5 Places to Visit for Pride in New York
For decades, visitors flocking to New York for Pride every June found plenty of packed bars and jubilant parties but no easy way to engage with the city’s rich L.G.B.T.Q.
history. Even Sheridan Square, the center of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising that catalyzed the gay liberation movement, had little to see for anyone interested in the queer past. “The guest experience when they got there was a bar, a bench and a park,” said Ross Levi, a director and vice president at the New York State Division of Tourism. “That isn’t terribly helpful for somebody who comes during the day when the bar is closed.
It’s not terribly helpful if you have kids that you want to bring and learn about the history of the area.” That’s about to change with a new visitors’ center at Stonewall National Monument, in Greenwich Village, set to open on June 28, the 55th anniversary of the night in 1969 when a police raid set off several days of riots.
The center will serve as a focal point of the eight-year-old, 7.7-acre monument, which includes Christopher Park and several surrounding streets.
