown. A former patron has launched an effort to buy and reopen the club, which closed in late August after over 50 years of operation. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)
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The LGBTQ+ club Vogue Lounge, also known as Stonewall, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Allentown. A former patron has launched an effort to buy and reopen the club, which closed in late August after over 50 years of operation. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)
Monteiro noted that the club’s business dropped in the six months before it closed, and that he was told the club would close the day before with no reason provided.
As much as he enjoyed his work, Monteiro said the closure disappointed him more for being the last LGBTQ+ club in the Lehigh Valley. Candida’s Bar closed in 2017 in Allentown and Diamonz Nightclub closed in 2016 in Bethlehem.
He figured that some in the LGBTQ+ community, especially the younger generation, may feel more accepted and not see clubs like Vogue as important, but he argued they still feel different than other kinds of venues.
“To me, the experience is not the same,” Monteiro said. “I still feel like I have to be on guard. Like if I was on a date, I would never just hold my date’s hand or even kiss that person on the cheek at a straight place, you know what I mean? I would just feel too nervous.”
If reopening and taking over Vogue doesn’t work out, the fundraising money would go toward someone else wanting to open a similar business or to the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and the GoFundMe money would be returned, Sholley said.