Longstanding gay leather bar DC Eagle is closing permanently, the second LGBTQ institution to announce it is shuttering this week.

The DC Eagle’s owners made the announcement at a virtual meeting with employees on Monday night, according to Miguel Ayala, the bar’s promotions and events manager.

This past November marked the bar’s 48th anniversary, celebrating nearly half a century of serving D.C.’s LGBT community, from fetish nights to pet-friendly dance events. “This is a historic loss because we’re the oldest and largest gay bars in D.C.,” Ayala says, “and one of the oldest leather bars in the country.”

Metro Weekly first reported on the closure. Meanwhile, Ziegfield’s/Secrets—the combined drag venue and male strip club—announced earlier this week that it also won’t reopen after the pandemic.

The DC Eagle has been temporarily closed since March 15, when restrictions on dining and entertainment fell across the D.C. region. Ayala says it isn’t clear if the closure is related to the pandemic, but the news came as a surprise to himself and fellow staff members.

“I don’t think anyone was aware that [this was] coming,” he says. “We now have to be out of the space by the end of September.”

The building on Benning Road in Northeast was sold last June, but the bar was able to stick around. Then the building was sold again in April for $3 million to Benning Rock LLC, according to Ayala and property records.

Since the temporary closure began, DC Eagle has applied for payroll protection, but Ayala says that the staff’s tips cannot be matched through government assistance. The bar’s website has the listings for its employees’ Venmo accounts, a GoFundMe for staff and talent that typically performs, and branded merchandise to raise funds for employees. Ayala says these efforts will continue in the hopes of supporting staff members who now have no place to return after the pandemic passes.

“It’s one thing to be in this pandemic, but it’s another not knowing where you next paycheck is going to come from,” Ayala says. “A lot of people would talk very positively, like ‘after this we should do this and that’ and kind of think about events and things that would happen after this crisis is over. But now they need to strategize and look for another job. And I don’t think any of us know what the other side of this pandemic is really going to look like.”

The departure of DC Eagle and Ziegfield’s comes after several other D.C. area gay bars shuttered their doors in recent years. Landmark lesbian bar Phase 1 closed in 2016, Town Danceboutique closed in 2018 with plans to relocate in NoMa, and Cobalt closed in March of 2019.