NEW YORK (AP) — Half of the Stonewall Inn, a gay watering hole that was raided by police in 1969, has been destroyed.
NEW YORK (AP) — A 1969 police raid destroyed half of the Stonewall Inn, a gay watering hole that marked a landmark moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
But for the better part of the 55 years since then, there have been few outward signs that 51 Christopher Street was part of that history.
It was home to Stonewall’s largest bar and one of two dance floors that attracted a young, diverse crowd. But after the raids sparked riots and the Stonewall closed, 51 Christopher Street became a bagel shop, then again for a short time a gay bar, a clothing store, a nail salon, and then the space became vacant. In 1989, its big “Stonewall Inn” sign was removed, but a newer version of the speakeasy opened next door a few years earlier.
Now the community is working to reclaim the building and its historic status: It will open as the visitors’ center for Stonewall National Monument on Friday, the anniversary of the 1969 riots that helped change LGBTQ+ life in the United States for decades to come.
“Today, when you look around the world, millions of people are celebrating Pride, and it all started in this building,” Mark Segal, senior adviser to the visitors center, said recently as he gave a tour of the building.
The gay activist and publisher was standing in front of a construction find: a bricked-up doorway that once connected two sections of the original Stonewall Inn.
This was the very gateway through which Segal himself passed in the early hours of the morning of June 28, 1969, when, at age 18, he had recently moved from Philadelphia to New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, and found the LGBTQ+ community he longed for.
What happened in the next few hours enraged him and many others and gave them a new sense of purpose.
“I was taught that I had to speak out loud and proud,” he recalled.
The visitor center aims to tell the history of Stonewall in more depth than the monument itself, which is centered around a small park with historical photographs but limited interpretive information. Overseen by the National Park Service and LGBTQ+ advocacy group Pride Live, the $3.2 million visitor center was funded primarily by private donations, with the exception of $450,000 from the Park Service’s philanthropic arm, which receives funding from both private individuals and the federal government.
“When people think of the National Park Service, they don’t typically think ‘queer and urban,'” says visitor center co-founder Diana Rodriguez, “so we’re a very different type of visitor center.”
Whereas other venues have plaques about wildlife or geology, this one has photos of protests and lines in the floor marking the location of the old bar. A 1967 jukebox, the same model that played on the night of the Stonewall riots, is loaded with tunes from that era and beyond.
Located across from two former stables at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, the Stonewall Inn was a speakeasy-like establishment with blacked-out windows, iron doors, a doorman who checked patrons, no liquor license and notoriously overpriced drinks.
At the time, LGBTQ+ social life in New York City was an open secret, but it was still dangerous and repressed. From the 1950s to 1973, the US psychiatric community classified homosexuality as a mental illness. Law enforcement in New York and elsewhere often deemed it illegal to express LGBTQ+ identity, such as dancing or showing affection with same-sex partners or wearing gender-fluid clothing.
Police frequently raided gay bars, and patrons tended to leave quietly rather than risk arrest, which could expose their sexual orientation and lead to the loss of their jobs or family relationships.
But when the cops showed up at Stonewall that day, patrons and their friends suddenly and spontaneously decided they couldn’t take it anymore.
“If the police can do this, anyone can do it,” Segal recalled thinking as she stood near the dance floor at 51 Christopher Street, her favorite side of Stonewall, watching officers harshly handle patrons. News and other reports have described police determining or threatening to determine the gender of some people based on their clothing, and arresting some. (The police apologized for the behavior in 2019.)
Some patrons resisted arrest as they were taken away to police vehicles, and the officers responded violently. The crowd continued to grow and began throwing coins, bottles and other objects at the police.
Police then withdrew and barricaded themselves inside the bar, while some in the crowd outside tried to break in. Riot police arrived to disperse the protesters, who continued to regroup and return until about 4:30 a.m.
Protests and clashes with police continued for several nights afterwards.
LGBTQ+ Americans had protested and fought police before, but after a decade of civil rights, women’s liberation and anti-Vietnam War protests, the Stonewall riots marked a broader, more confrontational chapter in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Many new groups were formed, pushing for anti-discrimination laws, holding open demonstrations and social events, and demanding rights and recognition.
The annual Pride Parade began on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The site of the riot, including two parts of the original Stonewall Inn, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000 and became the first national monument in the United States dedicated to LGBTQ+ history in 2016.
Meanwhile, the present-day Stonewall Inn has served as the monument’s informal welcoming and educational center.
“We came here for the history,” co-owner Kurt Kelly said in a recent interview in the bar, which still has a speakeasy feel, decorated with photos and documents. The original Stonewall Inn closed shortly after the riots, but the portion at 53 Christopher Street reopened as a gay bar in the 1990s. Kelly and co-owner Stacey Lentz bought the establishment in 2006.
They see the visitor’s center as a fitting addition to the neighborhood and hope to draw more people to the venue and bar, which they say has had a tough few years because of pandemic closures, inflation, rising insurance costs and other challenges.
“It’s been really hard to keep this place open,” said Lentz, who also serves as CEO of the Stonewall in Gives Back Initiative, a charity he founded with Kelly in 2017.
“The fight that began here on Christopher Street in 1969 is not over,” Lentz said.
For Segal, that fight led to a lifelong advocacy effort that included founding a gay youth group, disrupting television news and talk shows in the 1970s to demand coverage of LGBTQ+ rights issues, lobbying authorities, founding the Philadelphia Gay News, and developing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ seniors.
Then one day last year, he was back at 51 Christopher Street again, with The 5th Dimension’s 1969 song “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” playing on his mobile phone.
“I went to the back of the bar, played it, and danced to Stonewall for the first time in 50-something years,” he said, “and it brought back memories and brought tears to my eyes.”
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