Gay street

Gay Street is a short, angled street that marks off one block of Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Although the street is part of the Stonewall National Monument (a U.S. national monument dedicated to the LGBT-rights movement), its name is likely derived from a family named Gay who owned land or lived there in.

In the late 19th century, when Greenwich Village was the hub of New York City’s African-American community, many of the residents on Gay Street were POC and also musicians.

gay street manhattan location

The name of Gay Street is very fitting to the nature and history of Greenwich Village, New York's most famous home to the LGBTQ+ community. Between Waverly and Christopher just west of 6th Avenue is a short dogleg called Gay Street, which contains a number of handsome Federal-style buildings and has a varied lore. The name of the street predates Greenwich Village’s gay community by several decades, but the derivation is in dispute.

Community protests erupted in late when news that the City Department of Buildings (DOB) and the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had allowed the developer to do illegal construction at 14 Gay Street that had endangered it and neighboring buildings. Village Preservation is dedicated to preserving the architectural heritage and cultural history of Greenwich Village, the East Village and NoHo. Village Preservation advocates for landmark and zoning protections and monitors proposed and planned developments and alterations to landmarked and historic sites throughout our neighborhoods.

View current and past campaigns to protect landmarked properties. View applications to the LPC for work on landmarked properties. But the origins of its name are hotly debated, with the LGBT rights movement and abolitionism often cited as the source of its unusual nomenclature. And while the street certainly has strong connections to gay liberation and the African-American struggle for freedom, the history behind the name is a little murkier, and a little more complicated to unravel, than one might expect.

Gay street is unique in several respects. With a bend at its northern end, you can never really see the street in its entirety.

The three- and four-story Federal and Greek Revival-style houses which line much of its length give Gay Street a remarkably intimate feel. As narrow as the street is now, it was actually widened on its east side in Gay originally meant carefree, happy, exuberant. However, by the late 19th and especially the early 20th century, the connotations of the word gay came to be increasingly associated with a lifestyle unfettered by the conventions of the day.

As time went on, this especially came to mean freedom from sexual conventions. But many were not. The name appears to date back to at least Thus although the street is just one short block from the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement, that has nothing to do with the origins of the name as is sometimes assumed. He also did not become the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard until , thus blowing a large hole in this theory.

In fact, the exact origin of the name of Gay Street does not appear to be conclusively established. However, most authorities on the matter believe that it was likely a family name since most but not all streets in the area were named for local families. Of course that would be a coincidence of a particularly charming and improbable nature — not unlike the Village itself.

A version of this article originally appeared in 6sqft. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. All Campaigns View current and past campaigns to protect landmarked properties. Tour of Stonewall Visitor Center July 8, Village Preservation. Via Wiki Commons. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.