5 Places to Visit for Pride in New York
Check out the new Stonewall visitors’ center, bask on a queerfriendly beach, see works by a pioneering lesbian photographer
and revel in L.G.B.T.Q. history in every borough.

The Manhattan skyline is lit up in rainbow colors for Pride Month. But in all five boroughs, visitors and locals alikecan enjoy L.G.B.T.Q.-linked attractions, many of them free. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

By Ainara Tiefenthäler
June 17, 2024Updated 11:02 a.m. ET

For decades, visitors flocking to New York for Pride every Junefound plenty of packed bars and jubilant parties but no easy way toengage with the city’s rich L.G.B.T.Q. history.
1Even Sheridan Square, the center of the 1969 Stonewall Uprisingthat catalyzed the gay liberation movement, had little to see foranyone interested in the queer past.

“The guest experience when they got there was a bar, a bench anda park,” said Ross Levi, the executive director of the New York State
Division of Tourism. “That isn’t terribly helpful for somebody whocomes during the day when the bar is closed. It’s not terribly
helpful if you have kids that you want to bring and learn about thehistory of the area.”That’s about to change with a new visitors’ center at Stonewall
National Monument, in Greenwich Village, set to open on June 28,
the 55th anniversary of the night in 1969 when a police raid set off
several days of riots. The center will serve as a focal point of theeight-year-old, 7.7-acre monument, which includes Christopher
Park and several surrounding streets.

Welcoming Pride Month at the West Fourth Street subway station, not far from the Stonewall National Monumentin Greenwich Village. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
2The building that houses the new center sits next door to thecurrent Stonewall Inn bar (which opened in the early 1990s). But
back in the late 1960s, an earlier bar of the same name occupied
both spaces, which were connected by an interior doorway. Notlong after the riots, the original Stonewall Inn went out of business,and the connecting doorway was bricked up.

The modern Stonewall Inn bar sits next to the spacethat will house the new Stonewall visitors’ center.

Christopher Park, across the street from the Stonewall
Inn and the visitors’ center, is part of the official
Stonewall National Monument, established in 2016.

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The storefront next to the current Stonewall Inn stood empty in2022, when Diana Rodriguez, the chief executive of Pride Live, an
L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, took over the space. Nail salon chairsfrom the previous tenant still lined the walls.

3Ms. Rodriguez raised more than $3 million, much of it fromcorporate donors, to build the visitors’ center, which herorganization will manage. The center will offer National Park
Service rangers working at the monument a much-needed roof overtheir heads (they currently have to use local businesses’restrooms) and give visitors of all ages a place to share in themonument’s history through a number of exhibits (free admission).
“My hope is that people come in, learn more about Stonewall,” Ms.
Rodriguez said. “And then, at the end of their time here, that they
feel compelled to take action.”
The new visitors’ center in Manhattan is just one site that offers aglimpse into New York City’s queer history. Here are four more, onein each other borough.
STATEN ISLAND

The Alice Austen House Museum

Enjoying the lawn at the Alice Austen House, the namesake of a documentary photographer who lived there for 30years with her partner. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times4

In 1994, the activist group Lesbian Avengers marched to a charming
white cottage on Staten Island’s eastern waterfront chanting, “Alicewas a lesbian, and a lesbian she’ll always be.” That house, originallybuilt in 1690, once belonged to Alice Austen, a groundbreaking
documentary photographer who captured a quickly changing New
York City at the turn of the 20th century. It became a museum after
her death in 1952.
What the Avengers were protesting was the institution’s
unwillingness to acknowledge that Austen lived there for 30 years
with her partner, Gertrude Tate, and used the property as a studiofor the many pictures she took of the couple’s nontraditional friendgroup.

Aside from Austen’s works, the museum displays rotating photo exhibitions, like Supranav Dash’s portrait seriesof L.G.B.T.Q. people in India, on view through August. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

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“I felt like it was incredibly important for the house to have alesbian leading the interpretation,” said Victoria Munro, who took
over the museum’s direction in 2017 and has been spearheading
the effort to bring to light Austen’s contributions to L.G.B.T.Q.
history.
Now, visitors ($5 suggested admission) can admire more than 7,000of Austen’s works, including photos challenging norms of genderand sexuality, as well as rotating photo exhibitions, often by queer
artists, and a garden celebrating the gender fluidity of plants.
Lesbian Avengers are back, too: The photographer Saskia Scheffer’s
images of the 1994 protest are being exhibited on the house’s lawn
for at least the rest of the summer.
QUEENSThe ‘People’s Beach’ at Jacob Riis ParkThe Jacob Riis Park beach at Gateway National Recreation Area in Queens has long been a haven where L.G.B.T.Q.
New Yorkers can bask in the sun and one another’s company without judgment. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

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For decades, the People’s Beach, a slice of Jacob Riis Park on theRockaway Peninsula, has been the spot where queer New Yorkers
can shed layers and inhibitions without unwelcome stares, pilingup so close to one another that it’s sometimes hard to see sandbetween the colorful towels and sunshades (free admission; $20
daily parking fee).
“It’s very warm, and it’s a real community,” said Timothy Leonard,
the Northeast program manager for the advocacy group National
Parks Conservation Association, who learned to ride his bike on
the boardwalk at Riis and, later, as a teenager grappling with hisgay identity, found a sense of belonging on the beach. “It’s just aplace of celebration.”
In recent years, the beach, part of Gateway National Recreation
Area, has been undergoing some major transformations.
The 1932 Jacob Riis Bathhouse, which was shuttered for decades,
is scheduled to reopen next summer, after the completion of an
ambitious $50 million development project. The exterior of the Art
Deco building and interior tile work are being restored, and new
amenities will include hotel rooms, a bar, a courtyard pool andlounge area, and a rooftop restaurant.
Severe erosion has closed some areas of the beach this summer,
but that’s unlikely to dampen the queer-friendly spirit, even if theparty has to shift down the sand.

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BROOKLYNMarsha P. Johnson State ParkThe entrance arch at Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
echoes the flower crowns that Johnson, a transgender rights activist, wore. It’s
the first New York state park named after an openly L.G.B.T.Q. person. Hiroko
Masuike/The New York Times

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Marsha P. Johnson, an activist and transgender icon who died in
1992, is not known to have spent time on the Williamsburg
waterfront. Yet she made history there, when in 2020 the sevenacre East River State Park was renamed for her — the first New
York state park to honor an openly L.G.B.T.Q. person.
“The renaming opened the door to reimagine the park,” said Leslie
Wright, the state parks regional director for New York City. Thepark was remodeled not only to be more resilient against climatechange, but also to honor Johnson’s legacy, with input from thelocal and L.G.B.T.Q. communities, Johnson’s family, and public art
consultants.
The park’s entrance is now marked by a colorful ornamental
gateway reminiscent of the flower crowns Johnson wore, along withthe phrase “Pay it no mind” — her favorite retort, including to a
judge who asked her what her middle initial stood for. Signs
dedicated to transgender history and awareness line the pathways.
Aside from offering a stunning view of the Manhattan skyline
Marsha P. Johnson State Park hosts the popular Brooklyn open-air
food festival Smorgasburg (Saturdays) as well as a range of
L.G.B.T.Q.-centric events for Pride Month.

9THE BRONX

Woodlawn Cemetery

The grave of the suffragists Carrie Chapman Catt and Mary Garrett Hay, who were life partners after the death ofCatt’s husband and were buried side by side at Woodlawn Cemetery. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Among the many prominent New Yorkers buried in the 400 acres ofrolling hills at Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark,are those who contributed to L.G.B.T.Q. history, such as the poet
Countee Cullen, a teacher of the openly gay writer James Baldwin;
Herman Melville, whose works like “Moby Dick” and “Billy Budd”
are suffused with homoeroticism; and the suffragists Carrie
Chapman Catt and Mary Garrett Hay, life partners for decades, whoare buried side by side.

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Patricia Cronin’s sculpture “Memorial to a Marriage” depicts her and her wife, Deborah Kass (both still living). It
was originally installed in 2002, in marble, on a burial plot the sculptor purchased at Woodlawn before same-sex
marriage was legalized in the United States.. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“It’s moving to know that there were people who lived these lives
very bravely, heroically in the past,” said Ken Lustbader, a cofounder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. “Without thesupport systems that exist today, but paving the way for thevisibility and allies that we have today through their actions.”
Each year for Pride, his organization offers a trolley tour of thecemetery, highlighting the stories behind some of the burial sites
and making them more visible by placing rainbow flags next tothem.

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