Conjuring History at the Stonewall Inn

As national monuments go, The Stonewall Inn registers low on the gravitas scale. This site is singularly unassuming compared to Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and the other 130 areas designated worth preserving by presidential authority. It is the only such monument where you can get a gin and tonic.

Inside the Stonewall Inn
May 17, 2024

Like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, now in the Smithsonian, Stonewall occupies a much larger place in our collective imaginations than its present-day physical evidence suggests.

Yet I was thrilled when, in June 2016, President Obama determined that this humdrum gay bar in Manhattan’s West Village belonged on a list that included the Underground Railroad and George Washington’s birthplace. With marriage equality a reality, gays were on a roll.

No event was more seismic in modern gay history than the rebellion of some two hundred gays, drag queens, and trans patrons that took place here during a late June police raid back in 1969. The present-day Stonewall Inn is a descendant of the original, which went out of business shortly after the riots.

Gay pilgrims and history-seekers worldwide now flock to the plaque outside The Stonewall Inn. Yet even before it achieved national monument status, I knew in my heart that Stonewall was hallowed ground.

In my New York years, I regularly found myself loitering outside this place, trying to imagine what it felt like to be there on that fateful night.

In 2009, during my first trip to New York with Joe, we wandered to the West Village without a conscious destination and ended up in front of The Stonewall Inn. Before we checked Broadway shows or Ground Zero off our list, I had instinctively brought him to the place I deemed most important to our joint existence.

On a subsequent trip, we went into The Stonewall for sparkling water. Neither of us frequented bars, but I wanted us to sit at this one and absorb the atmosphere.

A portrait of its Matron Saint
at Stonewall

With a little prodding, the obliging bartender gave us some architectural comparisons of the bar’s present layout to what it looked like the month Judy Garland died of an overdose. (Today’s historians debunk the myth that Stonewall came about as a mourning response to the gay icon’s death.) But this barkeep had no sense of culture, no emotional wisdom to impart, and -- despite his long employment -- shrank from the role of history’s custodian. 

I then realized I had been filling in the blanks for myself at Stonewall for some thirty years. (This excellent PBS documentary offers a less conjectural approach.)

I would not be the man I am today were it not for the events that transpired there the same summer that men first walked on the moon. Stonewall has always stood for pride, speaking truth to power, and the dignity of being oneself. For the original 200 freedom fighters who stood up for themselves at this Mafia-run tavern back in the day, it was like arriving on a new planet.