Stonewall Inn

Overview

The Genovese-run juke-joint at 51–53 Christopher Street where same-sex dancing was a rare right, and where six nights of resistance beginning June 28, 1969 became the founding rupture of the modern LGBTQ civil-rights movement.

The building at 51–53 Christopher Street was constructed as horse stables in the 1840s, consolidated by architect William Bayard in 1930, and operated as Bonnie's Stonewall Inn Restaurant from 1934 until a fire gutted the interior in the early 1960s. In March 1966, a cluster of Genovese crime family associates led by Anthony 'Fat Tony' Lauria purchased the shuttered space for roughly $3,500 (pooling their shares with Zookie Zarfas, Tony 'the Sniff,' and Joey) and reopened it on March 18, 1967 as a private membership bar. The license dodge was standard: because New York's State Liquor Authority refused to serve gay establishments, the Stonewall operated as a bottle club, collecting admission fees ($1 on weekdays, $3 on weekends) and sign-in sheets of pseudonyms rather than sell liquor outright. Matty Ianniello, a higher-ranking Genovese associate, reportedly skimmed a cut of profits. Manager Ed Murphy ran day-to-day operations. The Genovese family paid an estimated $1,200 a month in bribes to the NYPD's 6th Precinct to allow the bar to operate, and raids were typically pre-announced. The bar's conditions were deliberately substandard: glasses were rarely washed, a hepatitis outbreak was attributed to unsanitary bar practices, and there was no rear fire exit. Yet none of that negated what the Stonewall gave its patrons: the freedom to dance with someone of the same sex. In a city where bars could be shut for 'disorderly conduct' merely for a same-sex slow dance, the Stonewall's two connected rooms, one with a main bar and dance floor, one with a secondary bar and jukebox stocked with Motown, soul, and pop singles, constituted a genuine sanctuary, especially for those pushed out of every other space: Black and Latino gay men, drag queens, trans women of color, homeless queer youth, and lesbians. Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, who witnessed the 1969 uprising, recalled: 'It was the only bar where we could slow dance. Being able to dance with someone of the same sex changed everything.' In the early hours of June 28, 1969 (reportedly without the usual advance warning) an eight-officer plainclothes team led by NYPD Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine raided the bar under a warrant citing unlicensed liquor sales. Approximately 200 patrons were inside. The raid proceeded by routine: check IDs, detain anyone in drag, load those arrested into a wagon. What broke the routine was the crowd's refusal to comply or disperse. As officers made arrest after arrest (thirteen on the first night alone) those assembled outside the door grew angrier and larger; estimates put the crowd at five to six hundred by the early morning. The precise trigger is disputed and probably irrelevant: multiple simultaneous small resistances (patrons refusing to move, an arrested butch lesbian fighting back) fused into a surge that pushed the police inside the bar and barricaded them there. The uprising continued for six nights, with a second peak on June 29 drawing hundreds more and further confrontations on July 2–3. The crowd's composition reflects who the Stonewall had always served: the most marginal and least protected members of the queer community. The roles of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (both of whom were regulars and both of whom were present during the uprising) have been debated. Johnson, by her own later account, arrived around 2 a.m., after the raid was already underway. Claims that she or Rivera threw 'the first brick' are disputed by participants including activist Mark Segal, who has noted there was no brick. What is documented is that both women became indispensable to the movement that emerged from the uprising, co-founding Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to serve homeless trans youth. The bar closed by late 1969, its liquor license revoked and the community's attention turned to organizing. The space cycled through a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a clothing store before a bar called Stonewall opened at 51 Christopher in 1987; by 1990 Jimmy Pisano had reopened 53 Christopher as 'New Jimmy's,' soon renamed Stonewall, running it until his death from AIDS-related causes in early 1994. After a further period of mixed management, including controversy over a second-floor dance floor opened in defiance of a Community Board ruling, the bar lost its liquor license and closed in 2006. Current management (Bill Morgan, Tony DeCicco, Kurt Kelly, and lesbian investor Stacy Lentz) took over around 2007 and reopened in March of that year. A 3,700-square-foot National Park Service visitor center opened at 51 Christopher Street on June 28, 2024, coinciding with the MTA's renaming of the Christopher Street–Sheridan Square subway station to Christopher Street–Stonewall station. The Stonewall today operates as a working bar hosting drag shows, karaoke, community events, and LGBTQ advocacy, while functioning simultaneously as one of the most documented civil-rights sites in U.S. history. Its historic designations track the slow official acknowledgment of LGBTQ history: National Register of Historic Places in 1999 (the first LGBTQ site so listed), National Historic Landmark in 2000, New York City Landmark in 2015, and (by President Obama's proclamation on June 24, 2016) the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights. Christopher Street Liberation Day, launched June 28, 1970, one year to the day after the raid, began as a march of roughly 5,000 from the Stonewall's block to Central Park; it became the template for Pride marches worldwide.

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