Charles Bowers, former owner of Baltimore gay bar the Hippo, dies

Charles “Chuck” Bowers, former owner of the storied Baltimore gay club the Hippo and a prominent advocate for Maryland’s LGBTQIA+ community, died Tuesday. He was 81.

Bowers turned the Mount Vernon club — located at the corner of North Charles and West Eager streets — into a judgment-free refuge for queer and straight locals looking to find and express their authentic selves on a packed dance floor.

“He truly tried to make the Hippo a place for everybody — a safe space,” said an emotional Rik Newton-Treadway, who befriended his “mentor” Bowers at the club in 1979.

Bowers died Tuesday evening of natural causes in Mount Vernon, where he lived, said his niece Cathy Bowers.

The Hippo, whose motto was “Where everyone is welcome,” introduced many locals to Baltimore’s gay bar scene, friends and family said.

Chuck Bowers quickly realized the Hippo should be more than just a place to dance and sing karaoke, friends and family said. As the AIDS epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s devastated and ostracized the gay community, he partnered with groups like AIDS Action Baltimore, raising money and awareness to help fight the deadly crisis.

“The earliest AIDS fundraisers I can remember happened at the Hippo,” Newton-Treadway said. “He was a person who sounded the alarm in the very beginning there was something wrong going on.”

Bowers was born on March 31, 1945, and grew up in Federal Hill. The youngest of four siblings, he graduated from Southern High School. He skipped college and instead joined the staff of the Hippo — then known as the Hippopotamus — in 1972 as a bookkeeper, his niece said.

By 1978, Bowers was ready to take over, buying the business from Kenny Elbert.

Over the years, the Hippo — along with nearby haunts Grand Central, The Drinkery and Leon’s — helped establish the Mount Vernon area as Baltimore’s “gayborhood,” drawing regular crowds with drag shows, gay bingo and spirited holiday parties.

“It was the closest thing to a New York discotheque that, you know, I’d ever seen at that point of my life,” Newton-Treadway recalled.

Jonathan Jackson, a former Hippo barback and drag performer, said he’d give anything for one more weekend at the Hippo, the first gay bar he ever visited.

“It was my first home away from home,” said Jackson, who performs as Tatiyanna Voche’.

Decades later, the memories made at the Hippo remain vivid to Jackson — from friends meeting their boyfriends for the first time to the night before the indoor smoking ban went into effect.

“I remember everyone lighting up their cigarettes at 11:55,” he said.

As a boss, Bowers was easy to talk to, former employees said, but he was honest and upfront when mistakes were made.

“Chuck was going to tell you, and you always wanted to do better,” Jackson said.

After 37 years as its owner, Bowers retired, closing the Hippo in 2015 as the city’s gayborhood footprint continued to expand to areas like Old Goucher and Station North.

While the building is now a CVS, the city honored its native son’s influence on Baltimore by designating a portion of North Charles Street as “Chuck Bowers Way.”

Friends and family members lauded Bowers’ generosity, which came with no strings attached and zero self-aggrandizement — he preferred to help others quietly, they said. To celebrate his retirement, he took a large group of family members on two Caribbean cruises, all expenses paid, Cathy Bowers said.

“He was the epitome of a family man,” she said of her uncle, who never married and had no kids. “All of his nieces and nephews were his own children.”

Post-Hippo, Chuck Bowers stuck around Mount Vernon. His neighbor and friend Billy Henderson would regularly visit Bowers, helping him figure out his TV remote as he tried to find war movies and comedies.

They often went out for dinner together in the city. A meal wasn’t complete without tiramisu, Henderson said. Bowers chose premium steakhouses like The Prime Rib and The Capital Grille, despite Henderson’s protests over Bowers picking up the check.

“I don’t make that kind of money,” Henderson said. “I said, ‘You can’t keep doing this. I don’t like it.’ He goes, ‘I’m older than you. Stop arguing with me.’”

Cathy Bowers said she’ll miss her loving uncle, the one who stepped up and stayed by her side through her cancer battle. The one with the quick humor who always had a one-liner for any moment. The one who treated her “like a queen.”

“I will miss talking to him on the phone and laughing with him and visiting with him — just having heart-to-heart conversations about what was going on in my life,” she said.

More than a decade after the Hippo’s closure, Chuck Bowers’ death feels like a hard-to-swallow denouement for his friends, family and Baltimore’s LGBTQIA+ community. It comes soon after the deaths of fellow Baltimore gay bar owners Ron Zimmerman and Ron Singer, of The Rowan Tree and Leon’s, respectively.

Those who loved and admired Bowers said they’ll continue to remember him as a man who provided a safe haven for a marginalized community in a time of need.

“I wish more people were like him,” Newton-Treadway said. “A big, big piece of our history died.”