For decades, visitors flocking to New York for Pride every June found plenty of packed bars and jubilant parties but no easy way to engage with the city’s rich L.G.B.T.Q. history.
Even Sheridan Square, the center of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising that catalyzed the gay liberation movement, had little to see for anyone interested in the queer past.
“The guest experience when they got there was a bar, a bench and a park,” said Ross Levi, a director and vice president at the New York State Division of Tourism. “That isn’t terribly helpful for somebody who comes during the day when the bar is closed. It’s not terribly helpful if you have kids that you want to bring and learn about the history of the area.”
The building that houses the new center sits next door to the current Stonewall Inn bar (which opened in the early 1990s). But back in the late 1960s, an earlier bar of the same name occupied both spaces, which were connected by an interior doorway. Not long after the riots, the original Stonewall Inn went out of business, and the connecting doorway was bricked up.
