The very first public demonstration for gay rights in the United States took place here. Organized by Randy Wicker of the Homosexual League of New York (HLNY), and the New York City League for Sexual Freedom (LSF), it protested the military’s treatment of gay people – including rejection, less-than-honorable discharges, and violation of privacy through a policy of sending gay men’s records to current and potential employers.

By the late 1980s, the AIDS epidemic had impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally. New York City’s LGBT community was among the hardest hit, with infections and deaths occurring at an alarming rate. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) formed in 1987 to call attention to the AIDS crisis. In 1989, it held two successful demonstrations at the New York Stock Exchange to protest the high price of the AIDS drug AZT, which was unaffordable to most people living with HIV.

Since 1983, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community Center has served here as a vital support system for hundreds of thousands of people. The Center has witnessed the founding of ACT UP, GLAAD, Las Buenas Amigas, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers, and for many years was the meeting location for the Metropolitan Community Church of New York and SAGE.

Best remembered for his pioneering book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Vito Russo was also a significant gay rights and AIDS activist in the 1970s and ’80s. He lived in this Chelsea apartment building from mid-1969 until his death from AIDS in 1990.

Between 1977 and 1987, the Paradise Garage, at 84 King Street, was one of the most important and influential clubs in New York City. Unlike many other clubs at the time, it was membership only – not open to the general public. Moreover, it did not discriminate among its membership based on race, class, or sexual identity. Its devoted patronage was largely comprised of sexual and ethnic minorities (primarily African-American gay men).

The apartment building at 2 Fifth Avenue has been home to several notable LGBT figures who have made impacts in the fields of activism, health, theater, and literature. One resident, Larry Kramer, (b. 1935) helped catalyze the response to the AIDS epidemic as co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). He is also well known for his controversial book Faggots (1978) and his screenplay of Women in Love (1969). Edith “Edie” Windsor & Dr. Thea Clara Spyer also lived here. Edith “Edie” Windsor was a LGBT rights activist and her wife Thea Spyer moved into their apartment in the mid-1970s. Windsor, who resided here at the time of her death in 2017, was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court of the United States case, which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.

During the Harlem Renaissance, the New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch served as an intellectual and artistic center for African Americans, including the likes of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. In the mid-1920s, the works of these gay poets were included in the newly formed Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints, which ultimately became part of the renowned Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

During the Apollo Theater’s heyday as a showcase for black performers from the 1930s into the 1970s, nearly every important African-American entertainer played here, including many LGBT stars. In the 1960s, the popular drag show Jewel Box Revue was often hosted by its sole woman, Stormé DeLarverie.

The rowhouse at 457 Sixth Avenue near the Jefferson Market police court (now the Jefferson Market Library) was the last residence and office of well-known Tammany politico Murray H. Hall. While Hall lived as a man for decades without his gender being questioned, following his death, the New York Times reported that Hall’s “true sex” was revealed by the doctor.

A picket at entrances to the Great Hall at Cooper Union on December 2, 1964, was later identified as the second public demonstration for gay rights in the United States. This was also the earliest known public challenge by the LGBT community against the psychiatric profession. The Cooper Union event followed the September 19, 1964, picket in front of the U.S. Army Building in Lower Manhattan, which protested the military’s treatment of gay people. Both pickets were organized by Randy Wicker.

The building at 150 West 4th Street has early LGBT history in its incarnation as the Mad Hatter, which was located in the basement from 1916 to c. 1930. The first tearoom in the Village, the Mad Hatter attracted a bohemian crowd (and a number of upper class “slummers” who came to watch them). Eliza Helen Criswell – who went by “Jimmie,” had short hair, and wore sandals, artsy smocks, and tailored suits and ties for formal events – owned the establishment with her partner Mathilda Spence for a number of years. Beginning in 1945, the ground floor space was the location of the Pony Stable Inn, a lesbian bar. Like other Greenwich Village lesbian bars of the 1940s-1960s, such as the Sea Colony and the Bagatelle, the Pony Stable Inn attracted mostly working-class white women who adhered to strict butch/femme gender roles \[for an explanation on butch/femme, see the entry on the Sea Colony].

Numerous health facilities were established in New York City following the outbreak of HIV and AIDS cases in the 1980s, including the Rivington Houses at the address in 1955. The center was the largest residential healthcare facility for AIDS patients in New York City and, perhaps, the nation. It was equipped with 219 beds and an outpatient treatment center!

Richmond Barthé, an African-American sculptor who gained prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, created an 8-foot by 80-foot frieze Green Pastures: The Walls of Jericho (1938), which has been located at the Kingsborough Houses since 1941. Considered the most important sculptor of African-American modernism in the first half of the twentieth century, he is known for his portrayals of religious subjects, figures from black history, notable stage and dance performers, and public works. Although he never publicly revealed his homosexuality, his artwork exploited the black male nude for its political, racial, aesthetic, and erotic significance, and often displayed homoerotic themes.