Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn is a gay bar and recreational tavern at 53 Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which led to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. When the riots occurred, Stonewall was one of the relatively few gay bars in New York City. The original gay bar occupied two structures at 51–53 Christopher Street, which were built as horse stables in the 1840s.
The original Stonewall Inn was founded in 1930 as a speakeasy on Seventh Avenue South. It relocated in 1934 to Christopher Street, where it operated as a restaurant until 1966. Four mafiosos associated with the Genovese crime family bought the restaurant and reopened it as a gay bar in early 1967. The Stonewall Inn was a popular hangout for gay men, particularly for youth and those on the fringes of the gay community. Stonewall operated as a private club because it was not allowed to obtain a liquor license; police raided the bar frequently, in spite of bribes from the owners. The Stonewall riots of June 28 to July 3, 1969, took place following one such raid.
The bar went out of business shortly after the riots, and the two buildings were divided and leased to various businesses over the years. In 1990, Jimmy Pisano opened a new bar at 53 Christopher Street, which was initially named New Jimmy's before becoming Stonewall. After Pisano's death in 1994, his boyfriend Thomas Garguilo took over the bar, followed by Dominic DeSimone and Bob Gurecki. The Stonewall Inn closed in 2006, and it reopened in March 2007 after Bill Morgan, Tony DeCicco, Kurt Kelly, and Stacy Lentz acquired the bar. The structure at 51 Christopher Street became a visitor center for the Stonewall National Monument in the 2020s.
The buildings themselves are architecturally undistinguished, with facades of brick and stucco, while the original bar's interior has been modified significantly over the years. The modern bar hosts various events and performances, and its owners also operate an LGBTQ advocacy organization. The Stonewall Inn became a tourist attraction and a symbol of the LGBTQ community after the riots, and various works of media about the bar have been created over the years. In part because of its impact on LGBTQ culture, the Stonewall Inn is the first LGBTQ cultural site designated as a National Historic Landmark and a New York City designated landmark. The bar is also part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the LGBTQ rights movement.
Background and early history
The Stonewall Inn buildings at 51–53 Christopher Street, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, were constructed as double-height horse stables. The older of the two buildings is 51 Christopher Street, which was built in 1843 by A. Voorhis and expanded to three stories in 1898. The other structure, 53 Christopher Street, was built in 1846; it was originally used by Mark Spencer before becoming a bakery operated by Baptiste Ycre in 1914. The then-owner of the buildings, Henry J. Harper, hired the architect William Bayard in 1930 to combine and redesign the structures in the Arts & Crafts style. The two structures were reclad in stucco, and the third story atop 51 Christopher Street was removed. The ground floor continued to host a bakery until 1933, while the Ycre family lived on the second floor.Meanwhile, Vincent Bonavia had opened Bonnie's Stone Wall at 91 Seventh Avenue South, near the Christopher Street buildings, in 1930. Bonnie's Stonewall might have been named after The Stone Wall, a lesbian autobiography by Mary Casal. The historian David Carter wrote that, even in the 1930s, this may have been an attempt to subtly welcome queer women. The bar was a secret speakeasy that illegally sold alcohol during Prohibition in the United States; as a consequence, it was raided in December 1930. Bonavia relocated to 51–53 Christopher Street in 1934, after Prohibition was repealed. The architect Harry Yarish installed a large vertical sign on the facade and a doorway with columns around the entrance to 53 Christopher Street. The interior was designed in the style of a hunting lodge.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission wrote that, despite a lack of documentation on Stonewall's early history, "sources suggest that it was among the most notorious of the tearooms operating in the Village in the early 1930s". The restaurant hosted various banquets and weddings, as well as events including a 1935 dinner for the Greenwich Village Association and a 1961 reunion party for performers involved with the play Summer and Smoke. The eatery had become Bonnie's Stonewall Inn by the 1940s and the Stonewall Inn Restaurant by the 1950s or 1960s. The interior of the restaurant was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, and the structures at 51 through 61 Christopher Street were sold in March 1965. Sources disagree over whether the new owner was Burt and Lucille Handelsman or Joel Weiser. The restaurant had definitely shuttered by 1966. After the restaurant closed, the buildings were vacant; the signs above the ground-story windows were removed, and the second story of the facade was patched.
Original gay bar
Renovation and conversion
Greenwich Village had become an LGBTQ neighborhood as early as the 1930s. The neighborhood's LGBTQ community was originally concentrated around Greenwich Avenue and Washington Square Park, but, by the 1960s, had started to move westward along Christopher Street. To cater to the growing LGBTQ community, in 1966, four mafiosos associated with the Genovese crime family paid $3,500 for the Stonewall Inn, turning the restaurant into a gay bar. The team of owners were led by "Fat Tony" Lauria; he paid $2,000 for the restaurant, and three other mobsters named Zookie Zarfas, Tony the Sniff, and Joey paid $500 each. It was one of several gay bars operated by the Genovese syndicate in New York City. Matty Ianniello, a Genovese mafioso who controlled various mob-operated bars, collected a portion of the bar's profits.The owners believed that a business catering to the LGBTQ community might be profitable; in return, they demanded regular payoffs for protection. Stonewall's owners could not obtain a liquor license because state law in the 1960s did not allow bartenders to legally serve LGBTQ people. At the time, the New York State Liquor Authority regarded any LGBTQ person in a bar as engaging in disorderly conduct. Frequent raids against gay bars forced most to close, except for those operated by mobsters. Furthermore, gay people who were arrested risked losing their jobs, homes, and families. By contrast, members of private clubs could bring their own alcoholic beverages under New York state law. Accordingly, Lauria and his co-owners acquired a private club's license for Stonewall, as they intended to serve LGBTQ people without obtaining a license from the NYSLA.
After acquiring the buildings, the owners renovated the exterior, blacked out the windows for privacy, and reinforced the wooden front doors with steel plates in anticipation of police raids. The new operators added peepholes and several locks to the front doors, and they removed the columns that flanked the original entrance. The operators also placed 2×4 pieces of wood behind the windows so the police could not easily enter through the windows during a raid. The interior was painted black because that color was used in other gay bars and it would hide the interior's burn damage. The new owners retained the Stonewall Restaurant's old name so they did not have to replace the exterior sign. At the time of the conversion, LGBTQ bars and straight bars had similar facades, though LGBTQ bars tended to have an intentionally rundown appearance so straight patrons would be discouraged from going to these bars.
Operation
Stonewall opened as a gay bar on March 18, 1967. It had two dance floors in addition to a long bar, jukebox, tables, and seating booths. The facade was nondescript, and the only external indication of the club's existence was a small sign proclaiming that it was a private, members-only club. When it opened, Stonewall "was a small gay bar just like any other", as the LGBTQ newspaper Gay News would later describe it. Its manager was Ed Murphy, an ex-convict who was known for sitting motionless around the bar and watching patrons.Clientele
Visitors were greeted by bouncers who inspected them through the peepholes in the door. The bouncers accepted almost any LGBTQ individual who wanted to enter, but they screened out straight patrons and undercover police officers. Admission was granted to would-be patrons who "looked gay" or who had visited the club before, as well as new patrons who were accompanied by someone that could vouch for them. People under the legal drinking age were frequently admitted. In keeping with private club regulations, patrons were required to sign a logbook upon entry; the logbook also served to screen out straight patrons. The visitor logbook frequently contained pseudonyms such as Donald Duck, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland. If a visitor wished to leave the bar and return the same night, the bouncers would stamp their hand with individual ink. Any customer who passed the screening process paid an admission fee of $3 on weekends and $1 on weekdays.Patrons were predominantly in their teens or early twenties, though men in their late twenties and early thirties congregated around the main room's bar. Most patrons were young gay men of various races and occupations, though Stonewall did also accept women, transsexuals, and transvestites. It is unknown to what extent women patronized the bar, though several observers interviewed by David Carter described the bar as being almost exclusively male. These observers also said that almost all of the lesbians at Stonewall were butch lesbians. Due to differing terminologies used in the late 1960s, it is also unknown to what extent transvestites visited the bar, but Carter writes that the number of transsexual and transvestite customers was not insignificant. Many homeless young men slept across the street in Christopher Park and would often try to enter so customers would buy them drinks.
The Stonewall Inn was a popular hangout for gay men. The bar was called "one of the most active spots in town currently; very crowded on weekends" in a 1968 guidebook, and it was New York City's only gay bar that allowed open dancing. It was also located on a busy road and was cheaper than comparable gay bars. The artist Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt recalled that Stonewall was one of the only bars in the city where couples could slow dance together, while the historian Martin Duberman said that the bar was frequented by a "non-vanilla mix of people: people in suits and ties, street hustlers, drag queens, a few dope pushers, a fair number of nonwhites". The New York Daily News called the bar a "mecca" for the LGBT community in the neighborhood, and Newsday wrote that "Here the young men with the delicate wrists and the bobby pins in their hair come to dance the night away with one another". One contemporary patron described the bar as being accepting of "anyone who was in the margins of gay society", but that this gave the bar a "trashy, low, and tawdry" feel. Homeless youth and drag queens frequented the bar by 1969; it was one of the only places where they were socially accepted, and the admission fee meant that additional drinks did not require a tab. Other LGBTQ patrons shunned Stonewall because of its mob ownership and the drag queens' presence.