Rehoboth’s Poodle Beach Gets State Historical Marker
Delaware will honor the longtime LGBTQ gathering spot with an October 29 unveiling, following a delay over installation concerns.
For decades, Rehoboth Beach has been a popular summer destination for vacationers from the Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia metro areas, especially members of the LGBTQ community.
Now, one of the LGBTQ community’s favorite gathering spots — “Poodle Beach” — will be recognized with a State of Delaware Historical Marker, to be unveiled at 11 a.m. on Thursday, October 29, near the corner of Prospect Street and the South Boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach.
The marker’s unveiling, originally scheduled for June 27 during LGBTQ Pride Month, was delayed because it was an “atypical installation,” according to Maegan Peterman, director and state archivist at the Delaware Public Archives.
“Usually, a marker installation is done on the side of the road and on concrete, not on the beach,” Peterman told Metro Weekly in July after the unveiling ceremony was postponed.
“Once the sign shop was made aware of where, specifically, it was going to go,” Peterman said of the planned installation in the sand, “they had significant concerns about liability and the possibility of the marker accidentally falling over and hurting someone. So they wanted to figure out the logistics of where the marker can be placed, safely and securely.”
Peterman noted that Delaware’s Historical Marker Program, operated by the Delaware Public Archives, is community-led: Residents or community organizations apply for markers commemorating historical events or places, rather than the agency selecting them.
“Community members identified Poodle Beach as a place of historical significance, and submitted an application for a marker,” Peterman said of the application submitted in 2020. “Through the application process and the research we did to develop the marker text, they clearly demonstrated that Poodle Beach has been a really important gathering place for Delaware’s LGBTQ community, as well as others visiting Delaware. It served as a place where people could come and gather, openly and safely, for fun and relaxation during periods when that wasn’t necessarily possible elsewhere.”
Poodle Beach’s marker is classified as a “social history marker,” commemorating places or groups that helped shape Delaware’s cultural history.
The unveiling coincides with LGBTQ History Month.
“Beginning in the mid-20th century, LGBTQ visitors to Rehoboth Beach gathered near the Carpenter Mansion that was south of the boardwalk,” Peterman said, referring to the Shell House, a century-old mansion built by a member of the wealthy du Pont family in Dewey Beach, a few minutes’ walk south of Rehoboth Beach’s city limits.
As the Philadelphia Gay News reported in 2018, Louisa du Pont Carpenter, an aviator and lesbian divorcée whose family owned the Shell House, would spend summers at the oceanfront property, often accompanied by her longtime friend, Broadway and Hollywood legend Tallulah Bankhead, and their male friends.
Over time, hundreds of other gay men would travel to the beach near Carpenter’s home to sun and socialize — keeping their distance from the vacationing straight couples and families along the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk. With no gay bars in Rehoboth Beach at the time — and many LGBTQ people risking their jobs or reputations if outed — the area, known informally as “Carpenter Beach,” served as a private daytime gathering place before sunbathers dispersed to house parties at night.
“By the late 1970s, that gathering place shifted to what became known as Poodle Beach,” Peterman said, referring to the area around the southern end of Rehoboth Beach’s boardwalk. “Over the decades, Poodle Beach then became one of the best-known gathering places for LGBTQ people on the East Coast, and for many years it hosted the annual Labor Day Drag Volleyball game as well. I believe COVID is when that tradition stopped.”
The origins of the name Poodle Beach remain unclear.
According to one local story, two gay cousins, accompanied by their poodles, stopped to spread their blankets on the sand after tiring of dragging their beach chairs and coolers past the boardwalk toward Carpenter Beach. Others who didn’t want to make the trek reportedly followed, settling just south of the boardwalk. And a landmark was born.
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