Stonewall Inn

In 1969 the protests that gave momentum to the movement for gay, lesbian and transgender rights began here

Local name: Stonewall Inn

Collection: Greenwich Village and the East Village · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The bar at No. 53 and the visitor center at No. 51 Christopher Street · Ajay Suresh, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the Stonewall Inn, one of the most important places in the struggle of gay, lesbian and transgender people for their rights. The two buildings here went up in the 1840s as stables. In 1930 they were joined behind a single facade, and a bakery worked downstairs. From 1934 this was the Stonewall Inn restaurant. Then in March 1967 a gay bar opened here. It was run by men tied to the Mafia. In those years, New York bars were forbidden to serve alcohol to gay people, and the police raided them regularly. A person could even be arrested for wearing fewer than three pieces of clothing that matched their sex. So the bar’s windows were painted black and its doors reinforced. On the night of the twenty-eighth of June 1969, at about one twenty in the morning, the police came for another raid. But this time the customers did not scatter. They stayed outside to wait for their friends, and passersby joined them. When the police began loading the arrested into vans, the crowd grew angry. Coins, bottles and bricks flew at the police. Someone tore a parking meter out of the ground and used it to batter the door. The police had to barricade themselves inside the bar. The protests went on for several nights, until the second of July. Within a month, activists had founded the Gay Liberation Front, and other groups soon followed. Exactly a year later, on the twenty-eighth of June 1970, a march went from Greenwich Village to Central Park to remember those events. Out of such marches grew Pride Month, now celebrated around the world. In 2015 the city named the bar a landmark, and in 2016 President Barack Obama created a national monument here. The building next door is now its visitor center.

Visiting

53 Christopher Street. The bar runs as an ordinary bar. Next door, at No. 51, is the national monument’s visitor center: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., free. Christopher Park across the street is open all year; its hours vary by season. Subway: the 1 train to Christopher Street–Sheridan Square, or the A, C, E, B, D, F or M to West 4th Street–Washington Square.