602 Club

602 Club was a Madison, Wisconsin tavern at 602 University Avenue, opened in 1951 by Dudley Howe in a former bar called "The House of Sparkling Glasses." Known for its tolerant atmosphere, it was supported by gay men for decades before the Stonewall era, and was one of seven Madison bars listed in early national gay travel guides from 1963 into the mid-1970s. By informal custom the front bar was used by gay men and the back bar by straight patrons.

Howe, who hired Black, female, and openly gay bartenders unusually early, became a local figure remembered for card games, unpaid IOUs, and a distinctive table buzzer system. As newer gay bars opened, the 602 became less of a gay space and largely disappeared from LGBT bar guides in the 1980s. Howe died in 1992 and his daughter ran the club until it was sold in 1994.

A 2018 University of Wisconsin–Madison exhibit, "The 602 Club in the Sixties," drew on hundreds of archived bartender photographs documenting the mid-century space.