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LGBTQ Freedom Trail
For Pride Week 2015 The History Project invites you to revisitimportant sites and moments in the rich LGBTQ history of Boston.
By Joan Ilacqua and Andrew Elder, on behalf of The History Project
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The first official Gay Pride March in Boston was held on Saturday, June 26, 1971. The march, a distinctly political event, followed a week of workshops on issues related to the emerging lesbian and gay community, including coming out and gay spirituality. The march stopped and rallied at four major points: the Bay Village bar Jacques, Boston Police Headquarters on Berkeley Street, the Massachusetts State House, and St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tremont Street. At each stop, a speech was made and a list of demands was presented. The march concluded with a closet smashing and book dumping on the Boston Common.
On the 45 th anniversary of the first Pride, we are highlighting a few of Boston’s myriad LGBTQ historical sites. Each of these sites represents an aspect of Boston’s LGBTQ history, and you’ll learn something more about the places you walk past every day, about where you live, work, worship, and play.
Jacques Cabaret - 79 Broadway
Jacques opened in 1938, and became a gay bar in the mid 1940s. After serving as the city’s only lesbian bar from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Jacques evolved into a venue for drag performers. Boston’s first Gay Pride March began at Jacques, which is now the city’s oldest surviving LGBTQ establishment, to confront a number of community concerns. Of primary importance was the club’s increasing problem with misogyny and the treatment of lesbian patrons.
Charles Street Meeting House - 70 Charles Street The Charles Street
Meeting House was once home to several early lesbian and gay activist groups and publications. The Gay Community News (GCN), which ran from 1973 to 1992 as a weekly and until 1999 as a quarterly, published its first issue here. GCN was an influential publication in Boston, across the country, and around the world. The fourth issue of GCN described the Charles Street Meeting House as “best known to the gay community as a gay community
center.” The Meeting House hosted a multitude of events including Gay Liberation Front weekly dances for gay youth and the gay crisis hotline. The hotline was staffed by volunteers who talked with people who phoned in with no one else to turn to, and was one of the very few gay help resources in the early 1970s.
Public Garden The Public Garden was commissioned in 1837, almost 200 years after the Boston Common was designated a public park in 1634. The three-acre lake in the Public Garden contains a small island that was once a peninsula, but the peninsula proved to be so popular with lovers that it was cut off from the land to prevent “misuse” of
the spot. The Public Garden was long a popular gay cruising site in Boston, especially before World War II through the 1980s. The Four Seasons hotel now stands where hustlers once patrolled opposite the Public Garden, and in the 1980s, the city changed traffic patterns to discourage drivers from circling and cruising “The Block”.
The Public Garden is alsohome to a swan couple, Romeo and Juliet, two female swans who have been nesting here since 2005.
The Public Garden is a site for other moments in Boston’s LGBTQ history, too. The Public Garden is where Boston’s most famous (or infamous) drag queen, Sylvia Sidney, received his stage name. Sylvia, who preferred male pronouns, described the moment in an interview with The History Project:
“I went down to what they call Queen’s Row in the Public Garden. It was a dirt road. They had benches. Some older queens were there. They said, ‘Oh, hi, honey! How are you? Aren’t you cute!’ I wasn’t really cute at all. They said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Sidney.’ They said ‘We’ll call you Sylvia.’ They called everybody a name. There was a Bette Davis; there was a Helen Morgan. There was a queen who looked like Katharine Hepburn. She had a twin brother – the Hepburn sisters.”
Cathedral Church of St. Paul - 138 Tremont Street
St. Paul’s Cathedral was constructed in 1818 and was the fourth Episcopal Church built in Boston. It was the first building in the Greek Revival style constructed in Boston, and was expected to be finished with a frieze of St. Paul over the pediment. The Nautilus Sculpture, which now adorns the pediment, was completed in May 2013 as a symbol of spirituality beyond religion.
St. Paul’s has a long history of supporting the LGBTQ community in Boston. Some of the earliest public healing services for people with AIDS were held here. The Episcopal faith was one of the first Christian groups to recognize same-sex marriages and to create a same-sex marriage ceremony. The church also allows for the leadership of lesbian and gay bishops.
St. Paul’s is also supportive of the trans community in Boston, hosting the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance and providing a space for events for the trans community. Members of the St. Paul’s community have been marching against homophobia and for LGBTQ rights in Boston Pride for years, and generally hold a postmarch celebration for all who wish to attend.
At the first Gay Pride March in 1971, however, it was outside St. Paul’s that a list of demands were presented, denouncing centuries of religious persecution of homosexuals.
Club Cafe’s Napoleon Room - 209 Columbus Avenue
The Napoleon Club opened as a speakeasy in 1929 and later operated as a private club with a sizeable gay clientele. It wasn’t until 1952, though, when under new ownership Napoleon’s became a gay bar and eventually a piano bar. Regular crooners were joined by such luminaries as Liberace and the Queen of Queens herself, Judy Garland, who visited the club every night for a week shortly before her death in 1969. The Napoleon’s piano bar was decorated with bold black and red décor, and a collection of Napoleonic artifacts and motifs.
The Napoleon Club closed in 1998 and much of the contents of the establishment put up for auction. Its legacy lives on, though, in the Napoleon Room, a piano bar and lounge in Club Café, an LGBTQ restaurant and club on Columbus Avenue. On display in the bar and lounge, on loan from the collections of The History Project, are three large stained glass panels that originally hung over the bar at the Napoleon Club.
DEATH WITH DIGNITY - A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE
LGBT rights and fundamental fairness continue to be embraced throughout our communities. Supporters advocate for equitable and inclusive healthcare because they are HUMAN RIGHTS...Death with Dignity is also a HUMAN RIGHT, and a grassroots movement across the Commonwealth and the nation.
In Massachusetts, we are working to expand options at the end of life. Join the Death with Dignity movement. Contact Marie Manis at mmanis@compassionandchoices.org or call 617-379-0033 to get involved today.
www.compassionandchoices.org
A R T S & C U LT U R E
29 Stanhope Street
29 Stanhope Street, on the edge of Back Bay and the South End, has been home to a number of LGBTQ organizations over the years, including (to this day) the Boston Living Center. Founded in 1989, the Living Center provides a wide range of services for people living with HIV.
Stanhope Street has also served as the home of The History Project for nearly 15 years. Founded in 1980 by a group of activists, archivists, and historians, the mission of The History Project is to document and preserve the history of Boston's LGBTQ communities and to share that information with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public. A number of LGBTQ organizations have occupied space at 29 Stanhope Street over the years, including the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Speak- OUT Boston, Dignity, the Prime Timers, the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, and (still today) the Bisexual Resource Center, the Living Center, and The History Project.
The History Project is Boston’s LGBTQ community archives. During the month of June, the History Project will run a special Pride tour. For more details, visit historyproject.org.
Joan Ilacqua began volunteering for The History Project in 2013, and joined the organization’s Board of Directors in 2015. A graduate from UMass Boston’s Public History program, Ilacqua is an oral historian at the Center for the History of Medicine.
Andrew Elder has been an archivist with The History Project since 2006 and has served on the organization's Board of Directors since 2013. By day, Elder is an archivist at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
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