A Brief History of The Stonewall Inn
First built in 1843, the buildings at 51 and 53 Christopher Street were constructed as six stables, and at the time were best known for housing the delivery horses for Saks Fifth Avenue. The two buildings were converted into one connecting structure in 1930, and became Bonnie’s Stone Wall, an infamous prohibition era tearoom named after the novel by Mary Casal. A restaurant was added later. The space operated as The Stonewall Inn Restaurant until the early 1960’s when it was forced to shut down due to fire damage.
After remaining vacant for a few years, the space reopened as The Stonewall Inn, a gay ‘private club’ run by mafioso son Tony Lauria, in 1967. Why a private club? At the time, it was still illegal in NYC to serve alcohol to known homosexuals, so identifying as a private club gave the establishment some wiggle room in terms of a liquor license. A front room was outfitted with a bar, dance floor and jukebox. Behind the bar was a dimly lit back room, a favorite hangout for drag queens and hustlers.
Two things made The Stonewall Inn popular in the Sixties: First, it was known for having one of the best jukeboxes in the Village, packed with popular Motown hits; Second, it was one of the only spaces that allowed slow dancing. Inside, there was no running water behind the bar, the toilets were known to regularly overflow, and the drinks were heavily watered down before being washed in a tub of still water sitting behind the bar. Stonewall was most certainly a dive bar with a capital D.
The Stonewall Inn is probably best known as the site of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Random raids on gay bars in the Sixties were a regular occurrence. As stated before, at the time it was still illegal to serve alcohol to homosexuals (for more information about this check out the Mattachine Society’s “Sip In” at Julius’). A strict gender-based dress code was also enforced (New York’s penal code called for the arrest of anyone in public wearing fewer than three items of clothing “appropriate” to their gender), with those in violation arrested during these raids.
Just after midnight on June 28, 1969, NYPD and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board agents entered The Stonewall Inn, allegedly looking for violations of the alcohol control laws. The night was supposed to be just another routine raid. However, tensions escalated. Instead of quietly slipping away into the night, hustlers, drag queens, students and other patrons decided to fight back. They were joined by members of the neighborhood. The “Stonewall Uprising” had begun.
Shortly after the Stonewall Riots, the bar closed and remained removed from its place in queer history for many years. During that time, the space operated as a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store. It was reincarnated as a gay bar during the 1990’s (now only occupying #53), and has remained so ever since.
Today, Stonewall is considered by many historians to be the symbolic home of the US Gay Liberation Movement. The Stonewall Inn is both part of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Greenwich Village Historic District (designated in 1969) and was itself designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999. [UPDATE: The Stonewall Inn was officially designated a stand-alone NYC Historic Landmark on June 23, 2015 by a unanimous vote by NYC’s Landmark Commission – the first ever queer site).
The Stonewall Inn
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