Warehouse 29

Warehouse 29 was an LGBT nightclub at 1011 Arnold Street in Greensboro. It opened in 1992 and closed on 31 May 2014, after a twenty-two-year run, with a grand finale that night. [QnotesCarolinas] Its owner was Kent Woofter, who did not speak to the press about the closing; others reported at the time that a non-LGBT business would take the space. [QnotesCarolinas] The club announced the closing to its customers on Facebook, thanking the Triad LGBTQ community. [QnotesCarolinas] It closed in a run of them: Hartigan's Irish Pub in Charlotte, open since 1996, and the Rainbow In at Lake Wylie had both shut shortly before, and Winston-Salem had lost its only LGBT nightclub at the end of 2012. Greensboro was left with The Q on West Market Street and Chemistry Nightclub on Spring Garden. [QnotesCarolinas] The Arnold Street room had two earlier lives under other names: it began as Wham, became Encore, and later Warehouse 29. [YES! Weekly] UNCG's "Out for the Evening" exhibit on Greensboro gay nightlife had least material from the 1990s, which its digitization coordinator David Gwynn called the club's own peak — an archive gap he said he had been called on by a bar owner. [YES! Weekly] The 1011 Arnold Street building housed the beach-music club The Castaways before either Wham! or Encore occupied it. [Digital Greensboro (UNCG)] Wham! was a livelier disco room than The Palms or Davey's, with a light-up dance floor drawing a younger, showier and almost entirely gay male crowd; the women who came were largely their straight friends. [Digital Greensboro (UNCG)] Encore succeeded Wham! in the same building and ran from 1982 to 1991. [Digital Greensboro (UNCG)] Encore stayed open about as late as any bar in the state: required to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m., it kept running as an underage-admitted room until 4. [Digital Greensboro (UNCG)] As of the UNCG exhibit, 1011 Arnold Street is occupied by Boston's House of Jazz. [Digital Greensboro (UNCG)]

“We have had a terrific run over the last 22 years, earning our little place in Greensboro's history — and it could not have been accomplished without the support of the Triad LGBTQ community.” [QnotesCarolinas]

“That's the one area where we're probably the most lacking... That was when Warehouse 29 was a big deal.” [YES! Weekly]