Queer Places:
Gingerbread Square Gallery, 1207 Duval Street. Key West, FL, 33040
1500 Atlantic Blvd, Key West, FL 33040
Lee Dodez (May 4, 1934 - July 20, 2016) was a Key West business man who collected a wide range of art. He was a talented artist who created pottery, paintings and writings. In 1972 Lee Dodez and his best friend from college at Ohio State, Richard Heyman, opened the Gingerbread Square Gallery on Duval Street. Richard was later elected Mayor of Key West in 1983, becoming the first openly gay mayor elected in a U.S. city. In 1998 Dodez published Memories of Key West, the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Into the Nineties.
Lee Dodez earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1962. His work-study assignment was to watch over (the proper word was probably advise) the lively batch of undergraduate theater majors. “I’m the reason Richard came to Key West,” reported Dodez, who was beginning to buy and renovate small properties (and then larger ones) in town. Heyman and Dodez, whose artistic expressions ran to pottery, founded the Gingerbread Square Gallery together in 1972. “The gallery showed paintings by the playwright Tennessee Williams, who lived in Key West, as well as other artists, including Heyman’s partner of many years, John Kiraly,” The New York Times reported.
My published books:
