Exploring Local LGBTQ+ History Through Historic Images
An exciting feature of Village Preservation’s sizable Historic Image Archive is the ability to filter images by category, or “tag.” We have added tags to the more than 5,000 historic photographs in our archive, so that users can easily view images organized by their interests.
To celebrate pride, we will explore images using the “LGBTQ+” tag, which currently yields 277 results. These include landmarked buildings where important moments in the gay rights movement have occurred, such as the Stonewall Inn, or where significant LGBTQ+ figures have lived. We also have photographs of recent protests, older marches, drag shows, musicians, dancers, artists, and more, all related to LGBTQ+ history in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Today we will explore some of these images, and learn a bit about the history connected to them.
Wigstock
Many of our LGBTQ+ images come from the Jillian Jonas Collection — Downtown Drag + Performance in the 1990s Parts I and II. Jonas was the house photographer at the legendary boy bar on St. Mark’s Place in the mid 1990’s, where she captured thousands of images of drag performers who mixed gender-bending and illusion with a downtown in-your-face attitude.
Many of the images in the collection are of Wigstock, an annual outdoor drag festival. Wigstock started in 1984, when a group of drag queens performed a spontaneous drag show at Tompkins Square Park. Eventually moving to the Greenwich Village waterfront, our archive features images of the 1994 festival, when they celebrated along the Hudson River.
The Jillian Jonas Collections also feature images from the Pyramid Club, the Gay Pride Festival, Jackie 60 and various other downtown nightlife and performance venues of the early-to-mid 1990s, capturing a golden age of LGBTQ+ nightlife and performance.
Village People
Images also with the tag include those taken behind the scenes of the musical Can’t Stop the Music. Taken by Meredith Jacobson Marciano, the movie gave a fictional account of the formation of the Village People. Most well known for their song, and the corresponding dance, “YMCA”, the Village People are an iconic LGTBQ music group named in reference to Greenwich Village due to the neighborhood’s thriving LGBTQ community.
Can’t Stop the Music Film Set, Charles and West 4th Street, 1979.
Filmed primarily in Greenwich Village, the images included in the Meredith Jacobson Marciano Collection were taken on the corner of Charles and West 4th Streets in 1979.
Julius Sip-In
A particularly seminal image we have is the one above of the 1966 “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar. In response to laws that prevented businesses from serving members of the LGBTQ+ community, gay rights organization the Mattachine Society organized a “Sip-In”. Three years before the Stonewall Riots (which occurred around the corner) and based upon the “sit-ins” against segregation at Southern lunch counters, the Julius’ Sip-In was one of the very first planned actions of civil disobedience for LGBTQ+ rights.
The image above is included in the Fred W. McDarrah: Iconic Images of the Village & East Village from the 1950s and 60s historic Image archive collection. McDarrah was an author and staff photographer at the Village Voice, while there he captured hundreds of iconic village moments, such as this one.
Located in a ca. 1825 building, Julius’ opened at the corner of West 10th Street and Waverly Place in the 1860s, making it one of the longest operating bars in New York City. In 2022, Village Preservation placed a plaque on the building to commemorate this important location for LGBTQ history. That same year, the building was landmarked following a successful campaign led by Village Preservation.
To check out the image tagging for yourself, click here to access the archive, select whichever tag(s) you are interested in, and then hit “apply.” You can view one tag at a time, or as many as you’d like. And whether you’ve accessed an image by this method or directly within a collection, all of the tags relevant to an image appear hyperlinked at the top of its page, so you can see how images are organized, and easily visit any of the tags. Have fun exploring Village Preservation’s Historic Image Archive!