James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924 and became a celebrated writer and social critic in his lifetime, exploring complicated issues such as racial, sexual, and class tensions, as a gay African-American man. Baldwin spent some of his most prolific writing years living in Greenwich Village and wrote of his time there in many of his essays, such as "Notes of a Native Son".

Many of Baldwin's works address the personal struggles faced by not only black men but of gay and bisexual men, amid a complex social atmosphere. His second novel, Giovanni's Room, focuses on the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men. It was published in 1956, well before gay rights were widely supported in America. His residence from 1958 to 1963 was 81 Horatio Street. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

Born in 1930, Lorraine Hansberry was a playwright and activist most commonly associated with Chicago, despite attending school and living much of her life in Greenwich Village. She first attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison but left in 1950 to pursue her career as a writer in New York City. She moved to Harlem in 1951, attended the New School in the Village, and began writing for the Black newspaper “Freedom.” In 1953, she married Robert Nemiroff, and they moved to Greenwich Village. Hansberry separated from Nemiroff in 1957 and they divorced in 1964, though they remained close until her death. It was revealed in later years that Hansberry was a lesbian, and had written several anonymously published letters to a lesbian magazine, “The Ladder,” discussing the struggles of a closeted lesbian.

With the success of “A Raisin in the Sun,” Hansberry bought and moved to 112 Waverly Place. Village Preservation unveiled a historic plaque at 112 Waverly Place in celebration of Hansberry’s time there. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

Hansberry’s first apartment in the Village was at 337 Bleecker Street, where she lived from 1953 to 1960.

Located just a block away from the famous Stonewall Inn, Julius' is often called the oldest continuously operating gay bar in New York City. It was originally established in 1867 and by the 1950s was attracting gay patrons.

On April 21, 1966, members of the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society staged a "Sip-In" and established the right of homosexuals to be served in licensed premises in New York. Julius' was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

In the early morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, dozens of gay men, lesbians, and transgender people, many of them people of color, resisted a routine raid on the Stonewall Inn. The riots that followed over the course of three days are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the modern gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movement in the United States.

Stonewall Inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The national register application was co-sponsored by GVSHP. Since the National Register listing, Stonewall has been recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on the basis of its status in LGBT history and was named a U.S. National Monument, the first in the country dedicated to the LGBT rights movement, on June 24, 2016. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

80 Fifth Avenue housed from its founding in 1973 until 1986 the headquarters of what was then known as the National Gay Task Force (which became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1985, and is now the National LGBTQ Task Force). The Task Force was the very first national LGBT rights organization in the United States, accomplishing groundbreaking changes in those first dozen or so years and laying the foundation for many more in the years which followed, as well as initiating battles for civil rights which are still being fought today. This was the Task Force’s very first headquarters and its only in New York, and it remained here for more than a dozen years until it moved to the nation’s capital in 1986. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

The Task Force’s accomplishments during the time they were located here represented several giant leaps forward for LGBTQ Americans. After employing tactics like staffing booths at the American Psychiatric Association’s Convention to challenge the group’s official categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, in 1973 the Task Force secured the removal of homosexuality from the APA’s official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reducing a significant stigma attached to LGBT people and paving the way for further legal reforms. In 1975 the Task Force advocated for the successful ruling by the U.S. Civil Service Commission eliminating the longtime ban upon gay people serving in federal government employment, ending decades of witch hunts against government workers suspected of being gay which dated back to the McCarthy era and before. In 1977, the Task Force brokered another historic first – the very first meeting of any LGBT group with the White House. The meeting directly resulted in changes in policies at the Bureau of Prisons and the Public Health Service, while also initiating policy discussions that would continue for decades and contributed to the incorporation of support for gay rights within the Democratic Party platform. In 1978, the Task Force got the U.S. Public Health Service to stop certifying gay immigrants as "psychopathic personalities." Click here to learn more on our LGBTQ Tour. . . .

From 1952 to 1959, the ground floor of 86 University Place housed “The Bagatelle” or “The Bag,” a popular lesbian bar run by Barney Gallant. Like many other gay and lesbian bars in Greenwich Village at the time, the Bagatelle was run by the Mafia, since such establishments were considered illegal, and frequently raided by the police. “The Bag” was known to attract a largely working-class clientele, had a small dance floor, and employed guards to keep gawkers and other “undesirables” out.

"The Bag" was frequented by famed lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde, and pulp-novelist Ann Bannon. Click here to learn more on our LGBTQ Tour. . . .

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop originally opened in 1967 in this building at 291 Mercer Street as the first gay bookstore in the world. Owner Craig Rodwell stocked his shelves with literature by gay and lesbian authors and refused to stock pornography of any kind, despite having a limited selection of materials. The store became a meeting place for the LGBT community and served as the location for the meetings to organize the first Pride Parade in the 1970s.

It later moved to 15 Christopher Street and was bought by Bill Offenbaker, and later, Larry Lingle. In 2003, Lingle said he could no longer afford to keep the store open and after changing hands two more times, the bookshop closed on March 29, 2009. Since its closing, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop has been called "clearly pioneering" as it demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to own a bookstore, however small, that catered to a gay public. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

On December 2, 1964, gay rights activist Randy Wicker and four others - including Kay Tobin and probably Craig Rodwell - staged a picket at the front entrance of the Great Hall, protesting a talk conducted by Dr. Paul R. Dince titled “Homosexuality, A Disease.” The previous September, Wicker had organized another action at the U.S. Army Building at Whitehall Street, drawing attention to the military’s discriminatory treatment of the LGBTQ community. Together, these rallies have come to be known as the first public demonstrations for gay rights in the United States.

The Great Hall protest was also the first public protest of the profession of Psychiatry, which formulated and perpetuated prejudiced “science” targeting the LGBTQ community. With his protest, Wicker followed several other efforts to fight psychiatry’s pathologization of homosexuality, including Thomas S. Szasz’s 1961 book The Myth of Mental Illness, and Frank Kameny’s 1963 attempt to convince the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C., a leading gay rights organization, to publicly deny that homosexuality was a disease (Kameny succeeded in 1965). Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

From its opening in 1979, the Pyramid Club was credited with defining the East Village drag and gay scenes of the 1980s and 1990s. The Pyramid Club has been credited with defining the East Village drag and gay scenes of the 1980s and is known for its politically conscious drag performance art and as a hangout for the counterculture of the neighborhood. The club was established by Bobby Bradley, Alan Mace, and Victor Sapienza.

The Pyramid Club hosted drag performers such as Lypsinka, Lady Bunny, and RuPaul. It was here that the annual Wigstock festival began in 1984 when a group of the club's drag queens performed a spontaneous drag show at Tompkins Square Park. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .

The building at 99 Wooster Street was formerly home to the Gay Activists Alliance, one of the most highly influential LGBT groups of the post-Stonewall era. Founded in 1969 by Marty Robinson, Jim Owles, and Arthur Evans, the group was an offshoot of the Gay Liberation Front.

Their location in an abandoned city firehouse at 99 Wooster Street became the first gay and lesbian organizational and social center in New York City. Their "zaps" and face-to-face confrontations were highly influential to other activist and political groups. In 1974 they were targeted by an arson fire and subsequently were forced to cut back on functions. They officially disbanded in 1981. Click here to visit our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map . . .