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GAA Firehouse, 1971. Photo by Diana Davies. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

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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. 

Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse (1971-1974)

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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.

During the 1980s with the rise of AIDS and the deaths of so many artists and collectors, Charles W Leslie and Fritz Lohman realized that many important works of art were being thrown away or destroyed by family members. Many families of gay artists either didn’t know what to do with queer art or did not want to acknowledge the sexual orientation of their loved ones. Leslie and Lohman knew something had to be done, so the couple made a rigorous effort to preserve queer art. In 1987, the couple founded the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, Inc.The museum's first location was in a basement on Prince Street in New York City. In 2006, the galleries moved into the ground floor of a much larger space located at 26 Wooster Street in SoHo New York. In 2011 that New York State Board of Regents officially declared the foundation a museum. With the gallery’s new status, it makes it the first and only LGBTQ art museum in the world of its kind. The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art maintains a collection of over 30,000 works. The museum also manages an artist archive that contains information on over 1,900 LGBTQ artists, both those represented in the collection and others of interest to LGBTQ audiences. A variety of visual arts are represented across several galleries. The main Gallery offers 6-8 exhibitions a year. Each exhibition includes various art forms such as poetry readings, film screenings, plays, and artists panel discussions. Entrance to the museum is free, with a ten dollar donation suggested.

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.

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

During the 1970s and 1980s, gay rights activists lived and worked out of this townhome. Activists who lived and/or met here went on to establish the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Gay Activists Alliance, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. According to the&nbsp;executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, these three men lived here and their house also "functioned as a communal space for discussions around the activist issues of the time." Scientist Bruce Voeller lived at this home at the time of his then-ground-breaking research and public awareness campaign showing that condoms could prevent the spread of AIDS. While he lived at this address, Voeller challenged numerous homophobic and pseudo-scientific theories about the causes of AIDS at a time when some physicians and journalists referred to the disease as "Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder. Voeller died of AIDS in 1994. The property was also home to Jim Owles, who became New York's first openly-gay candidate for a public office. Owles was a leader in the organization of the&nbsp;Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Owles died of AIDS in 1993. Professor Arnie Kantrowitz also lived at the home and in addition to teaching some of the first courses on homosexuality and literature, he was also one of the first openly gay speakers and activists to appear on nationally&nbsp;syndicated radio and television programs. He was a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Kantrowitz authored&nbsp;Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay,&nbsp;one of the first and most influential autobiographical looks at life for gay rights activists.&nbsp; Voeller also challenged the American Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder and launched a successful legal challenge that ended laws that barred gay men from having access to their children.&nbsp;In 1973, responding to activists who lived at this home and the members of the organizations they led, the&nbsp;American Psychiatric&nbsp;Association polled its members for their opinion as to whether homosexuality should continue to be listed in the&nbsp;Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental. Disorders. At that time,&nbsp;5,854 psychiatrists voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, and 3,810&nbsp;to retain it. The APA responded&nbsp;by removing homosexuality from the list of diseases. At the same time, the APA referred to homosexuality as a "disturbance" for people "in conflict" with their sexual orientation.&nbsp;

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. 

186 Spring Street (1824-2012) 

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. 

Tony Pastor’s Downtown (1939-1967) Gay Community Center (1970-1971)

The Church of St. Joseph is one of the longest
standing churches within Manhattan. The church was founded by John Dubois in 1829 and was the sixth parish added to the
area. Before the church’s building was constructed, services were held in a
hall not far from the church. The building was created by John Doran with construction beginning between
1833 and 1834. 

Throughout the church’s longstanding service, the
building had many events happen under its roof. The building faced fires during
1855 and 1885 to its interior. The church also had various revisions to its
structure in the late 1900s, focusing on its interior as well as its overall
structure. Throughout all these events,
the church was noted for being involved with social issues, a standout point
for the parish and its surrounding area. 

The Church is well known for its relation to the LGBTQIA
community, notably, its support for the
group. It annually holds mass every pride month for those lost to AIDS and the church is open to
welcoming queer individuals to their congregation. The church was also the
meeting place for the Gay Officers Action League, with the first meeting being
held in 1982, in the church’s basement. This cemented the church as one of the
first sanctuaries to allow a gay-rights organization to use a church building
as a meeting place. This meeting was led by Charles H. Cochrane, who was the
first New York police officer to announce his sexuality. Cochrane’s courage to
come out was immortalized in 2016 when Sixth Ave. and Washington Place, a street very close to the church, was
renamed Charles H. Cochrane Way.

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. 

Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village

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.

Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (1967-2009)

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. 

Gay Liberation Monument

The
importance of this event can only be grasped if one understands what life had
been like for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the years before
it occurred. Sodomy laws were on the books in almost all states. Homosexuality
was officially listed as a mental illness by the medical establishment. It was
perfectly legal to deny a job or an apartment to someone who was (or perhaps was
only suspected of being) gay or lesbian. As members of a marginalized group, known
homosexuals were constantly vulnerable to intimidation, exploitation, and
violence. Perhaps even more troubling was the unseen damage this situation did
to people’s psyches, filling their lives with fear, anxiety and self-hatred. 

Thus at a time when it was illegal to serve alcohol to gays and being caught in drag
made one subject to immediate arrest, police raids on bars like the Stonewall Inn
were quite commonplace. However, on that night in June 1969, what began as the customary weekly&nbsp;raid on the Stonewall Inn did not go
as planned. Many patrons who were set free by the police declined to leave the
scene; many who were arrested simply
refused to cooperate.&nbsp;As the growing crowd outside the establishment, which
included passersby and even tourists, became more and more restive, the eleven
policemen on the scene quickly became overwhelmed and frightened. When a
lesbian was handcuffed after getting into a scuffle with a policeman, she yelled
to the crowd, “Why don't you guys do something?” Then, when this woman was unceremoniously
dumped into the back of a patrol wagon, the crowd exploded. By 4:00 a.m. the following
morning, after the Tactical Police Force of New York City had become involved,
the battle at the Stonewall Inn ended. Rioting continued in Greenwich Village
for the next few days. However, during those days, for the first time, gay men
and women openly expressed affection in public – kissing and&nbsp;holding hands – as
they had previously never dared to do, having lost their shame and fear of
exposure. 

The
event was transformative for attitudes both inside and outside the LGBT
community. It was only after Stonewall that the first organizations for homosexuals
that included the word “gay” in their names (Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activist
Alliance) were formed; prior to this, such organizations deliberately employed
obscure names – like The Mattachine Society and The Daughters of Bilitis – to conceal
from mainstream society the orientation of their memberships. For a short time, the police continued to target gay bars, but after a young man died by accident
in one of these raids, demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns, in which
sympathetic straight people also participated in large numbers, soon forced the
police to abandon this policy. On the first anniversary of Stonewall, gay civil
rights marches were held not only in New York, but Los Angeles and Chicago. On
the second anniversary of the event, Gay Pride marches took place in numerous
cities not only in America but Europe – a tradition that continues to this day.
Ironically, the changes that Stonewall brought about doomed the “bar culture”
of which the Stonewall Inn was a typical example, since it became increasingly
unnecessary for LGBT people to congregate in dark, secretive places to express
their sexuality. &nbsp;&nbsp;

The
Stonewall Inn was closed later in 1969. It reopened in 1990 as
"Stonewall" and returned to the original name of "The Stonewall
Inn" in 2007. In 1999, the inn was declared a National Historic Landmark
and continues to inspire Pride parades today.

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. 


The Stonewall Inn

The building that would eventually become Julius’ Bar was constructed in 1826 in the Greenwich Village Neighborhood. In 1840, the building began to see use as a grocery store, and it remained as such until it was converted into Julius’ Bar in 1864. In the 1920s, the bar saw a great deal of activity serving as a speakeasy during the era of Prohibition. During these "dry" years, the bar was quite popular among jazz musicians and literary artists. By flouting the law, Julius’ Bar survived the Prohibition era and the establishment prospered as a local bar that reflected the people of the neighborhood. As a result, records indicate that by the 1950s, some of the gay men who had moved to Greenwich Village patronized the bar. The bar’s management responded in a variety of ways designed to discourage these customers owing to a city law that barred establishments from serving gay men. After the police raided the bar several times and fearing for the loss of their liquor license, bartenders would deny service to anyone they knew was homosexual and some would even harass gay customers.

On April 21st of 1966, several members of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights activist groups, decided to try to test the New York City law against serving gay patrons. After notifying several reporters, members of the Mattachine Society staged what they called a “Sip-In” to test the law. The first bar owner where the activists hope to stop closed the bar while the next two establishments willingly served the men. When the activists arrived at Julius’ Bar they were denied service. The refusal was documented and used as evidence in court, and the ensuing trial led to a removal of the law against serving homosexuals.&nbsp;According to Dick Leitsch, who was one of the four men who participated in the protest, the bartender initially set out four glasses for the men. At that point,&nbsp;Leitsch recalls that the four men went out of their way to state that they were homosexual. At that point, the bartender put his hands on top of one of the four glasses and said that he could not serve the men. This dramatic refusal was photographed and reflected the fact that the bar was raided by police for serving gay men just ten days prior. A failure to refuse service with witnesses and photographers would have likely resulted in the loss of the bar's license.&nbsp;The protest was scheduled to happen at another bar, but the owner had heard about the plan in advance and closed his establishment to avoid a potential confrontation. In response, the four men chose Julius' specifically because of the recent raid. The bartender likely understood that his denial of service would provide a test case while also saving his establishment's license. According to Leitsch, the photograph of the bartender placing his hand over one of the men's glasses helped their case.&nbsp;Julius’ and several other bars in the Greenwich Village tacitly supported the victory of the Mattachine Society and the removal of the local ordinance that required the State Liquor Authority to revoke licenses of bars that openly served homosexuals. From 1966 on, Julius' was known as a gay bar.&nbsp;The significance of the protest, according to Leitsch, was that it served as a catalyst for further action. "Until this time gay people had never really fought back," Leitsch explained. "We just sort of take in everything passively, didn't do anything about it. And this time we did it, and we won."&nbsp; Three years later, gay patrons at the Stonewall Inn launched an open rebellion against the continuation of police raids despite the end of the law that prohibited service to homosexuals. The Stonewall Rebellion became a crucial moment in the gay rights movement, but that protest could only happen after the end of the discriminatory law. On April 20th of 2016, Julius’ was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

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. 

Julius' in Greenwich Village 

Reverend C. Edward Egan, Jr., an openly gay minister, led the congregation from 1971 to 1977. While Methodist residents of the Village supported Egan, leaders of the Methodist Church forced him to retire early owing to his sexual orientation. Thanks to his leadership in these years, PFLAG went from a small support group to a national organization with hundreds of chapters. Egan also opened the church to other support groups with flavorful names such as the "Salsa Soul Sisters," a support group for gay Latina and African American women.&nbsp;

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. 

Beyond Stonewall: Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village LGBTQIA History Walking Tour

Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse (1971-1974)

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