In 1951, Dudley Howe bought "The House of Sparkling Glasses" and opened the 602 Club.

The 602 Club was well-known for its liberal and tolerant atmosphere, and gay men supported it for decades before Stonewall. Howe employed Black, female and openly gay bartenders long before other Madison businesses. The bar's unspoken rule was that the front bar was for gay men, and the back bar was for straight men. There was no conflict between the groups at all, despite the space often being uncomfortably crowded. While there was no jukebox, no dance floor, and the TVs were usually turned off, the bar was so popular that it often filled past capacity. It was known as a bar for people to talk-- and listen to other people talk.

The 602 was a haven for men seeking men to find each other, even during the terrifying Gay Purge of 1962-1963. It was one of seven Madison bars listed in the earliest national gay guides from the first national guides in 1963 until the mid-1970's. Anyone passing by the bar just saw a lot of men-- never knowing they were looking at a "criminal" operation, according to the laws of the time.

Author Arthur Drury is believed to have visited the 602 Club while attending UW-Madison, as his 1959 book Advise and Consent features a 602 Club (in Greenwich Village.)

Over the years, Howe became a local legend. He was well known for challenging customers to games of card, cribbage and euchre. He kept a huge and ever-growing stack of IOUs under the bar that he never attempted to collect. He was known for telling the "worst jokes in the world." John Tuschen, who served as the 602's resident poet, described Howe as an "angel with baggy pants and warped wings that would open wide- real wide- with room enough for everybody."

The bar is remembered for its unique buzzer system, which was used to summon bartenders to tables and booths. Eventually, Howe removed the jukebox entirely after a customer played "North to Alaska" on repeat for an entire evening.

After newer, hipper gay bays opened in Madison, the 602 Club became less and less of a gay space. So much so that it never appeared in LGBT print media 'bar guides' from the first issue of "In Step" magazine from 1984 on, and was unknown to most gay men of the 1980's. Howe passed away in 1992 at age 82, and his daughter Jerilyn ran the business until selling the club in 1994. At its end, the bar hadn't changed much since its opening day, with the exception that most of the furniture was now held together with duct tape. "There are going to be a lot of lost souls wandering the streets of Madison," said the Wisconsin State Journal. "Closing up this place will be like kicking over an ant hill."

Photographer John Riggs, who served as a 602 Club bartender for years, presented Howe with a portfolio of 160 interior photos for the 15th anniversary celebration. In 2018, those photos- and hundreds of others-- served as a University of Wisconsin-Madison exhibit, "The 602 Club in the Sixties," curated by the University Archives and The Tamarack Gallery in Madison. In total, over 500 negatives of various condition were located, evaluated, and archived. The collection provides one of the rarest views of a midcentury LGBTQ gathering space ever found in Wisconsin.

Listings in early "Gay Guides": (For more information on the Guides, click here.)

1963, Lavendar Baedeker   History of the Baedeker Guides   Index	1964, "Directory 43"   Title Page   Introduction	1964 Guild Guide   Title pg   Editors note   Note concl
1964 Lavender Baedeker Guide   History of Baedeker Guides	1965 International Guild Guide   Title pg   Editor's note   Codes
1966 International Guild Guide     Title pg   Editors note	1966 Lavender Baedeker Guide     Back page	1966 Male World Guide     Index, excerpt
1967 International Guild Guide     Title pg		1969 International Guild Guide     Title pg   Editors note   Codes
1972 Bob Damron's Address Book Notes: Girls, Dancing, "Closed Mondays"	1973 Guild Guide     Title pg   Editors note   Codes