This text is a part of Hyperallergic’s 2025 Delight Month sequence, spotlighting moments from New York’s LGBTQ+ artwork historical past all through June.
Whether or not serving as websites of protest, celebration, communal mourning, or remembrance, public parks have all the time performed an important function within the historical past of New York Metropolis’s LGBTQ+ rights motion. Throughout the 5 boroughs, from the “People’s Beach” at Jacob Riis Park to the piers working alongside the Hudson River waterfront in Greenwich Village, these freely accessible out of doors locales have allowed traditionally oppressed queer teams to return collectively and categorical themselves with out restriction or stigma. Park landmarks like Emma Stebbins’s Bethesda Fountain in Central Park pulse with their very own LGBTQ+ historical past.
Earlier than the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, Christopher Park, the small triangular inexperienced house instantly throughout from the well-known inn on the nook of Seventh Avenue, was lengthy a shelter for queer and gender non-conforming youths (a lot of whom have been unhoused) escaping violence and abuse they skilled at house or on the streets. On the evening police raided the Stonewall Inn, it grew to become a refuge for protesters, who shaped kick strains and sang humorous songs to taunt officers. And in the course of the peak of the riots, the park was swarmed with a number of thousand individuals who had taken to the streets to confront police. Within the aftermath, the park endured as an emblem of LGBTQ+ activism, internet hosting demonstrations led by newly shaped teams just like the Homosexual Activists Alliance and the Homosexual Liberation Entrance. It was additionally the place LGBTQ+ rights advocate and Stonewall chief Marsha P. Johnson may usually be discovered panhandling for funds that may normally be redistributed to these in want.
View of George Segal’s “Gay Liberation” (1980) (picture Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
Later, queer rights and AIDS activist Bruce Voeller, who co-founded the Nationwide Homosexual Job Pressure (at this time often known as the Nationwide LGBTQ Job Pressure), proposed the concept of inserting a commemorative statue within the park on the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall rebel. Louisiana arts patron Peter Putnam agreed to finance the mission, and Pop Artwork sculptor George Segal was commissioned on the stipulation that the art work “had to be loving and caring, and show the affection that is the hallmark of gay people … and it had to have equal representation of men and women.”
The ensuing sculpture, “Gay Liberation” (1980), shares many traits of Segal’s figurative plaster sculptures. 4 unidentified life-sized figures — a masculine couple standing and a female couple seated on a bench — are proven in relaxed poses. Though metropolis officers introduced the fee in July 1979, public opposition and a two-year renovation of the park would delay its unveiling till June 1992.
Entrance to Christopher Park, positioned on the nook of Christopher Road and Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village (picture Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
In 1999, Christopher Park was positioned on the New York State Register of Historic Locations together with different notable Stonewall websites, and was additionally added to the Nationwide Register.
Like a lot of LGBTQ+ historical past, the memorialization of Stonewall has often confronted criticism for its whitewashing of the rebel and its exclusion of the trans and gender non-conforming people who spearheaded the preliminary rebel, together with Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, and Sylvia Rivera. The people in Segal’s sculpture, as an illustration, seem White and cisgender.
“It would be great to have a sculpture that was more representative of the diversity of the community, in particular, those who were really behind the Stonewall uprising, who were Black and Brown trans women and butch lesbians,” Cathy Renna, communication director on the Nationwide LGBTQ Job Pressure, informed Hyperallergic.
Sylvia Rivera at a 1970 rally for the group, Road Transvestite Motion Revolutionaries, which she based with Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson (picture through Wikimedia Commons)
“We had the full backing of the city, and then we got a new mayor, and it hasn’t happened. You do the math on that one,” Renna mentioned.
In 2021, group activists took issues into their very own arms and put up their very own guerrilla bust honoring Johnson in the course of Christopher Park. Created by artist Jesse Pallotta, “A Love Letter to Marsha” (2021) was later displayed on the Lesbian, Homosexual, Bisexual and Transgender Neighborhood Heart.
Jesse Pallotta’s guerrilla bust, “A Love Letter to Marsha” (2021)
Metropolis officers formally renamed Brooklyn’s seven-acre waterfront East River State Park after Johnson in 2020, making it the primary state park in New York to be named after an LGBTQ+ particular person, in line with the New York Metropolis LGBT Historic Websites Venture. A floral gateway added in 2023 greets guests with the phrases “Pay it no mind,” Johnson’s motto that the “P” in her identify stood for, and her retort when confronted with questions on her gender.
The erasure of trans group members and folks of shade from the reminiscence of Stonewall stays a permanent risk, particularly in the course of the second time period of Donald Trump’s presidency, which has been characterised by relentless assaults on trans and gender non-conforming folks nationwide. Earlier this 12 months, the Nationwide Park Service eliminated references to trans and queer folks from its webpage describing the Stonewall riots. And final week, the Supreme Courtroom dominated that public faculty techniques are required to supply dad and mom with the selection to “opt out” their youngsters from course materials that conflicts with their spiritual beliefs — particularly, books with LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
“We’re seeing very active, very intentional erasure of queer history, whether it’s monuments, whether it’s in schools, whether it’s in government entities,” Renner mentioned.
On Thursday, June 26, the Nationwide LGBTQ Job Pressure and the Worldwide Imperial Courtroom Council added the names of seven trans and nonbinary activists to the Stonewall Inn’s Wall of Honor, which posthumously honors LGBTQ+ heroes from all sectors of artwork and activism.
“ We’re a resilient community. We’re certainly not giving up,” Renner mentioned. “And I think that if you look at the results of the recent election in New York, maybe not too far in the future, we will have a candidate [Zohran Mamdani] who has promised millions of dollars for trans-affirming care, so asking for some historic recognition is gonna be a pretty low lift.”
