For decades, visitors who flock to New York City for Pride each June have found plenty of packed bars and happy parties, but no easy way to engage with the city’s rich LGBTQ history.
Even Sheridan Square, the center of the 1969 Stonewall riot that catalyzed the gay liberation movement, had little to see for anyone interested in the queer past.
“The visitor experience when they got there was a bar, a bench and a park,” said Ross Levi, director and vice president at the New York State tourism department. “That’s not terribly helpful for someone coming in during the day when the bar is closed. Not very helpful if you have kids you want to bring and learn about the history of the area.”
The building housing the new center is adjacent to the current Stonewall Inn bar (which opened in the early 1990s). But back in the late 1960s, an old bar of the same name occupied both spaces, which were connected by an internal door. Shortly after the riots, the original Stonewall Inn went out of business and the connecting port was built.
The storefront next to the current Stonewall Inn sat vacant in 2022 when Diana Rodriguez, the CEO of Pride Live, an LGBTQ advocacy group, took over the space. Nail salon chairs from the previous tenant still lined the walls.
Ms. Rodriguez raised more than $3 million, much of it from corporate donors, to build the visitor center, which her organization will manage. The center will give National Park Service rangers working at the monument a much-needed roof over their heads (they currently have to use the restrooms of local businesses) and give visitors of all ages a place to share history of the monument through a series of exhibits (free entry).
“I hope people will come, learn more about Stonewall,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “And then, at the end of their time here, they feel compelled to take action.”
The new visitor center in Manhattan is just one site that offers a glimpse into New York’s queer history. Here are four more, one in the other municipality.
Staten Island
In 1994, the activist group Lesbian Avengers marched on a charming white cottage on Staten Island’s eastern waterfront chanting, “Alice was a lesbian and she will always be a lesbian.” This house, originally built in 1690, was once owned by Alice Austen, a pioneering documentary photographer who captured a rapidly changing New York City in the early 20th century. It became a museum after her death in 1952.
What the Avengers were complaining about was the establishment’s reluctance to acknowledge that Austen lived there for 30 years with her partner, Gertrude Tate, and used the property as a studio for the many photographs she took of the couple’s non-traditional group of friends.
“I felt it was incredibly important for the house to have a lesbian leading the interpretation,” said Victoria Munro, who took over as director of the museum in 2017 and spearheaded the effort to bring Austen’s contribution to LGBTQ history to light.
Now, visitors ($5 suggested admission) can admire more than 7,000 of Austen’s works, including photographs that challenge the norms of gender and sexuality, as well as rotating exhibitions of photography, often by queer artists, and a garden that celebrates the gender fluidity of plants. The Lesbian Avengers are also back: Photographer Saskia Scheffer’s images from the 1994 protest are on display on the home lawn for at least the rest of the summer.
Queens
For decades, People’s Beach, a patch of Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula, has been where queer New Yorkers can shed layers and suspensions without unwanted stares, piled so close together that it’s sometimes hard to see sand between their. the colorful towels and umbrellas (free admission, $20 daily parking fee);
“It’s very warm and it’s a real community,” said Timothy Leonard, the Northeast program director for the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association, who learned to ride his bike on the boardwalk at Riis and, later, as a gay-bashing teenager identity, found a sense of belonging on the beach. “It’s just a place of celebration.”
In recent years, the beach, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, has undergone some major transformations.
The 1932 Jacob Riis Bathhouse, which has been closed for decades, is scheduled to reopen next summer, following the completion of an ambitious $50 million development project. The building’s Art Deco exterior and interior tiling are being restored, and new amenities will include hotel rooms, a bar, a courtyard pool and lounge, and a rooftop restaurant.
Severe erosion has closed some areas of the beach this summer, but that’s unlikely to dampen the queer-friendly spirit, even if the party has to shift to the sand.
Brooklyn
Marsha P. Johnson, an activist and transgender icon who died in 1992, is not known to have spent time on the Williamsburg waterfront. However, she made history there when in 2020 the seven-acre East River State Park was renamed for her — the first New York state park to openly honor an LGBTQ person.
“The renaming opened the door to reimagining the park,” said Leslie Wright, regional director of state parks for New York. The park was renovated not only to be more resilient to climate change, but also to honor Johnson’s legacy, with input from the local and LGBTQ community, Johnson’s family, and public art consultants.
The park’s entrance is now marked by a colorful decorative gate reminiscent of the flower crowns Johnson wore, along with the phrase “Pay it no mind” — her favorite response, including a judge who asked her what her middle initial stood for. Signs dedicated to transgender history and awareness line the trails.
In addition to stunning views of the Manhattan skyline, Marsha P. Johnson State Park is home to Brooklyn’s popular outdoor food festival Smorgasburg (Saturdays) as well as a number of LGBTQ-focused events for Pride Month.
The Bronx
Among the many prominent New Yorkers buried on the 400 acres of rolling hills at Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, are those who contributed to LGBTQ history, such as poet Countee Cullen, teacher of openly gay author James Baldwin. Herman Melville, whose works like ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Billy Budd’ are full of homoeroticism. and suffragettes Carrie Chapman Catt and Mary Garrett Hay, lifelong partners for decades, who are buried side by side.
“It’s moving to know that there were people who lived these lives very bravely, heroically in the past,” said Ken Lustbader, co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. “Without the support systems that exist today, but paving the way for the visibility and allies we have today through their actions.”
Every year for Pride, his organization offers a trolley tour of the cemetery, highlighting the stories behind some of the burial sites and making them more visible by placing rainbow flags next to them.
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