LGBT Community Center

208 West 13th Street | West Village | built 1925

Open on the map8 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1889

    Public School 16 opens an evening school for working teenage boys

    By 1889 the Italianate school at 208 West 13th Street, rebuilt around 1869, had added evening classes for boys aged 13 to 18 whose ages and jobs kept them out of the day schools. Struggling families needed the income a teenage son could bring. An applicant had to be brought in by a responsible adult who would vouch for him, or else show a certificate attesting to his identity and character.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1984

    December

    Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center buys the old school for $1.5 million

    After more than a year of fundraising, mostly from individual donors, the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center bought 208 West 13th Street from New York City in 1984 for about $1.5 million. The building had most recently been the Food and Maritime Trades Vocational High School. Six groups rented space at the start: Partnership for the Homeless, Metropolitan Community Church, the Media Network, S.A.G.E., Friends of the Earth and the Community Health Project.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1984

    The Community Health Project, the first community-based HIV clinic in the nation, sets up at the Center

    The Community Health Project, one of the Center's first tenants, was created in 1983 by merging the Gay Men's Health Project with the St. Mark's Community Clinic. Staffed at first by volunteers and a single paid coordinator, it was the first community-based HIV clinic in the country and saw about 20,000 patients a year at the building. It later became the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1985

    October

    The Harvey Milk School finds a temporary home at the Center

    In October 1985 the Harvey Milk School, which served gay and lesbian teenagers who had left or been pushed out of other schools, took temporary space in the building. The New York Times called it the first public school in the United States aimed at gay adolescents. The program was a partnership between the city school board and an advocacy group, the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, and had begun classes in April at Washington Square United Methodist Church.

    “…the Harvey Milk School was the first public school in the United States specifically for homosexual adolescents…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1987

    Larry Kramer's speech at the Center leads days later to the founding of ACT UP

    The Center's Second Tuesdays series, begun in 1985 as its first cultural program, brought in speakers from the writer Audre Lorde to the activist Larry Kramer. Kramer's emotional 1987 speech there led, a few days later, to the formation of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. GLAAD (1985), Queer Nation (1990) and the Lesbian Avengers (1992) were also founded at the Center.

    Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

  6. 1989

    Keith Haring paints the "Once Upon a Time" mural in the second-floor men's room

    To mark the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, 50 works of art were installed in the Center in 1989. Keith Haring contributed a mural, "Once Upon a Time," painted in the second-floor men's bathroom, a room that is no longer a restroom. The mural was restored in 2012.

    Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

  7. 2011

    July

    The Center hosts a wedding reception for 300 as same-sex marriage begins in New York

    The Center had helped promote the Marriage Equality Act. The state Assembly and Senate passed it in June 2011, and Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it just before midnight on June 24. Legal same-sex weddings started in the state in late July, and the Center celebrated with a reception for more than 300 guests.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  8. 2019

    June 18

    The Landmarks Commission designates the Center an individual city landmark

    Though the former school had been part of the Greenwich Village Historic District since April 1969, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated it an individual landmark on June 18, 2019, in recognition of its role in LGBT life. At the hearing, 40 people spoke in favor, among them the building's owner and representatives of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, and the commission received 260 written submissions supporting designation. No one spoke against it.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village