Queer All Along A short History Of Lgbtq Life In Lower Manhattan - Written by Benjamin Serby - Downtown Alliance
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Queer All Along
A short History Of Lgbtq Life In Lower Manhattan
Written by
Benjamin Serby
ew New York City neighborhoods
are as steeped in history as
Lower Manhattan. Long defined
by its relationship to the sea,
commerce and New York’s restless spirit
of change, the one square mile at
Manhattan’s southern tip is where the
city began, where it continues to flourish
today and where any story of New York’s
LGBTQ community must begin.
As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, there is no
better time to reflect on the vital, if long overlooked, role that LGBTQ people
have played in this area’s fascinating past. While the Village, Chelsea and
parts of Brooklyn can lay claim to rich and central dimensions of the New
York’s gay history, for over four centuries, gays, lesbians, and trans and
queer people have faced down adversity, struggled for their civil rights,
and built their lives in Lower Manhattan. During that time, they have
gained recognition and acceptance for their distinctive contributions to the
neighborhood. Today, Lower Manhattan is a welcoming place of residence,
work, and leisure for LGBTQ New Yorkers from all walks of life.
1
1609-1789
Lower Manhattan was a refuge for nonconformists from the very
beginning of its recorded history—and likely even earlier, though we have
limited documentary evidence of the lives of the indigenous people who
settled the area prior to the arrival of the Dutch in 1609. While other
seventeenth-century European colonies in the New World tended to be
religious communities, New Amsterdam was a trading outpost that drew
a cosmopolitan mixture of economic migrants who by 1646 spoke an
estimated eighteen languages.
The burgeoning port’s male-dominated culture of heavy drinking
soon earned its denizens a reputation for relaxed social mores and a
propensity for “much mischief and perversity.”1 By 1648, the southern tip
of Manhattan’s liberal atmosphere had become a matter of concern to
colonial officials, who anxiously observed that the “seriously debauched”
inhabitants were too frequently “drawn from the path of Virtue and into
all sorts of irregularity.” 2
Among the vices that most alarmed Dutch authorities were interracial,
extramarital, and homosexual intimacy, all of which appear to have been
practiced as a matter of course. Nonetheless, on at least two occasions,
men were brutally tortured and put to death for the “abominable crime” of
sodomy. Both known executions, occurring in 1646 and 1660, took place
near the present-day intersection of South and Water Streets 3.
Of note, the 1646 execution was of an adult slave who had sexually
assaulted a 10 year old slave and was turned over to the authorities by
fellow slaves. The 1660 execution was of a man who was charged with
sodomizing his servant who was also a boy. The victims were also punished
- the 10 year old slave, named Manuel Congo, was flogged. The servant,
Hendrick Harmensen, was whipped and sent out of the community.
2 3
While sodomy laws remained in effect until after
independence, they appear to have been rarely enforced,
and the city’s rich and famous residents were especially
free to do as they pleased. 4 One remarkable example is
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a celebrated Prussian
military officer who served as inspector general under
General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Von Steuben first arrived in the British colonies in 1777—
accompanied by his Italian greyhound, Azor—seeking an
appointment in the Continental Army while fleeing prosecution
in Europe for sodomy. Despite the outstanding charges and
his inability to speak English, von Steuben was awarded
his desired post, and eventually rose to the rank of major
general on the strength of his administrative competence
and rigorous training protocols (his drills and tactics
manual set standards for the United States armed forces
that remained in effect until the 1840s).
While in the service, the flamboyant disciplinarian openly
courted and cohabited with younger officers, adopting several
as his legal heirs at the end of the war—with no demonstrable
effect on his record. He received an honorable discharge,
American citizenship and a congressional pension for his
service. Indeed, von Steuben’s homosexuality appears to
have been accepted without reservation. At Washington’s
request, he attended the first presidential inauguration at
Federal Hall on Wall Street in 1789 as an honored guest,
Baron friedrick wilhelm von steuben and to this day, German-Americans celebrate Von Steuben
Inspector General Under General George Washington Day every September. 5
4 5
1789-1865
With independence came legal reform and an some to build a private life around their homosexual
expansion of personal freedom in Lower Manhattan. desires and to enjoy casual same-sex encounters
In 1796, New York became the fourth state to with relative anonymity.
eliminate the death penalty for sodomy. In the early
Women had far fewer opportunities to achieve
years of the new republic, Hocquet Caritat, a French
economic independence; for many, the sex trade
émigré and owner of a library and salon at the
was their only option. Lesbian relationships among
City Hotel just north of Trinity Church, attracted
prostitutes and popular sex shows depicting
controversy for publishing erotic illustrated novels
“unnatural love” shocked reformers who sought to
that included frank depictions of lesbian orgies.6
combat the moral waywardness of waterfront zones. 9
In the less respectable quarters of the area, One particularly scandalous figure of the times
particularly the wharves lining the East and Hudson was Peter Sewally, a cross-dressing, African-Ameri-
Rivers, sexuality met with even fewer constraints. can, male prostitute employed in brothel frequented
As Lower Manhattan’s commercial seaport boomed by wealthy, white men just north of what we now call
in the 1820s, these areas became infamous vice Lower Manhattan. According court documents after
districts where prostitution and unregulated sex his arrest in 1836, Sewally adopted the alias Mary
flourished. The term “hooker” allegedly originated Jones and dressed in female clothes because he
as a reference to the sex workers of Corlear’s Hook, felt that he “looked so much better in them.” 10
just south of what is today the Manhattan side of
Sewally’s gender-nonconforming behavior was
the Williamsburg Bridge. 8 No area had a higher
far more disruptive of mid-nineteenth century
concentration of brothels, however, than Five Points,
social norms than was same-sex intimacy, as
the city’s worst slum, near what is today Foley
gender identities were rigidly defined while sexuality
Square (just north of Chambers Street along the
remained surprisingly fluid before modern notions
East River).
of homosexual and heterosexual identity came
By the 1840s, Lower Manhattan had become into being. As in the rest of the country, men and PETER SEWALLY
home to large concentrations of young male wage women in Lower Manhattan increasingly inhabited
laborers, whose economic independence and separate spheres, remaining apart from one
Early Gender Non-Conformist
geographic distance from their families enabled another for much of their waking lives. Men spent
7
6 7
their time in intensely homosocial environments like the docks, the
saloons, or in the many boarding houses that accommodated the
district’s male laborers, where same-sex couples could live without
raising suspicions.11 Men seeking casual sex with other men could find
it along lower Broadway, in theaters, parks, and other public spaces.12
At mid-century, Lower Manhattan had become a notorious place of male
prostitution and cruising. In 1846, for instance, the New York Herald
lamented “those disgraceful acts which are nightly practiced on the
Battery or in the vicinity of City Hall.” 13 Despite the tone of concern, however,
sodomy was largely tolerated at the time, and was rarely prosecuted. 14
Among the most famous denizens—and chroniclers—of this world is
the great American poet, Walt Whitman, whose writings celebrate the
people of Lower Manhattan, especially the many young men whom he
admired. Throughout the 1850s, Whitman would cruise the streets of
Lower Manhattan on his way between the Brooklyn ferry and Greenwich
Village, observing scenes and people who would inspire the poems that
appeared in his best known volume, Leaves of Grass. Many of Whitman’s
poems express an unmistakable eroticism: in “Give Me the Streets of
Manhattan,” he intones, “Give me interminable eyes give me women—give
me comrades and lovers by the thousand!/ Let me see new ones every
day—let me hold new ones by the hand every day!” 15 Recalling his time
spent in the area late in life, Whitman spoke with fondness of his visits to
the theaters on Park Row, “the Italian operas at Chambers-street [and] the
Battery,” and classical concerts “at Castle Garden, Battery,” and numerous
other locations in Lower Manhattan.16 Although he would leave New York
during the Civil War, Whitman would remain deeply attached to the places
WALT WHITMAN
and people of the area (including the Broadway omnibus drivers, whom he
sought “for comradeship, and sometimes affection”). As late as 1882, he
enthused: “The Battery—its past associations—what tales those old trees
American Poet and walks and sea-walls could tell!” 17
8 9
1865-1945
The decades following the Civil War saw increasing efforts to regulate
and police sexuality in New York City. Changing attitudes among elites
and a growing middle class were reflected in new age of consent laws. 18
Beginning in the 1870s, vice patrols cracked down on prostitution in red
light districts along Whitehall and Water streets.19 Meanwhile, those who
entered the country through Castle Garden at the west end of the Battery—
where two out of every three immigrants arrived between 1855 and 1890)
were scrutinized and screened by government officials on the lookout for
“sexual defects” and gender-nonconforming behavior. Those deemed
morally unfit for entry were detained and often deported.20
Still, Lower Manhattan remained a haven for queer life into the early
twentieth century. In the 1910s, Battery Park retained its reputation as
a prime cruising area, while nearby hotels and cheap lodging houses
offered men private space for same-sex encounters.21 Even religious
reformers’ efforts to rid the district of sin and impropriety backfired.
On Pine and South streets, the two residential facilities established by the
Seamen’s Church Institute, as alternatives to the waterfront boarding
houses became notorious hangouts for gay sailors and their admirers.22
From 1927 to 1945, Governors Island, just off the shore of Lower Man-
hattan, was home to Henry Gerber, one of the earliest American gay rights
pioneers. A German immigrant, Gerber founded the Society for Human
Rights, the country’s first gay rights organization, in 1924 while living in
Chicago. The group was soon exposed, however, and swiftly disbanded.
henry gerber
Upon relocating to New York, Gerber worked as a proofreader and editor
for the Army at Fort Jay, all the while quietly continuing his advocacy and
running a national pen pal service for gay men.23 He died in 1972, having
lived to witness the Stonewall Rebellion and the flowering of gay liberation. Early American Gay Rights Pioneer
10 11
1945-Present
After the Second World War, much of the Lower Manhattan waterfront fell into disuse as industry relocated
and the city’s economic base shifted away from shipping and manufacturing. But a cadre of young artists,
inspired by the aesthetics of the East River shoreline, took advantage of the inexpensive rents and ample
space, and put the area to new use. In the early 1950s, the pioneering art power couple Robert Rauschenberg
and Jasper Johns settled at Coenties Slip, just south of Brooklyn Bridge, where together they developed new
styles of painting in conscious rebellion against the reigning Abstract Expressionist movement that dominated
the uptown art world. By the late 1950s, the pair had attracted a larger group of influential painters and
sculptors to the area that included gay artists Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, and Agnes Martin. They came
to be known as the Coenties Slip Group.24
Martin, with her steadfast refusal to be shoehorned into any “ism,” is a particularly striking figure when
viewed in light of current discussions of privacy, gender identity and sexuality. A ferocious guardian of her own
right to self disclosure and self definition, she varyingly described herself as “not a lesbian,” “not a woman,”
and that she was “a man.” 25 While with what we know of her private life, it is clear it was driven a succession
of intimate relationships with other women, her determined insistence on privacy was not merely a matter of
personal preference but also an aesthetic and philosophical strategy for insisting on the primacy of work.
The revival of the Lower Manhattan waterfront by queer artists during the late 1950s and early 1960s
coincided with a wave of political activism in the area. One of the first public gay rights demonstrations in
American history occurred in October 1964, when ten activists, including a number of brave heterosexuals,
picketed outside the military induction center at 39 Whitehall Street to protest antigay discrimination and
persecution by the United States Armed Forces.26 This small, but significant action ushered in a new era of gay
and lesbian politics, further establishing Lower Manhattan’s role as a major site in the battle for LGBTQ equality.
Throughout the 1970s, gay rights activists gathered on the steps of the area’s government buildings to
demonstrate and to lobby officials for early LGBTQ civil rights legislation such as Intro 475, which would
have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in New York City. In June 1971, members of
the Gay Activists Alliance occupied the city’s Marriage License Bureau (located on Worth Street, just north of
Robert Rauschenberg & Jasper Johns Chambers) to claim their right to respect, dignity, and equal rights under the law.27 Five years later, after two
gay men riding the Staten Island Ferry were told not to hold hands the while on board the vessel,28 the Alliance
Members of the Coenties Slip Group successfully pressured the city’s Transportation Administration to adopt a nondiscrimination policy. Activists
12 13
returned to Lower Manhattan to publicly denounce the backlash against such hard-won victories in 1986, after
the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state sodomy laws. Protesters rallied in Battery Park on
Independence Day in sight of Lady Liberty, bearing signs imploring her to “Lift Your Torch for Us, Too.” 29
LGBTQ culture and politics in the area only grew more visible and vibrant toward the end of the twentieth
century, in the face of AIDS crisis and political homophobia. In September 1989, as 350 people demonstrated
in front of the New York Stock Exchange to protest the high price of the drug AZT, seven members of ACT UP
(AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) snuck inside, chained themselves to the VIP balcony, and dropped fake
$100 bills onto the trading floor. Among those activists was Peter Staley, an HIV-positive gay man who had
previously worked as a Wall Street bond trader.30 Four days later, drug manufacturer Burroughs Wellcome
lowered the price of AZT by 20 percent. 31
In 1988, third-generation stockbroker Walter Schubert flung open the closet door in Lower Manhattan’s
booming financial services industry when he came out as the first publicly gay member of the New York Stock
Exchange. Schubert went on to found the Gay Financial Network, and later the National Gay and Lesbian
Chamber of Commerce. 32
In 1990, Deborah Glick became the first openly gay state legislator in New York when she won election
to the Assembly. Glick worked to pass the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in 2002. In 2004, her
Hospital Visitation Bill became law, providing domestic partners equal rights to spouses and next-to-kin when
caring for partners in hospital and nursing facilities. She continues to hold office, representing a district that
includes the northern part of Lower Manhattan —the areas west of Park Row and north of Vesey Street.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, as conservative legislators in states across the country passed
laws curtailing gay rights, annual marches for marriage equality proceeded from Lower Manhattan across the
Brooklyn Bridge. When the State of New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2011, gay and lesbian couples Phyllis Siegel Deborah
flocked to City Hall to celebrate. Many would consecrate their unions at the Marriage License Bureau on
Worth Street shortly thereafter. & Connie Kopelov Glick
Today, fifty years after the birth of gay liberation, a substantial number of LGBT advocacy groups and The First Legal Same-Sex First Openly Gay State
media outlets—including Lambda Legal, GLSEN, the Anti-Violence Project, them and others—are located Marriage in New York City in 2011. Legislator in New York
in Lower Manhattan, a sign that the neighborhood’s tradition of diversity and open-mindedness endures.
As neighbors, as workers, as consumers, and as citizens, LGBTQ people have left an indelible mark on the
area for centuries, and they continue to shape it in various ways as new challenges and opportunities
arise in the present and into the future.
14 15
About the Author: Benjamin Serby is a doctoral candidate in US History at Columbia University, a museum educator, and former
Lower Manhattan tour guide. His dissertation project is an intellectual history of gay liberation in the 1960s and 1970s.
References
1
See for instance: Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (New York: Vintage, riage License Bureau,” The Atlantic , March 26, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/
2005). On the skewed sex ratio in New Amsterdam, see Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, archive/2013/03/the-prehistory-of-gay-marriage-watch-a-1971-protest-at-nycs-marriage-
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 34. license-bureau/274357/ .
2
E.B. O’Callaghan, ed., New Netherlands Laws and Ordinances 1638-74 “Ferry Fair!” Gotham: New York’s Gay Newsmagazine, June 24, 1976, p. 3, Archives of Sexual-
28
(Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1868), 12, 93. ity & Gender , http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/A7A3q0 , accessed May 23, 2019.
3
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA: 29
Jay Sharbutt, “Liberty Weekend: Battery Park Hosts Show of Its Own,” The Los
A Documentary History (New York: Cromwell, 1976), 22-23. See also: Angeles Times , July 7, 1986, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-07-ca-
http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/the-age-of-sodomitical-sin/1660s/sodomy-case-jan- 20631-story.html.
quisthout-new 30
Patricia Sellers, “The AIDS Activist and the Banker,” Fortune, August 1, 2016,
4
Thomas A. Foster, ed., Long Before Stonewall : Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality http://fortune.com/barclays-jes-staley-global-500/ .
in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 5 . 31
Will Kohler, “Gay History - September 14, 1989: ACt UP Protests the NYSE,
5
Mark Segal, “Baron von Steuben, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Franklin to Washington,” Windy City Crashing Trade Floor,” Back2Stonewall , September 14, 2018, http://www.back2stonewall.
Times, October 1, 2013: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Baron-von-Steuben- com/2018/09/today-gay-history-september-14-1989-act-protests-nyse-crashes-trading-
Dont-Ask-Dont-Tell-Franklin-to-Washington/44574.html ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ floor.html .
Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben 32
“Ten Money Questions for Walter Schubert,” Queercents, December 28, 2007, https://www.
6
Stephen Shapiro, The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel: Reading the Atlan- queercents.com/ten-money-questions-for-walter-schubert/ .
tic World-System (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2009), 159-160.
7
Several of the city’s earliest red-light districts could be found along the
Hudson River near Trinity Church, on George Street near City Hall Park, and near the East Images
River wharves. See: Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Com-
Cover: Walt Whitman, skeeze/12154 images, Pixbay, https://pixabay.com/photos/walt-whit-
mercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 (New York: Norton, 1992), 25.
man-vintage-american-author-391107/
8
Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 494.
9
Gilfoyle, City of Eros , 176. Pg. 3: J. Hinton, 1776, “A Plan of the city and environs of New York in North
10
Jonathan Ned Katz, “The ‘Man-Monster,’” Out History , accessed May 23, 2019, America”, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, Accessed 14 May 2019, https://
http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/sewally-jones/man-monster . digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-eed9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
11
Burrows and Wallace, Gotham , 796.
4: “[Baron Steuben]”, The New York Public Library Digital Collections,
Pg.
12
Ibid.
Accessed 14 May 2019, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c5831e4d-c361-1ecb-e040-
13
Ibid.
e00a18067b87
14
Gilfoyle, City of Eros , 136.
15
James E. Miller, ed., Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose Pg. 7: Unknown, “The Man-Monster; Peter Sewally, alias Mary Jones,” 1836. ”,
(Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1959), 223.
OutHistory.org, Accessed 14 May 2019, http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/sewally-jones/
16
Walt Whitman, Specimen Days & Collect (New York: Dover, 1995), 19-20.
man-monster
17
Ibid, 20.
18
Burrows and Wallace, Gotham , 1163. Pg. 9: Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1855. The Walt Whitman Archive.
19
Gilfoyle, City of Eros , 218.
Gen. ed. Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 14 May 2019. .
Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), Chapter One.
21
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making Pg. 11: Head shot of Henry Gerber, Windy City Times, Accessed 23 May 2019, http://www.
of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 89. windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Chicagos-Henry-Gerber-House-designated-National-Histor-
22
Ibid, 154. ic-Landmark/51872.html
23
“Henry Gerber,” Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame , accessed May 23, 2019,
Pg. 12: Rachel Rosenthal, 1954, Rauschenberg And Jasper Johns, Ca. 1954, The Robert Raus-
https://web.archive.org/web/20150703163555/http://www.glhalloffame.org/index.
chenberg Foundation, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/photo111
pl?item=18&todo=view_item.
24
Lori Zimmer, “Coenties Slip Group,” Art Nerd New York , June 27, 2018, Pg. 15:
http://art-nerd.com/newyork/coenties-slip-group/. Left: TJ Sengal, Phyllis Siegel and Connie Kopelov, Flickr, https://identity.flickr.com/panda.
25
Nancy Princenthal, Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames and Hudson, 2015), html
26
Andrew Belonsky, “Today in History: The First Gay Protest,” Out ,
September 19, 2013, https://www.out.com/entertainment/today-gay-history/2013/09/19/ Bottom Right: Photo of Deborah Glick, http://www.deborahglick.com/,
today-gay-history-first-gay-protest http://dev.deborahglick.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/landingimage-2.jpg
27
Garance Franke-Ruta, “The Prehistory of Gay Marriage: Watch a 1971 Protest at NYC’s Mar-
16“The Battery—
Lorem Ipsum
its past associations—
what tales those old
pride
trees and walks and
sea-walls could tell!”
- Walt Whitman
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