Responding to an executive order from President Trump, the National Parks Service has erased all references to transgender history and individuals from its websites and other materials, most notably for the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village — in spite of the fact that transgender people played a key role in the Stonewall Riots, and that the monument’s 2016 designation was intended to recognize and honor all who made that historic event possible.

Village Preservation has joined more than two dozen of our fellow preservation organizations from across New York State in condemning the move, noting that the telling of history should not be manipulated for political agendas, and people and communities should not be excluded or denigrated to divide and oppress. Read the letter HERE.

We take particular exception to this erasure of history because of Village Preservation’s leading role in seeking local, state, and national recognition of Stonewall, and the extensive work we have done to make historic preservation expansive and inclusive, recognizing and celebrating all histories, particularly those which have been overlooked, ignored, or denigrated. Village Preservation, in partnership with other organizations, successfully campaigned to have Stonewall listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places in 1999, a first for the federal government; and led the campaign to have it designated an individual NYC landmark in 2015, the city’s first LGBTQ+ landmark (we’ve since successfully advocated for a half dozen other sites recognized for LGBTQ+ history). We’ve also secured groundbreaking recognition and protections for sites marking Black history like 70 Fifth Avenue and 50 West 13th Street, and are currently campaigning to protect multiple sites connected to women’s history; the city’s first Spanish-language church (Our Lady of Guadalupe at 229 West 14th Street); the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, which would be our city’s first landmark connected to disability history; and several other LGBTQ+ sites. We have also done extensive work to document and illuminate transgender history and the role of transgender people in our neighborhoods, which can be found on our website.