Day With(out) Art: Positive Voices - Richard Sawdon-Smith & Steed Taylor

Salvatore Seeley curated Positive Voices for Day With(out) Art featuring Visual AIDS artist members Richard Sawdon-Smith and Steed Taylor at CAMP Rehoboth, Rehoboth Beach, DE

Rehoboth's LGBT History

For a beach town founded in the 1870s as a Methodist Meeting Camp, Rehoboth Beach developed a gay sensibility surprisingly early.

When the religious camp was abandoned, the area attracted visitors from within Delaware, assisted by a new boardwalk and a railroad that ran directly into downtown.

Shortly thereafter, Rehoboth Beach earned the designation it still has today: the Nation's Summer Capital, with Washington, DC lawmakers and their staff members coming here for weekend and summer getaways. Then, just as now, both the legislators and their support staff included quite a few gay people.

Lore has it that the DuPont property along the ocean was where Rehoboth's gay nightlife began. In the 1940s, Tallulah Bankhead and Hollywood cronies frolicked at the DuPont mansion and the local art league nurtured a cadre of women painters famous both for their canvases and their close camaraderie.