The Old Mill Inn was a historic "sailor bar" mere blocks from Wisconsin Avenue from 1921 to 1958. The pre-Civil War Cream CIty brick building, used by Fairbanks Morse as a grain elevator, was otherwise vacant. Even in the 1920s, the Old Mill Inn was a known meeting place for men seeking men. In the 1940s, the bar was acquired by a Greek nightlife syndicate and managed by Stella Zeppos and her husband, Peter La Bracke. It became Mary's, a Harry Kaminsky-funded "gay for pay" venture, in 1958, and the scene of the Black Nite Uprising in August 1961.