Baltimore mourns Leon’s Backroom Bar owner Ron Singer’s death
Leon’s Backroom Bar will close at midnight Thursday as Baltimore mourns Ron Singer, who owned the city’s oldest gay bar for 20 years. His free Thanksgiving meal became a refuge for patrons with nowhere else to go.
Ron Singer’s death this week closed a 20-year chapter at Leon’s Backroom Bar, where Baltimore’s oldest gay bar became as much a community shelter as a nightlife stop. Leon’s said it would shut its doors at midnight Thursday so staff could attend Singer’s funeral Friday morning, a sign of how quickly the loss hit Mount Vernon’s LGBTQIA+ crowd.
Singer died Tuesday, July 7, at age 66. His services were scheduled for Friday, July 10, at 9:30 a.m. at Sol Levinson’s Chapel in Pikesville, with interment at Arlington Chizuk Amuno Cemetery in Baltimore. Singer, an Ocean City resident and 1978 graduate of Pikesville High School, is survived by four children, several grandchildren and siblings. Memorial contributions were requested for Chase Brexton Health Care.
At 227 W. Chase Street in the Tyson Street area, Leon’s has carried Baltimore history for generations. Baltimore Heritage identifies it as the city’s oldest continuously operating gay bar, tracing the name to Leon Lampe, who owned the bar after Prohibition ended in December 1933. The space survived as a hangout for bohemians, artists and beatniks after World War II, and by 1957 it was operating as a gay bar.
Singer’s years at Leon’s were marked by a visible kind of hospitality that went beyond the regular business of drinks and late nights. For 14 years as of 2023, he hosted a free Thanksgiving meal for anyone who needed a place to go, serving turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes and more. He said he started the tradition because many people in the community had nowhere to spend the holiday.
The bar said it planned to honor Singer’s legacy by keeping Leon’s the place patrons know and love. That future now rests with an institution that has outlived Prohibition, postwar cultural shifts and decades of change in Baltimore’s gay nightlife. Leon’s has been open since the 1930s, but Singer’s stewardship over the last 20 years gave the bar a new measure of continuity, one built on memory, visibility and a standing invitation to belong.
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