After running "The Gray Cottage" in Chicago in the 1920s, Kotchever and Norlander moved to Greenwich Village, which had become an important area for the gay and lesbian community in New York City. In 1925, the couple opened "Eve's Hangout" on MacDougal Street, a mecca of bohemian New Yorkers. At the entrance, Kotchever put a sign up that said "Men are admitted but not welcome". The place was a haven for lesbians, but also for migrants and the working class. Very quickly, intellectuals like Emma Goldman, a friend of Eva Kotchever, frequented it. It became a popular club, especially for artists like Henry Miller, June Miller, Anaïs Nin and Berenice Abbott. Kotchever used to organize concerts and readings, but also meetings where it was accepted to talk about love between women, political matters and liberal ideas. For that, Eva Kotchever became a figure of "the Village".
Some conservative newspapers, such as the Greenwich Village Quill, which defined it under the Bobby Adward plume as a place "where it is not very healthy for teenagers or comfortable for men," began to denounce Eve's Hangout. A neighbour upstairs called the police. On June 11, 1926, the Vice Squad of NYPD organized a raid on the bar. One of the detectives, the young Margaret Leonard, discovered the book Lesbian Love, that Kotchever wrote under the pseudonym Evelyn Adams. Kotchever was therefore arrested and found guilty of "obscenity" and "disorderly conduct". The bar did not survive the arrest of its owner and had to close quickly. For that reason, Kotchever was imprisonned at Jefferson Market before being deported from the United States to Europe, but Greenwich Village did not forget her. In Europe, Kotchever fought, as Europeans intellectuals, for Second Spanish Republic. She also ran another place, called Le Boudoir de l'Amour in Montmartre and joined the "Dômiers", at Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse. She turned back there to meet her former customers of her Eve's Hangout, such as Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.
Legacy
Eve's Hangout has become an LGBT historic place, as well as for New York's Jewish history. It is considered as one of the first lesbian bars in the United States and is recognized as a New York City heritage, as well as by the National Park Service. It is included in tours for Europeans on official US websites. and has become a must-see. Playwright Barbara Kahn wrote a play and musical, "The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams" and "Unreachable Eden", about Eve's Hangout. Today, the location is an Italian restaurant and jazz club named La Lanterna di Vittorio.
