LGBT | 6sqft

The New-York Historical Society, the oldest museum in the city, recently unveiled to the Landmarks Preservation Commission plans to expand by more than 70,000 square feet with a five-story extension at the rear of its Upper West Side lot. The $140 million expansion will be designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern and include additional classrooms and gallery space, as well as a permanent home for the American L.G.B.T.Q.+ Museum, the city's first museum dedicated to L.G.B.T.Q. history and culture, as the New York Times first reported.
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The secret history of Julius’, the oldest gay bar in NYC

Owner Helen Buford with longtime bartender Daniel Onzo

July 21, 2020

The secret history of Julius’, the oldest gay bar in NYC

By James and Karla Murray

On the corner of West 10th and Waverly Place sits Julius’ Bar, New York City’s oldest gay bar. Constructed in the middle of the 19th-century, the landmarked Greenwich Village building first opened as a grocery store and later became a bar. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously operating bars in the city, Julius’ is also known for its historic “Sip-In" on April 26, 1966, when members of the Mattachine Society--one of the country’s earliest LGBT rights organizations--protested the state law that prohibited bars from serving "suspected gay men or lesbians." Not only did the demonstration lead to the courts ruling in 1967 that gay people had the legal right to assemble and be served alcohol, but it also became one of the most significant instances of gay rights activism before the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Like many businesses forced to close because of the coronavirus pandemic, especially now that indoor dining is on hold indefinitely, Julius' owner Helen Buford is struggling to pay the bills and launched a fundraising campaign this month to help save the bar. Ahead, go behind the scenes of Julius' while it remains closed, learn about its unique history from longtime bartenders Daniel Onzo and Tracy O’ Neill, and hear more from Helen about the struggle to survive as a small business during COVID-19.
Go behind the scenes

Where I Work

The long road to landmark: How NYC’s Stonewall Inn became a symbol of civil rights

Via NPCA on Flickr

June 28, 2019

The long road to landmark: How NYC’s Stonewall Inn became a symbol of civil rights

Millions will converge in New York City this weekend to celebrate events which took place in and outside of a Greenwich Village bar 50 years ago. The Stonewall Riots will not only be memorialized here in New York City, but those events have come to take on international significance. There are celebrations and marches in countries across the globe, with the name 'Stonewall' also used by countless organizations and entities around the world to signify the quest for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality. But 50 years ago those three nights of protests were barely noticed beyond the boundaries of the local neighborhood and a small but energized group of activists and rabble-rousers. They garnered little media attention, and most of the attention received was pretty negative – including from the gay community. So how did the events at the Stonewall 50 years ago go from an obscure set of disturbances at the tail end of the decade marked by strife and disorder, to an internationally-recognized symbol of a civil rights movement? Ahead, learn about Stonewall's long road to becoming a civil rights landmark.
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History

Everything you need to know about this year’s NYC Pride March

Image via Flickr

June 25, 2019

Everything you need to know about this year’s NYC Pride March

By Alexandra Alexa

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and culminating the monthlong WorldPride festivities, this year’s NYC Pride March taking place on Sunday, June 30 is set to be the largest Pride parade since the tradition launched in 1970. Approximately two million people attend the event each year, making it the biggest Pride celebration in the world, and that number should easily be surpassed this year.
Routes, street closures, and more

Events & Things To Do

19 iconic NYC sites will light up rainbow in honor of WorldPride

Photo of Madison Square Garden via NYC and Company

June 21, 2019

19 iconic NYC sites will light up rainbow in honor of WorldPride

By Nicole Mondrus

This month, 19 buildings throughout the five boroughs will be lighting up rainbow in honor of WorldPride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The city-wide display is part of NYC and Company's Project Rainbow, a marketing initiative led by the city's official tourism organization. Among the sites listed are the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and the World Trade Center.
Find out where to be on the lookout for Pride-themed lights...

Events & Things To Do

June 17, 2019

23 LGBT landmarks of the East Village and Noho

Their neighbor to the west Greenwich Village may be more well known as a nexus for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, but the East Village and Noho are chock full of LGBT culture as well, from the site of one the very first LGBT demonstrations to the homes of some of the greatest openly-LGBT artists and writers of the 20th century to the birthplace of New York’s largest drag festival. Ahead, we round up 23 examples, from Walt Whitman's favorite watering hole to Allen Ginsberg's many local residences to Keith Haring's studio.
Learn the history of all the spots

History

June 14, 2019

From superheroes to speakeasies: 10 walking tours even New Yorkers will love

By Nicole Mondrus

There’s no better way to enjoy the warm weather and see all New York has to offer than by taking a walking tour. Not just for tourists anymore, you can learn more about city history, find a new favorite spot to eat, and even discover some Instagram-worthy views. Ahead, we’ve rounded up 10 of the most fun and information tours in NYC, from superheroes and ghosts to swing dance and pork buns.
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Events & Things To Do

MTA rolls out rainbow MetroCards and train decals for Pride month

Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit

June 13, 2019

MTA rolls out rainbow MetroCards and train decals for Pride month

The Federal government may be banning Pride flags at U.S. embassies, but here in New York, our city agencies are prouder than ever to show off the rainbow. The latest initiative comes from the MTA, who has revealed a special set of Pride MetroCards, along with Pride-themed Transit merchandise and a new Pride logo on select subway cars. All of the festive additions mark not only World Pride being hosted in NYC this year but the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
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Same celebration, different courses: The routes of Pride marches and parades in NYC

“GAA and Vito Russo marching in 1st Christopher St Liberation Day Parade,” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1970.

June 12, 2019

Same celebration, different courses: The routes of Pride marches and parades in NYC

By Cait Etherington

Decades ago, New York City's Pride Parade was controversial because it focused on LGBTQ rights. And while there's always more work to be done, five decades later, the LGBTQ community has gained legal recognition and acceptance. And in sharp contrast to the first Pride March, the annual event now seems to attract as many politicians and corporate sponsors as it does activists. But one controversy persists—the Pride Parade route itself.
Route this way

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How artist-activist Gwen Shockey is keeping the memories of NYC’s fading lesbian bars alive

Photo of Gwen and “Girl Party Wallpaper” series, courtesy of Gwen Shockey

June 7, 2019

How artist-activist Gwen Shockey is keeping the memories of NYC’s fading lesbian bars alive

After 49 people were killed in a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, New York City artist Gwen Shockey gathered with queer people at the Cubbyhole and Stonewall Inn to mourn. The tragedy made Gwen think about the importance of lesbian bars and safe spaces for this community. She began talking with her friends, interviewing them about coming out and navigating NYC's queer community. This laid the groundwork for Gwen's 2017 "Addresses" project, a digital map marking more than 200 current and former queer and lesbian bars across the five boroughs. Using information from interviews she's conducted and from police records and newspapers, Gwen found each location and photographed what sits there now. "It felt like a secret pilgrimage, going to each location and looking for a site that was more or less invisible to everyone else around me," she told us. And with just three lesbian bars remaining in NYC today, the need to preserve the memories of these places seems more apparent than ever. Through her project, which is ongoing, Gwen realized that although the number of lesbian bars in the city is dropping, there are "huge shifts occurring in the queer community toward inclusion not based on identity categories but based on who needs safe space now and who needs space to dance, to express their authenticity, and to be intimate." Gwen shared with 6sqft the process of tracking the lesbian bars of NYC's past and lessons she's learned about the city's LGBTQ history along the way.
Meet Gwen

Last year’s Pride Parade outside the Stonewall Inn, via Wiki Commons

May 30, 2019

17 LGBT landmarks of Greenwich Village

In about a month New York will be in the throes of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, three nights of disturbances from June 28th to June 30th 1969, which are recognized globally as the start of the modern LGBT rights movement. But Stonewall is only one of the scores of important LGBT landmarks in Greenwich Village – the homes of people, events, businesses and institutions dating from more than a century ago to just a few years ago. Thanks to landmark designation, most of these sites still stand. Here are just some of the dazzling array of those, all still extant, which can be found in the neighborhood which is arguably the nexus of the LGBT universe.
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History

PHOTOS: NYC’s first LGBTQ monument opens in Greenwich Village

Photo by Tia Richards for 6sqft

June 25, 2018

PHOTOS: NYC’s first LGBTQ monument opens in Greenwich Village

New York's first public monument to the LGBTQ community opened Sunday in the Greenwich Village, a historically significant neighborhood for the gay rights movement. Located in Hudson River Park and designed by local artist Anthony Goicolea, the monument honors the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, as well as all victims of hate and violence. "This memorial saddens us, when we think about the Orlando 49 senseless deaths, but it also enlightens us, and it also inspires us," Cuomo said on Sunday. "It inspires New Yorkers to do what New Yorkers have always done - what Anthony was referring to: to push forward, to keep going forward on that journey until we reach the destination that the Statue of Liberty promised in the first place."
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Exploring NYC’s historic gay residences beyond Greenwich Village

Clear Comfort, the Alice Austen House, photo by Alice Austen, via NYPL

June 22, 2018

Exploring NYC’s historic gay residences beyond Greenwich Village

By Cait Etherington

When most people think about gay New York, they naturally think about all the historic sites located in Greenwich Village and its surrounding vicinity. In fact, the LGBTQ community has long lived and made history citywide from the Bronx to Staten Island. To mark the 2018 NYC Pride Celebration, which will take place from June 14 to 24 with the famed Pride March happening this Sunday, 6sqft has compiled a list of just a few historic gay residences located well beyond Greenwich Village.
Learn about 7 of the most influential sites

History

Construction well underway for interactive LGBTQ monument in Greenwich Village

Rendering by Anthony Goicolea via Gov. Cuomo’s office

June 21, 2018

Construction well underway for interactive LGBTQ monument in Greenwich Village

A monument to the LGBTQ community is taking shape in Hudson River Park along the Greenwich Village waterfront. Last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo chose Brooklyn-based artist Anthony Goicolea to design the monument, aimed at honoring both the LGBT rights movement and the victims of the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. Although the Hudson River Park Trust told 6sqft an opening date of the installation isn't known yet, Urban Omnibus reported the monument is expected to be completed this month, coinciding with Pride Month.
More here

June 21, 2018

Help preserve the untold stories of the Stonewall Riots by donating personal photos, letters

Via Wikimedia Did you participate in the Stonewall Inn Riots of 1969 and the period of LGBTQ activism in New York City between 1968 and 1971? Do you know someone who did? If so, consider contributing pride memorabilia from that moment in history to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, which is compiling a collection to preserve the history of Stonewall. The project, Stonewall Forever, launched last year after Google granted the LGBT Center $1 million to preserve oral histories and experiences of those present during the riots.
Find out more

History

June 7, 2018

Anti-bigotry ‘service’ posters hit NYC subway stations for Pride Month

By NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

The normally drab service posters found across the city's subway stations got a burst of color this month. Instead of detailing changes to late-night train service, these rainbow-adorned signs remind commuters that no "bigotry, hatred or prejudice" is allowed at any time, as Pride Month, a celebration of LGBTQ love, kicks off. Originally created by School of Visual Arts faculty member Thomas Shim and alumni Ezequiel Consoli and Jack Welles (Kyle Harrison was added to the core team this year), the posters will remain fastened to the station walls throughout the month of June.
More details here

May 30, 2018

8 things you didn’t know about LGBT history in NYC

This Saturday, 6sqft is excited to sponsor "The Hunt: NYC LGBT Sites." Put on by our friends at Urban Archive and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, the three-hour historic scavenger hunt will mark Pride Week by focusing on the history of the LGBT community in NYC. To give 6sqft readers an idea of what to expect, the Historic Sites Project has put together eight things you probably don't know about LGBT history in New York, from the four remaining lesbian bars in the city to the first LGBT activist organization.
All this and more history!

August 24, 2017

How LGBT activism led to NYC’s most notorious bank robbery: The real story behind ‘Dog Day Afternoon’

The most notorious bank robbery in New York City history took place on August 22, 1972, during the decidedly dog days of that long hot summer. Immortalized in the film "Dog Day Afternoon," it was an unlikely anti-hero tale with a backstory that began in Greenwich Village, interwoven with the social and political currents running through the city at the time, most notably the growing LGBT movement that had taken hold after the Stonewall Riots.
Get the whole surprising history this way

History

VIDEO: Tour historic LGBT sites in Greenwich Village, from Stonewall and beyond

Forty-eight years ago, just after 1:00am on June 28th, police raided Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, the well-known gay bar on Christopher Street. Unlike past raids against gay bars, the crowd outside fought back, throwing bottles at the cops and protesting around the site for the next six days. According to the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, […]

History

June 28, 2017

INTERVIEW: The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project talks gay history and advocacy in NYC

"Where did lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history happen in New York City? In what buildings did influential LGBT activists and artists live and work, and on what streets did groups demonstrate for their equal rights?" These are the questions that the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project is answering through a first-of-its-kind initiative to document historic and cultural sites associated with the LGBT community in the five boroughs. Through a map-based online archive, based on 25 years of research of advocacy, the group hopes to make "invisible history visible" by exploring sites related to everything from theater and art to social activism and health. To mark Pride Month, 6sqft recently talked with the Historic Sites Project's directors--architectural historian and preservation professor at Columbia Andrew S. Dolkart; historic preservation consultant Ken Lustbader; and former senior historian at the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission Jay Shockley--along with their project manager, preservationist Amanda Davis, about the roots of the initiative, LGBT history in NYC, and the future of gay advocacy.
Read the interview here

June 26, 2017

Cuomo unveils winning design for NYC’s first public monument to LGBT people

By Michelle Cohen

To coincide with pride weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that artist Anthony Goicolea had been chosen to design the first official monument to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to be commissioned by the State of New York. According to the New York Times, the statue will be built near the waterfront piers in Hudson River Park. The monument's design features nine boulders bisected in places with glass, which can act as a prism, emitting a rainbow pattern. Governor Cuomo formed the LGBT Memorial Commission after the deadly attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. in 2016; A request for designs for a new memorial went out in October of this year. Hudson River Park's waterfront piers have figured prominently in the history of the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
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Events & Things To Do

June 19, 2017

Stonewall Inn gets $1M grant from Google to preserve stories of the gay rights movement

Last June, President Obama formally recognized Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn and its surrounding area as a national historic monument, creating the first National Park Service unit dedicated to the gay rights movement. To expand the reach of this monument, Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Sunday a $1 million grant from Google to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center to begin a project preserving the oral histories and human experiences from early LGBTQ leaders present during the Stonewall Inn riots. According to the New York Times, the initiative will create an educational curriculum for students and a digital platform that's expected to launch by the 50th anniversary of the protests in 2019.
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History

March 28, 2017

Explore historic LGBT sites in NYC with this interactive map

To broaden people's knowledge of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community’s history in New York City, the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project created a map-based online archive to document significant sites throughout the five boroughs. Although earlier maps highlighting LGBT history have been created, they focused solely on the history of Greenwich Village, the hub of gay activism. But the new interactive map, based on 25 years of research and advocacy, hopes to make “invisible history visible” by exploring sites across the city related to everything from theater and architecture to social activism and health.
Learn more here

History

June 23, 2016

Protecting Your Rights As a LGBT Renter or Buyer in NYC

By Cait Etherington

Following the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and the 2015 ruling that upheld the decision, gay and lesbian couples across the United States have had a lot to celebrate. After years of struggle, gays and lesbians now have the right to marry and along with it, the right […]

June 25, 2015

Landmarks Preservation Commission Maps 150 Years of LGBTQ History in Greenwich Village