Following our lawsuit filed in February, on Monday Village Preservation and our co-plaintiffs secured a court-enforceable settlement that requires the National Park Service to restore the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument. Earlier this year, the federal government removed the Pride flag there, the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights and history. Just eight days later, Washington Litigation Group and Lambda Legal sued on behalf of us and our co-plaintiffs, arguing the government’s actions illegally targeted the LGBTQ+ community. In the settlement, the government agrees to rehang the Pride flag on the monument’s official flagpole within seven days and maintain it permanently, with the federal court retaining jurisdiction to enforce the agreement. Read more details HERE. 

This is a tremendous victory for our efforts to preserve and tell a full and complete picture of our history. Village Preservation has a long relationship with Stonewall. We were the co-nominator in 1999 for Stonewall to be added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, the first site ever recognized by the federal government for its relationship to LGBTQ+ history. In 2015, we led the successful campaign to secure NYC landmark designation for Stonewall, making it the first site ever landmarked in NYC due to LGBTQ+ history. And in 2016, we were a strong supporter of the successful push to have Stonewall named a national historic monument— the highest level of recognition by the federal government of a historic site, and the first ever for LGBTQ+ history. 

Recognizing and preserving LGBTQ+ history has long been an important part of Village Preservation’s mission and an important part of our neighborhood’s character. Recognizing civil rights and social justice history, as well as underrepresented histories, continues to be a major focus of our preservation efforts.