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A week before crowds flock to Loring Park for the annual Twin Cities Pride Festival, Grace Sillinger pulls up outside a nondescript gray building just a few blocks away: 19 Bar.

“I really don’t think there’s another place like it,” Sillinger said. “I haven’t found a place that really itches and itches the same way.”

Passers-by may not notice it at first glance. It’s a low building with no windows and just a sign out front with its name on it. It’s a gay bar from the 1950s, when discretion was a necessity.

The bar’s more than 70-year run has been on hiatus since it closed following a fire on March 22 when a garbage truck hit a nearby utility pole. Electrical cables hit the building’s gas mains and caused a spark in the basement, which then spread to the bar upstairs.

No one was injured, but bar manager Craig Wilson explained that the interior was charred.

“Everything had to be gutted,” Wilson said. “The bar itself, the top of the bar. They’re gutted to the bone.’

The bar is under reconstruction. Wilson said crews are cleaning the interior and repairing the roof, but due to uncertain permitting timelines and weather delays, he’s not sure how long it will take. Wilson said insurance covers the cost.

Meanwhile, the bar’s absence hits hard — especially during Pride weekend, when it’s usually teeming with people stopping by Pride festivities in Loring Park.

“We feel like we’re at a loss with the ’19’s gone,” Wilson said. “It’s like the whole community is at a loss.”

Before the fire, it was a classic dive inside: bar in the middle, pool tables to the left, darts and a few tables to the right. In 70 years, the mood hasn’t changed much. The bar is cash only and does not host drag, karaoke or dancing. The bar is simply a place to meet and chat with friends.

Seelinger opened 19 Bar after moving to Minneapolis in 2022. She was just starting to come out as trans and didn’t have much of a community here — until she found the bar where she met her best friend.

They became regulars and even got jobs there together.

“I wasn’t able to fully come out until I met her and started working with her,” Zellinger said. “She was the person who really helped me sit down and go, ‘Okay, okay, how are you going to get your work wardrobe together?'” And I really needed that in a friend.

Wilson has heard dozens of stories like this about friends and partners meeting at the bar. He describes 19 Bar as the neighborhood living room. Wilson says people who live nearby often wander in, attracted by its low prices, late hours and central location.

Ryan Patrick Murphy has been a part of this community since the mid-1990s. He opened 19 Bar as a student. After graduating, he moved into the red brick building just down the block.

“I’ve basically been 19 at least once a week for 20 years,” Murphy said.

Murphy is a professor of history at Earlham College in Indiana, but calls Minneapolis home when not at college. He has studied the role of bars in LGBTQ+ movements.

19 was where he met local activists, people older than him who supported gay rights; there, too, he heard accounts of attacks on strange people in the neighborhood.

“You had this kind of activist fervor, but then you also had an intense backlash,” Murphy said. “A lot of that scene revolved around the ’19s.'”

Those years were the tail end of the darkest part of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, too — something Murphy said loomed over 19 Bar. The regulars had died.

He has seen 19 Bar change over the years along with the LGBTQ+ community. When he started going, the clientele was mostly older white gay men. He says it is now more diverse in terms of age, gender and race.

“I just feel very excited about the queer community as a whole,” Murphy says. “People have worked their way in from a much wider part of the community that used to be more on the sidelines.”

The 19 Bar community reacted quickly when word of the fire spread.

Two online fundraisers raised more than $30,000 for the bar’s eight employees, who Wilson said are taking on extra jobs while out of work.

Several other bars around the Twin Cities — gay bars and otherwise — stepped in to help. Black Hart of St. Paul hosted an evening fundraiser; Eagle MPLS invited staff to guest bartend for an evening. The proceeds went to the employees.

“Everybody stretched,” Wilson said. “It was great to see the community come together and show the love and support for us.”

Wilson wants to bring the bar back to the same vibe it always had. The staff salvaged most of the old posters, neon signs, the jukebox and the stained glass light fixture that hung above the pool tables — all of which are now being deep cleaned, Wilson said.

Wilson says they’ll touch up the paint, but the low-key coziness will remain the same.

“I want to reopen the bar and get everybody back and I want to give everybody a big hug to protect them until we get there,” Wilson said.

He says people will hear about it once 19 Bar is ready to reopen.

“Let it be known: the minute we find out, I’ll be on the roof yelling at him.”