Stonewall National Monument Visitors Center Opens On The 55th Anniversary Of Historic NYC Uprising [VIDEO]

June 28, 2024 LGBT History, LGBT News

The New York Times reports:

Diana Rodriguez, the chief executive of Pride Live, which runs the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, pointed to an old-fashioned jukebox. “Go ahead, give it a whirl,” she said. I dropped in a Stonewall-branded coin and chose a song.

The machine whirred, for five seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, as Rodriguez explained that it was the same model as the one that was at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the Stonewall uprising 55 years ago — the event that ushered in an era of gay pride and activism for gay rights. Five more seconds passed before the music started — the gospel standard “Oh Happy Day.”

The jukebox is just one of the elements that mix past and present in the $3.2 million visitor center in Greenwich Village, which opens today after six years of development. The center, which is privately funded, largely through corporate donations, memorializes the bar’s history and the night in 1969 when a police raid set off several days of riots.

Fast Company reports:

The visitor center features a stark design. With sleek tile and bright lights, the space verges on Silicon Valley-style modernism. The all-white design brightens up the center, which is devoid of natural light, and provides a blank canvas that designers could “infuse with color through the stories and the exhibit.”

Stretched across the gallery’s main wall is a timeline that tells the story of LGBTQ+ activism.

Brought to life by experience design studio Local Projects, the timeline chronicles the movement toward queer liberation from pre-Stonewall to present day. Local Projects had originally planned for the timeline to jut out from the wall in a series of rainbow banners, but the plan was scrapped for something simpler.

ABC News reports:



Mark Segal was 18 years old and had only lived in New York City for six weeks when he found himself at the center of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969.

The very spot where Segal once danced, drank and took part in one of the most consequential moments in LGBTQ history is now the first LGBTQ visitor center within the National Park System.

“Before Stonewall, there were no more than 100 out activists in the entire United States of America on that first Pride,” said Segal, now 73. “Today, if you look around the world, there are millions of people who celebrate Pride. And it all started in that building.”

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