The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art is the first and only LGBTQ art museum in the world dedicated LGBTQ art and history. The mission of the museum is to display and preserve LGBTQ art and the artists behind it. The Leslie-Lohman Museum embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ art community by educating, informing, inspiring, entertaining, and challenging all who enter its doors. The organization was founded as a non-profit foundation in 1987 by Charles W. Leslie and Fritz Lohman, who have supported LGBTQ artists for over 30 years.
From 1971 to 1974, this former firehouse was the headquarters of the Gay Activists Alliance. Founded two years prior to acquiring this building, the Gay Activists Alliance quickly grew to become the largest American gay liberation political activist organization of the early 1970s.
Constructed in 1824, this house was one of the oldest remaining buildings in Greenwich Village and home to several gay-rights activists who lived and worked out of this building in the 1970s and 1980s. The home was known as a "gay commune" following the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and it was here where Bruce Voeller and other residents lived and worked. The men who lived here were the guiding force in establishing important civil rights organization such as The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The property was later owned by the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz. Despite the efforts of historians, local residents, preservationists, and LGBTQ activists in the early 2010s, the property was demolished in 2012 to create room for a seven-story condo unit.
Patricia Highsmith was an American writer. Over the span of her career, she wrote more than 30 books, three of her most notable works being The Talented Mr. Ripley, Strangers on a Train, and The Price of Salt, which was the first lesbian novel published in either hard or soft cover to have a happy ending. Many of her novels were also adapted for film and television. She spent most of her time between Greenwich Village and traveling, preferring to write in locations around Europe. She was a very complicated woman, as she was somehow very appealing to suitors, a talented writer, while also being somewhat racist and anti-Semitic.
From just 1925 to 1926, a Polish immigrant, Chawe Zlocsewer, made history by operating what was perhaps the first lesbian bar in New York City. Known as Eve Adams' Tearoom (or Eve Adams' Hangout). The basement bar, popular as an after-theater club, made no secret of its clientele. Because it was openly a lesbian bar, Eve Adams' Tearoom was targeted by police and Adams (as Zlocsewer was known) was convicted on obscenity charges and eventually deported.
From 1939 until the New York State Liquor Authority revoked its license, this was the location of a bar that earned a reputation as serving all patrons, including gay and lesbian residents of the community. The bar was raided by police in 1944 for serving gay customers in violation of the era's "morals laws." Although the bar owner was ordered to close for good, he continued to operate and given the bar's mob backing, the police generally looked the other way. The bar was raided again in the 1950s and 1960s and closed in 1967. In 1970, Gay Liberation Front operated the Gay Community Center at the site of the former bar.
Constructed between 1833 and 1834, this is the oldest building constructed for the purpose of providing a space for Roman Catholic congregants to worship in New York. The parish is today known for providing a welcoming place for LGBTQIA Catholics and in 1982, it became one of the first Catholic churches to allow a gay-rights organization to use its sanctuary as a meeting space. From that time to the present, the Gay Officers Action League has met at the Church of St. Joseph.
The first bookstore dedicated to offering books and a space for gay and lesbian authors, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop was located here from 1973 until its closure in 2009. The store was not affiliated with Oscar Wilde, but owner Craig Rodwell chose this author owing to the playwright's fame in London as well as imprisonment and early death while in prison for the "crime" being gay. The store was located in a rowhouse that was constructed in 1827.
Commisioned in 1979 in recognition of the ten-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, this monument to the civil rights activists who participated in the most famous gay rights protest in American history was not actually located next to the Stonewall until 1992. Following its completion in 1980, New York politicians balked at approving the dedication of the monument in their city and the monument was instead dedicated in Madison, Wisonsin.
Here, on June 28, 1969, hundreds of people who would now be referred to as LGBT stood up to harassment by the New York City police, rebelling against the habitual mistreatment to which they were subjected. In conscious or unconscious emulation of public confrontations with the law by civil rights and antiwar protesters of the period, the patrons of the Stonewall that night did not meekly submit to injustice, but spontaneously insisted upon their right to associate without fear of arrest. This event is often considered the single most important milestone in the gay and lesbian quest for civil equality, as it galvanized the entire movement.
Just a few blocks away from the Stonewall Inn, another bar that catered to gay patrons in Greenwich Village called the Snake Pit became the site of another police raid just in the spring of 1970. Only months after the landmark raid at the Stonewall Inn, a mass arrest of over one hundred patrons at the Snake Pit led to increased political activism of the LGBT community in Greenwich Village and beyond.
Julius' is located in a building that was constructed in 1826 and has been home to a bar since the Civil War. Today, that building is home to the city's oldest continuously-operating gay bar. While Julius' is now a center of the local LGBTQIA community, it was not until 1966 that this bar would openly serve gay patrons. On April 21st of that year, four gay rights activists challenged the city law that required establishments to deny service to homosexuals. Taking inspiration from the sit-ins and other tactics used by civil rights activists, these members of the Mattachine Society, a small national organization that was influential in the early gay rights movement, decided to challenge the city law. The activists chose this bar because it had long served local gay patrons and was known as a safe place, but following several police raids and fearing for the loss of their license, the owners had been less welcoming. The owners were sympathetic but having been raided and harassed by the police for serving gay men just ten days prior. As a result, they denied service to the four men. This provided a test case for attorneys working with the Mattachine Society who successfully challenged and ended the New York City law. In April of 2016, Julius added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition for the important role it played in ending New York City's discriminatory law.
In 1973, Metropolitan-Duane United Methodist Church church hosted the first formal meeting of "The pArents of Gays,' an organization that is today known as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The organization began when Jeanne Manford decided to march alongside her son Morty at the Christopher Street Liberation March. After many other marchers asked Manford to speak to her parents, Manford recognized the need for a support organization to help encourage parents to understand and eventually join her in publicly supporting their gay and lesbian children.
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
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This walking tour includes famous historic sites related to LGBTQIA history such as the Stonewall Inn. The tour is a work in progress and is growing to include other landmarks, museums, and historic places related to the gay rights movement in New York City.
LGBTQ+ History
