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Gaining a foothold: conserving Los Angeles' queer Eden(dale)

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Gaining a foothold: conserving Los Angeles' queer Eden(dale)

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GAINING A FOOTHOLD

CONSERVING LOS ANGELES’ QUEER EDEN(DALE)

by

Rafael Francisco Fontes

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Rafael Francisco Fontes

ii

A city is composed of different kinds of men;
similar people cannot bring the city into existence.
Aristotle, Politics

iii

Dedication

When I first began to learn about LGBTQ history over a decade ago, I realized just how
profoundly and rapidly the society I’d been born into had changed in the past century. I
benefitted from the efforts of so many who questioned, loved, suffered, fought, and gave their
lives to leave the world a better place for people like me. While this thesis deals with some of
these histories, it is clear that the vast majority have vanished into obscurity. For those legacies
that I had access to, the fact that I didn’t always have a lot in common with these individuals in
terms of background, interests, and values ultimately proved to be inconsequential. Engaging this
research helped me to understand their struggles, empathize with their pain, put aside my own
biases, and see our common humanity. Nobody is perfect, and LGBTQ people have always been
especially complex and contradictory in the context of their time and place. Like me and those I
love, former generations have done their best to make sense of and respond to the circumstances
in which they found themselves. This thesis is dedicated to all of them, to all of us, and to those
who’ve yet to come.
iv

Acknowledgments

Strange as it may seem to preface this thesis with a confession, I feel it necessary to state
that I do not consider myself to be a radical activist of the kind whose legacies are dealt with as
part of this work. I also do not apply the label of “artist” to myself–any cursory reading of my
fourth chapter will make it apparent that I highly value art–and the extent to which I can be
considered a scholar will be up to each reader to decide for themselves. Unlike so many of us, I
was lucky enough to grow up in a time and place where I was encouraged to be myself by those
who mean the most in my life. As a gay man, proud to be both Mexican-American and Jewish, I
recognize that my journey would’ve been profoundly different had I not been so fortunate.
Perhaps because of this, I cannot view the society we live in as monolithically oppressive or
hopelessly broken. Too much good has happened to me to believe that our world is beyond
repair, though it is certainly not perfect and there is much to be done.
No acknowledgment would be complete without first recognizing my parents. They gave
me life itself, and as educators devoted their entire careers to ensure that I, like the so many
hundreds of children that they taught and mentored over the years, would be able to know
ourselves better and navigate our lives through learning. My parents came from different cultural
backgrounds, but the shared value they place on education has been a constant. Whether with the
Fontes-Ahumada or Becker side, my most cherished memories consist of time spent with
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The busier life gets, the more I realize how valuable
and rare this time can be. Recent events have only made it clearer how much my family means to
me, and I hope to see more of them as time and circumstance allows.
In a practical sense, this thesis would simply not have been possible without the support,
guidance, and encouragement provided by Trudi Sandmeier. A few years ago, I found myself in
the privileged position of weighing offers of admission and comparing graduate schools. In the
middle of this process, several things stood out to me about USC’s Heritage Conservation
program. To start with, Los Angeles was closer to my immediate family than any of the other
schools that I had applied to. More importantly, the thesis topics being pursued by graduates of
this program were not only engaging but often informed by the lived experience of the students
pursuing them. This spoke to my desire to understand how history can help us make our
surroundings more meaningful, and the possibility that I could write a thesis like this seemed too
v

good an opportunity to pass up. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, my first meeting with
Trudi as a prospective student made it clear that she takes a genuine interest in our wellbeing and
growth as individuals. This support was vital, continuing throughout my experience as a USC
graduate student. She not only helped me believe that I could write a thesis dealing with LGBTQ
history, but that I could do so in a way that would be of value beyond my own self-interest.
I’m likewise grateful to Shayne Watson and Dr. David Sloane, the additional readers on
my thesis committee. Shayne’s editorial eye and professional expertise were critical, and
professor Sloane’s perspective when it came to having me challenge my own gendered language
tendencies were much appreciated. I thank my entire committee for not only providing me
feedback and expertise but also for their endless patience as I kept pushing back my own due
dates. I also owe a debt to the individuals I interviewed while researching my case studies. In
addition to Russell Gamble, Wes Joe, Benjamin Clavan and Peyton Hall, Lambert Geissinger
and Melissa Jones gave me valuable insight when it came to the role played by the City of Los
Angeles in landmarking. I’m profoundly grateful to Durk Dehner, S.R. Sharp, and Marc
Bellenger of the Tom of Finland Foundation, not only for letting me interview them but for being
so generous with their time as to give me a tour of the house. The importance and uniqueness of
the Tom of Finland house cannot be understated, and the increasing recognition it has received in
recent years is justly deserved.
With its pressures and academic demands, graduate school can–and frankly will–take an
emotional toll. Neglecting one’s personal life for a flurry of professional activities and academic
tasks is profoundly alienating. This can be difficult to explain for those who haven’t gone
through it themselves, and the importance of my friends and colleagues in heritage conservation
cannot be understated. To Erik, Kelsey, Tennesee, Haowen, Camille, Lindsay, Daniel and
Jackson especially, I’m grateful that we could keep each others’ spirits up, commiserate, and
continue to support each other even as we leave the program. I also owe an unbelievable debt of
gratitude to the staff and docents of The Gamble House. Thank you for trusting me to assist, in
my own small way, with the care and stewardship of a truly special place. My time as a Scholar
in Residence has reinforced the fact that change often comes whether we seek it or not, and how
we respond to its challenges is at the core of what we do. I look forward to a career of engaging
change in an intentional and meaningful way.

vi

Table of Contents

Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi
List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Subject Terminology ................................................................................................................... 4
Professional Terminology ........................................................................................................... 7
Chapter 1: The Push to Preserve LGBTQ L.A. .............................................................................. 9
Queering Place and Public Memory ........................................................................................... 9
Heritage Conservation in Los Angeles ..................................................................................... 16
Queering L.A.’s Heritage .......................................................................................................... 19
Coming out in Edendale............................................................................................................ 29
Chapter 2: The Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine Steps ........................................................ 32
Significance............................................................................................................................... 32
Process ...................................................................................................................................... 38
Outcome .................................................................................................................................... 41
Chapter 3: The Black Cat Tavern ................................................................................................. 48
Significance............................................................................................................................... 48
Process ...................................................................................................................................... 54
Outcome .................................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 4: The Tom of Finland House ......................................................................................... 69
Significance............................................................................................................................... 69
vii

Process ...................................................................................................................................... 77
Outcome .................................................................................................................................... 81
Chapter 5: Advancing LGBTQ L.A. ............................................................................................ 85
Learning from Edendale ........................................................................................................... 85
Cast out of Edendale ................................................................................................................. 95
A Communal Imperative......................................................................................................... 104
Queering Integrity ................................................................................................................... 110
Pursuing a Stable Heritage ...................................................................................................... 112
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 120
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 124

viii

List of Figures

0.1 – Map of the focus area with case study locations .................................................................... 3
2.1 – The Hay Residence .............................................................................................................. 40
2.2 – The Mattachine Society Steps .............................................................................................. 47
3.1 – The Black Cat Tavern .......................................................................................................... 60
4.1 – The Tom of Finland House .................................................................................................. 76

ix

Abstract

The present-day neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park, historically known as Edendale,
contain a significant concentration of historic resources associated with Los Angeles’ Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities from the early to late-twentieth
century.
1
This thesis begins by illuminating the earliest efforts to preserve historic resources
specifically for their associations with Los Angeles’ LGBTQ history. It traces the origins of local
interest in doing so, then focuses on three case studies to explore the complexities of
landmarking at the local level. These case studies, the Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine
Steps, The Black Cat Tavern, and the Tom of Finland House, are linked both in terms of their
socio-spatial context and their exposure to Los Angeles’ framework for recognizing and listing
sites as Historic Cultural Monuments. These crucial efforts to center LGBTQ history within the
framework of Los Angeles’ landmarking process yielded results that merit increased
understanding within a vast, multi-centric metropolis where the pressure for change and
redevelopment continues to increase.

This thesis highlights the unique challenges and advantages that LGBTQ historic resources face,
lending perspective that can guide professionals, advocates, and the communities they serve. It
also stresses the need to move beyond standard measures of integrity that privilege tangible
history, since traditional forms of interpretation are not alone enough. Forward movement here
depends on a critical engagement with emerging planning tools, combined with an honest
acknowledgment of the web of struggles and tensions facing LGBTQ communities today. These
steps, while only a starting point, should be taken to ensure that historically queer places
continue to resonate for the living communities whose stories they represent.

1
For the purposes of this thesis, an “LGBTQ historic resource” is any site, building, of place whose significance is
derived predominantly because of its LGBTQ associations.
1

Introduction

The presence and contributions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ)
people cannot be denied. They are a valid and visible part of public life, society, and culture in
the United States. Two decades into the twenty-first century, a diverse and ever-growing field of
scholarship attests to the vibrancy of these people and the communities they have built. Though
this work serves to provide understanding and recognition, it also delves deeper into queer folks’
respective histories, development, and contributions to U.S. history. While valuable in the
academic and social sense, extant scholarship has more recently begun to engage critical
connections between queer communities more broadly and their relationship to the historic built
environment. This thesis seeks to further an understanding of these connections. By focusing on
the process of landmarking, it highlights one of the ways that sites with queer historical
associations are not only recognized, but also protected and interpreted for posterity.
While preservation practices at the local level differ by community, understanding the
challenges, complexities, and opportunities that arise from applying preservation tools to queer
sites is a critical task. The city of Los Angeles for instance, despite its size and complexity, is
often overlooked in terms of its queer significance.
2
Beyond New York City and San Francisco,
many cities and communities around the country have played vital roles with respect to this
history. L.A.’s role has been cited by eminent LGBTQ historians such as Lillian Faderman. In
writing the book Gay L.A. with the journalist Stuart Timmons, Faderman “discovered that,
historically, more lesbian and gay institutions started in Los Angeles than anywhere else on the
planet, and that L.A.’s multifaceted, multiracial, and multicultural lesbian and gay activism
continues to have a tremendous impact worldwide.”
3
The extent to which this impact has been
successfully reified as part of the city’s urban landscape constitutes a central theme of this thesis.
Because the city of L.A. is so large geographically, a specific area of focus, in this case,
will be the historic neighborhood of Edendale, which is today split mainly between the

2
Owing to its colloquially being referred to as such, and simply for brevity’s sake, the acronym L.A. will be used to
refer to the city of Los Angeles unless it appears fully spelled out in quotations.
3
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A., Second (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: University of
California Press, 2009), 3.
2

contemporary neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park (Fig. 0.1).
4
The first chapter, The
Push to Preserve LGBTQ L.A., attempts to briefly trace the development of local interest in
applying planning and preservation tools to historical sites associated with LGBTQ persons,
activities, and events.
5
While a general interest in L.A.’s urban significance predates the
twentieth century, the conceptual shift towards viewing urban landscapes as a form of public
history is a critical factor. Key actors and activities largely during the 1980s and ’90s propelled
this shift. The process by which academic interest slowly transitioned into action in the realms of
preservation and land use planning is admittedly a convoluted one, but it must be addressed to
accurately contextualize subsequent case studies.
The first of these cases, The Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine Steps, centers on a
single-family home and is outlined in the second chapter. Its significance derives from it being
the site of the first meeting of the Mattachine Society, a group that is overwhelmingly considered
by historians to be the first organization to successfully form and pursue equal rights for LGBTQ
individuals. As the first LGBTQ-associated site in L.A. to be considered for landmarking at the
local level, the fact that the effort to do so proved inconclusive leaves much to be examined.
While the homesite itself was not physically at risk, community interest in its history would
resurface in 2011, a full decade after the initial attempt at landmarking. In this latter instance, the
concrete steps adjacent to the house were designated to ensure that this critical history did not go
unacknowledged.
The third chapter will focus on The Black Cat Tavern, a gay bar that became the site of
the first major LGBTQ protest in response to a police raid on New Year’s Eve 1966. In L.A., this
case stands as the first local landmark to be designated specifically for its LGBTQ historical
associations. Initiated by neighborhood activists in 2008, the effort to successfully shepherd it
through a bureaucratic and politicized landmarking process required the cooperation and support
of several entities and individuals. Vigorous debate as to what tangible aspects of the site were

4
Both Silver Lake and Echo Park are bounded and recognized within the city of L.A.’s Neighborhood Council
System. While the Edendale name was used up through the 1950s, it is the only historic name that accurately
describes the entire area of interest while including all three case studies in its boundary. The relevant
contemporary designations will be used when discussing the landmarking process underlying each case study. See
Chapters 2, 3, & 4.
5
Within the US and throughout much of the English-speaking world, the LGBTQ acronym stands for Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning.
3

Figure 0.1: The three case studies in relation to contemporary neighborhood boundaries. Sunset Boulevard is
highlighted in red, in addition to the L.A. river in blue. The blue body of water next to the first case study is the
Silver Lake reservoir. Map made from GIS data courtesy of L.A. County. The case studies are:
1. The Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine Steps
2. The Black Cat Tavern
3. The Tom of Finland House
4

worthy of preserving took place, with decisions being reached as part of a negotiation between
property owners, community activists, and planners. Despite the building being saved,
the (then) extant gay bar was ultimately replaced with a more upscale gastropub, which today
includes a historically relevant interpretive program as part of a more culturally “mainstream”
space.
Another single-family property, The Tom of Finland House, stands as the second
LGBTQ-centric property to successfully be listed. As the part time residence and L.A.
workspace of the gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen, it represents an advancement of the former
two cases in terms of outcome. While it wasn’t listed or called out in traditional archival sources
like the former two cases, a concerted effort to establish its significance was undertaken between
the property owners (with preservationist support) to ensure that it would continue to function as
it had been after Laaksonen’s passing. Today, it is not only an active house museum, but also the
headquarters for the Tom of Finland Foundation, which is devoted to safeguarding erotic art and
erotic arts education. Alongside this program, the house also functions as a living resource for a
queer community of researchers, curators, students, and enthusiasts.
The fifth chapter will analyze and compare these case studies, to better understand how
varying factors led to equally varied outcomes. The usefulness of intersectionality will be
addressed as a possible means of telling a broader story to increase community interest in
preservation, advocating for an honest acknowledgment of ongoing tensions among LGBTQ
communities generally. These efforts, occurring in the context of a living city, must also account
for the political and economic forces currently shaping the built environment. The hope here is to
open the way for suggestions that can be relevant for future attempts at landmarking similar sites
in L.A., as more places of this nature exist and are already being considered for nomination.
These points will be reiterated in the conclusion, which will also call out some unanswered
questions and emerging methods that may prove useful in the pursuit of a more stable heritage.

Subject Terminology:
In his influential work, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz begins with the questions
that people engage as part of any given moment of self-realization. Typically individual in
origin, this process involves several inquiries when collectively expressed: Who are we? Where
do we come from? What does it mean to be who we are? While Paz frames these in terms of
5

national, cultural, and ethnic identity, they can easily be applied to a sense of self concerning
gender and sexuality.
6
For many this may take the form of more specific variants: What does it
mean to be Male or Female? Gay or Lesbian? Bisexual? Masc or Femme? Non-binary?
Transgender? What does it mean to be Queer in any gendered or sexual sense? The post-World
War II history of LGBTQ people in the U.S. may be viewed as a continuing sequence of
responses to these questions. The ability to conceive of and ask them–almost always a
challenging thing in and of itself–was inevitably followed by responses both individual and
collective. The implications of this dialectic would go on to inspire the significant acts and
struggles that have come to define what it means to be LGBTQ for many today.
Whether seen as part of a spectrum or other theoretical model, the language used to
understand these concepts is constantly evolving. The need for tools to assist those for whom
these questions are relevant has never been greater, with an understanding of appropriate
terminology being a primary means of addressing this. For the sake of academic and professional
relevance, subsequent chapters will take their cues from recently published historic context
statements.
7
While this may sound straightforward, terminological approaches are hardly
standardized. Seemingly insignificant discrepancies, upon closer inspection, may work to
diminish the credibility of documents that are intended to function as sources of discursive
authority for professionals concerned with documenting and interpreting this history. A salient
example of this can be found in the LGBT Historic Context Statement for the city of L.A. Its

6
Paz employs the metaphor of a self-conscious adolescent caught between childhood and adulthood. This serves to
introduce the themes of his first chapter, The Pachuco and Other Extremes, where he uses his observations of
Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles to inform a definition of Mexican identity as opposed to a North American
(US Anglo) one. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. (New York, Grove Press,
1962), 9.
7
A historic context statement is “a narrative document that provides the framework for survey professionals to
identify potential historic resources and evaluate them according to established federal, state, and local criteria for
designation.” These documents are not inherently required as part of a preservation ordinance. They are usually
prepared by historians and preservation consultants, with oversight and guidance from relevant city planners and
officials. Their drafting and adoption by a municipality can boost preservation efforts by highlighting locally
specific historical themes, making it easier to justify significance for the resources associated with them. “Historic
Context Statement Outline and Resource Guide Available | Office of Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,”
February 5, 2013, https://preservation.lacity.org/news/historic-context-statement-outline-and-resource-guide-
available.
6

authors opted for caution by employing the word “queer” only with respect to the visual arts,
where “queer art” is a frequently defined category within professional circles.
8

To advocate for more inclusivity, this thesis defers to the national theme study, LGBTQ
America, which takes the LGBT acronym and appends the letter “Q,” short for queer or
questioning. Stemming from its root meanings of “strange” or “peculiar,” the historical use of
“queer” to denigrate LGBTQ people broadly should not come as surprise to anyone familiar with
the conformist cultural attitudes held by most Americans during the mid-twentieth century.
Megan E. Springate, the lead editor for the LGBTQ America theme study provides additional
considerations in her introductory chapter:

Recognizing that the word queer is charged, and uncomfortable to some, the scholars
wanted to acknowledge the importance of groups like Queer Nation who influenced the
trajectory of both LGBTQ and national histories in part through their reclaiming of the
word, as well as to have the initiative be explicitly inclusive of those who, for personal or
political reasons, do not feel represented by lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender
identifiers.
9

Its inclusion as part of this thesis also acknowledges the complexities, nuances, and ambiguities
that characterize this topic. The LGBTQ acronym, at present the most prominent in an ever-
shifting array of alphabet soup combinations, is a predominantly anglophone one that does not
always translate easily to other languages and cultures. It nonetheless continues to serve as a
useful tool for describing individuals who self-identified as different, and by extension any
behavior considered to be sexually “deviant” or outside of an established norm of gendered
expectations.
Though LGBTQ will be used to refer to this history generally, it must be acknowledged
that the case studies which will be discussed largely center on the stories and struggles of

8
The LGBT acronym, “used to broadly describe the entire community of ‘un-straight’ people,” was chosen for the
L.A. context statement owing to the shifting connotations surrounding the use of the word “queer,” which “for
decades… was used as a derogatory adjective for gays and lesbians, but in the 1980s gay and lesbian activists
began to use it to self-identify. Like many reclaimed words, they are considered acceptable when used by a
member of the group, but not by outsiders.” While the earnest desire to avoid causing offence is admirable here,
this position implies that any reader who is not an “outsider” cannot be trusted to objectively grapple with
triggering language embedded in their own history, which is an undeniably difficult one. Teresa Grimes, “LGBT
Historic Context Statement,” Historic Context Statement, Survey LA (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Los
Angeles Department of City Planning, September 2014), 3.
9
Megan E. Springate, “Chapter 2: Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study” (Washington, D.C.:
National Park Foundation, October 31, 2016), 5–6.
7

cisgender, and predominantly white, gay men.
10
This was not intentional during the formulation
of the thesis topic, but reflects a broader set of cultural biases addressed in greater detail as part
of the first and fifth chapters. Now obsolete terms such as “homophile” will be used in the
appropriate context, with terms appearing within quoted sources and citations unaltered and
footnoted where necessary.
11
The case studies addressed not only deal with the personal realms
of sexuality, but also the contentious processes of politically-informed community activism and
planning. Out of respect for the wishes of individual actors, it must be acknowledged that some
additional information has been kept out of this thesis as requested during oral interviews.

Professional Terminology:
The subject focus of LGBTQ history in L.A. is viewed through the lens of heritage
conservation. In the U.S., this is part of a professional field of activity commonly referred to as
historic preservation, which directly involves the preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and
reconstruction of historically important sites and places. The movement to document and save
places in the U.S. has roots going back to the nineteenth century, occurring in a context where
private interests pursued these aims beyond the realm of public oversight.
12
The public efficacy
of these ideas–their ability to gain steam and successfully push for shifts in policy at the federal,
state, and local levels–is due in large part to general anger and elite dissatisfaction over the
aesthetic and social changes wrought by urban renewal in the post-World War II period.
13
In
pushing to save the architectural treasures of a collective, if too often idealized, American past,
the historic preservation movement succeeded in establishing a regulatory framework with the
passing of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966. This legislation, in addition

10
The word cisgender refers to any person who identifies with the gender that they were assigned at birth, while the
use of the word Gay, which originally meant “happy,” began “during the 1930s, [when] men who were attracted
to men or in same-sex relationships began calling each other ‘gay,’ although the term did not really catch on until
the 1950s. Although homosexual women were referred to as lesbians by this time, gay was also used as an
umbrella term that included homosexual men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders.” Grimes, “LGBT Historic
Context Statement,” 2.
11
The term homophile, “an alternative word for homosexual or gay that was used briefly in the middle of the
twentieth century,” is explored in greater detail in the first case study (see Chapter 2), as it conveyed specific
etymological meanings that responded to the socio-political context of its time. Ibid, 3.
12
In western Europe, this interest evolved out of conceptual debates over how to preserve, which was typified by the
contrasting attitudes of Violet Le Duc (a French architect and restorer) and John Ruskin (a British art critic and
philanthropist). U.S.-based grassroots movements advocating for preservation can be traced back to the Mount
Vernon Ladies Association, which sought to preserve George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon.
13
Activists and writers such as Ada Louise Huxtable and Jane Jacobs were key figures in this effort, garnering and
working to organize popular opposition to urban renewal policies generally.
8

to setting precedents for the listing, documentation, and protection of historic resources, has also
resulted in a general professionalization of the movement.
14

The use of “heritage” to describe the activities of this professionalized movement stems
from the need for a more inclusive term, whereas “conservation” is meant to bring the profession
(linguistically) into alignment with how it is normally referred to worldwide. In this context,
heritage “is therefore ultimately a cultural practice, involved in the construction and regulation of
a range of values and understandings.”
15
In short, using heritage as a term allows traditional
preservation discourse to move beyond simply saving beautiful buildings to include “the act of
passing on and receiving memories and knowledge… as an act of communication and meaning-
making. [Heritage] also occurs in the way that we then use, reshape and recreate those memories
and knowledge to help us make sense of and understand not only who we ‘are’, but also who we
want to be.”
16
The conceptual flexibility of this term is appropriate in light of the LGBTQ
communities being discussed which, like the notion of “heritage” itself, are largely defined in
terms of intangible aspects relating to self-identification, inter-personal relationships, and forms
of engagement with broader publics via activism, art, and other means.
Embracing the intangible side of historic preservation–embracing heritage conservation –
is necessary to do justice to the history being discussed. This is not only true for LGBTQ
communities, but for all minorities and people whose stories, perspectives, and narratives cannot
be sufficiently conveyed by inert architectural monuments and sites alone. While the
preservation/rehabilitation of tangible historic resources and districts plays an integral role in any
sound urban and environmental policy, it must engage notions of heritage to stay socially
relevant. This engagement is above all characterized by the intangible processes that are
undertaken to center the meaning of people in place. The efficacy of landmarking as a tool for
conserving heritage in this regard merits assessment for developing a nuanced understanding of
how much space heritage can reasonably be expected to claim. In many ways, the pursuit of a
richer, vibrant, and more meaningful urban landscape depends on it.

14
Grassroots and community efforts at preservation still occur frequently and are welcomed by the profession.
These efforts (though not guaranteed to work) are often successful, even if the activists or communities involved
don’t self-identify as preservationists/conservationists outright.
15
Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London ; Routledge, 2006), 3.
16
Ibid, 2.
9

Chapter 1
The Push to Preserve LGBTQ L.A.

Queering Place and Public Memory:
LGBTQ communities in the United States have been historically oppressed and
marginalized. This oppression has been pervasive enough that the existence of LGBTQ people
was rarely, if ever, officially acknowledged as part of the public realm. By extension, this
marginalization renders LGBTQ history and heritage as routinely forgotten, invisible, and lost.
Whether by negligence or malicious intent, such obfuscation is a cruelty to communities where
the search for self, communion, meaning, and purpose in a hostile context is especially
poignant.
17
Significant literary figures have elaborated on the importance of historical awareness
in this regard, not only as relevant for establishing memory, but also for providing a template
upon which future endeavors may depend:

Despite the often illusory nature of essays on the psychology of a [community], it seems
to me that there is something revealing in the insistence with which a people will
question itself during certain periods of its growth. To become aware of our history is to
become aware of our singularity. It is a moment of collective repose before we devote
ourselves to action again.
18

Increasing consciousness and self-reflection as a prerequisite to action is an idea that
LGBTQ people have long understood and sought to engage. These efforts to claim space in the
realm of public memory stem from the fact that LGBTQ people have existed in every place,
culture, and time. Since this has not been reflected within the historical record, many of the
earliest efforts at what was initially termed “gay scholarship” were undertaken as a direct
response to this condition of erasure. While the earliest instances of addressing this occurred
during the late 1960s and ’70s, they strengthened as LGBTQ people began to claim more space

17
For instance, “it might not be the lack of evidence of an LGBTQ presence that explains [their] general absence
from the historical record but rather scholars’ concealment of that evidence and unwillingness to interrogate the
possibilities of alternative or nonnormative sexualities and gender expressions in their interpretations of this
history.” Leisa Meyer and Helis Sikk, “Chapter 3: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and
Queer (LGBTQ) History in the United States” (National Park Foundation, October 31, 2016), 9.
18
Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, 10.
10

politically and culturally towards the end of the twentieth century.
19
Self-consciously pioneering
in its initial phase, scholarship borne out of the gay liberation movement was also heavily
politicized, and tended to focus on "categories of activities, identities, and communities,”
ultimately “yielding a bounty of biographies, community studies and theoretical works.”
20

For a variety of reasons too numerous to list here, societal attitudes have shifted
dramatically since the twenty-first century began, with the U.S. and Western Europe often
viewed as leaders in this respect.
21
While said gains are typically framed as socio-political in
scope, positive developments can also be seen in the field of public history and the agencies
charged with managing historic resources at the federal, state, and local levels. This is evidenced
by the recent publication of a theme study in 2016, commissioned by the National Park Service
(NPS) in partnership with the National Parks Foundation, entitled LGBTQ America. As the
centerpiece of an LGBTQ Heritage Initiative, this theme study contains thirty-two chapters and
was informed by the expertise and peer review of over forty-eight historians and scholars
specializing in the fields of gender and sexuality.
22
It marks the first time that this prominent
federal agency, which describes itself as “America’s storyteller,” has so forcefully and
meaningfully devoted itself to making an official narrative reflect the fact that “queer
Americans… consistently played important roles in American cultural life.”
23

LGBTQ America is significant because it asserts that history is not only limited to the
literary fora typically associated with elite academic, professional, and cultural circles. It speaks
to a broader truth that historical memory, for individuals and communities alike, is also

19
Jonathan Ned Katz, an activist/academic who cofounded the Gay Academic Union in 1973 and wrote the first
“gay” history book in 1976, is a founding figure in this regard. Jim Downs, “The Education of Jonathan Ned
Katz,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2016, B11-13; Jonathan Katz, Gay American History:
Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. : A Documentary History (New York: Crowell, 1976); Gerard Koskovich,
“Chapter 4: The History of Queer History: One Hundred Years of the Search for Shared Heritage” (National Park
Foundation, October 31, 2016), 26–27.
20
Daniel Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale: Bohemian Los Angeles and the Politics of Sexual Identity, 1918–1953”
(Los Angeles, Calif., United States, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), 11.
21
The US campaign for marriage equality, which became prominent in 2004 with the State of Massachusetts’
adoption of same-sex marriage and culminated nationally with the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v.
Hodges, is often viewed as the most significant (and recent) indicator of societal acceptance. While this change
has been an overwhelmingly good one in terms of achieving visibility and equal rights, shifts in attitudes towards
LGBTQ people have never been consistently linear or always positive. Moreover, levels of understanding and
acceptance are not uniform and still vary widely nationwide.
22
“LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History” (National Park
Foundation, October 31, 2016), 5–11.
23
“Telling All Americans’ Stories: LGBTQ Heritage Introduction (U.S. National Park Service),” National Park
Service, February 9, 2017, https://www.nps.gov/articles/taas-lgbtqheritage-intro.htm.
11

embedded in place. Efforts to situate public history geographically are what allow it to play a
more active role within the living urban landscapes where it is so often overlooked.
24
This is not
only true in terms of the tangible spaces that framed significant events, but also in the relation of
those events to historical developments of both national and local importance. Mark Meinke, the
founder and chair of the Washington, D.C. based Rainbow History Project, asserts that “LGBTQ
people created, and continue to create, communities across the nation to provide for their needs,
provide support when needed, and more recently to celebrate their shared past and historic
sites.”
25
What Meinke describes–the celebration of a shared past and its component place-based
histories–depends on the assumption that said places will continue to exist in some form or
another. While place can be a powerful thing conceptually, it can also be taken for granted
physically, and it’s no stretch to assume that most laypeople frequently do so. For anyone
critically interested in places and their relation to public memory, the physical continuity of sites,
buildings, and their embedded historical associations, should never be assumed outright.
As the stability of place is ultimately contingent upon a variety of factors that vary by
situation, the most prominent ones addressed by LGBTQ America is that of heteronormative bias
and (lack of) representation.
26
This bias is not only evident in a society that has only just recently
begun to reassess its opinion(s) of LGBTQ people, but it is also apparent within professional
fields that have typically laid claim to objectivity:

Lack of representation … is the result of historical and structural forces in American
history and historiography that have foregrounded the elite and powerful in celebrations
of the predominantly white men who are popularly perceived as the driving forces behind
the exploration, settlement, expansion, and military and political success of the United
States. … It was not until the new social history that began in the 1960s became more
widespread in both academia and cultural resource management that historians began to
focus on the rich, complex, and important histories of “those of little note”: non-male,

24
Max Page, an architectural historian and prominent preservationist, asserts that “memory is impossible without
society—families, communities, nations—but it is also impossible without physical places on which to ground it,
for they bear witness to past events.” Max Page, Why Preservation Matters (Yale University Press, 2016), 21.
25
Mark Meinke, “Chapter 1: Prologue: Why LGBTQ Historic Sites Matter” (Washington, D.C.: National Park
Foundation, October 31, 2016), 4–5.
26
Heteronormativity “is the assumption that heterosexuality is the default, preferred, ‘normal’ state for human
beings because of the belief that people fall into one or other category of a strict [male and female] gender binary.
Thus it involves the further assumption that someone’s biological sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender roles
are aligned. Such assumptions marginalize [LGBTQ] people.” John Harris and Vicky White, A Dictionary of
Social Work and Social Care (Oxford University Press, 2018).
12

non-citizen, non-wealthy, non-Protestant, non-heterosexual, and non-white (and various
combinations of these identities).
27

The significance of these forces being recognized in a federally sanctioned report cannot be
understated, but they are not the sole preservation challenge that LGBTQ historic resources
face.
28
Whether urban or rural, the specific geographies of relevant places can be problematic,
with many “have[ing] historically been in economically marginal urban areas because such
locations were less likely to attract negative attention from neighboring businesses and because
they were cheaper for LGBTQ persons and organizations not particularly blessed with
affluence.”
29
These “everyday” spatial qualities–viewed by many as low-key, nondescript, or
perhaps even “seedy”– are arguably character defining features in and of themselves. Whether
intentional or serendipitous, they functioned as a sort of spatial camouflage (or alternatively
signaling queer presence to the initiated) in an otherwise hostile environment.
That the development of marginalized communities, and their constituent histories,
unfolded in marginal spaces should come as no surprise. What is often less clear is how the
physical nature of marginal spaces themselves can frequently hamper preservation efforts.
Confronting tangibility in any effort to preserve this history often involves spaces that may
otherwise seem unremarkable or less than noteworthy to the average person. Even for seasoned
preservationists, this can make important places difficult to recognize given the standards by
which a resource’s integrity is measured and evaluated.
30
The subjectivity inherent in these
standards may be problematic, but it also provides the necessary flexibility for preservation
professionals to make judgement calls based on a variety of factors that affect a place’s ability to
“tell its story.” Bias will always be present to some degree, working to influence the process of
resource evaluation in ways that vary widely by community.

27
Springate, “Chapter 2: Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study,” 3.
28
Resources of this nature are key to countering the adverse factors of bias and representation because “other places
included in … [landmarking] programs reflect LGBTQ histories, but those histories were not included in the
nominations.” Ibid, 7.
29
Meinke, “Chapter 1: Prologue: Why LGBTQ Historic Sites Matter,” 4.
30
As defined by the National Park Service, a property’s integrity is measured by a professional review, conducted
through the lens of “seven aspects or qualities: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and
association.” Jeff Joeckel, “Integrity: Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Historic Aids to Navigation to
the National Register of Historic Places (Bulletin 34),” July 11, 2001,
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/upload/NRB-15_web508.pdf.
13

While context varies, development pressure is especially acute in urban zones where
monied interests are keenly aware of the implications that landmarking may have on property
values. Growth in historic urban cores usually takes the form of “redevelopment,” and is an
inherent part of a dynamic urban economy. Because these processes are by nature exploitive and
disruptive, they are necessarily subject to regulation. Preservation tools, be they landmark
designations or districts, contribute to the process of checking and controlling development. This
is especially true when said activities endanger places that matter as part of the historic built
environment generally. The failure–or perhaps unwillingness–to recognize and control special
interests is another factor contributing to the process by which marginal spaces and places are
generally ignored and simply allowed to disappear.
Relevant research on marginalized communities, which is a necessary (and ascendant)
aspect of scholarly interest today also seeks to understand these communities’ relation to space
and place. In order to progress, this work has had to reach beyond the traditional expectations
placed on professional silos as part of a greater push towards interdisciplinarity. The ability of
some fields–and arguably the willingness of practitioners–to diversify their own professional
frameworks is necessary for these efforts to succeed. A significant example lies in the way that
academic history, and by extension acts of public history or preservation generally, seek to make
claims to authority via facts and evidence. Despite a common perception of evidence-based
analysis as scientific, fixed, and unassailable, the interpretation of historical evidence is
constantly being negotiated.
31
This negotiation is itself a political one, and subject to changes
that come about with the passing of time and hindsight necessary to see the subsequent effects of
historical events and developments.
Extending received professional and knowledge boundaries also depends on the inclusion
of diverse individuals, especially those with unique backgrounds and perspectives, as part of any
“historicizing” process generally. The field of preservation is a key here because it is something
the broader public is more likely to engage given its geographic scope. Because of this, the
inclusion of LGBTQ scholars and preservationists as part of “re-understanding” the historical

31
While this process of authoritative claiming is unique to every context, it has been defined in the area of heritage
studies by some scholars as part of an “authorized heritage discourse.” This discourse “is reliant on the
power/knowledge claims of technical and aesthetic experts, and institutionalized in state cultural agencies and
amenity societies … tak[ing] its cue from the grand narratives of nation and class on the one hand, and technical
expertise and aesthetic judgement on the other.” Smith, Uses of Heritage, 11.
14

record has been instrumental in centering their own history, an effort that scholar Gail Dubrow
highlights as having noticeably gained steam by the end of the twentieth century:

In recent years the preservation movement has taken the first steps toward gaining greater
visibility for gay and lesbian heritage. The National Trust’s 1996 annual conference
feature[d] the first social gathering for gay and lesbian preservationists, followed by the
organization’s approval of an educational session for the 1997 meeting. Subsequent
meetings in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have featured field sessions that
highlighted the cities’ gay and lesbian landmarks and neighborhoods.
32

This needed work continued to advance alongside the social, political, and legal progress of the
late 2000s and ’10s, but it can hardly be considered complete two decades into the twenty-first
century. The publishing of LGBTQ America, as central to the NPS’s LGBTQ Heritage Initiative
itself, was never intended as a culmination to the process that Dubrow describes. Its ability to
recognize this history as a valid facet of a more inclusive national narrative not only validates the
scholarship that proceeded it but is also meant to catalyze action. To that end, it has established a
set of goals with respect to future preservation efforts nationally. These four main goals are:

- To increase the number of listings of LGBTQ-associated properties in the National
Register of Historic Places [NRHP], including amendments to current listings;

- To identify, document, and nominate LGBTQ-associated National Historic Landmarks
[NHL], including amendments to current designations;

- To engage scholars and community members who work to identify, research, and tell the
stories of LGBTQ associated properties and to preserve and nominate properties for
appropriate levels of recognition; and

- To encourage national park units, National Heritage Areas, and other affiliated areas to
interpret associated LGBTQ stories.
33

The first three goals are intended to address the issue of underrepresentation outright by
increasing instances of landmarking at all levels. The fourth addresses professional bias via
interpretation and, one may hope, serve as a means of countering historical erasure and societal
hostility generally. As the “official list of our country's historic buildings, districts, sites,

32
The National Trust, which originally began as a federally affiliated entity, is today the foremost non-profit
advocacy group for preservation efforts nationwide. Gail Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and
Rainbow Flags,” in Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation (JHU Press, 2003), 284–85.
33
Springate, “Chapter 2: Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study,” 6.
15

structures, and objects worthy of preservation,” the NRHP is a critical tool for increasing the
visibility of LGBTQ historic resources.
34
If listed, then subject resources have been evaluated
according to a very high standard of professional scrutiny with respect to their significance
and/or integrity. NHL designation may provide an even greater boost, not only because listed
resources have been subject to an even higher level of evaluation, but also owing to them being
considered “exceptional because of their abilities to illustrate U.S. heritage.”
35

The goals spelled out in LGBTQ America are a necessary start, with the looming
challenge of the first two becoming immediately apparent in a subsequent assessment of LGBTQ
places currently listed at the national level. Of the over 95,000 listings made since 1966, only ten
LGBTQ-centric places were listed at the time of the report’s release. The derth of listings was
immediately recognized and acted upon by the profession, with that number more than doubling
to twenty-three four years later.
36
To date, four of these sites have been listed as National
Historic Landmarks. Only one, The Stonewall Inn, has been listed as a National Monument (it
achieved this designation in 2016, and was the first LGBTQ resource to reach National Historic
Landmark status as early as 2000).
37
While each listing is compelling for its context and
significance, only three of the currently listed resources are in California, a state that has been
consistently prominent in so much of the development of LGBTQ communities and their
respective struggles in the twentieth century.
38
While there is undoubtedly a large number of
historically significant LGBTQ sites in California, making sure they’re represented as part of the
NRHP and NHL programs is only one way to emphasize and protect the history they’re
associated with.

34
“What Is the National Register of Historic Places? - National Register of Historic Places (U.S. National Park
Service),” accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/what-is-the-national-
register.htm.
35
“National Historic Landmarks Program (U.S. National Park Service),” accessed September 26, 2019,
https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1582/index.htm.
36
This number is current as of the start of 2020, and will only continue to increase as professional and general
interest gains steam nationwide. “Sites Listed on the National Register of Historic Places That Interpret LGBT
History.” (NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, December 1, 2019), http://www.nyclgbtsites.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/12/List-of-NR-Noms-1.pdf.
37
Springate, “Chapter 2: Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study,” 7–12.
38
These three are listed solely on the National Register thus far, including two in San Francisco (The San Francisco
Federal Building and the Women’s Building) and one in Los Angeles (The Great Wall of Los Angeles). In
addition, the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco, California has been federally recognized through
an NPS program (designated a National Memorial in 1996), though it is not included in either the NRHP or NHL
programs.” Springate, 12; “Sites Listed on the National Register of Historic Places That Interpret LGBT History.”
16

Landmarking at the national level, though prestigious and bringing sorely needed
attention to marginalized sites, cannot alone advance their preservation outright. Listing a place
on the NRHP can make it subject to several planning and policy tools, but these largely work to
incentivize–never enforce–their preservation. As this thesis focuses on the city of L.A.,
additional incentives beyond federal historic preservation tax credits are also available at the
state level. These come in the form of Mills Act contracts, which in California consists of
programs that are locally administered.
39
These policies, while valid and invaluable for
preservationists, cannot alone prevent the unsympathetic alteration, or downright demolition of a
significant property.
40
The power to do this lies at the local level, as it is here where states
authorize local governments “to enact regulations over persons and property to prohibit all things
inimical to their citizens’ health, safety, morals, and general welfare.”
41
Through legal precedent,
preservation related statutes have become a valid expression of this power, with the desire and
responsibility to pass/enforce ordinances resting with the local municipality in any given case.
What follows is a closer look at L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Ordinance. As a legislative document,
it not only defines the entities responsible for determining what constitutes places worth
preserving, but also how such places are to be listed as local landmark.

Heritage Conservation in Los Angeles:
In the case of L.A., the passing of a Cultural Heritage Ordinance in 1962 preceded the
NHPA by four years, “ma[king] possible the designation of buildings and sites as individual
local landmarks, called ‘Historic-Cultural Monuments’…” (HCM).
42
Reflecting
recommendations put forth by the State Historic Preservation Office, the ordinance centers on

39
While tax credits are applicable to income-producing properties, the Mills Act, enacted in 1972, tends to benefit
private residences by “grant[ing] participating local governments (cities and counties) authority to enter into
contracts with owners of qualified historic properties who actively participate in the restoration and maintenance
of their properties to receive property tax relief.” “Mills Act Historical Property Contract Program | Office of
Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,” accessed September 26, 2019,
https://preservation.lacity.org/incentives/mills-act-historical-property-contract-program.
40
While it is not popularly thought of as a tool for historic preservationists, the California Environmental Quality
Act (CEQA) has also been an immense boon to preservation state-wide. Generally, CEQA “requires state and
local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those
impacts, if feasible.” This also applies to any private development projects receiving discretionary approval from
a public agency, requiring Environment Impact Review for projects that may impact both listed and potentially
eligible historic resources. “CEQA,” accessed October 1, 2019, http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/more/faq.html.
41
Barlow Burke, Understanding the Law of Zoning and Land Use Controls (LexisNexis, 2009), 8.
42
“Landmark THIS! Cultural Edition” (Los Angeles, Calif., United States, July 18, 2015), 5,
https://www.laconservancy.org/resources/guide/landmark.
17

the procedures for nominating, reviewing, and listing eligible resources.
43
To accomplish this, a
Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) acts as the deliberative body responsible for
recommending for or against listing in any given case. Per the ordinance, the CHC must consist
of five appointed commissioners (qualified L.A. electors) who “have a demonstrated interest,
competence, or knowledge of historic preservation.”
44
While the CHC is defined as the
deliberative body when it comes to recommending an HCM be declared, the role of planning
staff is just as significant because they are the first line of review for applicants interested in
listing a property.
Assuming a nomination has not been initiated by the city council or director outright, the
planning staff housed within the Office of Historic Resources (OHR) is required to provide
applicants with necessary feedback. If their feedback has been successfully incorporated and an
application deemed “complete,” OHR staff will prepare a report recommending designation. At
this point, a temporary stay on demolition begins. Any construction or renovation activities at
the site are put on hold pending a formal review period and, ultimately, an outcome. The OHR
report is then submitted at an initial hearing where the CHC will vote on whether to take the
subject property into consideration. If approved, the CHC will have staff forward their report to
the City Council. If the CHC’s decision is a negative one, then their decision is final and cannot
be appealed.
45

In the event of approval, the CHC report will be submitted to the Planning and Land Use
Management (PLUM) Committee, which consists of five city councilmembers. Because every
potential HCM lies within one of L.A.’s fifteen council districts, ensuring the local council
office’s sympathy and support is crucial factor in the listing of any new HCM. If PLUM
approves the nomination, the report will then be referred to the full City Council who will likely
adopt the findings, resulting in the resource becoming an HCM. When HCM status is achieved,
the city can then take additional steps to further protect the property in the event of physical
threats by owners or developers. Because owner consent is not required for places to be listed as

43
A core feature of the NHPA in 1966 included the creation of 50 State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO) along
with additional territorial and (later) tribal equivalents. SHPO’s serve a variety of purposes by conducting surveys,
in addition to evaluating and nominating significant historic buildings, sites, structures, districts and objects to the
NRHP.
44
“Cultural Heritage Ordinance,” Pub. L. No. 185472, § 22.171, Los Angeles Administrative Code 12 (2018), 1.
45
If viewed to be necessary, “the City Council may override a Commission recommendation of denial of a City
Council-initiated designation by a minimum of ten votes.” Cultural Heritage Ordinance, 5–7.
18

an HCM, such threats are not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
46
In L.A., this comes in
the form of a 180-day stay on demolition which, because it can be renewed once, allows for
nearly a year in which viable preservation alternatives can be explored. At the time of this
writing, over 1100 HCMs have been listed the city’s official database, with more constantly
being considered, debated and added.
47

Declaring an HCM entails the involvement of multiple civic entities and is reflective of
the growing and complex role that preservation plays in contemporary urban development. The
efforts of preservationists in the mid-twentieth century was a direct response to urban renewal,
which in L.A. was typified by the construction of freeways and the redevelopment of Bunker
Hill. The resultant impetus to preserve largely concerned itself with the artistic and cultural
losses produced by the destruction of vast swathes of historic urban fabric. As a result, the
subsequent ordinance adopted in 1962 initially placed responsibility for the designation of
individual HCMs within the more loosely defined Cultural Affairs Department. While this
administrative structure made sense at the time, there is an ever-growing recognition that
preservation today not only deals with the artistic qualities of historic resources, but also the
authority to regulate urban land use generally. To reflect this, a series of changes were
undertaken in the 2000s to restructure L.A.’s preservation infrastructure:

In 2004, the [CHC] and the two staff members of the Historic Preservation Division of
the Cultural Affairs Department were moved to the Department of City Planning. In
2006, this function became the new Office of Historic Resources (OHR). The OHR also
managed SurveyLA, the comprehensive Los Angeles Historic Resources Survey Project,
to identify and record significant historic resources throughout Los Angeles.
48

Though the institutional role of preservation in L.A. is arguably more complex and
bureaucratic than it used to be, the effects of these changes are varied. The increasing role of
OHR, in addition to providing a more stringent and diligent review process, has helped to

46
While owner consent is not required for listing an HCM, recent changes have amended the ordinance to require
owner notification earlier than before to avoid blind sighting them. These changes have also extended the
deliberation-related stay on demolition, which is now initiated by planning staff deeming an application
“complete,” whereas beforehand the demolition stay was contingent on the CHC’s initial consideration hearing.
47
“The Historic Designation Process | Office of Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,” accessed September 28,
2019, https://preservation.lacity.org/commission/historic-designation-process; “Designated Historic-Cultural
Monuments,” Office of Historic Resources, accessed September 28, 2019,
https://preservation.lacity.org/commission/designated-historic-cultural-monuments.
48
“About the OHR | Office of Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,” accessed September 30, 2019,
https://preservation.lacity.org/about.
19

standardize local preservation efforts. As part of the first comprehensive citywide survey
undertaken in L.A., SurveyLA not only gave critical professional exposure to previously ignored
parts of the city, but it also provided “baseline information on historic resources to inform
planning decisions and support City policy goals and processes.”
49
Despite the vague wording,
SurveyLA data findings are a key starting point which has galvanized community involvement
as a result of its recent culmination.
The involvement of advocacy groups such as the L.A. Conservancy is likewise a critical
means of assisting eligible properties throughout every step of the HCM process. These non-
profit groups not only work to educate the public on how preservation works, but also coordinate
efforts to raise funds, awareness, and lend support for historic resources. Their campaigns, while
invaluable, must also be backed by the necessary historical context that supports the significance
of any historic resource. Without this context, it becomes increasingly difficult for marginalized
resources to pass the increased professional scrutiny that today’s HCM process demands. In the
case of LGBTQ historic resources, this context was often delayed by the previously discussed
issues of professional bias and lack of representation. The first efforts to preserve LGBTQ L.A.
were also contingent on the ability to conduct authoritative research and connect it to the built
environment. Establishing this connection was a key factor in beginning to identify significant
LGBTQ places.

Queering L.A.’s Heritage:
Marginalized communities–and their histories–can be understood and engaged in terms
of urban geography. While this statement may not seem groundbreaking, attempts to bring this
idea forward and test its efficacy with respect to preservation and urban planning are very recent.
In L.A. they can be traced to the efforts of an urban historian and academic by the name of
Dolores Hayden. The work she spearheaded focused on projects that would reify women’s and
ethnic history in urban public places. Hayden, and those she collaborated with, sought to re-
examine and engage urban landscapes as public history:

Early in the 1980s, when I was teaching at the Graduate School of Architecture and
Planning at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), I founded The Power of

49
“SurveyLA Findings and Reports | Office of Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,” accessed September 30,
2019, https://preservation.lacity.org/surveyla-findings-and-reports.
20

Place as a small, experimental nonprofit corporation, to explore the ways to present the
public histories of workers, women, and people of color in Los Angeles. It began as an
unpaid effort with a few student[s] as interns – I also had a full-time teaching job … I
was tremendously excited by the new, ethnic urban history and its potential to broaden
my teaching in a professional school whose students were concerned with the physical
design of the city, in areas such as preservation, physical planning, public art, and urban
design (I was looking for ways to enable students to take something back to their own
communities).
50

Though The Power of Place projects ceased upon moving to teach at Yale, Hayden would go on
to publish a book, giving it the same name as the non-profit that she founded in 1984. Framed as
“an extended reflection,” it aimed to contextualize, and assess, work done up until the mid-
1990s.
51
By disseminating new ideas, The Power of Place ultimately sought to forge connections
between student-scholars, professional-practitioners, and engaged reader-citizens.
The significance of The Power of Place is multivalent depending not only on how you
read it, but also on how any given reader happens to see themselves in relation to place. In its
second chapter concerning urban landscape history, the social and political meaning of spatial
terms (such as barrios, plantations, ghettoes, etc.) are discussed as a means of understanding of
how space is socially produced. This production is loaded with political implications within a
period of late-capitalism, and like many scholars, Hayden employs Marxist theories of power
and space to frame the discursive and conceptual gulf between architectural and social history.
52

She argues that traditional urban histories center on the “civic father” perspectives of white men,
reinforcing an American Western “conquest” narrative. Per Hayden, an inclusive practice of
public history will bring attention to power struggles by focusing on the histories of socially
produced spaces, which she refers to as “territories,” that can be represented and understood
geographically:

The territories of the gay and lesbian communities can be mapped. So can those of
childhood and old age. The spatial dimensions of class can be illuminated by looking at
other boundaries and points of access. Since many of these categories interlock, studying

50
The italicization here is my own. Dolores Hayden, “The Power of Place Project,” in Restoring Women’s History
Through Historic Preservation, ed. Gail Dubrow (JHU Press, 2003), 200–201.
51
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995),
xi.
52
This gulf is exemplified by a 1975 debate between Ada L. Huxtable (architectural critic and preservationist) and
Herbert J. Gans (sociologist and historian) concerning the role of landmarking in New York City. Hayden’s
subsequent theoretical analysis depends heavily on the work of Henri Lefevre. Ibid, 18.
21

how territories defined by gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, or age affect
people’s access to the urban cultural landscape can be frustrating.
53

In calling out issues that arise when studying these identities, The Power of Place touches
upon intersectionality (though Hayden doesn’t use the term outright) as an inherent feature of
L.A.’s multi-ethnic urban history.
54
The respective struggles of ethnic groups to claim space in
the urban environment and define themselves are key in this regard. LGBTQ people are–to
varying degrees–attuned to and familiar with these causes because many directly participated in
them (despite often being closeted). While none of the projects in The Power of Place deal with
LGBTQ history outright, it is safe to assume that Hayden’s inclusion of it as a possibility was a
result of her own teaching practice. As an instructor, her work at UCLA went on to influence a
small cadre of LGBTQ historian-activists to pursue scholarship inspired by her ideas. Whether
focused on planning, heritage conservation, or traditional academic history, this work has served
to contribute to, and provide critical context for, the preservation of LGBTQ L.A.
In terms of advocating for LGBTQ preservation at the national level, the first and most
significant of these proponents has been Gail Dubrow. As a UCLA graduate student, Dubrow
worked with Hayden to assist on the first project undertaken by The Power of Place, a walking
tour of downtown L.A. that focused on working landscapes and the economic development of
the city.
55
Dubrow, with Hayden’s mentorship, not only went on to do pathbreaking work on the
interpretation of women’s history, but also the preservation of sites related to Japanese-American
heritage.
56
While this work took her to Washington State, and then on to Minnesota, her
exposure to L.A. and the notion that urban landscapes can serve as a form of public history have
undoubtedly influenced her scholarship-activism. She is arguably the first academic to explicitly

53
Ibid, 23.
54
Much of the history discussed in The Power of Place embodies the notion that these stories, such as the project
commemorating Biddy Mason’s life, must be viewed considering the totality of her experience as a black
(formerly enslaved) woman. In effect, her ethnicity and gender cannot be accurately understood exclusive to each
other. Hayden, 168–87. For more on intersectionality as a theory, the work of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw has
proved instrumental. Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics,
and Violence Against Women of Color.,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241,
https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.
55
Hayden, “The Power of Place Project,” 201.
56
Gail Dubrow, “Preserving Her Heritage: American Landmarks of Women’s History” (ProQuest Dissertations
Publishing, 1991); “Gail Dubrow 1980,” School of Architecture & Environment, June 16, 2017,
https://archenvironment.uoregon.edu/gail-dubrow-1980.
22

advocate for many of the goals and aims that LGBTQ America would adopt in 2016, serving in
the extreme as an editor and contributor.
57

Dubrow’s most prominent contribution to LGBTQ America was the fifth chapter, which
serves as a progress report for the preservation profession. In writing this, Dubrow is in the
position of measuring efforts that she herself has been at the forefront of promoting long before it
was popular or easy to do so. Her prognosis is hopeful, but it is also upfront about many of the
growing challenges that need to be overcome, especially in terms of urban development pressure
and the potential erasure of LGBTQ resources generally. This chapter reiterates the point that
boosting representation of LGBTQ heritage as part of preservation praxis not only necessitates a
forceful engagement with planning but must also deal with the ongoing politicization of LGBTQ
existence generally.
58
In summarizing a host of challenges and opportunities related to the
preservation of LGBTQ resources, Dubrow also recognizes “theses and dissertations by students
pursuing graduate degrees in historic preservation and related fields (particularly architecture,
urban planning, museum studies, and public history), who are eager to connect their political
concerns and identity to their chosen profession.”
59

Of the student-scholars that Dubrow credits, perhaps the first direct contribution towards
a spatial understanding of LGBTQ L.A. is a 1994 dissertation by Moira Kenney, titled Strategic
Visibility: Gay and Lesbian Place-Claiming in Los Angles. By centering on case studies
concerning L.A. LGBTQ activism over a 24-year period, Kenny analyzes cognitive maps in
order to develop a theory of “place-claiming.” This in turn serves to explore “powerful
connection[s] between place and activism and points the way for a deeper understanding of
social movements and urban space.”
60
Her focus on “place-claiming” is intended to differentiate
it from “placemaking,” which is a more common term in the field planning and dates to the

57
Dubrow’s LGBTQ preservation essay contributed to the anthology she helped to edit. While it was published in
2003, it “grew out of papers presented at the first National Conference on Women and Historic Preservation
which began in 1994 …” Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” ix, 298–99; “LGBTQ
America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History,” iii.
58
Gail Dubrow, “Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage” (National Park Foundation, October 31, 2016),
3, 43–45.
59
Ibid, 49.
60
Moira Rachel Kenney, “Strategic Visibility: Gay and Lesbian Place-Claiming in Los Angeles, 1970-1994” (Los
Angeles, Calif., United States, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994), xi–xii.
23

1960s.
61
This is done for semantic reasons, and as a term borrows heavily from Kenny’s
exposure to Dolores Hayden’s research with The Power of Place, which by the time she had
written her dissertation was already winding down:

Although Hayden circumscribes the notion of place rather narrowly, her project – to
explore the hidden histories of American cities through a mapping of sites which resonate
for marginalized communities – is very close to the project I am undertaking here…
[where] a theory of place-claiming is intended to [provide] a framework for
understanding, at the macro level, the relationship between place and politics in gay and
lesbian activism.
62

Kenney’s dissertation provides a typology of strategies, grouped loosely into seven
categories which, though illuminating, does not explicitly address heritage conservation itself as
a form of place-claiming.
63
At the surface level, this reflects the dissertation’s focus on activism
and the political strategies of LGBTQ communities generally. When considering the broader
context in which this document was written, and to which it was arguably responding, it becomes
clear that works like Strategic Visibility belong to a newer phase of LGBTQ scholarship. While
just as self-consciously politicized, this research is no longer part of the aforementioned “gay
scholarship” period that concerned itself with “queering” history by challenging a
heteronormative academic outlook. This was frequently done by delving into and/or revising the
biographies of significant individuals who had been posthumously “straightwashed.”
64
For
many, this process of (un)straightening history was and remains a valuable means of helping
LGBTQ folks build self-esteem and claim a place in the historical record.
65
This newer phase
instead tended to focus on self-identified LGBTQ political movements outright, and is better

61
Placemaking as a term owes much to the writings of Jane Jacobs and William H. White, and today functions as a
conceptual rubric for managing and designing public space in an urban context especially. In Kenney’s view,
choosing “claiming” over “making” reflects a more nuanced perspective that views the city “not as a clean slate
upon which something new is built, but as a thing constructed, upon which activists and communities layer new
meanings.” Kenney, 23. For an analysis on societal relations to space generally, see Dolores Hayden, “The
American Sense of Place and the Politics of Space,” in American Architecture: Innovation and Tradition, ed.
Robert A. M. Stern, First edition. edition (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 184.
62
Kenney, “Strategic Visibility,” 23–24.
63
Ibid, 33.
64
Straightwashing refers to the process by which queerness, with respect the identities and behaviors of significant
individuals, is expunged from (or simply left out of) official records.
65
While the scholarship immediately following stonewall did not initially employ the term “queer” in this way, it
ultimately led to questions regarding what constituted “standard” history that queer theorists would work to help
mount responses to during the 1980s and ‘90s. As a result, the process of “queer[ing] gets a critical edge by
defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual." Michael Warner, Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer
Politics and Social Theory (U of Minnesota Press, 1993), xxiii–xxxi.
24

understood as developing in response to the AIDS crisis. The noticeable spread of AIDS within
the LGBTQ (and especially gay male) community began in the early 1980s and had arguably
become the dominant concern for many LGBTQ people by the start of the 1990s.
66

The political struggles and concerns of the AIDS crisis era are prominent in Strategic
Visibility, which seeks to clarify “new forms of organizing [that] are particularly suited to the
diversity of Los Angeles.”
67
Kenney’s analysis is circumscribed within a set time period, and its
intent is not to provide historical context outright. It analyzes specific instances of activism
through a theoretical framework which is characterized more in terms of planning than
historiography. The analysis period is intended to better understand (then) recent and ongoing
developments in how LGBTQ communities inhabit L.A. and organize for social, communal, and
political purposes. Though Strategic Visibility would provide an excellent start for looking at
LGBTQ communal presence through an advocacy and social geography lens, it was Kenney’s
subsequent work which would help to open the way for establishing direct connections between
LGBTQ people and heritage conservation in L.A. This was accomplished with the assistance of
Bill Adair, a graduate student at UCLA planning, who became involved by assisting Kenney in
conducting oral interviews and verifying research for sites of LGBTQ significance. These efforts
would lead to the first map of LGBTQ places drawn specifically for heritage conservation
purposes in L.A.
Adair’s master’s thesis, Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic Places
in Los Angeles, consists of a report meant to accompany the first driving tour focused on
LGBTQ places in L.A.
68
It simultaneously analyzes “the history of the preservation movement
[and] offers various models and methods from which this project can learn,” while “also
[illustrating] exclusive and hierarchical practices from which this project must diverge.”
69
In

66
While AIDS is still very much an ongoing issue, the urgency and perception of it as a “death sentence” has faded.
This shift began as combination antiretroviral therapy was introduced in the mid-1990s. Additionally, it is no
longer viewed as an exclusively LGBTQ concern, as general transmission rates among women and in ethnic
minority communities (irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity) are starting to receive more attention
and exposure statistically. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Who Is at Risk for HIV?,” HIV.gov,
May 15, 2017, https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/who-is-at-risk-for-hiv.
67
Kenney, “Strategic Visibility,” 32.
68
Adair lists 20 sites as part of the tour, which include the Hay Residence and The Black Cat (see chapters three and
four respectively). Adair, Bill, “Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic Places in Los Angeles”
(Los Angeles, Calif., United States, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997), 5, 54–55.
69
Ibid, 6.
25

presenting both the problems and potentials that preservation provides, Celebrating a Hidden
History echoes the same concerns then being voiced at the national level:

In the last several years, the preservation movement has been challenged to consider the
concerns of groups other than the dominant white male Anglo culture–the nearly
exclusive target of preservation efforts. Because members, and particularly leaders, of the
movement have acted monoculturally, their efforts and concerns have led to the
preservation of only one version of history … Thus, the interpretation of most historic
sites has told a narrow story of America’s history which has left out women, the working
class, non-whites, and, of course, gays and lesbians.
70

Adair’s subsequent response to these conditions was to propose LGBTQ-centric initiatives that
outright mirror and advance The Power of Place efforts, which had begun in L.A. but were no
longer active by 1997.
71

The motives underlying the resultant mapping effort were varied, but they indicate
increasing interest on behalf of L.A.-based LGBTQ scholars to recognize, document, and
conserve their own history. To an extent, this interest was inspired by the profound sense of loss
and trauma brought about by the most intense years of AIDS crisis.
72
Emerging professionals
such as Kenney (who from 1994-2000 worked as a program associate at the Getty Research
Institute) and Adair were able to engage this spatial interest, in large part because UCLA (their
home institution) still grouped designers and planners within the Graduate School of
Architecture and Urban Planning.
73
The partnerships that resulted from this close proximity
helped contribute to a “heady” period of time where fruitful work could be pursued with the
support of a progressive and understanding faculty, though it was still relatively unusual to talk

70
Ibid, 20. Dubrow is more forceful when calling out “the glaring omissions, deafening silences, misleading
euphemisms, and outright lies we repeatedly encounter in relation to our gay heritage and our gay lives.” Dubrow,
“Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” 282.
71
The effort to memorialize Biddy Mason (a prominent ex-slave and early L.A. pioneer, landowner, and
entrepreneur) is cited directly as a precedent. While Adair expresses regret that The Power of Place made no
significant effort to commemorate LGBTQ history, he acknowledges that it “has a great deal to teach the gay and
lesbian community about ways to begin investigating and celebrating our culture’s history.” Adair, Bill,
“Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic Places in Los Angeles,” 26–28.
72
Bill Adair, interview by Rafael Fontes, Telephone, August 10, 2019.
73
This changed when, “in 1994, the UCLA Professional Schools Restructuring Initiative resulted in the
administrative separation of GSAUP’s programs. Urban Planning became a department within the new School of
Public Policy and Social Research (now the School of Public Affairs). The architecture and urban design program
merged with the School of the Arts, to become the School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts).”
“Architecture Department History - UCLA,” UCLA A.UD, accessed October 5, 2019,
https://www.aud.ucla.edu/welcome/history.html.
26

about “alternative” histories.
74
Contemporary publications by architectural historians were
likewise critical in helping to open up academic conversations dealing with space, focusing
especially on its relation to both gender and sexuality.
75

While The Power of Place would employ several UCLA architecture students for the
production of its graphics, Adair’s Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian History Tour only required one
additional partner (Jeffrey Samudio) to assist in drafting an accompanying map, which by the
time of its publication at end of the decade had begun to receive notice for its preservation
potential:

Funded in part with a $1,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the
‘Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map’ grew out of Bill Adair’s UCLA urban planning
graduate school thesis that explored gay landmarks. The project’s third partner, Moira
Kenney, is a UC Berkeley urban planner and author of a forthcoming book on gay
activism. Adair, Kenney and Samudio spent three years tracking down older gays and
lesbians and visiting sites. Between conflicting memories and transient landscapes, the
trio sought corroboration through, among other things, police records and the gay-
oriented ONE Institute & Archives, a library affiliated with USC.
76

The process by which this map was produced helped to illuminate some key historiographic
issues. For one thing, much of the history discussed was predominantly oral, and several
difficulties arose when attempting to corroborate stories. These struggles reflected the fact that
first hand sources, which could frequently be unclear or biased, needed to be taken with a grain
of salt. Morris Kight and Harry Hay, two prominent activists who were still living and involved
with the map’s production, kept trying to emphasize their own role in L.A.’s LGBTQ history
over that of the other.
77
This tension led to Kight’s public criticism of the map’s veracity, even
though he had been included and consulted extensively on its formulation.
78
These activists were
grateful and (in the case of Morris Kight especially) earger to share their stories and struggles
with the research team. At the same time, most were seniors living in various states of near or

74
Adair, interview.
75
Beatriz Colomina, ed., Sexuality & Space, 4th edition (New York, N.Y: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997);
Aaron Betsky, Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality, 1st ed. (New York:
William Morrow, 1995); Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 1st ed. (New York:
William Morrow & Co, 1997).
76
Italicization here is mine. Larry Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age,” Los Angeles Times, July
8, 2001, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jul-08-cl-19702-story.html.
77
Adair, interview; Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement, 1st ed.
(Boston: Alyson, 1990), 229–30.
78
Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age.”
27

abject poverty by the 1990s. The sense that their contributions had been forgotten, spurned or
misunderstood by younger activists was inescapable. Additionally, many prominent elders took
umbrage at the use of the word “queer” by younger generations that followed them, earning
further opprobrium from them as a result.
79

Issues related to source reliability have always been encountered by scholars of LGBTQ
history generally, and in the case of L.A.-centered scholarship were (thankfully) not enough to
thwart these projects leading up to the 2000s. While the work on behalf of historian-activists
helped to provide a framework for engaging heritage conservation in L.A. from an LGBTQ
perspective, sustaining community efforts outside of the academe would prove to be more
challenging. In the conclusion to his thesis, Bill Adair addresses this challenge to Triglyph, a
professional LGBTQ affinity group that was willing to stand in as a named “client” to which
Celebrating a Hidden History officially addressed itself:

Triglyph has the opportunity to become involved in important work in Los Angeles. As
architects, designers, and planners, we have the responsibility to act as stewards for the
historic buildings and sites of our city. As members of the lesbian and gay community,
we have a particular responsibility to unveil and celebrate our hidden histories. The
members of Triglyph stand in a powerful, professional place to begin expanding
preservation discourse to include gay and lesbian sacred sites. With energy and
enthusiasm, Triglyph can break new urban ground. It is the hope that this report and its
proposals can act as a catalyst and a guide for the organization’s engagement in this
meaningful and essential work.
80

Despite Adair’s hopeful tone here, initial efforts to landmark a site based on this research would
ultimately prove ineffective.
81

In the case of Triglyph, the notion of bringing together LGBTQ designers and planners to
advocate for a shared heritage was hampered by the difficulties of trying to organize in a city as
decentralized and physically spread out as L.A.
82
It nonetheless managed to hold a series of
salon style talks about critical urban issues and educational site visits to historic buildings. These
efforts, significant in terms of engaging the process of “re-understanding” heritage as part of the

79
The resultant language employed by the “Gay and Lesbian” history map, along with the report, makes no mention
of bisexual or transgender people, as individuals who identified with these labels had historically been excluded
and/or viewed as problematic by many gay and lesbian liberationists of the 1960s and ’70’s. Adair, interview.
80
Adair, Bill, “Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic Places in Los Angeles,” 40.
81
For more details on the first attempt at landmarking LGBTQ resources, see Chapter 2.
82
Email correspondence. Benjamin Clavan to Rafael Fontes, “MHC Thesis: Triglyph Question,” September 12,
2019.
28

built environment, were never explicitly intended to be Triglyph’s mission. Rather, its primary
function evolved into that of a social network, helping to provide a means of support and
commiseration for LGBTQ architects dealing with homophobia and harassment in the
workplace.
83
Though many political gains had been made during the post-Stonewall gay
liberation era, being “out” in any field was still a dangerous (if not impossible) thing for many
LGBTQ professionals during the 1990s. While Triglyph became defunct soon after the
completion of Celebrating a Hidden History, organizations like them were a critical means of
moral support long before digital media would become sophisticated enough to meet these needs.
Efforts to save tangible remnants of LGBTQ history would ultimately come to fruition
only towards the end of the 2000s. These were arguably affected not only by the lack of an
established historiography when it came to LGBTQ L.A. generally, but also by the departure of
researchers engaged in this work. By the time the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map was
receiving exposure, Bill Adair had already moved to Pennsylvania. Moira Kenney had moved on
to the Bay Area, and was able to re-tool and publish her dissertation as a book titled, Mapping
Gay L.A. This version expanded on her case studies by augmenting them with oral histories from
prominent L.A. activists; the very same sources that had informed the Gay and Lesbian L.A.
History Map. In some ways this work reflects a sense of alienation from more stereotypical
portrayals of LGBTQ progress in the U.S. By the start of the twenty-first century, these
narratives were already beginning to establish themselves along familiar lines that Kenney
sought to address:

The popular narrative of the gay and lesbian movement in the United States tends to be a
tale of two cities, centering on New York and San Francisco. Seen as models of freedom
and sophistication, these two cities are accepted as uniquely enabling gay and lesbian
community formation and as models for communities in other cities. Their enclaves–
Greenwich Village and the Castro–are celebrated as offering the best of gay and lesbian
community life, and these cities, as well as their satellite neighborhoods are similarly
cosmopolitan. Like most popular narratives, this one ignores complexity.
84

Within L.A., Kenney addresses this complexity as contingent on understanding the city itself, a
feat that is so involved that attempting to do so becomes a central feature of her work overall.

83
Email correspondence. Clavan to Fontes.
84
Moira Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics, American Subjects (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2001), 1.
29

The compelling nature of planning-based efforts to understand and preserve LGBTQ L.A. in the
1990s are laudable, but their ability to effectively engage preservation tools outright would
depend on written context to ground landmark nominations in history-oriented academic
research.

Coming out in Edendale:
The first major attempt to provide an LGBTQ-centered history of L.A. came in 2006 with
the publishing of Gay L.A: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians.
Authored by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A. attempted to counter the narrative
marginalization highlighted by Kenney in Mapping Gay L.A. By coordinating copious amounts
of archival research and oral histories, the authors sought to assert L.A. as an epicenter of
LGBTQ activity:

We wanted to locate the photographs, examine the written records, and talk with the
people who knew about the hidden gay world of Los Angeles in bygone eras. We wanted
to prevent fading memories from begin snuffed out forever and more photos from
becoming permanently obscure. We also wanted to capture more recent history, to find
out how Angelenos were able to establish the biggest, wealthiest, longest-lived gay and
lesbian international church, community center, and national magazine; how they became
major players in city and state politics and in the movie industry that influences the
world; how they entertain themselves in a city devoted to entertainment; how the steady
stream of immigrants that flock to L.A. for refuge have been able to make a life for
themselves.
85

The book itself is grouped in into three loosely defined historical periods, which roughly
correspond to the pre/post Second World War (The Silent Era), the gay liberation period of the
1960s and ’70s (The Bold Ones), and the AIDS crisis era leading into the twenty-first century
(Smash Hits…).
86

85
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 5.
86
While tripartite structures are a common organizational tool, the attempt to qualify themes and periods reflects the
influence of earlier LGBTQ historical urban surveys. It is hard not to view the title of Gay L.A. as a response to
George Chauncey’s book on the gay male experience in New York City in the half century leading up to the
Second World War, George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male
World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1994); Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: 1940-1996 (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1997). Books on San Francisco have also been influential in cementing the Bay Area’s LGBTQ historical
legacy, see Susan Stryker and Jim Van Buskirk, Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco
Bay Area (Chronicle Books, 1996); Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to
1965 (University of California Press, 2003).
30

Reading as a kind of “greatest hits” of LGBTQ L.A. milestones, Gay L.A. provides
critical exposure for, and likewise works to legitimize, a marginalized aspect of L.A. history.
Though its authors provide historical context for every theme and subsection, Gay L.A.’s
enthusiastic adherence to the “gay and lesbian” perspective can, at times, seem myopically
focused on prominent historical events and figures.
87
This is especially apparent given copious
gaps in the record, and part of “work [that] has been frustrating because we know that much has
been lost.”
88
Audiences not familiar with the history of L.A. as a region will, understandably,
have more trouble grasping the place-based significance and meaning of certain events. The
diversity of peoples, communities, and stories that comprise Gay L.A. is astounding but also
difficult to tie together thematically. Owing to its herculean scope of analysis, the authors
generally neglect to factor in how engagement with groups outside the bounds of LGBTQ
identity interacted with and influenced the development of that very same community.
The effort to bridge these gaps came almost immediately after Gay L.A.’s release with the
publication of Daniel Hurewitz’s Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics in
2007. This book, a re-working of his 2001 dissertation Made in Edendale: Bohemian Los
Angeles and the Politics of Sexual Identity 1918-1953, is also the result of the phase of
scholarship that produced Strategic Visibility/Mapping Gay L.A. and Celebrating a Hidden
History.
89
By focusing on Edendale, the historic name for the hilly area immediately northwest
of downtown L.A., Hurewitz traces connections between “a rich network of artists, writers, and
impresarios; a cohort of Communist Party organizers and fellow travelers; and a subculture of
homosexual men and women.”
90
While the scope of Made in Edendale is heavily narrowed, the
mustering of resources for research goes farther than Gay L.A. (which purposefully emphasized

87
This is not to say that other perspectives aren’t addressed. The authors explain their terminological choice within
the book’s introduction: “We chose to call our book Gay L.A. because, as our older informants told us, ‘gay’ in
the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s was the term that included homosexual men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, and
even bisexuals. Some of our younger informants called themselves ‘queer.’” Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A.,
5–6.
88
Ibid, 3.
89
While Hurewtiz wrote his dissertation as part of a History PhD at UCLA, the influence of the (then extant)
GSAUP is evident in his reliance on planning theory as a means of analyzing his chosen historical period. The
most prominent example of this is his inclusion of Ed Soja’s work on “thirdspaces” which, like Dolores Hayden’s
research for The Power of Place, leans heavily on the work of Henri Levebvre in order to understand how the
socio-spatial character of a given place can work to foster “counter-hegemonic” attitudes and communal
expressions of resistance. Though Hurewitz doesn’t discuss The Power of Place projects outright, its inclusion as
part of his bibliography, along with Strategic Visibility, indicates an awareness of its aims and motives. Hurewitz,
“Made in Edendale,” 24–26.
90
Ibid, xiv.
31

archival materials and personal interviews) to also understand how phases of LGBTQ
scholarship since the late 1960s have evolved in tandem with the gay rights movement itself.
Bohemian Los Angeles, which was intended for a broader audience, eschews much of the
scholarly analysis to emphasize parallels between the activities of Edendale’s communities to
concurrent instances of racial and political strife in L.A. It reiterates the thrust of Hurewitz’s
research focus, which “links the formation of post-New Deal identity politics directly to the
changed notions of personal identity, self-expression and political activism that emerged after
World War One.”
91
Hurewitz’s choice to use the Edendale name, rapidly falling out of favor by
the 1950s, is intended to evoke a specific temporal and geographic milieu that no longer exists in
the socio-economic sense.
92
This isolated zone of hilly topography and rural character, in part,
allowed for a distinctively “bohemian” community to evolve beyond the socially conservative
flatlands that had dominated L.A. development.
93

Made in Edendale is successful in illustrating L.A. as a “complex metropolis” in its own
right, “vibrant with opposition politics and opposition cultures that both influenced each other
and affected the city as a whole.”
94
While this urban complexity helped scholars like Kenney
recognize and understand the LGBTQ history of L.A. in the late twentieth century, Hurewitz’s
focus on these conditions within the inter- and post-war period clarifies a key conceptual shift in
the relationship between politics and individual personae. The implications of this shift for
LGBTQ history and development are profound:

Leftist activism about race relations and discrimination brought political attention to bear
on how personal and minority identities were becoming steadily reified as categories of
social oppression. By 1950 the homosexuals [in Edendale] used the connection between
social categorization and self-articulation to launch the nation’s first sustained gay rights
movement. That effort … was emblematic of the kind of action that dominated urban
political culture in the ensuing decades.
95

The legacy of Harry Hay, the pivotal figure who conceived of this effort, was deemed significant
enough to justify the first attempt to landmark an LGBTQ resource in L.A.

91
Ibid, xiv.
92
Hurewitz claims to use the Edendale name “as much for reasons of poetry and metaphor as for any others.”
Beyond its connotations of paradise, the bohemian “Eden” described in his dissertation can be understood (if read
in the biblical sense) as a genesis, or significant place of origin, for the concept of gay rights itself. Ibid, 2.
93
Ibid, 27.
94
Ibid, xv.
95
Hurewitz, xv.
32

Chapter 2
The Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine Steps

Significance:
Historic houses, whatever their size, style or significance, command an outsize role in the
preservation field. Their predominance reflects a culture that regards the single-family home as
holding a (nearly) unassailable sacred status. This status is reinforced by financial, land-use
planning, and policy mechanisms which have worked to reinforce the cultural supremacy of this
building type both historically and up to the present day.
96
In LGBTQ America, the ubiquity of
houses as a subject of preservationist attention is both cited for its “potential to interpret LGBTQ
lives,” while also “reflect[ing] a prior generation’s emphasis on extraordinary individuals as
agents of change and underlying biases that favored preserving the architecturally distinguished
heritage of a property-holding elite.”
97
Within the current framework, efforts to interpret LGBTQ
history in single-family homes have often relied on their associations with historically significant
persons, corresponding to criterion B of the NRHP criteria for evaluation.
98

Any effort to landmark a house for criterion B must deal with both the problems and
privileges associated with historic houses, which in the eyes of most are primarily seen in terms
of real estate transactions. The presence of LGBTQ history adds another layer of complexity,
which becomes problematic if the person in question has not lived a geographically static life.
The effort to center significant individuals becomes more difficult when they may never have

96
While cultural preferences are difficult to conclusively trace, the American view of the single-family home can be
understood has having originated as far back as the colonial period. Additional legislation, such as the Homestead
Act of 1862 have also tied this housing type to landownership. Perhaps one of the most indicative (and
subsequently influential) events is tied to the 1926 Supreme Court decision of Euclid vs. Ambler, which provided
a judicial basis of support for modern day zoning nationwide. The preference for single family homes is reflected
in the majority court’s opinion, asserting that “the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by
the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house
purposes; that in such sections very often the apartment house is a mere parasite … [when] the coming of one
apartment house is followed by others … until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its
desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed.” Opinion of the Court: Village of Euclid, Ohio
v. Ambler Realty Co., No. 272 U.S. 365 (U.S. Supreme Court 1926).
97
Dubrow, “Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage,” 22.
98
In the National Park Service’s section on understanding criterion B, subject properties must be “associated with
individuals whose specific contributions to history can be identified and documented.” This is mirrored in L.A.’s
Cultural Heritage Ordinance, in which relevant properties must be “associated with the lives of historic
personages important to national, state, city, or local history.” Rustin A. Quaide, “Section VI: How to Apply the
National Register Criteria for Evaluation, National Register of Historic Places Bulletin (NRB 15),” November 28,
2001, https://www.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/nrb15/nrb15_6.htm#crit%20b; Cultural Heritage Ordinance,
3.
33

publicly identified as LGBTQ. Even if documentation supports such an assertion, the ethics of
“outing” historical figures presents another point of contention that is still very polarizing.
99

Prominent writers, artists, and politicians are often the most frequent subjects of these erasures
and omissions.
100
The absence of this perspective from NRHP and NHL nominations supported
by criterion B are also difficult to rectify within official records like NRHP applications.
Amending these records can also seem futile when the associated resource in question has
already been successfully listed and/or is in no immediate physical danger.
LGBTQ erasure, or posthumous “closeting” in an interpretive sense, becomes untenable
when the significance of a given historical figure is derived from them self-identifying as
LGBTQ in the context of their own time. While many of the early post-war activists self-
identified as queer or different in some fashion, understanding the meaning of their achievements
demands recognition of the oppressive gender conformity that marked life in the mid-twentieth
century. For these early activists, choosing to go against everything they were taught and
advocate for their rights demanded an incredible amount of bravery, but it also required the
capability to understand how their differences would be defined. This complex struggle to
identify one’s individual perspective is evident in Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself, where
the phrase “I contain multitudes” has become culturally prominent to the point of being
clichéd.
101
It is nonetheless appropriate when looking at the legacy of a figure as complex and
controversial as Harry Hay, whose residence constitutes the first attempt to landmark an L.A.
resource specifically because of its LGBTQ associations. Stuart Timmons reflects on Hay’s
multi-faceted legacy in the introduction to his 1990 biography, The Trouble with Harry Hay:

I learned [from him] the contradictions of a committed life, Harry is an anti-patriarchal
patriarch, a future-looking visionary ruled by nineteenth-century manners and ethics. The
mix of communism and homosexuality may be his most volatile contradiction, and it is at
the core of his existence. The skills for organizing and belief in revolutionary change he
acquired during his years in the Communist Party USA fostered Hay’s founding in 1950
of the Mattachine Society, the underground organization acknowledged by historians as
the starting point of the modern gay movement.
102

99
Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” 287.
100
Some salient examples listed in LGBTQ America are Walt Whitman, Georgia O’Keefe, and Francis Perkins.
Dubrow, “Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage.”
101
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Auckland, New Zealand: The Floating Press, 1998), 151.
102
Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, xiv.
34

By the time of Timmons’ writing, two major historians of the gay liberation era, Jonathan Ned
Katz and John D’Emilio, had already established Hay’s importance in bringing the tactics of
political organizing to bear on LGBTQ identity and activism. D’Emilio describes the most
significant event as having taken place when, “on a Saturday afternoon in November [11
th
], 1950
… five men … gathered at Hay’s home to discuss the formation of a homosexual rights
organization. Frequent meetings over the next several months led to the formation of the
Mattachine Society.”
103
In addition to Hay, the members present at that first meeting included
Rudi Gernreich, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Dale Jennings.
104

Hay’s creative background(s) in the visual and performing arts, when combined with his
experience in leftist activism and personal charisma, made the Mattachine Society a possibility.
Though the contextual influence of Edendale is left out of Gay L.A., Faderman’s analysis helps
give critical insight to how the organization operated in secrecy. It relied on a structure “designed
to protect members from exposure and ruin, no master lists were kept. The leaders and the rank-
and-file were separate, and the latter did not know who the former were.”
105
While these
measures were necessary during the early 1950s, they subsequently made it difficult to
understand the extent of the Mattachine’s significance for historians during the gay liberation era
onwards. A year after their founding, real traction for the Mattachine would come when Dale
Jennings, one of the original founding members, was arrested on a “morals charge” in 1952.
Jennings, after openly admitting his homosexuality in a plea against entrapment, launched a legal
case with Mattachine’s help.
106
His acquittal “caused a sensation on the gay male grapevine. A
dozen Mattachine chapters immediately proliferated in Southern California and then quickly
spread to Northern California and beyond.”
107

103
John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United
States, 1940-1970, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 62.
104
There is a predominance of last names and initials in D’Emilio’s work, respecting Hay’s desire, in line with the
Mattachine oath of secrecy, that respected still-living individuals who wished to have their involvement kept
anonymous. Intentionally or not, Hay is erroneously introduced in D’Emilio’s chapter as “Henry Hay,” an error
that continued to be printed in other publications up through the mid-1990s. D’Emilio, 58. Mark Thompson, Don
Alan Romesburg, and Masha Gessen, eds., Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and
Lesbian Movement, First Edition (New York, N.Y., U.S.A: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), xviii, 140, 186.
105
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 111–12.
106
In the context of LGBTQ history, “entrapment” specifically refers to the process by which undercover policemen
would trick men into engaging in sexually explicit or intimate acts as a means of securing an arrest for
committing a crime. In Southern California, the practice of employing policemen and specialized (quasi-police)
bounty hunters has been dated to as far back as 1914, with the accused typically being prosecuted in violation of
the state’s anti-sodomy statutes. Ibid, 32–37.
107
Ibid, 113.
35

Organizations such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis are today
referred to as “homophile” organizations.
108
As with so many other things, the word itself can be
traced to Hay, who worked with the Mattachine’s founding membership to find an etymological
alternative to “queer,” which at the time was a exclusively viewed as a slur.
109
While homophile
groups frequently used the term “homosexual” out of familiarity, that word also reflected the
oppressive and pathologizing views held by the psychiatric field at the time. The combination of
the Greek roots homo and philo (homo + philo = same + love) resulted in homophile. This
conveyed the core tenant of “identity” that Mattachine worked to impart to its membership. This
identity-based message centered the idea that one’s sexual attractions and feelings were an
integral part of one’s personality. By holding space for LGBTQ folk to discuss themselves in a
non-oppressive social setting, the Mattachine society allowed them to grapple with the
subsequent political implications of viewing themselves as a minority. In doing so they
established the conceptual and discursive foundations of what LGBTQ rights would come to
mean in the twentieth century.
110

Despite its revolutionary beginnings, the Mattachine Society would succumb to what is
today referred to as “respectability politics” within two years of its founding.
111
As the fear of
communism became widespread via the influence of “red-baiting” senators such as Joseph
McCarthy, a growing number of chapters shifted to a more conservative position that reflected
these fears.
112
The end result of this was that, in 1953, “Harry Hay and other early Mattachine
founders … resigned [after] they were dubbed communists who would ‘disgrace us all.’”
113

While this turn of events would prove personally devastating for Hay and his friends, it also

108
Founded in 1955 in San Francisco, the Daughters of Bilitis was “the first Lesbian organization in America … and
had a bit more success in attracting women than did Mattachine.” Faderman and Timmons, 128.
109
Eric Marcus, “Harry Hay,” Making Gay History (blog), June 2017, https://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/harry-
hay/; Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 222.
110
Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale,” 380–89.
111
In Springate’s introductory chapter for LGBTQ America, respectability politics is defined as “the self-policing of
marginalized groups to enforce social values compatible with mainstream values (assimilation) as a strategy for
acceptance, rather than challenging the mainstream’s failure to embrace difference.” Springate, “Chapter 2:
Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study,” 15.
112
While many of these members were understandably terrified of being targeted by law enforcement, others
preferred to not “get political” and simply saw no connection between their homosexual identity (the discursive
construction of which was a central tenant of Mattachine’s mission) and Marxist-inspired ideology. More recent
scholarship has brought attention to the concurrent “lavender scare,” which in seeking to “root out” homosexuals
and “sex perverts” within the State Department and federal government stoked homophobia generally. See David
K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government
(Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
113
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 113.
36

served to make homophile organizations appear outdated by the late-1960s. It was around this
time that the national network of Mattachine chapters would begin to fold and diminish due to a
lack of strategy and purpose.
114
Hay would move on from this difficult period of ostracization to
become an even more fervent activist, creating the North American Conference of Homophile
Organizations, co-founding the L.A. chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, and finally the Radical
Faeries.
115

With so many varied achievements, it can be difficult to understand the relevance of
place in the context of Hay’s prolific life. The founding of the Mattachine Society not only
represented a turning point for him personally, but also sparked a political turning point for
LGBTQ communities long before many would even become aware of it. By the time said
awareness reached any sort of national prominence, it took the tone of “gay liberation” as
opposed to homophile affiliation. Despite this, the importance of Hay’s homophile achievement–
his formulation of identity-based ideas of selfhood and its political implications–is integrally tied
to the Edendale home where he lived and worked. This is attested to in Hurewitz’s writing,
which focuses on the setting in which Hay formulated these ideas. For Hay, this process was
borne out in the house that he had moved into with his (then) wife Anita and their daughter in
1943.
116
Its role as a locus for Edendale’s leftist social scene, is described in vivid detail by
Timmons:

The Hay family’s new home was an old three-story house beneath a spreading pine on a
cul-de-sac named Cove Avenue. The house was split-level, with kitchen and dining room
below and more rooms above. There was even a study for Harry. The center piece was a
huge, high-ceilinged living room with a picture window overlooking the reservoir for
which the Silver Lake district was named … The acreage was generous, extending far
downhill, which was landfill and could support no more building … The house at 2328

114
Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale,” 410.
115
Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 221–23, 230, 248–79.
116
Hay’s marriage to Anita Platky (erroneously referred to as “Platsky” in some sources), who came from a Jewish
family of progressive-leftists, occurred for multiple reasons. While Hay had known of–and was familiar with
expressing–his homosexuality from a young age, a psychiatrist suggested he marry a woman in order to
substitute for his lack of finding an ideologically aligned (male) lover. Moreover, Hay’s increasing involvement
in the Communist Party made marriage convenient. Party membership at this time was contingent upon a strict
(heteronormative) morality code, and though Platky was aware of Hay’s past homosexual relationships, they
agreed that their marriage would help them advance politically as social partners on the condition that he had
“reformed” his behavior. Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale,” 338; Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 100–114.
37

Cove Avenue hosted an endless cycle of [communist] meetings, classes, and parties. Pete
Seeger was a guest there during some of his West Coast concert appearances.
117

Even before the Mattachine’s conservative shift and rejection of its founding leadership,
Hay’s critical role as the ideological motivator, composing the manifestos and leading meetings,
led to significant consequences for him personally.
118
These began “within six months of the first
November gathering, [when] he had informed Anita, his wife, of the Mattachine’s efforts.
Shocked, she asked him to seek therapy, but he refused. After several more months, explaining
that she was worried that the Mattachine might be discovered, she asked for a divorce in order to
protect herself and their daughters.”
119
Now a social pariah, Harry moved out and cut himself off
from the creatively rich Edendale scene of left-wing activists and artists that he’d become greatly
attached to. He then shared apartments with other Mattachine members, eventually settling in his
mother’s home for the remainder of the decade. Throughout this time, he continued to work odd
jobs, supporting Anita and the children financially for the next twelve years that she remained in
the house.
120

Because the Hay family only lived in the house as renters, it’s highly unlikely they
would’ve been able to make major architectural alterations during the period they inhabited it.
121

The absence of permitted building records on file for 2328 Cove Avenue for the years between
1943 and 1951 (when Harry, Anita, and the children were in residence) attests to this. The
closest recorded changes to this period are from a series of permits for interior and landscape
work done in 1961, when Anita and her daughters would’ve still been living there.
122
Instead, the
most detailed descriptions of Harry’s material influence concern the interiors, which were as
eclectic as the activities that the house hosted:

117
As a prominent folk singer and social activist, Pete Seeger’s influence continues to be felt as part of the early
history of leftist-socialist activism in the United States. Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 118–19.
118
The most salient of his works in relation to the Mattachine were published following Timmons’ 1990 biography.
These two books constitute the most in-depth explorations of Hay’s legacy to date. See Harry Hay, Radically
Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder, ed. Will Roscoe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
119
Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale,” 410.
120
Harry and Anita had adopted two daughters, who were five and eight years old at the time of the divorce.
Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 158, 161.
121
The couple moved into the home to have space for raising the children. As Timmons describes it, “Harry kept
Sundays free of meetings to maintain the huge yard. Rent was forty dollars a month.” Ibid, 118.
122
“2328 Cove Ave. Permit for Building Alteration and Repair,” September 20, 1961,
http://ladbsdoc.lacity.org/idispublic/; “2328 Cove Ave. Building Permit for Grading,” November 3, 1961,
http://ladbsdoc.lacity.org/idispublic/.
38

It was always a house of mixed elements. In 1944, Anita’s sister moved to an apartment
in San Francisco too small to house the jade mosaics and screens she had bought in
Macao years before, so amidst Harry’s collection of American books and records, the
exotic furnishings were somehow fit in. The neighborhood around the cul-de-sac was
peaceful. Down the hill spilled several bungalows of Craftsman or Japanese style,
accessible from landings off a long stretch of concrete stairs. In the 1980s the neighbors
still recalled in hushed voices that the large house at the end of Cove Avenue had once
been a Communist cell.
123

This last portion of Timmons’ description indicates that the Hay family activities were
significant enough to leave a lasting impression on the surrounding community long after they
had moved away. Harry Hay’s founding of the Mattachine Society, which put an end to this
period of activity, also reflected the influence of the Edendale community that the Hays
themselves contributed to. Despite this unique legacy, material remnants from this period were
likely long gone by the early 1990s. The subsequent attempt to landmark this resource, while not
failing outright, nonetheless raises several issues that, when taken together, help to understand
what hindered the effort.

Process:
Harry Hay’s importance is attested to by the fact that historical engagement with his
legacy, and that of the Mattachine, dates to the first phase of “gay scholarship.” This early work
was mainly political in focus and did not factor in theorized notions of space and place as part of
its analysis. The effort of planners such as Moira Kenney and Bill Adair provided the
intermediate step by helping to survey potential resources, though it was not alone enough to
mount a serious landmarking attempt. Preservation, which is integrally related to the fields of
architecture and art history, necessitates the inclusion of this expertise to be successful. This
perspective is crucial when it comes to assessing the physical condition and level of integrity that
a historic resource retains. Expertise in this area was then provided by Jeffrey Samudio, a
graduate of the USC School of Architecture, who assisted in the creation of the Gay and Lesbian

123
Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 119.
39

L.A. History Map.
124
It was Samudio who first highlighted the Hay residence as an ideal
opportunity for landmarking an LGBTQ-centric resource in L.A.
125

The main residence at 2328 Cove Avenue, which dates to 1905, was set relatively far
back from the street compared to the homes that began to slowly surround it through the decades.
The property today is gated and surrounded by high hedges, with the house only visible from the
concrete steps that lead northwest and downhill towards Silver Lake Boulevard (Fig. 2.1). By the
time the mapping effort began in 1996, the property was owned by Charles K. McWhorter.
126
A
year prior he had completed alterations to the house (which he had likely purchased around
1990) that included moving portions of an exterior wall and adding a raised porch to take better
advantage of the same commanding views of the Silver Lake reservoir that the Hay family had

124
Samudio was featured in an anthology focusing on the role of gay men in preservation. Interview with Jeffrey
Samudio: Will Fellows, A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2004), 150–55; Bill Adair, Moira Rachel Kenney, and Jeffrey Samudio, Gay & Lesbian L.A.
History Map. (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Center for Preservation Education & Planning, 2000).
125
In the 2001 L.A. Times article about the map, a picture of Samudio standing in front of the Hay residence
accompanies his own speculative assessment of its eligibility. It notes that “of the 31 locations on the Los
Angeles map, the one most likely to be considered for [NHL] designation, Samudio said, is a beige and white
two-story wood-frame house on Cove Avenue with spectacular hilltop views of the Silver Lake reservoir. It was
the home of Harry Hay, who hosted the founding meetings of the Mattachine Society there.” Gordon, “A Guide
to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age.”
126
McWhorter, who was active in Republican party politics from adolescence onward, served as an aide in the
1950s to (then) Vice President Richard M. Nixon. He subsequently became a lawyer for A.T.&T. and was later
appointed to a position on the National Council of the Arts at the start of the Nixon administration in 1969. Upon
his retirement from A.T.&T. in 1987, he lived a bi-coastal life in New York City and L.A. “Charles K.
McWhorter, 77, Aide to Nixon,” The New York Times, May 16, 1999, sec. U.S.
40

Figure 2.1: The Hay Residence, April 20
th
2019. Photo by author.

41

enjoyed.
127
While it is unknown whether or not McWhorter was aware of the house’s history or
significance, any potential conversations or outreach efforts that may have taken place would’ve
been stymied by his untimely death from a car accident in 1999. McWhorter, who never married
or had children, was survived only by a sister.
128

As part of the team working on the map, Samudio reached out to fellow preservationists
to inquire about the home’s eligibility in 1997.
129
By 2001, the L.A. Times article focusing on
this effort mentioned a new owner for the property, an openly gay screenwriter who was
described as “delighted” to learn of its significance.
130
Enthusiasm on behalf of the new owner
nonetheless waned following further discussion with relevant city employees, who at this point
were housed in the city of L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department.
131
By the time a subsequent visit
to gauge eligibility in 2002 took place, the owner’s displeasure with the possibility of
landmarking his new home had become clear to inspectors. Jay Oren, the city’s head staff
architect at the time, decided not to pursue the effort, and it was subsequently shelved.
132

Outcome:
Though this first attempt did not result in any “lavender landmarks” for L.A., there is
much to be said given the lack of resources available to preservationists like Samudio at the

127
“2328 Cove Ave. Permit for Building Alteration and Repair,” August 21, 1995,
http://ladbsdoc.lacity.org/IDISPublic_Records/idis/Report.aspx?Record_Id=21924171&Image=Hidden&ImageT
oOpen=.
128
“Paid Notice: Deaths McWhorter, Charles K.,” The New York Times, May 18, 1999, sec. Archives,
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/18/classified/paid-notice-deaths-mcwhorter-charles-k.html.
129
In her 2003 essay, Dubrow cites correspondence with Samudio and Howard Smith describing the filing of a pre-
application for evaluating the Hay residence’s eligibility for listing on the NRHP and California Register. As the
house is currently unlisted, this effort is presumed to have been unsuccessful. Dubrow also cites communication
with Samudio, who at the time had been appointed a State Historical Resources Commissioner, where he claims
to have added gays and lesbians to a list of the state’s “historically significant” communities for a statewide
preservation plan in 1997. While Samudio’s non-profit, The Center for Preservation Education and Planning,
appears in the plan, the words “gay” and “lesbian” are nowhere to be found. Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink
Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” 292, footnotes 50, 51; Office of Historic Preservation, “Forging a Future with a
Past: A Comprehensive Statewide Historic Preservation Plan for California” (Department of Parks and
Recreation Resources Agency, December 1997), 37.
130
Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age.”
131
“History of the Cultural Heritage Commission | Office of Historic Resources, City of Los Angeles,” accessed
October 17, 2019, https://preservation.lacity.org/commission/history-cultural-heritage-commission.
132
Rafael Fontes, Interview with Lambert Giessinger and Melissa Jones, In person conversation, September 30,
2019.
42

time.
133
Interest in conserving the Hay residence came during a period where Hay himself had
just begun to receive focused recognition for his life’s work. Timmons’ 1990 biography was
inaugural in this regard, followed five years later by a city commendation and publication of
Hay’s manifestoes in 1996.
134
As a living figure of advanced years, Hay’s famous energy and
loquaciousness were rapidly diminishing by the 1990s. Because of this, the urgent need to
capture his recollections, along with the oral histories of other contemporaneous activists, was
the primary concern for scholars engaging in this history. Hay himself was not consulted during
the creation of the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map, passing away soon after the ill-fated city
inspection to his former residence. His obituary in the New York Times did much to
posthumously raise the profile of his legacy nationally, while a local epitaph written for Los
Angeles Magazine mentions the (recently failed) attempt to landmark the Edendale home where
the Mattachine was founded.
135

While the historical perspectives of ethnic and racial minorities were just beginning to be
officially acknowledged in states like California, LGBTQ people still had to contend with
oppressive forces that had not been addressed during the civil rights period. Towards the end of
the twentieth century these communities were still struggling to assert their existence due to
ongoing heteronormative bias, which as a mindset knows no ethnicity.
136
This broader societal
hostility was reinforced by the rising tide of political and social conservatism that began during
the Reagan administration, strengthening during the (George H.W.) Bush years. While Bill
Clinton’s election in 1992 brought some relief, it did not speed up the complicated process of
medical research upon which tens of thousands of lives depended during the height of the AIDS
crisis, which only began taper off by the end of his first term in office. Clinton’s tendency to

133
The term “lavender landmark” is Dubrow’s, describing the landmarked equivalent to historic resources that
center LGBTQ history and people as part of their historical significance. Her use of “lavender” reflects a color
that has come to mean several things beyond just connoting LGBTQ presence. For instance, the lavender stripe
on the rainbow flag (there was a value assigned to each of its seven original colors), symbolizes the “spirit” of
the LGBTQ community. Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” 285; Dubrow,
“Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage,” 2.
134
Ruth Galanter, Jackie Goldberg, and Joel Wachs, “Resolution of Commendation: Harry Hay” (City of Los
Angeles, May 12, 1995); Hay, Radically Gay.
135
Kevin Roderick, “Epitaph: Harry Hay,” Los Angeles Magazine, January 2003,
http://www.kevinroderick.com/harryhay.html.
136
Social attitudes regarding gender and sexuality still vary by community. In the interest of asserting that racial and
ethnic groups are not monolithic, it bears repeating that these attitudes are not uniformly predictable. They are
dependent on a variety of factors that must account for political and religious affiliation, in addition to socio-
economic status, level of education attained, and beliefs specific to region and national origin.
43

compromise with conservatives on social issues also resulted in the passage of Don’t Ask Don’t
Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. In hindsight these laws are regarded as serious political
setbacks for the LGBTQ community nationally, taking years of work and struggle to repeal. All
these things worked to direct collective energy and resources towards more pressing political and
community issues, moving preservation concerns and LGBTQ history down the list of priorities.
Local resources for preservation were also scarce, and glaringly evident in the lack of
context necessary to establish significance. While L.A.’s LGBTQ community was to some extent
aware of its activist and artistic roots, meaningful texts documenting this history were not
published until the latter 2000s, finally culminating in the city’s 2014 LGBT context
statement.
137
Preservation efforts in L.A. had, until the creation of OHR and SurveyLA, been
primarily considered a matter of cultural affairs, then reflecting an overwhelming bias towards
white, straight males that was called out by both Dolores Hayden and Bill Adair.
138
While
there’s scant evidence of overt antagonism on the part of preservation officials to recognizing
this history at the local level, reluctance on the part of some LGBTQ people for the sake of
respectability politics was also a factor.
139
Lack of (respected) historical context likewise
resulted in draft applications that were fairly “weak” from a scholarly perspective.
140
Submitting
them would’ve hindered the CHC’s ability to understand the significance of the Hay residence,
potentially resulting in a negative decision on their part.
For the Hay residence, the decision not to pursue landmarking was mainly driven by a
homeowner who did not wish to be told what to do with his property. While owner consent is not
required to landmark in L.A., the problem of trying to determine what was materially significant
about the residence presented issues for city staff, who would’ve taken a more “academic”
approach during this time.
141
This attitude, presuming that architectural integrity and historic
significance would neatly align, was problematic for a 1905 house that had several additions and
alterations well before the Hay family moved into it. Preservationist interest in restoring postwar
remnants (at this point practically non-existent and vaguely documented) of Harry Hay’s
presence also came into conflict with the new owner’s desire to “restore” the house in a way that

137
Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context Statement.”
138
Hayden, “The Power of Place Project”; Adair, Bill, “Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic
Places in Los Angeles.”
139
Interview with Jeffrey Samudio Fellows, A Passion to Preserve, 154.
140
Rafael Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe, In person conversation, September 9, 2019.
141
Fontes, Interview with Lambert Giessinger and Melissa Jones.
44

would make it reflect its earlier architectural origins, eliminating the quirky “house of mixed
elements” feel that Timmons described. Oren, who wanted to ensure that L.A.’s first lavender
landmark would be a certainty, was shrewd in his decision to shelve the effort.
142
At present the
Hay Residence has been recorded by SurveyLA and the city of L.A.’s LGBT Historic Context
Statement, with an option to landmark it still open in the future.
143

All these factors aside, the meaning of this house’s history–especially Harry Hay’s
legacy–would prove significant enough to generate interest nearly a decade later in 2011. Wes
Joe, a prominent community activist based in Silver Lake, was informed about the house while
canvassing the area. In the same way that Timmons had picked up on a lingering communal
memory, neighbors confirmed that the house at the end of the cul-de-sac was significant, this
time openly acknowledging its associations with Harry Hay.
144
At this point Joe had already
interacted extensively with OHR from his experience with landmarking The Black Cat Tavern,
and when he inquired about the house, he was told of the failed effort to landmark it.
145
As he
continued to press for alternative options, staff suggested he try nearby features instead,
recommending the adjacent concrete stairway as a viable option that could be re-named. In this
case, “landmarking” could be accomplished with a commemorative plaque using available grant
money from the L.A. Department of Transportation.
146

The predominance of concrete steps, in lieu of roads or creating shortcuts through blocks,
is a character defining feature of the Edendale landscape. Historically these features were the

142
Fontes, Interview with Giessinger, Jones.
143
SurveyLA, “Silver Lake – Echo Park – Elysian Valley Report: Individual Resources” (Los Angeles, Calif.,
United States, May 13, 2014), 78; Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context Statement,” 30.
144
This piqued Wes Joe’s interest because the Margaret and Harry Hay house at 3132 North Oakcrest Drive had
already been declared an HCM (#981) in 2010. While this house is mentioned in Timmons’ biography, it was
built as a retirement home for Hay’s mother Margaret, who helped Hay and his co-founders organize the
Mattachine after being ejected from Edendale. The property’s location in the Hollywood Hills makes it far too
removed geographically to be considered part of the social scene that inspired Hay to begin with. As a result, the
main argument for its significance rests on criterion C, which describes a resource that “embodies the
distinguishing characteristics of an architectural type or specimen, inherently valuable for the study of a period
style or method of construction.” The house today is an intact example of the International Style designed by
Gregory Ain, who would go on to become a significant modernist architect in postwar L.A. Timmons, The
Trouble with Harry Hay, 162; Constanze L. Han, “Recommendation Report: Margaret and Harry Hay House”
(Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Los Angeles Department of City Planning, January 21, 2010).
145
Though Gail Dubrow claims the Margaret and Harry Hay House as L.A.’s “first gay landmark,” she also cites the
Black Cat, which was listed in 2008. Dubrow, “Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage,” 23, 54. For
more details on the landmarking effort, see Chapter 3.
146
Joe’s decision to not revive the former landmarking attempt was also the result of his own discomfort with
advocating for a single-family home, especially given the current owner’s lack of consent. Fontes, Interview with
Wes Joe.
45

result of a time before local road engineers knew how to (economically) grade steeply sloped
streets.
147
Residents living in the hilly neighborhoods surrounding Silver Lake Reservoir still use
these features today, and since much of L.A. before the Second World War developed around
streetcars, many homes in the area are only accessible by these steps. Because they are part of
the public thoroughfare–and aren’t bought and sold like private parcels–property owners cannot
restrict access to them. Motions to re-name these features also do not need a direct spatial-
historical connection to the history (or person) being commemorated. The ability to avoid
bureaucratic hoops associated with the HCM process not only made this a more attractive option
for local preservationists like Wes Joe, but also saved time and money by dealing mainly with
the Public Works Committee and the City Council directly.
The fact that this feature, then known as the Cove Avenue steps, terminated at the Hay
residence proved helpful. In communicating with Timmons, Joe was able to verify its importance
as a means of telling the story of the November 11
th
meeting between Hay and his Mattachine
cofounders in 1950, which initially took place at the point where the house driveway met the cul-
de-sac and stairway terminus.
148
Wes Joe then went to present his “Harry Hay Steps” initiative to
the local neighborhood council, which he regarded as a “formality” since they were already
enthusiastic and received over twenty letters from neighbors supportive of this effort.
149
Joe’s
ultimate success was accomplished by leveraging his relationship with the local council office,
headed by (then) councilmember Eric Garcetti.
150
The only serious hiccup in this process came
from the council office itself, which objected to naming the steps after Harry Hay owing to his

147
Glen Creason, “These Nondescript Stairs in Silver Lake Are Actually a Memorial to a Gay Rights Game-
Changer,” Los Angeles Magazine (blog), June 1, 2016, https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/mattachine-
society-stairs-map/.
148
Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
149
The Eastsider, “Silver Lake Stairway May Be Renamed in Honor of Gay Activist,” The Eastsider LA, June 1,
2011, https://www.theeastsiderla.com/archives/silver-lake-stairway-may-be-renamed-in-honor-of-
gay/article_4a60621d-5ecb-5b19-9a8b-75ddb1bc9b9c.html; Clint Lukens et al., “Meeting Agenda,” § Silver
Lake Neighborhood Council (2011).
150
Garcetti would be elected mayor of L.A. in 2013, with his vacated council seat subsequently occupied by his
former senior advisor, Mitch O’Farrell.
46

public support of pederasty.
151
Wes Joe suggested the “Mattachine Society Steps” instead, and
the motion was successfully passed.
152

The Public Works Committee installed the sign at the base of the steps comprising the
western portion of Cove Avenue (Fig. 2.2).
153
This sign then was marked by an unveiling
ceremony, attended by councilmember Garcetti and State Assemblyman Mike Gatto, held on
April 7, 2012 to mark Harry Hay’s one hundredth birthday.
154
The accompanying motion letter,
submitted by Garcetti, briefly describes “the accomplishments of [the] Mattachine Society”
which “resonate strongly with Silver Lake's traditions of tolerance, modernity and creativity. It is
only fitting that the City should commemorate the Mattachine Society's achievements in naming
the Cove Avenue steps in their honor.”
155
Garcetti’s sentiments reference Silver Lake’s Edendale
roots as described by Hurewitz’s writings, giving insight into how this area views itself with
respect to L.A.’s broader social landscape generally.
In an ideal world, critical academic scholarship would’ve preceded any attempt at
landmarking resources associated with Hay. Though the results of preserving this facet of
Edendale’s heritage are mixed, they reflect the complexities of dealing with a history that is
largely intangible. That said, intangibility here should not itself be viewed as synonym for
powerlessness. The ability of this heritage to resurface despite all the professional, procedural,
and societal factors stacked against it would seem to speak to the power that place-based legacies

151
Harry Hay’s approval of pederasty, which describes sexual relations between teenage boys and older men, was
borne out of nineteenth century views of “Greek love” as interpreted most famously from works such as Plato’s
Symposium. In Hay’s case, this expressed itself via interactions with the North American Man/Boy Love
Association (NAMBLA), an infamous pedophilia advocacy group. While Hay himself was never a card-carrying
member of NAMBLA per se, his approval of, and willingness to speak at, their events created trouble for
LGBTQ organizations working hard to dispel the canard that homosexuality and pedophilia were somehow
linked or identical. This came to a head during the 1986 L.A. Gay Pride Parade, where Hay narrowly avoided
arrest due to organizer complaints from his choosing to wear a sign that read “NAMBLA walks with me.” This
also opened Hay up to political attacks from conservatives looking to discredit LGBTQ activists during the
“culture wars.” Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay, 295, 310; Jeffrey Lord, “When Nancy Met Harry,” The
American Spectator, October 5, 2006, https://spectator.org/46366_when-nancy-met-harry/; Ben Miller,
“Remembering Harry Hay,” Jacobin, April 10, 2017, https://jacobinmag.com/2017/04/harry-hay-communist-
mattachine-society-lgbtq.
152
“Council File 11-1432: Public Stairway / Cove Avenue to Rockford Road / Mattachine Society Steps” (Los
Angeles City Clerk, February 10, 2012),
https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=11-1432.
153
Wes Joe, “Where Harry Met Rudi, Chuck and Bob and Dale...,” The Pride LA, October 9, 2015,
https://thepridela.com/2015/10/where-harry-met-rudi-chuck-and-bob-and-dale/.
154
Joe; Vincent Brook, Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles (Piscataway, UNITED
STATES: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 224,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/socal/detail.action?docID=1051869.
155
“Council File 11-1432.”
47

retain over time. Identifying and tracing these instances of heritage resurgence can help us
develop a more nuanced understanding of how much power place-based histories have when it
comes to affecting change in the built environment. This struggle would be more directly
expressed with the effort to landmark The Black Cat Tavern, a resource just south of the Hay
Residence on Sunset Blvd.

Figure 2.2: The Mattachine Society steps, April 20
th
2019. Photo by author.
48

Chapter 3
The Black Cat Tavern

Significance:
It is no coincidence that homophile organizations like the Mattachine Society began to
confront a crisis of confidence and energy in the mid-1960s. Their shift towards an
assimilationist position from more radical origins had come to look hopelessly out of date to
younger generations.
156
While this period is nostalgically remembered as a time of heady social
and political change, insurgent efforts leading to the birth of gay liberation would critically alter
the tone of LGBTQ life in complex ways. Looked at holistically, these changes may be
understood as part of a broader response to the stifling conformist values of the immediate
postwar period and its perceived failings. The most visible examples of this were anti-Vietnam
War protests, the struggle to advance civil and voting rights for ethnic minorities, second wave
feminism, and the rise of a counterculture that culminated in the sexual revolution.
157

Social attitudes regarding these controversial issues, being fluid and varied, are difficult
to measure objectively. Despite statistical information available from the midcentury period,
efforts from professional entities such as the Kinsey Institute to increase understanding of
sexuality and gender, while pioneering, don’t alone give us an accurate sense about the
embedded systemic oppression that LGBTQ people faced. Artifacts and pieces of evidence–
whatever their medium–provide critical insight to a topic that was rarely discussed in a public
forum at the time. One of the most influential of these was a CBS documentary, produced in
1964, titled The Homosexuals.
158
Hosted by Mike Wallace, this program attempted to address the
subject of homosexuality, specifically concerning the lives of gay males, in an evenhanded and
objective fashion.

156
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 151–54; Thompson, Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, xviii.
157
Perhaps the most significant character defining feature of gay liberation was the willingness of activist groups to
center sex and sexuality as part of their self-consciously revolutionary rhetoric. This marked a distinctive shift
from homophile organizations, which tended to shy away from any explicit focus on sex. Faderman and
Timmons, Gay L.A., 154.
158
While the documentary was produced in 1964 and ’65, difficulties completing the episode related to corporate
cost-cutting were compounded by the inability to find sponsors willing to purchase commercial time for the
program. The documentary eventually aired on March 7, 1967, leading many LGBTQ activists in L.A. to
perceive it as a direct response to protest efforts undertaken months earlier. Edward Alwood, Straight News:
Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media, Between Men--between Women (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996), 70–71. Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
49

The Homosexuals categorically fails to do this by today’s standards. Presenting
homosexuality as a disorder and social disease exclusively, the program served to reinforce a
pathologizing viewpoint. It did critical damage to the educational efforts that homophile groups
had undertaken in the previous decade by messaging to millions of viewers nationwide that gay
people were a public menace; a threat to society above all. Most of the psychologists interviewed
expressed views that would be broadly rejected by the American Psychological Association less
than a decade later, and interviews with gay men were edited to cast them in a far more negative
light than the interviewees themselves were led to believe.
159
The most indicative testimony
provided by The Homosexuals came from an interview with police captain (introduced simply as
“inspector”) James Fisk of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD):

During the year of 1964 we arrested three thousand homosexuals who committed their
lewd acts in public places. I can state conclusively that the problem is growing. I’m
concerned with the moral atmosphere in the community … I’m opposed on the matter of
principle to making anything which is improper or immoral conspicuous, and by its
conspicuousness making it easy for persons to engage in this kind of activity. The law
itself is such that, really, there isn’t a great deal we can do about those things that occur in
private places. But the most important thing to emphasize here I believe–this applies also
to other kinds of vice activities–that our primary effort goes to the reduction of prohibited
behavior in public places.
160

Fisk’s words are carefully measured in The Homosexuals, but he expressed his concerns more
bluntly in a Life Magazine report in 1964, saying “the [gay] pervert is no longer as secretive as
he once was. He’s aggressive and his aggressiveness is getting worse because of more
homosexual activity.”
161
This concern was clearly shared by the LAPD, as (then) Chief of Police
William H. Parker would later appoint Fisk coordinator of community relations following the
Watts riots in 1965.
162
These attitudes were reflective of the LAPD’s self-perceived role as the
enforcer of moral standards for the community, which in the context of midcentury L.A. took the
form of institutionalized homophobia.

159
Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis, 162; Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and
Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1st. (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2000), 52–53.
160
William Peters, “The Homosexuals,” Film, CBS Reports (New York, N.Y., United States: Columbia
Broadcasting System, March 7, 1967).
161
Paul Welch, “The ‘Gay’ World Takes to the City Streets,” Life, June 26, 1964.
162
Jon Thurber, “Obituaries; James G. Fisk, 91; Made Mark in LAPD With Outreach Effort,” Los Angeles Times;
Los Angeles, Calif., March 19, 2006, sec. California Metro; Part B; Metro Desk.
50

The LAPD’s explicitly homophobic approach led to increasing instances of oppressive
vice squad activities targeting LGBTQ people and places. Sting operations consisting mainly of
entrapment, crackdowns on cruising, and raids on gay bars continued and strengthened during
the 1960s.
163
Despite that fact that nearly all activities in gay bars occurred out of sight and on
private property, raiding these establishments was seen by police as an ideal way to arrest scores
of “perverts” and, once taken to the station for booking, register their names publicly. Arrestees
were also registered as sex offenders, leaving a permanent stain on one’s record in the eyes of the
law. While the effects of these practices varied by case, victims would typically be fired from
their jobs, ostracized by their family or community, and in many instances commit suicide.
164

LGBTQ community reaction to these worsening conditions began in the fall of 1966 with
the founding of PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) by Steve Ginsburg.
165
As
part of a new generation of radical community activists, Ginsburg forcibly distanced himself
from pre-existing homophile groups by referring to them as “prissy little old ladies” and
refusing to obfuscate PRIDE’s sexual stance and political agenda for the sake of respectability
politics.
166
Despite PRIDE’s stated goals of fostering pride within L.A.’s LGBTQ community, its
defining moment would come only a few months after its founding.
167
This began on New
Year’s Eve 1966, when the LAPD raided a Silver Lake gay bar called The Black Cat Tavern.
168

163
“Cruising” here refers to the solicitation of sex in public places. Owing to the increased freedom of movement
that men generally enjoy in public space, it’s assumed that gay men were disproportionately affected by police
crackdowns. Though it’s admittedly difficult to compile reliable statistics, there are several documented instances
of LAPD harassment of trans people, lesbians, and any woman perceived as too masculine or gender non-
conforming in dress and appearance. While L.A. gay bars during the 1960s were often consciously unisex to
make them appear heteronormative to the uninitiated, women were largely unaffected by police entrapment in
L.A. The LAPD, which employed women as early as 1909, never directed female officers to entrap lesbians in
the same fashion. Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 23–27, 47, 67, 72; “Women in the LAPD - Los Angeles
Police Department,” accessed November 3, 2019,
http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_view/833.
164
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 27–37.
165
This is the first recorded use of the word “pride” to be applied to an LGBTQ organization. Today, the word is
typically used to refer to annual LGBTQ commemorative parades and celebrations occurring both nationally and
globally. Thompson, Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, xviii.
166
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 155.
167
PRIDE’s initial goals presaged issues that would come to define the LGBTQ movement in later decades.
Ginsburg embraced bar-goers as members of the community. This was done in opposition to L.A. homophile
groups that refused to associate with bars generally. PRIDE also sought to organize a variety of events for more
“wholesome” forms of LGBTQ socializing, and called for a center to serve the community years before the L.A.
chapter of the Gay Liberation Front would get around to founding one. Ibid, 155–56.
168
The Black Cat Tavern, while colloquially referred to as the Black Cat, is distinguished here from the Black Cat
Bar (or Black Cat Café), a site in San Francisco that is also significant for bar-based LGBTQ activity. Boyd,
Wide-Open Town, 57; D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 187.
51

The sequence of events that transpired were typical of the treatment that many had come to
expect from police at this point:

Twelve plainclothes Vice officers had positioned themselves in a large crowd at the
Black Cat [Tavern] to overserve the goings-on. At 11:30, when a costume contest had
ended at New Faces, a bar down the street, dozens of men in drag crowded into the Black
Cat [Tavern]. As [performers]… sang a rock version of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ balloons fell
from the ceiling and gay men exchanged the traditional midnight kiss. That was when
uniformed police, who had been alerted by the undercover officers, rushed in and began
to swing billy clubs, tear down leftover Christmas ornaments, break furnishings, and beat
several men brutally … officers chased two men across Sanborn Avenue to the New
Faces bar. There, the officers knocked the woman owner down and beat her two
bartenders unconscious. One of the bartenders, Robert Haas, suffered a ruptured spleen
from the beating. He remained in critical condition for days, and when he recovered, was
charged with felony assault on an officer. Six men were charged with lewd conduct: They
were seen kissing other men on the lips for up to ten seconds. A jury found them all
guilty.
169

In addition to documenting the raid and subsequent trial through its newsletter, PRIDE
worked with sympathetic youth groups to organize a series of protests outside of The Black Cat
Tavern to draw attention to police abuses all along the Sunset strip.
170
Beyond the local publicity
that PRIDE’s 1967 protests received, the organization also worked to support (financially) those
convicted at The Black Cat Tavern raid, though attempts to appeal their convictions were
ultimately unsuccessful.
171
As a result, PRIDE itself would dissolve within the following year
owing to “internal squabbling and piled-up legal bills.”
172
Despite this, its most enduring legacy
came as a result of the newsletter, which had picked up a decent circulation following its
coverage of The Black Cat Tavern protests, and was subsequently acquired by Dick Michaels

169
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 156.
170
The Black Cat Tavern is located at 3909 E. Sunset Boulevard in L.A. While there had been a “truce” between
police and the LGBTQ community, Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as governor was seen as a motivating factor in
the raid. thirstyinla, “Alexei Romanoff and the LGBT Civil Rights Legacy of The Black Cat,” Thirsty in LA,
June 12, 2015, http://thirstyinla.com/2015/06/12/alexei-romanoff-lgbt-black-cat/.
171
Defended by Herb Selwyn, a longtime LGBTQ ally and straight lawyer, the brief argued from the basis of the
equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment, in essence asserting that two heterosexual men wouldn’t
have been subjected to the same violent treatment for kissing as the homosexual defendants had been. Though
Selwyn’s brief made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, they ultimately declined to hear the case.
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 157.
172
Thompson, Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, xix.
52

and Bill Rand.
173
While both men had joined PRIDE as part of the surge in membership
following The Black Cat Tavern raid, they were interested in expanding the newsletter to create a
LGBTQ news source free from the homophobia-laden outlets that tended to regurgitate attitudes
evident in The Homosexuals. Their efforts resulted in The Advocate (initially titled The Los
Angeles Advocate), which by the end of the twentieth century would become the national news
magazine of record for the LGBTQ community.
174

The LAPD raid–and the protests that responded to it–were relatively brief, and initial
energy fizzled out fairly quickly. Despite this, the significance of these events is due to them
being the earliest documented instance of open defiance on the part of self-identified LGBTQ
people. Police raids on gay bars had long been a fact of life in LA and elsewhere during the
postwar period. The collective sense that these practices were wrong was not new. However,
resentment on behalf of bar patrons and raid victims was always accompanied by an
overwhelming sense that these raids were carried out with the approval of a heterosexual
majority. In beginning to organize themselves, The Black Cat Tavern protest is evidence of a
growing awareness among LGBTQ people that there could be strength in numbers. More
importantly, they began to realize that countering homophobic oppression could be more
successful if done collectively.
Many significant achievements and events are tied to The Black Cat Tavern raid in 1967,
but the failure to launch a sustained and radical gay liberation movement in any sense was
undeniable. While The Advocate in later years had always been aware of its geographic origins,
the events of 1967 were quickly overshadowed by the Stonewall Uprising, which occurred two
years later in New York City.
175
Instead of PRIDE, the most prominent LGBTQ protest

173
Both men used pseudonyms, Michaels was really named Richard Mitch, and Rand was Bill Rau. Thompson,
Romesburg, and Gessen, xix; Advocate Staff, “Gay Passion, Gay Pride,” The Advocate, January 29, 2007,
http://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2007/01/29/gay-passion-gay-pride; Faderman and Timmons, Gay
L.A., 159–60.
174
While this prominent designation is a common and uncontested one, The Advocate’s early issues were almost
exclusively dominated by (and catered to) gay male concerns. This gradually changed when it was purchased by
David Goodstein, an investment banker who moved its base of operations to San Francisco. The Advocate
eventually moved back to L.A. in a more professionalized form. Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 160–62.
175
This event, “where a police raid of a Greenwich Village Gay bar sparked several nights of rioting…” is also
referred to as the Stonewall Rebellion, or simply Stonewall. It’s commonly regarded as the beginning of the
modern movement for LGBTQ rights nationally. While early historians never go so far as to declare it an
absolute beginning, it is a critical turning point for queer people, and has begun to develop a global resonance in
recent years. D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 1; “NYC Pride 2019 | WorldPride NYC |
Stonewall50,” accessed September 19, 2019, https://2019-worldpride-stonewall50.nycpride.org/.
53

organization of the early 1970s became the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), which was founded in
New York City in reaction to Stonewall. While the L.A. chapter of the GLF made huge leaps for
the community through protests, boycotts, and holding the city’s first pride parade in 1970, its
founding was by extension a reaction to Stonewall. Many of its achievements were likewise
overlooked in favor of political gains being made on the east coast. This is reflected in LGBTQ
historiography during and after the gay liberation period, ultimately leading to LGBTQ L.A.’s
narrative marginalization as described by Moira Kenny in Mapping Gay L.A.
Comparisons between The Black Cat Tavern and Stonewall have increased in recent
years, largely resulting from their fiftieth anniversaries in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
176

Attempting to understand why events transpired as they did is a common pastime for historians
generally, and Gay L.A. is no exception in this regard:

Topography played a role in the significance of both events: Los Angeles is an area
spread out over 450 square miles, where (unlike New York’s Greenwich Village, the site
of Stonewall) people seldom take casual walks. The Black Cat [Tavern] protests attracted
multitudes of people who drove across town to participate, but chance passers-by (such as
many of the Stonewall protesters had been) were scarce.
177

The Black Cat Tavern eventually changed its name to Basgo’s Disco, and by the summer of
1989 had transitioned into a prominent nightclub associated with the local queer and punk
scenes.
178
The Black Cat Tavern itself was subsequently forgotten by scholars until the
publication of the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map in 2000. The L.A. Times article describing
the map begins with an interview of Jeffrey Samudio at the site, which was operating as a gay
bar specializing in Spanish language drag performances.
179
Though the article discusses the
significance of The Black Cat Tavern raid and its aftermath, it would be another eight years
before interest in preserving the site would lead to L.A.’s first LGBTQ landmark.

176
Laura Dominguez, “The Black Cat: Harbinger of LGBTQ Civil Rights | KCET,” February 11, 2017,
https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-black-cat-harbinger-of-lgbtq-civil-rights.
177
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 157.
178
FUCK! or “Club Fuck! aimed to counter the exclusion and conformity of other gay clubs at that time in L.A.”
The club was raided in 1993 by the LAPD vice squad and replaced by LeBarcito. In 2016 it was the subject of a
retrospective exhibition at the ONE Archives and gallery. Andrew J. Henkes, “A Party for the ‘Freaks’:
Performance, Deviance and Communitas at Club Fuck!, 1989–1993,” The Journal of American Culture 36, no. 4
(2013): 287, https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12050; “FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure | ONE Archives,” accessed
November 9, 2019, https://one.usc.edu/exhibition/fuck-loss-desire-pleasure; Myriam Gurba, “L.A.’s Legendary
Queer Night Club,” KCET, February 29, 2016, https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/resurrecting-an-expletive.
179
Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age.”
54

Process:
Serious preservation interest in The Black Cat Tavern began in the Spring of 2008 with
Wes Joe, a longtime resident and activist in Silver Lake. At the time, the building was split
between a laundromat and Le Barcito, a Latino gay bar.
180
When Joe became aware of potential
city interest in up-zoning along Sunset Junction’s commercial strip, he began to inquire about the
bar, situated on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hyperion Avenue.
181
When
community members recalled that significant protests had occurred there during the ’60s, Joe
began to do his own research, finding varying accounts of what had occurred at The Black Cat
Tavern in 1967.
182
Joe then reached out to Charles J. Fisher, a locally-based architectural
historian for hire, to further investigate the building and its LGBTQ significance. When Fisher’s
initial round of research indicated that the bar was significant with respect to LGBTQ history,
Joe and like-minded colleagues created a non-profit, called Friends of the Black Cat, to formally
advocate and pursue HCM status for the site.
183

In working to further this effort, the Friends of the Black Cat also recognized a need to
increase general awareness and interest in LGBTQ history.
184
They began by assisting Zócalo,
an L.A.-based nonprofit media partnership, to sponsor a panel discussion, held on June 19, 2008.
Titled Gay L.A. vs. Gay San Francisco, the discussion was held at the Arclight Hollywood

180
The structure at 3909 W Sunset Blvd dates to 1939 and was originally built as a Safeway grocery store. It was
likely sold off as many grocery chains contracted in size due to scarcities related to the second World War. In
1963 it was subdivided into a bar (The Black Cat Tavern) and a laundromat; a set of uses that remained in place
up through the 2008 landmarking process. Appended application by Wes Joe and Charles J. Fisher,
“Recommendation Report: The Black Cat” (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Los Angeles Department of City
Planning, September 18, 2008).
181
Sunset Junction is a semi-official term describing the southernmost portion of Silver Lake where Sunset and
Santa Monica Boulevards intersect. Up-zoning refers to the process by which cities approve changes in land use,
allowing for more (or higher density) uses on parcels within a designated area. The city of L.A. uses Floor Area
Ratio (typically referred to as FAR) along with height limits to determine how much property owners and
developers can build on a given parcel. Because so much of greater L.A.’s historic built fabric consists of low-
rise structures, up-zoning is seen as a danger to these historic resources from a preservationist standpoint. This is
because it incentivizes property owners to build at higher densities, often demolishing (rather than restoring or
rehabilitating) existing structures. “Guide to the Current Zoning String | Los Angeles City Planning,” accessed
November 3, 2019, https://planning.lacity.org/zoning/guide-current-zoning-string.
182
Jim Burroway, “Box Turtle Bulletin » The Temerity of a Kiss,” 2006,
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2006/12/27/171.
183
Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
184
Ibid.
55

theater.
185
J. Edwin Bacon, a prominent LGBTQ ally and Episcopalian priest, acted as the
moderator. The first panelist was Gary J. Gates, an expert on LGBTQ demography in the U.S,
who provided a data-based perspective on comparing the LGBTQ populations of the two cities,
specifically with respect to how stereotypical perceptions belie demographic realities. The two
historians representing each city were Nan Alamilla Boyd, whose book Wide Open Town details
San Francisco’s pre-Stonewall LGBTQ history, and Daniel Hurewitz, the author of Bohemian
Los Angeles.
As an ally, Brown brought up the commonplace perception that LGBTQ politics began in
New York City (and on the east coast generally) in order to allow Hurewitz and Alamilla Boyd
the opportunity to introduce their research as a counterpoint. Hurewtiz, who by this time had
moved to the east coast after finishing his PhD at UCLA, describes New York City’s dominance
of the LGBTQ narrative as a “puzzle.” His attempt at an answer reveals much about differing
cultural values, saying “somehow I think that we Angelenos or we Californians don’t boast
enough–or celebrate enough–[about] our history unlike New York. Maybe [New Yorkers] do a
better job telling their stories.”
186
While this says much about how each place is perceived (it’s
common to deride L.A. as a city that places little to no value on its own history), Hurewitz’s take
would’ve signaled to any preservationists in the audience that night that there was much work
needing to be done in telling the story of LGBTQ L.A.
Following the panel, the Friends of the Black Cat earnestly resumed the process of
engaging support among relevant community members and preparing an HCM nomination.
While six books, including Gay L.A., helped to give the application scholarly support, the most
critical resources came from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, which provided
valuable source materials ranging from contemporaneous news coverage (primarily clippings
and PRIDE newsletters) to photos of The Black Cat Tavern protest itself. Two significant letters
of support were also included in the application. The first came from Mark Thompson, a long
time journalist for The Advocate and editor of The Long Road to Freedom, which was the first

185
“Gay L.A. vs. Gay San Francisco | The Takeaway,” June 19, 2008,
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2008/06/19/gay-l-a-vs-gay-san-francisco/events/the-takeaway/.
186
Italicization added.
56

non-news publication to detail The Black Cat Tavern’s historical significance in hindsight.
187

The second letter came from Lillian Faderman who, in addition to reiterating the points made
when she and Stuart Timmons wrote Gay L.A., stated that designation “would help restore to
[L.A.] its rightful place as the true pioneer in a gay rights movement that has positively affected
millions of lives worldwide.”
188

After having their application reviewed by city planning staff to ensure completion, The
Black Cat Tavern was scheduled as the sixth item for the next CHC meeting on July 17, 2008.
189

This constituted the first official step in the landmarking process, where the commissioners
would vote on whether to take the resource up for consideration as an HCM. By the time this
first meeting occurred, Joe had already brought the matter to his local council district office (CD
13). By leveraging pre-existing relationships and engaging the sincere interest of the council
office, Joe succeeded in securing a letter of support from Eric Garcetti, the councilmember for
CD 13. Received by the CHC a month in advance of their consideration vote, it reiterates many
of the same points of historical significance that former scholars had already identified about the
site’s LGBTQ significance, asking the commission to “please give the Black Cat every
consideration in making this designation possible.”
190

Once the CHC voted to take The Black Cat Tavern up for consideration, OHR sent a
notification letter to the registered building owner (Roco Investment Holding, LLC) to which
there was no reply.
191
In the meantime, a letter received immediately following the July 17
th

meeting helped give the CHC even more scholarly perspective with respect to LGBTQ history,
reiterating the significance of The Black Cat Tavern. Written by Elizabeth Armstrong, a
professor researching the sociological origins of the U.S. gay liberation movement, the letter
provides an additional reason for The Black Cat Tavern’s historiographic marginalization:

187
Published in 1994 on the 25
th
anniversary of Stonewall, Long Road to Freedom is structured like a large timeline
of significant events interspersed with articles and interviews that The Advocate had previously published. Mark
Thompson, who wrote the introduction that details The Black Cat Tavern, served as the main editor. Thompson,
Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, xvii–xxvi; Mark Thompson, “Letter Addressed to Cultural
Heritage Commission,” April 27, 2008; Joe and Fisher, “Black Cat Report,” 33.
188
Faderman goes on to state her conviction “that Mr. Timmons, who has been hospitalized with a stroke since
March, would heartily endorse my support of this proposal.” Lillian Faderman, “Letter Addressed to Cultural
Heritage Commission,” May 5, 2008; Joe and Fisher, “Black Cat Report,” 34–35.
189
Richard Barron et al., “Agenda,” § Cultural Heritage Commission (2008).
190
Eric Garcetti, “Re: Cultural Heritage Landmark Designation of the Black Cat: 3909 Sunset Boulevard, Los
Angeles, CA 90026,” June 17, 2008.
191
Edgar Garcia, “Notice of Commission Action Re: 3909 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90026,” July 21,
2008.
57

The Black Cat [Tavern] did not come to be remembered as the origin of the gay
movement because, given the harsher nature of the policing in Los Angeles as compared
to New York, gay activists did not experience this protest as a success. Instead of
registering the historical novelty of what they had accomplished by pulling off what may
have been the first definitely gay liberation–as opposed to homophile–protest in the U.S.,
they were demoralized by how little headway they made with the [LAPD].
192

Armstrong goes on to support landmark designation, saying that doing so “will help the
community understand that movements don’t arrive out of thin air, and it really isn’t just one riot
that changes everything.”
193
Within two weeks, an additional letter from the Silver Lake
Community Association arrived to reinforce local support for the designation, which would
underscore the history of an area that “has been known for its diversity and tolerance.”
194
OHR
again attempted to notify the property owners by mail and, receiving no reply, went ahead with a
requisite site visit where commissioners conducted an inspection of the property on August 7,

2008.
195

By the end of August, another letter of support from Beth Chayim Chadashim had been
sent to the CHC.
196
Soon afterwards OHR was contacted by David Cohen (the owner of Roco
Investment Holding, LLC) regarding the CHC’s July 17
th
consideration vote. Cohen commended
the advocacy efforts of Friends of the Black Cat, but voiced his objection to the designation
based on its ability to restrict potential development options on the site.
197
Referencing a
conversation between him, OHR, and preservationists, Cohen cites “a consensus that the
significance of the property is primarily associated with events that occurred immediately outside
of the building. Therefore, it is recognized that the façade, storefronts and entrances to the

192
Elizabeth Armstrong, “Letter Re: Designating the Black Cat Bar Building as an HCM...,” July 17, 2008.
193
This is an explicit reference to the common misconception that the Stonewall Uprising in New York City
represents the absolute beginning of the gay rights movement. Thompson, “Letter,” April 27, 2008; Armstrong,
“Letter,” July 17, 2008.
194
Genelle LeVin, “Letter Addressed to CHC Re: CHC-2008-2708-HCM The Black Cat Bar, 3909 Sunset Blvd.,”
July 30, 2008.
195
Edgar Garcia, “Notice of Commission Action and Inspection Re: 3909 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
90026,” August 1, 2008.
196
Founded in L.A. in 1972, Beth Chayim Chadashim is the first self-identified LGBTQ synagogue anywhere. In
this case their support for the HCM designation was not only a matter of personal affinity but also an expression
of the biblical commandment to pursue justice. Brett Trueman, “Letter Addressed to CHC Re: CHC-2008-2708-
HCM The Black Cat Bar, 3909 Sunset Blvd.,” August 28, 2008.
197
David Cohen, “Re: Notice of Objection to Designation of Property Located at 3909 West Sunset Boulevard as
Historic (CHC-2008-2708-HCM)(Black Cat),” September 3, 2008, 2.
58

building are the key features that have associative value with the Black Cat [Tavern].”
198
Cohen
also acknowledges that the interior features are “worthy of documentation,” but diminishes their
importance for preservation in favor of the signage and architectural features facing Sunset Blvd.
Since the building in question is essentially a simple shed structure, its main architectural
ornamentation consists of an Art Deco parapet with chevron patterned geometry. Claiming to
have purchased the property “with a long-term view of renovation and rehabilitation,” it’s less
likely that Cohen would’ve altered such a unique and marketable feature to begin with.
199

However, the concerns of preservationists wanting to save aspects of the building that told the
whole story of The Black Cat Tavern (both the initial LAPD raid and protests) were not limited
to the façade alone. This was alluded to in the application reviewed by the CHC, ultimately
affecting Cohen’s desire to develop the building’s adjacent corner parking lot. This would’ve
been done by creating openings in the building’s unadorned eastern wall (keeping intact a row of
original geometric piers/pilasters that relate to the building’s design) in order to turn the lot into
an outdoor seating area. Alternatively, the wall could be left alone, with the adjacent lot simply
being infilled by a new building.
Cohen’s objection letter ends by offering a written agreement clarifying which features of
the building and site are significant in advance of designation.
200
This came in the form of an
addendum submitted to OHR by Roger A. Brevoort, an architectural historian (working for
Historic Consultants, Inc.) hired by Cohen to help him navigate the landmarking process. While
Brevoort reiterates the owners’ desire to respect the façade and architectural features, it
privileges “the form of the Black Cat (Le Bar), which relate[s] most closely to the actual events
of January 1967…” and that “the form of the current entry is more important in this case than the
fabric.”
201
While these statements contradict the preservationist norm of saving historic material
to the greatest extent possible, they reflect the challenges of advocating for marginalized spaces

198
Cohen, 3.
199
Ibid, 3.
200
Cohen was essentially negotiating here, and while one could envision this being a preservation easement (a legal
agreement protecting specific character defining features), it’s hard to imagine one being effective here given all
the managing and oversight issues associated with easements generally. In quibbling with the list of character
defining features spelled out in the Friends of the Black Cat application, Cohen was likely looking for ways to
test how rigid the HCM status would be with respect to his investment. When alterations are made to an HCM
(interior, exterior, or otherwise), the plans are typically subject to administrative review conducted by the
planning staff at OHR.
201
Roger A. Brevoort, “Re: 3909 West Sunset Blvd. (CHC-2008-2708-HCM) Character Defining Features
Addendum for the Black Cat Property,” September 18, 2008.
59

so often associated with LGBTQ history. In the case of the Black Cat, declaring its period of
significance to be 1967 would mean privileging a 1960s curtain wall inset into a 1930s building
façade, something that doubtlessly struck the owner as frustratingly illogical (Figure 3.1). This
was compounded by the alterations that the bar’s entry sequence had gone through in subsequent
decades. What was then (in 1967) a pair of curtain wall entry doors covered with posters had
been altered into a set of metal-clad double doors reflecting LeBarcito’s self-consciously dingy
and “industrial” aesthetic.
202

In this case the property owner’s objections weren’t coming from an overt place of social
prejudice or religious intolerance. The items listed in Breevort’s addendum letter express the
concerns of a developer wanting to maximize their return on investment. Cohen reiterated this at
the second CHC meeting on September 18
th
, taking issue only with the scope and scale of the
HCM designation with respect to interior and site features.
203
By this time, the CHC had
received three more letters demonstrating support from local scholars, preservation-planners, and
the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center (today known as the L.A. LGBT Center).
204
Of the nine
individuals requesting a decision letter copy following the commission’s deliberation, only
David Cohen was not a member of the preservation and/or LGBTQ community.
205
With local
support now well established alongside copious academic research, the CHC voted to submit
their recommendation that the Black Cat be declared an HCM. Their report was sent to PLUM a
couple of weeks after, and scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, October 28
th
.

202
This is evident in a historic photograph The Black Cat Tavern from 1967 as compared with Wes Joe’s photos
from 2008, at which time the Black Cat had become LeBarcito. Joe and Fisher, “Black Cat Report,” 28, 46.
203
Cohen’s earliest objections, communicated verbally though phone calls and meetings with OHR, were initially
opposed to any form of designation outright. These were quickly retracted once the established significance of
the site for LGBTQ history was made apparent to him. Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
204
One letter writer, Vincent Brook would go onto use the effort to designate The Black Cat Tavern to inform a
chapter devoted to “LAnglos and LAGBTs” in his book Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los
Angeles. Cason Anderson, a second letter writer, worked as a preservation-planner and would contribute to the
LA LGBT Context Statement six years later. Vincent Brook and Karen Brook, “Re: Cultural Heritage Landmark
Designation of the Black Cat,” September 5, 2008; Brook, Land of Smoke and Mirrors, 223; Carson Anderson,
“Re: Cultural Heritage Landmark Designation of the Black Cat: 3909 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
90026,” September 17, 2008; Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context Statement,” i; Jim Key, “Re: L.A. Gay and
Lesbian Center Support for Designation of the Black Cat: 3909 Sunset Boulevard,” September 8, 2008.
205
Another one of the signatures was from Tara Jones-Hamacher, historic tax credit consultant and principle at
Historic Consultants, Inc. “CHC Determination Letter Request Sign Up Sheet” (City of Los Angeles, September
18, 2008).
60

Figure 3.1: The Black Cat Tavern, April 20
th
2019. Photo by author.

61

In order to counter the possibility of only having certain portions of The Black Cat
Tavern landmarked, the Friends of the Black Cat took the opportunity to address the site’s
material aspects in advance of PLUM’s hearing. In a letter responding to Cohen’s assertions that
only the sign and façade were worthy of designation, Joe defends the material integrity of the
site, listing various interior features such as the floor, walls, bar, and raised dance floor. Joe
connected these to the associated permits to show that nearly everything in the interior
(excepting the ceiling and a now absent kitchenette) was essentially unchanged.
206
His assertions
were bolstered by another letter (received by PLUM simultaneously) from Alexei Romanoff, a
gay man and co-owner of the New Faces bar during the 1967 raid. Alexei’s first-hand testimony
of the raid and ensuing protest only served to strengthen an application that had already passed
the CHC’s scrutiny.
Scheduled as item 12 for the PLUM meeting, The Black Cat Tavern HCM
recommendation was introduced by Ken Bernstein, the head of OHR (which at this point had
existed for only two years). Though adopted by PLUM on consent, the committee chose to hear
testimony, first from Wes Joe and Avram Chill. The latter, a board member and representative
for Beth Chayim Chadashim, read Alexei Romanoff’s letter in his stead. Elizabeth Bougart-
Sharkov, as chair for urban design and preservation for the Silver Lake neighborhood council,
voiced the neighborhood’s support of designating both the building that housed The Black Cat
Tavern and its adjacent lot.
207
Given the overwhelming support, from both the community and
the CD 13 office, PLUM handily voted to forward the designation to city council, scheduling for
a meeting on November 7, 2008.
A significant factor during this entire process–one left largely unrecorded in all the
application research and correspondence–was the influence of events unfolding in California and
the nation leading up to 2008. Discussions of broader social issues are often avoided during the
landmarking process, but they remain a contributing factor nonetheless. Though often dismissed
as a local concern, preservation is ultimately political, with contemporary events greatly
affecting the tone of its discourse generally. This was certainly the case with The Black Cat

206
Wes Joe, “Letter Addressed to PLUM Re: CF# 08-2689, CHC-2008-2708-HCM The Black Cat Bar, 3909 Sunset
Blvd.,” October 20, 2008.
207
Bougart-Sharkov spoke on behalf of herself, acknowledging that the majority of the neighborhood
councilmembers felt they had too many financial investments to be viewed as objective in voicing official
neighborhood council support. Taped recording.
62

Tavern, which was being nominated not only for representing the difficult history of past
LGBTQ oppression but was also seen as indicative of the strides that the gay rights movement
had made in the four decades since. That this movement was still progressing was undoubtedly
on the minds of everyone involved. In California, the rights of LGBTQ people took center stage
when the state supreme court declared on May 15, 2008 that Proposition 22 was unconstitutional.
From then on “all counties [in California] had to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.”
208

The initial response from LGBTQ people, and allied social progressives, was one of
general elation as images of gay and lesbian couples tying the knot throughout the state were
broadcast nationwide. This increased level of exposure was unprecedented, not only bringing
copious media attention to the gay rights movement nationally, but also drawing ire from social
conservatives as well. Founded in 2000, the Protect Marriage/Proposition 22 Legal Defense and
Education Fund immediately went into action and successfully put a new anti-same-sex-marriage
initiative on the ballot for the upcoming 2008 election, titled Proposition 8 (colloquially referred
to as “Prop 8”). The counter effort, led by Equality for All/No on 8, was characterized by a
relatively weak and “de-gayed” campaign that failed to communicate what marriage could mean
for LGBTQ people.
209
On election day November 4
th
, three days before the L.A. city council was
set to vote on nominating The Black Cat Tavern as an HCM, Prop 8 passed, revoking the right to
same-sex marriage in California.
While approval of The Black Cat Tavern was not in doubt by the time of the council
meeting, the recent passage of Prop 8 was addressed and alluded to by nearly everyone speaking
in support of the nomination. The same three parties who’d addressed PLUM also reiterated their
support to the council.
210
By now they were able to strengthen their arguments for significance
by acknowledging that the sites like The Black Cat Tavern, much like the passing of Prop 8, help

208
Put on the ballot in 2000, Proposition 22 by was essentially a California version of the 1996 federal Defense of
Marriage Act (typically referred to as DOMA), stating that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid
or recognized in the State of California.” It was proposed by William “Pete” Knight, former fighter pilot and
ultraconservative state senator. In response to Massachusetts beginning to legalize same-sex marriages in 2004,
Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, began to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The
lawsuits resulting from the revocation of those licenses per Prop 22 eventually led to the state supreme court’s
decision. Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, First Simon&Schuster hardcover
edition. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 602, 606; In Re: Marriage Cases: (43 Cal. 4th 757 2008).
209
The zealous energy of the Prop 8 proponents was also fueled by an alliance of Catholic and Mormon activists
bolstered by out of state money. Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 606–9.
210
Wes Joe and Elizabeth Bougart-Sharkov restated their support, and BCC sent Brett Truemann (instead of Avram
Chill).
63

to disrupt popular assumptions of social progress as always linear and positive. Perhaps the most
spirited and influential commentary came from Bill Rosendahl who, then representing CD-11,
was the first openly gay councilmember in L.A.’s history.
211
The city council–already supportive
of this nomination–jumped at the chance to send a political message, repeatedly referencing
notions of struggle, progress, and human rights as themes that The Black Cat Tavern would help
to preserve as part of L.A.’s history. Among the eleven councilmembers present, The Black Cat
Tavern was unanimously approved, added to the official HCM list, and became L.A.’s first
lavender landmark.

Outcome:
Following the HCM designation, the LA Times described “thousands flood[ing] the
streets of Sunset Junction rallying for the rights of same-sex couples to marry, some
demonstrators rested their placards under the sign and crowded into the Silver Lake bar now
called Le Barcito.”
212
Informed by interviews with Alexei Romanoff and Herb Selwyn (the
lawyer who defended the Black Cat Raid victims in 1967), the article described the recent
designation of The Black Cat Tavern as a means of highlighting a history that, until its
designation, had been largely forgotten by younger generations of L.A.’s LGBTQ community.
By contextualizing the progress that the gay rights movement had made, interviewees
underscored the hope that this site would be preserved as part of a history that was still
unfolding. Prop 8 would subsequently be ruled unconstitutional in 2010, a decision that was
upheld in 2012.
213

In the same year Prop 8 was struck down, efforts to rehabilitate the property began to
move forward when a meeting was held with OHR on September 17, 2010 to discuss a design
review package from Valerio Inc., an architecture firm contracted to draw up designs for a
Starbucks. Intended to take the place of the laundromat that had vacated the (eastern) tenant

211
In 2013, Rosendahl was succeeded as councilmember by another openly gay man, Mike Bonin. To date,
councilmembers Bonin and Mitch O’Farrell (the latter as CD 13 councilmember and Garcetti’s former planning
director) are the highest-ranking LGBTQ officials in L.A.
212
Joanna Lin, “Bar Still Symbolic in Gay Community,” Los Angeles Times (1996-Current); Los Angeles, Calif,
November 16, 2008, sec. California.
213
Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 618–20; Perry, et al. v. Schwarzenegger, et al., No. C 09-2292 (U.S. District
Court for Northern California 2010); Perry, et al. v. Brown, et al., No. 10–16696 (U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit 2012).
64

space adjacent to Le Barcito, the plans depict an untouched Le Barcito and revitalized façade
facing Sunset Blvd. The design also depicted three curtain wall bays, punched into the existing
east-facing wall, between the building’s historic piers/pilasters. An outdoor seating area was also
proposed, jutting out at an angle (in plan) into the parking lot. While this design was never built,
it reflected Cohen’s continuing wish to open the building toward Hyperion, activating the street
corner.
Le Barcito announced it would close the following year, hosting a farewell party on
Halloween night 2011.
214
A few months later, OHR received a letter from Brevoort committing
to recognizing the bar’s history with a plaque as part of any new renovation and addressing the
question of the bar structure as a significant feature. The former owner of Le Barcito, which had
been operating since July 1993, informed Brevoort by telephone that he’d resurfaced the bar top
in the early 2000s.
215
Additional permits from 1981 also indicated that the paneling in the bar
had been replaced, with liquor license records citing different operators in the space throughout
the 1980s. At this point, it seemed that keeping the original bar as an interpretive feature was
now in conflict with the owner’s desire to have a more leasable space moving forward.
By now rumors had been circulating that the Village Idiot, a prominent restaurant on
Melrose, had leased the space.
216
Village Idiot’s owner, Charlie Conrad, had signed a lease and,
as luck would have it, took an interest in the history of the site after approaching Wes Joe for
advice.
217
Joe closely reviewed the design of a new bar that would revive The Black Cat Tavern
name and theme in the form of an upscale gastropub, depicted in a bid set of architectural
drawings submitted to the city by Soler Architecture on February 3.
218
These were accompanied
by a letter, detailing eight main points that the new design would adhere to:

1. At this time, there is only one tenant committed to the building, so this project will be
submitted in two phases, with a second submittal occurring when a tenant for the eastern
section of the building has been identified and a lease finalized.

214
The Eastsider, “Silver Lake Gay Nightclub to Throw One Last Party,” The Eastsider LA, October 31, 2011,
https://www.theeastsiderla.com/eastsider_on_the_go/silver-lake-gay-nightclub-to-throw-one-last-
party/article_dad6b89b-02bf-557f-9f9f-1a58dbe37fa7.html.
215
Roger A. Brevoort, “Re: Black Cat Building 3903 Sunset Boulevard HCM #939,” January 12, 2012.
216
Emma G. Gallegos, “Le Barcito Closes in Silver Lake — And There Goes the Gayborhood,” LAist, November 2,
2011, https://laist.com/2011/11/02/le_barcito_closes_and_there_goes_th.php.
217
Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
218
The Eastsider, “A New (Fancy) Life for Silver Lake’s Black Cat Tavern,” The Eastsider LA, October 10, 2012,
https://www.theeastsiderla.com/eastsider_on_the_go/a-new-fancy-life-for-silver-lake-s-black-
cat/article_28fda926-ffc0-5fe6-8512-ecc0de78a8b4.html.
65

2. The current owner … intends to add a commemorative plaque on the exterior at a future
date.

3. The west [Sunset Blvd.] storefront will be reconstructed to its ca. 1966 design based on the
historic photographs and images that show solid glass panels. In order to retain the original
character of the façade, the project is requesting a variance to the ADA guidelines under
the California State Historic Building Code to allow a 5x5 foot landing area and very slight
ramp to be placed inside the building so that the appearance of the façade can be more
accurately restored.

4. The eastern storefront, which dates from the 1960s era, will be repaired as carefully as
possible as part of a reglazing procedure intended to retain the historic storefront material.
The existing paint will be stripped to reveal the mill-finish appearance from that time.

5. The original framework of the Black Cat sign panel will be retained and reused.

6. The interior of the west [Black Cat Tavern] portion will […] feature a new design that will
reflect the layout and spatial configuration of the prior bar although it does not intend to be
an accurate restoration of the 1967 appearance. The bar itself, as rehabilitated, will remain
in the same location and have the same footprint. Subsequent to our most recent letter
discussing the bar […] it has been revealed that the primary construction material of the
[extant] bar surfaces is Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) which was not manufactured
and in common use until the 1980s, which further verifies the conclusion that the actual
bar was modified in the 1980s (and perhaps afterward) and nothing appears to remain in
place from 1967.

7. A proposed addition to the rear elevation of the building has been deleted from the plans.
The alternative shown on these drawings is a fenced enclosure that surrounds a
refrigeration unit, as well as a rear access, and an ADA compliant wheelchair lift. The
proposal for the minor alteration and fenced enclosure on the rear does not have any impact
on the historic aspects of the building.

8. The entire building will be painted in a grey color. The repainting will occur in conjunction
with the rehabilitation and restoration of the east and west portions of the storefront.
219

Once finished, the revived Black Cat Tavern sported a more lavish interior than any that
had existed on the site before. In typical design marketing language, it was intended to be
“reminiscent of an upscale London pub with a timeless feel and warm atmosphere,” along with
“artwork on the walls … curated to complement the traditional interior, with many tongue-in-
cheek references to the restaurant’s name and historic images of the gay rights demonstrations

219
Roger A. Brevoort, “Re: Black Cat, HCM #939 3903 Sunset Boulevard Rehabilitation Plans,” February 8, 2012.
66

that took place at the site in the 1960s.”
220
Though it’s easy to dismiss the revived Black Cat as
privileging the form-over-fabric approach that Brevoort had advocated for in his letters to OHR,
the retention of the bar’s placement with respect to the entry sequence (along with its underlying
structure) proved sufficient enough to meet Wes Joe’s scrutiny.
221
At the end of the day this also
made formal sense, since bars are typically large and not easy to move given that they depend on
power and water connections often embedded in the building. Brevoort himself acknowledges
that the design team recommended this to save money and construction hassle by simply
recladding the existing bar structure and adding interior features that could, if desired, simply be
removed in the far-off future without extensive damage to existing exterior and party walls.
The return of The Black Cat Tavern in a more affluent form, though a victory for
preservationists, seemed indicative to many of a wave of gentrification taking hold in Silver
Lake at the time.
222
Embodying the role of a progressive “angel” developer in this case, Conrad’s
desire to embrace The Black Cat Tavern’s history was also informed by his own experience as a
Silver Lake resident who wanted to maintain good relations with his politically active neighbors.
The building for A Different Light, an LGBTQ bookstore that had long been a neighborhood
anchor, was demolished just months before The Black Cat Tavern’s revival.
223
That same year,
the Sunset Junction festival, which had operated since 1980, terminated its operations under a
cloud of unpaid debts.
224
Though many of these local changes were often overshadowed by the
increasing progress same-sex marriage was making nationwide, they did not go completely
unnoticed. The Advocate, one of the most significant entities born of The Black Cat Tavern’s
historical legacy, re-enacted the 1967 protest in front of Le Barcito (with activists holding signs

220
Jeffrey Soler, “Projects,” soler architecture, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.solerarch.com/projects.
221
Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
222
Gallegos, “Le Barcito Closes in Silver Lake — And There Goes the Gayborhood.”
223
Founded in Silver Lake in 1979, “A Different Light eventually added locations in West Hollywood, San
Francisco and New York, becoming one of the nation’s largest gay-owned booksellers.” While there were no
immediate plans to redevelop after A Different Light closed its doors in 1992, word of an attempt by local
preservationists to landmark the site in 2011 had likely reached the developer, who hastily bulldozed the building
overnight. As of this writing the site remains undeveloped. The Eastsider, “Silver Lake Gay Landmark Gets
Bulldozed,” The Eastsider LA, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.theeastsiderla.com/archives/silver-
lake-gay-landmark-gets-bulldozed/article_a24c2346-974f-5e66-89fc-d3c0b4e2853a.html; Anthea Raymond,
“Gay Literary Landmark Leveled at Sunset Junction Saturday,” Echo Park-Silver Lake, CA Patch, September 24,
2011, https://patch.com/california/echopark/gay-literary-landmark-leveled-at-sunset-junction-saturday.
224
Originally founded as a means of reconciling tensions between Silver Lake’s LGBTQ community and their
working class Latino neighbors, the Sunset Junction festival typically took the form of a parade with
multicultural performances, vendors, and musical acts. Nathan Masters, “A Brief History of Sunset Junction:
Street Cars, Gay Rights and Its Namesake Festival,” KCET, August 25, 2011, https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-
la/a-brief-history-of-sunset-junction-street-cars-gay-rights-and-its-namesake-festival.
67

speaking to contemporary LGBTQ issues beyond marriage equality) on its 45
th
anniversary in
2012.
225

In a 2015 interview (arranged by Conrad) with the blog Thirsty in LA, Alexei Romanoff
served to underscore the importance of keeping the significance of the bar alive, comparing it to
other prominent civil rights sites such as Selma, Alabama and Gettysburg. Romanoff’s husband,
David Farah (also a local LGBTQ historian), voiced his hope that the revived Black Cat “could
parlay the history of this place–they’ve done such a wonderful job of it–[though] the real
significance is not this artwork, but the few little pieces they have on the wall about the
demonstration here.”
226
In response to this, and as an extension of his ongoing engagement with
the heritage of the site, Charlie Conrad chose to incorporate its history beyond the requisite
plaques and pictures as part of an interpretive program. In addition to hosting occasional
workshops on queer subjects and lectures, The Black Cat Tavern ensures that every server who
works there knows about–and can recount to curious patrons who ask–the site’s LGBTQ history
and significance.
227

While The Black Cat Tavern has been saved in the physical sense along with its critical
interpretive features, it is no longer the “living” gay bar that it was at the time of its
designation.
228
Despite this, the site still maintains a critical significance, not only for L.A.’s
LGBTQ community but also for allies and social justice progressives of all stripes. On February
11, 2017, a reenactment of the Black Cat protest was held to commemorate its 50
th
anniversary.

225
“Revisiting the Black Cat,” February 17, 2012, http://www.advocate.com/arts-
entertainment/features/2012/02/17/revisiting-black-cat.
226
As the co-owner of the New Faces bar with a woman named Lee Roy, Alexei has continued to give interviews
and speak about The Black Cat Tavern’s context and significance. Located just up the street from The Black Cat
Tavern at 4001 Sunset Blvd, the New Faces bar eventually became a prominent gay porn emporium called Circus
of Books in 1982. In 2016, Circus of Books closed its Silver Lake location, which as of this writing is now a
marijuana dispensary called MOTA. Rachel Mason, a queer filmmaker whose parents (Barry and Karen Mason)
owned and operated Circus of Books, produced a documentary detailing the role and significance of the business
for the LGBTQ community. The documentary, Circus of Books, was released on Netflix in 2019. While the West
Hollywood location of Circus of Books is listed as an eligible historic resource, the original “Circus of Books”
neon sign from the Silver Lake location was donated to the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, CA. thirstyinla,
“Alexei Romanoff and the LGBT Civil Rights Legacy of The Black Cat”; Elijah Chiland, “Silver Lake’s Circus
of Books Is Closing Up Shop,” Curbed LA, August 8, 2016, https://la.curbed.com/2016/8/8/12404716/silver-
lake-circus-of-books-closing-gay-porn-store-dispensary; Rafael Fontes, JQ Queer Sunday Screening Series:
Question and Answer session with Rachel Mason and Buck Angel, Karen and Barry Mason., Zoom Meeting,
May 24, 2020.
227
Rafael Fontes, Interview with Adrian Scott Fine, In person conversation, November 4, 2019.
228
This isn’t to say that The Black Cat Tavern today is in any way unwelcoming towards LGBTQ people. The space
as is currently exists, while welcoming everyone, can no longer be defined by a self-consciously LGBTQ-
focused program or understood as a queer space in this sense.
68

Volunteer reenactors led by Mark Henning, an LGBTQ activist and founder/director of The
Blank Theater, recreated protest signs and graphics from photos of the original event a half
century earlier. This time around, the slogans and chants uttered were a response to Donald
Trump, who had assumed the office of the presidency in an inauguration ceremony just three
weeks before.
229
Owing to the lack of space on the sidewalk in front of the Black Cat façade and
sign, this protest occupied the corner lot adjacent to the building, surrounding a raised stage that
had been set up for the occasion.
Mitch O’Farrell, the former planning director and now councilmember for CD 13, spoke
about the sacrifices that the Black Cat protesters made, referring to them as “the pioneers that we
have been able to build our lives on the backs of.”
230
O’Farrell was followed by Eric Garcetti,
the CD 13 representative during the 2008 landmarking process and now mayor of L.A., who
spoke on the importance of “marking history in order to make history.”
231
Garcetti’s words
culminated with Alexei Romanov (standing next to Wes Joe) raising hands with a female LAPD
officer. Eliciting cheers from the assembled crowd, this act was meant to symbolize the “turning
of the page” of history with respect to the political and social status of LGBTQ people. While the
Black Cat is today more of a queer memorial than a queer space, it not only represents the
struggle for civil rights, but also the struggle to secure a place for LGBTQ memory in L.A.

229
While Trump purported to support LGBTQ people during his election campaign, these claims lacked any
substantial backing in terms of policy proposals. Under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice
argued against considering sexual orientation under employment discrimination protections. The administration
also instituted a ban on transgender soldiers in the military. Julia Manchester, “Federal Appeals Court Rules in
Favor of Gay Rights,” Text, TheHill, February 26, 2018, https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/375612-
federal-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-gay-rights; Dave Philipps, “New Rule for Transgender Troops: Stick to
Your Birth Sex, or Leave,” The New York Times, March 13, 2019, sec. U.S.,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/transgender-troops-ban.html.
230
Mark E. Potts, 50th Anniversary of the Black Cat Demonstration (Los Angeles Times, 2017).
231
Ibid.
69

Chapter 4
The Tom of Finland House

Significance:
Sex and sexuality are intrinsic to the human experience. While few would disagree with
this statement outright, sexual expression–both in physical fact as in representation–is loaded
with cultural meanings that vary and shift over time. In her pioneering essay Thinking Sex,
renowned cultural anthropologist and sex theorist Gayle Rubin describes these shifts in order “to
contribute to the pressing task of creating an accurate, humane, and genuinely liberatory body of
thought about sexuality.”
232
As part of an effort to better understand how western societies
construct a hierarchy of values related to certain kinds of sex, Rubin details specific historical
periods (largely in England and the U.S.) where struggles to define sexual meanings became
particularly contentious. The resulting laws and consensuses reached by a heteronormative
mainstream, especially during the immediate post-war years, held significant consequences for
anyone who did not fit in:

In the 1950s, in the United States, major shifts in the organization of sexuality took place.
Instead of focusing on prostitution or masturbation, the anxieties of the 1950s condensed
most specifically around the image of the “homosexual menace” and the dubious specter
of the “sex offender.” Just before and after the Second World War, the “sex offender”
became an object of public fear and scrutiny… From the late 1940s until the early 1960s,
erotic communities whose activities did not fit the postwar American dream drew intense
persecution.
233

The post-war shifts that Rubin describes played out in public spaces where sexual
activity, and anyone associated with deviant behaviors or identities, would be forcefully targeted.
Even today, spaces, businesses, and neighborhoods associated with sex (and the sex industry
especially) are subject to restrictions and regulations that vary depending on the social standards
of any given state or local community. While these standards are subjective, they continue to

232
Gayle Rubin, Deviations a Gayle Rubin Reader, A John Hope Franklin Center Book (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2011), 145.
233
Rubin uses the term “erotic communities” to include sex workers of all identities, along with individuals
(including cisgender heterosexuals) who choose to engage in sexual acts subject to disapproval. Rubin employs
the theoretical framework of a “charmed circle” to diagram out which forms of sex are viewed positively and
negatively. For instance, sexual acts described as falling within the circle of acceptance are those free of overt
monetary exchange, private, heterosexual, and reproductively-oriented sex occurring within a marriage. Acts
outside of the circle (subject to disapproval) would likewise be those that are purchased/transactional, public,
queer, non-reproductive, and outside the bounds of any matrimonial or legal status. Ibid, 139–40.
70

reflect social biases and commonly held assumptions of where, when, and how sex or activities
related to the prurient interest should take place.
234
Historically, the results of this persecution for
LGBTQ sexual expression have not only been temporally enforced but also representational in
scope. With respect to the former, temporal controls were more viscerally experienced, forcing
queer and erotic communal activities to take place at night or in marginal urban areas. When it
comes to representation, whether in literature, art, film, music, or theater, the most telling
evidence lies in the immense absence of overtly queer characters, images, themes, and stories.
When LGBTQ representation did occur, it was often coded, usually negative, and
typically meant to characterize queer people as sinister or villainous. Historical analyses of these
tendencies tend to emphasize the role of Hollywood, since movies quickly began to drive, define,
and produce twentieth century popular culture.
235
Within the film industry, LGBTQ people not
only contributed as prominent actors and directors (often closeted), but also in the realms of
production and set design. The early development of the film industry helped turn L.A. into a
locus of creative industries, attracting queer artists of all stripes to a region that was otherwise
extremely conservative well into the mid-twentieth century. The slow and uneven waning of this
conservatism toward the end of the postwar period allowed various segments of L.A.’s creative
scene to evolve beyond the social constraints of homophobic moralists:

Los Angeles emerged as an important center for modern art in the United States during
the 1960s and 1970s when LGBT[Q] artists were becoming more visible within the art
community and when lesbians were seeking autonomy from the gay liberation
movement. During this period, artistic expressions of homosexuality became more
acceptable, but were not without controversy.
236

Instances of awareness and acknowledgement of an LGBTQ artistic legacy reached the
broader culture sporadically during this period, often being met with disapproval (or at best

234
While the forceful control of LGBTQ and erotic communities was more overt in terms of oppressive police
practices (see Chapter 3), this targeting had long existed in some form or another, strengthening as western
societies (and urban areas especially) began to change rapidly during the industrial revolution of the mid-
nineteenth century. In the U.S., attitudes toward non-approved forms of sex with respect to LGBTQ people have
continued to shift through the gay liberation and AIDS crisis eras. Spatially expressed, anti-sex attitudes have
generally fueled policy crackdowns via increasingly draconian zoning codes designed to expel sex-centered
businesses and enterprises out of inner-city areas as a prelude to redevelopment. Michael Warner, The Trouble
with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: Free Press, 1999), 149–93.
235
This influence, and the coded but visible presence of LGBTQ people in the interwar period of the film industry is
detailed extensively in the second “Going Hollywood” chapter of Gay L.A. Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A.,
38–69.
236
Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context Statement,” 89.
71

ambivalence) in a generally conformist culture. While the value of queer creativity was rarely
disputed–and routinely celebrated–in niche artistic and creative circles during the mid-twentieth
century, attention paid to it often reinforced harmful stereotypes outside of those circles. With
respect to gay males and queer men especially, the trope of the sensitive, artistic, and effeminate
“sissy” has continued to be reiterated in complex ways.
237
In a machoistic postwar context, this
contributed to the common perception of gay men as incapable of embodying traditionally
masculine roles. These assumptions, when coupled with stigmas related to the mechanics of
specific sexual acts, led to the common perception of gay men as not being “real” men to begin
with.
238

There is perhaps no other twentieth century artist whose work more forcefully reacts to–
and rejects–these assumptions than the person who worked under the pseudonym of Tom of
Finland, born Touko Valio Laaksonen in Kaarina Finland in 1920.
239
Tom traced his fascination
with depicting masculinity to a rural upbringing where most of the men surrounding him were
farmers and loggers. His ability to draw, evident early on in childhood, allowed him to explore
the kinds of male archetypes that would come to dominate his erotic work.
240
Unquestionably
masculinist in focus, Tom’s art portrayed male homosexual acts as natural, healthy, and fun. He
did this by focusing on “big, uncomplicated, physically oriented men, proud of their muscles and
… easily aroused, whether to anger or to lust, but also–and this is important–easy to please and
quick to forgive, always ready with a handclasp and an embrace.”
241

237
While the word sissy is used to denote anyone exhibiting feminine behavior generally, it also connotes cowardice
and feebleness. Women perceived as too masculine were subject to just as much violence and intimidation in real
life as queer men, but the level of social anxiety and vitriol in media tended to be directed more forcefully
towards feminine men. In focusing on the legacy of LGBTQ representation in film, Vito Russo devotes a chapter
to the sissy as “a symbol of the rank betrayal of the myth of male superiority, [whereas] tomboy [masculine]
women have seemed to reinforce that myth and have often been indulged in acting it out.” Vito Russo, The
Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 3–60.
238
Steven G. Underwood, Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles (New York: Harrington Park
Press, 2003), 1–18, 29–38.
239
For the sake of consistency with supporting sources and essays–and out of respect for the artist’s chosen persona–
Touko Laaksonen will be referred to as “Tom” or “Tom of Finland” from this point forward.
240
This specifically refers to work that Laaksonen produced under the Tom of Finland label (or just “Tom” in his
earliest drawings). At the start of his career, Laaksonen worked as a freelance commercial illustrator, eventually
working as a full-time commercial artist at McCann Erickson from 1958 to 1973. Durk Dehner and Tom Cho,
“Recommendation Report: The Tom of Finland House” (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Los Angeles
Department of City Planning, August 4, 2016), 2–3.
241
F. Valentine Hooven, Tom of Finland: His Life and Times (New York: StMartin’s Press, 1993), 2.
72

Due to Finland’s socially conservative post-war environment, much of Tom of Finland’s
early erotic work was drawn in secret and kept hidden.
242
The turning point for his exposure
came when a drawing of his was featured on the cover of the Spring 1957 issue of Physique
Pictorial, a subscription-based magazine owned and managed by the L.A. photographer Bob
Mizer.
243
So called “beefcake” magazines such as Physique Pictorial skirted obscenity laws by
featuring young, muscular and scantily clad men in athletic or whimsical settings, ostensibly
marketing themselves as guides for male body-building and good health.
244
The importance of
these publications for gay men during the post-war era cannot be understated, as they were (for
many) the safest or sole connection to their desires, fantasies, and sexuality. In the U.S., this was
underscored by a deep-seated cultural resonance detailed by Edward Lucie-Smith, the British art
critic and historian:

The [Tom of Finland drawings] presented the American gay audience with a new, far
more positive image of male homosexuality, one that fitted in with other aspects of
American life: The love of sports, of the outdoors, and the free and easy male
camaraderie that survived from the years when many Americans were frontiersmen. In
some respects this artist from a remote Nordic country seemed to revive the spirit of Walt
Whitman.
245

The enthusiastically positive response to his work made Tom of Finland drawings a regular
Physique Pictorial feature for the next two decades. This initially niche exposure would
eventually lead to legions of gay fans, opening a new market for private commissions that Tom
pursued in earnest.
Tom of Finland’s work changed over time, reflecting and responding to cultural shifts in
various ways. While early drawings maintained a focus on strapping young outdoorsmen-
laborers, the increasing predominance of bikers spoke to subcultures that were increasingly
becoming well-known by the 1960s via Hollywood films.
246
Tom often employed a comic book
format to tell stories, maintaining a consistent visual attitude in his depiction of exaggeratedly

242
This early period, covering Laaksonen’s time in the military, also informed subsequent Tom of Finland works
dealing with uniformed laborers, soldiers, and policemen. Durk Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL (Köln ;
Taschen, 2009), 21.
243
Dehner and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report,” 2–3, 11–12.
244
It was Mizer who appended “of Finland” to Laaksonen’s original mononymic “Tom” signature. Ibid, 3.
245
Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 21.
246
Films such as The Wild One (1953) starring Marlon Brando were key in this regard, in addition to various
“peplum” or “sword and sandal” films dealing with ancient Greek and Roman themes. Ibid, 21.
73

muscular male bodies.
247
The bodybuilding culture in Southern California, then resurgent in the
1950s and ’60s, was also a significant influence for Laaksonen due to his publishing connection
with Mizer. Images from the Athletic Model Guild (Mizer’s photography studio) would often
serve as models for preparatory sketches. By engaging and mirroring the “beefcake” images of
the time, Tom of Finland drawings cemented the aesthetic ideal of the “Tom’s man” as “square-
jawed, broad-shouldered and with an engaging smile.”
248

The relaxing of obscenity laws in the late 1960s allowed beefcake magazines to become
more explicit, giving Tom more freedom and artistic license.
249
Loosening attitudes in the
broader culture, along with the increasingly confrontational and anti-assimilationist stance of a
post-Stonewall LGBTQ community, opened the way for depicting more graphic scenes. Tom’s
work during this period entered a thematic lockstep with an evolving gay male culture “of the
1970s and early ’80s, [where] sex was increasingly ritualized.”
250
The sartorial and stylistic
choices he employed allowed Tom’s characters to subvert the hyper masculine roles that had,
until his work, almost exclusively been perceived as heterosexual. Whether depicting
construction workers (hardhats), cowboys (wide-brimmed hats and leather chaps), leathermen
(harnesses and jackets), or military officers and sailors (peaked caps and flared pants), Tom’s
men were proudly, enthusiastically, and aggressively homosexual.
251
While the bodies Tom
depicted were never intended to be naturalistic and were heavily stylized, they nonetheless
“influenced what the gay world wore and how its denizens behaved.”
252

The peak of Tom’s influence on gay male culture coincided with his deciding to pursue
erotic artwork full-time in 1973. After an initial exhibit that same year in Hamburg, where most

247
Laaksonen would also center many of his stories and vignettes on specific characters of his own invention, often
based on popular male models or actors. The most prominent and recurring of these was a mustached, dark-
haired leatherman named Kake. Dian Hanson and Tom of Finland, Tom of Finland. The Complete Kake Comics,
Multilingual edition (Köln: TASCHEN, 2019).
248
Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 22.
249
Ibid, 22.
250
Ibid, 25.
251
In her dissertation dealing with leather culture in the Bay Area, Rubin defines leather as “a key symbol for a
distinctive population of male homosexuals who coalesced into coherent groups just after the end of Second
World War. These communities exhibited a unique concatenation of sexual tastes, gender preferences, and social
structures that were expressed by and through the iconography of leather. All of these erotic desires and symbols
exist elsewhere and find other expressions in different social contexts. What is unique to gay male leather is this
singular combination and the fact that this way of arranging desires, institutions, and symbolism has been an
effective vehicle for creating communities, identities, and experiences.” Gayle Rubin, “The Valley of the Kings:
Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960-1990” (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1994), 22.
252
Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 25.
74

of his displayed works were stolen, it would be another five years before he would travel (this
time to L.A.) to exhibit work again.
253
In that brief period, the stylistic expression of queer men
shifted dramatically from casually low-key, hippie-influenced androgynous styles to more
aggressively masculine ensembles, appropriating the working class symbols that Tom had long
been representing in his work. Often referred to as the “clone” or the “Castro clone,” this shift
was a significant one:

The remaking of the homosexual male body–the birth of the muscular, masculine
“clone”–was one of the chief projects and achievements of the gay liberation movement.
While the black civil rights movement [of the 1960s] has been primarily about laws, and
women’s liberation was about consciousness, gay liberation was about the assertion of
physical presence … as the gay movement evolved, its logic seemed to lead to what
marketers would term a “rebranding” of homosexuality, to make it seem modern,
acceptable, and above all, masculine.
254

The exclusionary overtones of this rebranding effort aren’t difficult to discern, with willingness
to embody this image controversial even within the broader LGBTQ community.
255
Derisively
acknowledged by contemporaneous writers, clone culture was part of the post-Stonewall
fragmentation of the LGBTQ movement generally.
256
This in turn sowed alienation and
separatism in the broader LGBTQ movement, inspiring many lesbian and queer woman to go

253
Dehner and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report,” 3.
254
Thomas Hine, The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (On A Shag Rug) in the Seventies, 1st ed.
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 117, 118–19.
255
In this instance, a resurgence of aggressive masculinity within gay male culture (to the extent that it had ever
truly receded to begin with) not only directed itself at queer women but also effeminate men (especially men of
color) who did not fit into the clone scene, which today is more commonly described as “masc.” Joshua Gamson,
The Fabulous Sylvester : The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco (New York : H. Holt, 2005),
221–23.
256
While the “clone” archetype was perceived as having originated in San Francisco’s Castro district (by the late
1970s a visibly prominent gay area), its resonance endures for queer men throughout western countries
especially. More recent attention to the aesthetics of this period came with the release of the film Milk (2008)
which told the story of the prominent gay politician and civil rights leader (assassinated in 1978) at a time when
Prop 8 had bought the discussion of LGBTQ rights into the political mainstream. “Glad to Be a Clone ...,” Gay
News; London, August 21, 1980; Eddie Shapiro, “Remaking the Castro Clone,” OUT Magazine, December 1,
2008, http://www.out.com/entertainment/2008/12/01/remaking-castro-clone; Neil Broverman, “Op-Ed: The Gay
Clones Everyone Knows,” The Advocate, October 21, 2013,
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/10/21/op-ed-gay-clones-everyone-knows.
75

their own way socially. By extension, queer unity in this period was largely maintained to
counter reactionary political threats from social conservatives.
257

In the midst of all this, Tom came to L.A. in 1978 to exhibit his work in solo gallery
shows, staying with Durk Dehner and three other men in the neighborhood of Echo Park,
eventually becoming a semi-permanent resident by 1980.
258
Located on a quiet hilltop street
north of Sunset Boulevard, the house at 1421 Laveta Terrace (Fig. 4.1) was significant for Tom
because it allowed him to fully engage erotic art in a supportive setting. In L.A., he was not only
able to be Tom on a full-time basis, but also connect to his primary audience:

Curiously, the artist whose work has inspired men all over the world remains
underappreciated in his native Finland. Most of his art is considered [too] pornographic
by Finnish standards and consequently has never been widely circulated there. ‘People
think Finland is as liberated as Sweden or Denmark, but that just isn’t the case,’ says
Tom. ‘Most of my work is pornographic–it is meant to excite … that’s one of the reasons
I enjoy visiting the United States; so many gays there are unafraid to show the strong
masculine side of themselves.’
259

L.A. provided Tom with new inspiration in the form of diverse subjects, evident in his increasing
depiction of men of color during this period.
260
As the AIDS crisis emerged and continued to
worsen throughout the 1980s, he responded by advocating for safe sex and depicting condom use
as part of a healthy, shame-free, and proudly homosexual life. This grappling with illness and
death, to an extent reflected in many of the (slightly) older characters that he drew in this period,
presaged his own death from an emphysema-induced stroke in 1991.
261

257
While scholars like Faderman have referred to these trends as “internecine wars” over political and economic
clout within the gay movement, they were also reflective of internalized gay male misogyny. Early efforts to
form serious political advocacy committees came from the creation of the Municipal Elections Committee in
L.A., which supported LGBTQ allies (and eventually LGBTQ individuals themselves) for local elections. This
happened alongside efforts to counter the Briggs Initiative, a reaction to the repeal of California’s anti-sodomy
law in 1975 which would’ve required public educators to forbid or fire LGBTQ (in the language of the proposal
simply “gay”) teachers statewide. Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 210–29. Faderman, The Gay Revolution,
367–70.
258
In addition to the Physique Pictorial connection, Tom was drawn to L.A. by “Durk Dehner, a gay man who was
then 28 years old. Two years earlier, Durk had seen an image of Tom’s art in an advertisement at a gay bar in
New York. Struck by the image, he had written Tom a fan letter and they had begun a correspondence.” While he
had his own room, visa restrictions would require Tom to return to Finland every six months. Dehner and Cho,
“Tom of Finland Report,” 4; Martyn Thompson and Mayer Rus, Tom House: Tom of Finland in Los Angeles, ed.
Michael Reynolds (New York: Rizzoli, 2016), 11–12.
259
Thompson, Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, 257.
260
Dehner and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report,” 8.
261
Ibid, 5, 8–9.
76

Figure 4.1: The Tom of Finland House, April 20
th
2019. Photo by author.

77

Process:
Tom’s work, with its politically charged subject matter, had plenty of detractors within
the LGBTQ community. His graphic depictions of sex were not only shocking to anyone with
chaste sensibilities, but also for their settings, which included everyday public environments such
as parks, bars, and alleyways.
262
This reflected his own experiences as a soldier in Helsinki
during the Second World War, acknowledging a near universal reality of public sex that the
LGBTQ community at the time (especially the homophile organizations of the 1950s and ’60s)
would’ve preferred not to acknowledge for the sake of respectability. This controversy only
increased in the post-Stonewall era, where leather (and BDSM practices) became the focus of
heteronormative anxiety and persecution during the AIDS crisis.
263
In light of all this, it may
seem improbable that a historic resource in L.A. would not only be landmarked to commemorate
the legacy of Tom as an openly gay artist, but one whose work centered on explicit–and
intentionally pornographic–depictions of gay male sexuality.
The shift in attitudes regarding Tom’s work was no accident, beginning before his death
with the creation of the Tom of Finland Foundation in 1984. Durk Dehner–Tom’s L.A. host,
muse, and business partner following the death of his longtime companion Veli in 1981–initially
proposed creating a foundation to secure copyrights for Tom’s art and ensure that he would
receive just financial compensation for his work.
264
Practically speaking, this would counteract
the theft, unauthorized reproductions, and plagiarism that had dogged Tom’s erotic art career. At
a deeper level, it was also an effort to safeguard Tom’s significant artistic heritage and legacy for
posterity. The more Durk saw how his friends (and other queer men of different generations)
flocked to meet Tom and thank him for changing their lives for the better, the more apparent it
became that Tom’s artwork stood for more than single-minded prurience alone.
265

262
Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 47–49.
263
While not mutually exclusive, the terms “leather” and BDSM have often been conflated. BDSM, which stands
for bondage, domination/submission, sadomasochism, describes individuals who engage in a range of sexual
practices involving roleplay and the use of sex toys, etc. Gayle Rubin addresses this in the introduction to her
dissertation, where debates over the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts reached a boiling point
concerning leather, sexual, and sacrilegious themes in the works of photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and
Andres Serrano. Such debates speak to, among other things, “the systematic misuse of leather to promote a
variety of repressive social and political agendas.” Rubin, “The Valley of the Kings,” 21.
264
Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 49.
265
Rafael Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger, In person conversation, November
22, 2019.
78

In the final decade of Tom’s life, the bulk of his original drawings and unsold work was
shipped to the Dehner’s Echo Park home, which by the end of the 1980s was becoming known
simply as “TOM house.”
266
A simultaneous effort was undertaken to give Tom himself more
exposure, responding to critics and clarifying his artistic intent:

Some of [Tom’s] more overt drawings have proved controversial, with critics accusing
the artist of possessing a fascist mentality. Although the complaint is a familiar one, it
still disturbs Tom a great deal. ‘In the sixties, a French publication printed a story which
said I was a Nazi,’ he explains, ‘and they advised their readers not to buy my work. It’s a
nasty rumor and much to my dismay it continues to surface … all I want to communicate
through my art is that it’s okay to be gay and masculine.’
267

Following Tom’s death, his work continued to be shown in both solo and group exhibits
internationally. In his native Finland, a documentary about Tom’s work titled Daddy and the
Muscle Academy was produced in 1991. This was followed by a biography Tom of Finland: His
Life and Times the following year, which led to the first mainstream publications of his artwork
by the renowned art publishing company Taschen.
268

Additional Taschen books followed, fashion-merchandising deals were signed, and by the
mid-2000s Tom of Finland works were being acquired by LACMA, MoMA, the Art Institute of
Chicago, and SF MoMa. The largest of the Taschen publications, Tom of Finland XXL, is a 15 by
19 inch tome (with an intentional 666 pages) containing large reproductions of some of Tom’s
most iconic images. Previously unpublished early works and preparatory sketches abound, in
addition to a series of commissioned essays where Tom’s significance is acknowledged by
prominent queer cultural figures such as Armistead Maupin and John Waters.
269
High praise is
also provided by the polemical feminist art historian Camille Paglia:

The swaggering sexual personae of Tom of Finland’s world demonstrate the intimate
intertwining of art and pornography, which moralists of both the right and the left have
tried to drive apart … Thus Tom’s erotic designs have an ancient lineage: He is
meditating on one of the great themes of Western culture, the pagan glorification of the
ideal male body … In masculinizing the gay persona, Tom broke, for good or ill, with the

266
Dehner and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report,” 9–10.
267
Thompson, Romesburg, and Gessen, Long Road to Freedom, 257.
268
Dehner and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report,” 1–6 CV and Attachment.
269
Maupin is an author known primarily for his Tales of the City series, while Waters is one of earliest filmmakers
to deal with explicit queer themes through his transgressive cult films such as Pink Flamingoes (1972), Female
Trouble (1974), and the more mainstream Hairspray (1998). Dehner et al., Tom of Finland XXL, 93, 485.
79

cultural legacy of the brilliant Oscar Wilde, who promoted and flamboyantly embodied
the androgynous aesthete.
270

While the Foundation had been considering pursuing HCM status for its headquarters
(the Echo Park home) since the Black Cat Tavern was landmarked in 2008, the “lynchpin” came
with the book Tom House: Tom of Finland in Los Angeles, published by Rizzoli in 2016.
271

Interspersing photographs of the interiors with Tom of Finland artwork, the book aims to provide
a glimpse in to the rich artistic life of the house:

The gabled Craftsman abode now serves as the headquarters of the Tom of Finland
Foundation, containing a vast trove of artworks, correspondence, historical documents,
and ephemera. But this is no ordinary shrine to a famous artist, trapped in amber, à la
Jackson Pollock’s studio in East Hamption or Paul Cesanne’s dreamy atelier in Provence
… It’s an extraordinary place, equal parts frat pad, utopian collective, art historical
archive, sepulcher, community center, and den of iniquity. The character of the house
morphs in response to whoever happens to be living there or visiting at any particular
time. Some days, that might be a gaggle of art students or gay culture vultures; on other
days, it might be a group of like-minded voluptuaries gathered for a sex party.
Occasionally, it’s all those things at once.
272

Having long been a gathering place for the aforementioned interest groups, the Tom of Finland
Foundation had no shortage of researchers, experts, and contacts to draw from. Despite this,
former attempts at compiling a well-researched and appropriately written HCM application
proved difficult for more creatively-oriented writers, shelving earlier attempts.
273
The
professional expertise and enthusiasm of Tom Cho, a trans Australian-Asian writer and longtime
admirer of Tom of Finland’s work, proved instrumental in providing a tone-appropriate and
research-driven context statement.
274

Informed by Durk Dehner (acting as the applicant and homeowner) and S.R. Sharp
(foundation vice president, and curator), the resulting application is arguably one of the most

270
“Sex Play in Tom of Finland” Dehner et al., 81, 83.
271
Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger.
272
Foreward Thompson and Rus, Tom House, 7–8.
273
Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger.
274
Fontes; Tom Cho, “Tom and Me, Part One,” National Post, May 1, 2014, Afterward edition,
https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/tom-cho-tom-and-me-part-one; Tom Cho, “Tom and Me, Part
Two,” National Post, May 2, 2014, Afterward edition, https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/tom-cho-
tom-and-me-part-two.
80

comprehensive and well-organized to ever be submitted for OHR review.
275
The Foundation was
able to count on the support of Mitch O’Farrell (a longtime fan of the house and the openly gay
councilmember for CD 13), in addition to citing itself within the city’s historic context
statement.
276
By this time the Foundation had secured (and appended to their application) eleven
letters of support, from figures both political and cultural.
277
The L.A. Conservancy also lent its
support in addition to the Getty Research Institute, with the latter testifying to the importance of
the site as it relates to LGBTQ history:

The physical site of the house is an absolutely crucial aspect of the Foundation. The
notion of ‘home’ is one that was denied to generations of LGBT[Q] people, and it is
deeply symbolic and significant that TOM House truly is a home, and that the use of all
parts of the house [works] to create not only a functioning foundation but also, through
the display of its collections, a significant re-invention of what the visual identity of a
‘home’ can and in fact does entail–this is one of the most resonant aspects of the
Foundation, and one that goes absolutely to its core.
278

Scheduled as the eighth item for hearing, the foundation prepared a presentation for a CHC
meeting on August 4,

2016.
279
The presentation, given by S.R. Sharp, focused on Tom’s cultural
legacy and his significance for LGBTQ history and culture. The commission subsequently voted
to take it up for consideration and conduct a site visit via a CHC subcommittee.
Following their inspection, the TOM House was scheduled as the sixth item at a second
CHC meeting on September 15
th
. The only pushback came from commissioner (and CHC
president) Richard Barron, expressing an increased focus on the house as tangible resource:

I think that culturally this is a very important property. I thought that … the previous
presentation you made lacked a little bit in terms of the house. It seemed to me from the
information that I had that [the house] was a very charming and beautiful home. I
understand the cultural aspect of the nomination, but I also think that the house is part of

275
An appendix of over 120 pages not only shows copious (and relatively chaste) examples of Tom’s art, but also
reproduces publications and photographs of the various gatherings and events that have taken place there. Dehner
and Cho, “Tom of Finland Report.”
276
Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger; Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context
Statement,” 92–93.
277
Three sitting West Hollywood public officials (John D’Amico, John Heilman, and John Duran) submitted letters
of support, in addition to prominent gallery owners, art publishers and curators.
278
Glenn R. Phillips, “Letter Addressed to Office of Historic Resources,” May 2, 2016.
279
Richard Barron, Gail Kennard, Jeremy Irvine, et al., “Cultural Heritage Comission Agenda,” § Cultural Heritage
Commission (2016).
81

it. I think that as time goes on, being a monument, it would be subject to the secretary of
the interior standards, and I hope you realize that.
280

Commissioner Barron, who was not on the subcommittee tour, deferred to commissioner Jeremy
Irvine, who described the welcoming and casual atmosphere of the house as a “time warp.”
Irvine reiterated that the nomination was being done by the Foundation who, as the homeowners,
were securely tied to the art being shown and archived there as well. Moreover, maintenance and
upgrades had already been done on the house with restoration in mind, with the Foundation
viewing the house itself as an invaluable part of its art collection.
With all this in mind, the CHC voted to recommend the Tom of Finland house be listed
as an HCM, referring their recommendation to PLUM a week later. The PLUM meeting, taking
place on November 8
th
, was relatively uneventful, with Durk Dehner and other Foundation
volunteers commenting in support of the nomination. O’Farrell’s support, combined with the
owner-initiated nomination, made for very little to debate in this regard, and PLUM summarily
voted to list the Tom of Finland house as an HCM. The item was then scheduled for a full city
council meeting on November 23
rd
, where it was adopted on consent.
281
Throughout this entire
process, the Foundation received overwhelming support and encouragement from planning staff
and public officials, helping make the Tom of Finland house HCM #1135.
282

Outcome:
The Tom of Finland Foundation’s 2016 holiday party, held on December 19
th
, not only
celebrated the release of the Rizzoli book earlier that year, but also their recently acquired
landmark status.
283
Conferred largely on the basis of cultural importance, the Tom of Finland
house not only frames a significant artistic heritage, but also stands for the type of communal and
mutually supportive arrangements that queer people create outside their biological families:

Completed in 1912, the capacious but timeworn dwelling retained a few vestiges of its
Craftsman roots–notably, its dark oak paneling, sliding doors, and staircase–as well as
vague hints of the Art Nouveau influence that had migrated from Europe at roughly the

280
Taped recording. Barron, Kennard, Irvine, et al.
281
In essence, items adopted on consent save the city council time by not being physically heard or discussed during
the council meeting itself. This is largely done for non-controversial issues for which there is little to no debate or
opposition by this point.
282
Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger.
283
Fontes, Interview with Lambert Giessinger and Melissa Jones.
82

same time. In addition to ample outdoor space, the house possessed a partly finished
cellar, which the new occupants quickly painted black and outfitted with a sling, leather
gear, and other essentials of a proper gay dungeon… Sex naturally played a big part in
the social life of the defiantly polygamous household, but other, less visceral forms of
brotherly love set the overriding tone for the home. ‘There was always lots of activity and
people. This was a place where we could simply be ourselves, a place without shame or
judgement. It had a spiritual dimension,’ Dehner explains.
284

Dehner used the occasion of the holiday party to announce the (then) upcoming completion of a
new biopic on Tom of Finland’s life.
285
An advance screening for Tom of Finland (2017) took
place in L.A. the following year, with lead producers, Pekka Strang (the lead actor), and S.R.
Sharp taking part in a roundtable discussion about Tom’s legacy.
286
At the time of this writing,
the Tom of Finland House is the most recent HCM to be nominated specifically for its LGBTQ
historical associations. It currently operates much as it has before, not only by safeguarding
Tom’s artistic legacy, but by advocating for free erotic-artistic expression generally.
287

By 2017, the gay leather subculture that had long been represented in Tom of Finland’s
work began to receive broader attention. While Silver Lake had developed a reputation as a
center of this subculture in L.A. by the early 1970s, the most prominent center was the South of
Market Street (SoMa) neighborhood in San Francisco.
288
With the opening of bars like The
Toolbox in 1961, the coalescing of a gay leather community in SoMa began to receive
mainstream attention by the mid-1960s onwards.
289
Concerns over the potential state of this
community, and its ability to resist gentrification, drove this effort:

The scene [during the 1960s] was underground and hyper-visible all at once, a moral
scourge that was only beginning to conceive of itself as the nucleus of sexual liberation…
yet much of this history has been lost. Dimly lit clubs with short lifespans that could be
raided at any time didn’t typically maintain archivists on staff, and HIV/AIDS decimated
two generations. Today, SoMa’s leather scene consists of fewer than half a dozen bars …
[confronting] a renewed threat of extinction in the face of displacement. To preserve this
vital subculture, activists have chosen a novel strategy: partnering with City Hall to

284
Thompson and Rus, Tom House, 11.
285
“Tom of Finland House Historic-Cultural Monument,” The Leather Journal, January 2017.
286
This screening took place at the USC School of Cinematic Arts on October 18, 2017. Personal recollection of the
author.
287
This expanded mission was also a response to the AIDS crisis, where the artwork of queer erotic artists who had
died of AIDS-related complications were rescued from unsympathetic family or destruction by disposal. “Tom of
Finland Foundation Purpose and Goals - Erotic Art Education, Curation and Collections.,” accessed September
19, 2019, https://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org/foundation/purpose.html.
288
Larry Townsend, The Leatherman’s Handbook (New York: Other Traveller, 1972).
289
Welch, “The ‘Gay’ World.”
83

designate a portion of Western SoMa as the San Francisco Leather District. The
degenerates are about to be officially sanctioned.
290

While the idea of implementing cultural districts had been discussed as far back as the mid-
2000s, LGBTQ America helped to underscore the importance of saving queer resources that it
cited as being nationally significant.
291
The additional NPS-sponsored context helped to bolster
the district goals that had been outlined back in 2010.
292
Signed into law on May 8, 2018, a
ribbon cutting to celebrate the additional new district was held at The Stud, a historic San
Francisco gay bar, the following June.
293

As a planning and policy tool, the SoMa LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District, once
adopted, established geographic boundaries in order to demarcate, identify, and classify what are
referred to as “individual assets” (essentially historic resources).
294
By working to support
existing leather and LGBTQ businesses and help guide future development, the cultural district
has also helped yield urban memorials in the vein of The Power of Place. In this case, the
renovation of SoMa’s Ringold Alley as part of a development project by 4Terra Investments
included a permanent installation by the landscape architect Jeffrey Miller (of Miller Company
Landscape Architects). The memorial, entitled Leather Memoir, sought to commemorate a
valuable part of the city’s LGBTQ legacy:

This permanent art installation consists of four custom fabricated features installed on
Ringold Street [from 8th Street to 9th Street] that reveal Ringold's rich history. A black
granite marker stone mounted at 9th and Ringold features an etched narrative, a
reproduction of Chuck Arnett’s long-gone mural (famously captured in a 1964 Life
magazine spread about gay life in America), and an image of Mike Caffee's Leather
David statue. Granite standing stones recycled from San Francisco curbs are cut, polished
and engraved to honor community institutions. The stones emerge through the
pavement’s leather flag markings in new bulb-out areas in several locations along the
new street alignment. In a rugged twist on the commemorative plaque, bronze boot prints

290
Peter Lawrence Kane, “Folsom and Jetsam,” SF Weekly, September 20, 2017,
https://www.sfweekly.com/culture/feature-culture/folsom-and-jetsam/.
291
Carrie Sisto, “LGBQT Leather Cultural District Proposed For SoMa,” Hoodline, September 26, 2017,
https://hoodline.com/2017/09/lgbqt-leather-cultural-district-proposed-for-soma; Donna J. Graves and Shayne
Elizabeth Watson, “Chapter 25: San Francisco: Placing LGBTQ Histories in the City by the Bay” (National Park
Foundation, October 31, 2016).
292
Draft Proposal: SF Planning, “Recognizing, Protecting and Memorializing South of Market LGBTQ Social
Heritage Neighborhood Resources.” (City of San Francisco, March 4, 2010).
293
Joshua Sabatini, “SF Expands Cultural Districts to Include SoMa’s Gay and Leather Community,” The San
Francisco Examiner, May 2, 2018, https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-expands-cultural-districts-to-include-
somas-gay-and-leather-community/.
294
“SoMa” stands for South of Market Street. SF Planning, “Recognizing SoMa,” 2.
84

embedded along the street’s curb lines conjure the footsteps and names of the men who
once frequented Ringold Street in its heyday.
295

When interviewed about the piece, Gayle Rubin stated that, to her knowledge, Leather
Memoir “is the only such monument to leather history anywhere on a public street or
sidewalk.”
296
Since 1984, SoMa has hosted the Folsom Street Fair, often referred to simply as
“Folsom.” It is broadly considered to be the largest public event for leather and BDSM culture
anywhere, drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists to the area every September for San
Francisco’s annual Leather Pride Week.
297
While there is still much work to be done in
countering heteronormative cultures of sexual shame, the growing prominence and recognition
of resources such as the Tom of Finland house and the SoMa LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural
District help to demonstrate that progress is ongoing. They not only speak to the increasing
visibility of LGBTQ communities in the U.S., but also to a broader acknowledgement of
sexuality (in all its diverse forms, practices, and permutations) as a valid and normal part of the
human experience.

295
Jeffrey Miller, “‘Leather Memoir’ at Ringold Alley,” Miller Company Landscape Architects, accessed December
14, 2019, http://www.millercomp.com/ringold-alley.
296
Laura Paull, “Honoring Gay Leather Culture with Art Installation in SoMa Alleyway,” J. The Jewish News of
Northern California, June 21, 2018, https://www.jweekly.com/2018/06/21/honoring-gay-leather-culture-with-art-
installation-in-soma-alleyway/.
297
“About Folsom Street Events,” Folsom Street Events | Leather Events for Good Causes (blog), accessed
December 14, 2019, https://www.folsomstreetevents.org/about-folsom-street-events/.
85

Chapter 5:
Advancing LGBTQ LA

Learning from Edendale:
Why is Edendale critical from the perspective of heritage conservation? There is no
single or definitive answer to this question, but any insight to be gleaned must start by
understanding how subsequent generations have sought to landmark the queer history of this
place. What stands out is not only how a culture (or power) of place can persist over generations,
but also how research efforts themselves constitute an invaluable component, affecting how
memory is accessed and interpreted for posterity. Scholars like Kenney, Hurewitz, Adair, and
Samudio not only worked to engage LGBTQ history towards varying personal and professional
ends, but also helped to assert that this history is rooted in L.A. as a place.
298
This may not seem
particularly radical in hindsight, yet it was necessary to establish a conceptual foothold,
ultimately opening the way for a more direct means of landmarking sites for queer heritage in
L.A.’s historic built environment. The case studies examined can rightfully be seen as too few to
show a consistent or predictable pattern for LGBTQ landmarking citywide, but lessons are
nonetheless evident.
When looking at the Harry Hay Residence, the inability to successfully landmark the
property highlights multiple issues when dealing with the significance and legacy of prominent
individuals within social movements. As a matter of practicality, any attempt to successfully
articulate the meaning of the house itself was hindered by the lack of committed people devoting
extended time and effort to pursuing the landmarking process in good faith. No matter how much
persistence an enterprising preservationist like Samudio had, establishing “objective”
significance for a history that had yet to be broadly recognized was perhaps always going to be
difficult from a professional vantage point. In addition to this, the socio-spatial impact of the
house was never just about Harry Hay and the Mattachine Society. After all, how could an initial
burst of small, late-night meetings in 1950 have looked any different to prying eyes than the
typical activities the house had been hosting up to that point? Anita Hay (née Platky) and her

298
Kenney, “Strategic Visibility”; Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A.; Hurewitz, “Made in Edendale”; Daniel Hurewitz,
Bohemian Los Angeles: And the Making of Modern Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007);
Adair, Bill, “Celebrating a Hidden History: Gay and Lesbian Historic Places in Los Angeles”; Adair, Kenney,
and Samudio, “Gay & Lesbian L.A. History Map.”
86

daughters lived alone in the house for a longer period of time after Harry left, and while their
divorce (and the reasons behind it) were shocking enough in the early 1950s, it’s difficult to
know if neighbors outside their leftist circles were ever made fully aware of this.
299

In a public sense, the role of this house as an event and hospitality space for the activist
(and socialist) circles that gave the “red hills” of Silver Lake their reputation is paramount. Its
prominent siting on top of a hill, and the fact that it had a semi-public life as a neighborhood
gathering place and performance space is what made its cultural memory persist at the local level
long after Harry and Anita had moved on. The formation of the Mattachine, and by extension the
very idea of viewing queer people as “an oppressed cultural minority” is what makes this
property significant. That said, this event did not occur as part of the home’s public life. For the
neighbors’ part, awareness of its queer history was practically non-existent until the house’s
address was published as part of Hay’s obituary in Los Angeles Magazine.
300
Seemingly
negligible, this increased awareness on behalf of the surrounding community was a key means of
support for subsequent preservationist efforts. This persistence of collective memory led to the
Mattachine steps being chosen as means of marking Hay’s legacy in the built environment, even
if his name couldn’t be the most prominent part of it.
While this outcome could be written off as a consolation prize, the hypothetical question
of what would happen had the house been landmarked is also worth considering as this is still (in
theory) an open possibility. Assuming the owner had been enthusiastic about restoring the house
to the period of Hay’s residency, how exactly would it help tell the story of Harry Hay’s life and
achievement as one of the (conceptual) forefathers of gay liberation? How would it engage the
broader queer communities of today via the discursive processes of meaning making that are so
crucial to conserving and understanding the development of queer heritage itself? Converting it
into a historic house museum (a typical preservationist model à la Monticello or Mount Vernon)
would certainly do much to bring back a semi-public dimension that was present up until 1950,
but it would also open up new issues with respect to establishing an endowment (and perhaps a
non-profit) to manage a working residence, generating an income to further a clearly defined

299
It seems unlikely that Anita would’ve stayed if the surrounding community was aware and/or ostracized her for
this. Beyond the irreconcilable personal differences between them, Anita insisted that Harry leave to shield
herself and the children from being associated with a homophile organization by proximity. When the Mattachine
began to really expand (and consequently receive attention from the FBI), it was operating logistically out of
Hay’s mother’s house. Han, “Recommendation Report.”
300
Roderick, “Epitaph: Harry Hay.”
87

mission.
301
Commercializing this legacy based on Harry’s achievements would likewise be
problematic. Much of Harry Hay’s work from this time took the form of theatrical scripts and
written manifestoes, which are not widely read and require contextualization (or study) to be
understood or appreciated.
302
While revolutionary for their time, these works don’t lend
themselves to reproduction and consumption in the way Tom of Finland works–which can be
enjoyed by almost anyone regardless of linguistic ability or educational level–continue to do.
A successful interpretation of Hay’s achievements would also have to credit the robust
artistic and socialist circles that helped inspire his creation of the Mattachine. This Edendale-
centric social milieu, self-consciously anti-capitalist and anti-racist, served as clear inspiration;
even if the Mattachine’s radical beginnings were quickly rejected in favor of queer conservatism
and assimilationism. This struggle over respectability still speaks to major challenges and
fissures within LGBTQ communities today, and while Harry Hay may have been born into
wealth, enjoying the privileges of being an educated white man in twentieth-century America,
the life of a committed activist was undoubtedly a difficult one. The founding of the Mattachine
in 1950 marked his full transition to this activist role, and Hay spent the rest of his life agitating
and critiquing the increasingly mainstream and institutionalized LGBTQ movement itself.
Because of this, none of Hay’s achievements have produced lasting institutions in their own
right, and those that do exist (such as the L.A. LGBT Center, the Human Rights Campaign, etc.)
generally don’t spend their resources founding or operating house museums.
303

Even this line of speculation with respect to a potential house museum would have to
reconcile issues of ownership. While theoretical opposition to listing a house because of its

301
Assuming the house were to be given a period of significance with respect to LGBTQ history, it would likely be
November 11
th
1950, which was the date that the first meeting between Hay and his Mattachine co-founders took
place. That said, a more inclusive period of significance would also factor in the years of leftist organizing and
progressive communion that preceded that night.
302
Additionally, while Hay may have been one of the first to wrestle with the ideas evident in these works, he was
certainly not alone. More recent investigations into the development of Hay’s theories have demonstrated a
pressing need for serious scholarship to investigate and contextualize the works of his contemporaries. Many of
these thinkers and activists, most prominently Jim Kepner and Dorr Legg, were also based in Los Angeles. Ben
Miller, “Children Of The Brain: The Life, Theory, & Activism of Harry Hay, 1953-1964” (New York, N.Y.,
United States, New York University, 2014), 81–83.
303
The L.A. LGBT center, whose primary role is as a provider of healthcare services to the region’s broader
LGBTQ communities, can trace its roots to Morris Kight. Kight was demonstrably more successful than Hay in
creating lasting institutions of relevance because he focused more on the need for social services and direct
action as opposed to Hay’s discursive emphasis, which by comparison reads as navel-gazing. That said, recent
scholarship on Kight’s life has helped to emphasize that both men could be profoundly arrogant in attempting to
“own” or take credit for the movement. Mary Ann Cherry, Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist
(S.l.: Process, 2020).
88

LGBTQ history might easily be dismissed as homophobia, the fact that this objection came from
the homeowner–himself an openly gay screenwriter–would’ve made such a charge spurious. It
also made city officials reluctant to engage all-too-familiar (and politically non-productive)
disputes over preservation and property rights. While it’s easy to bemoan another preservation
loss, the outcome is more accurately viewed as a détente. Subsequent alterations, which have
likely resulted in the loss of historic fabric, have not greatly affected the setting, and the formal
qualities that the Hay family appreciated seem to have proved compelling enough that the new
owner chose to keep the house largely intact rather than demolish it. Moreover, the house is
being used much in the same way it was when Hay himself lived there. It serves as a place for a
gay man to reside, recharge, shape his own eclectic environment, and find inspiration for creative
work.
304
In this sense the Harry Hay Residence continues to serve nearly the exact same function
it had during its period of significance, only now in an exclusively private capacity.
By contrast, understanding The Black Cat through a heritage conservation lens highlights
a set of tendencies concerning how resources like it are being remembered in the twenty-first
century. Gay bars have long held a venerated position within a positivist-progressive LGBTQ
rights narrative, holding a near cherished cultural status.
305
This cherishing often expresses itself
as nostalgia, not only on behalf of queer people who engaged with these spaces in the twentieth
century, but also for younger LGBTQ generations whose personal lives in and around these
places are enhanced by newer means of social (and predominantly digital) engagement. With
hindsight, gay bars are often romanticized as places of personal exploration, close-knit
community building, and political activism. While these activities absolutely occurred in the pre-
liberation era, gay bars were also seen as seedy, dangerous places at a time when the fear of
extortion, police raids, and entrapment was a constant reality. This cast a pall of suspicion and
tension over every social interaction that occurred in them, and while gay bars in many parts of
the U.S. are not subject to these same institutional threats today, the possibility of violence,

304
The Los Angeles Times, “Producer Fuller Rights His Boathouse,” The Denver Post (blog), October 10, 2007,
https://www.denverpost.com/2007/10/10/producer-fuller-rights-his-boathouse/.
305
Popular interest in the legacy of gay bars increased as the campaign for marriage equality progressed in the early
2010s. June Thomas, The Gay Bar: Its Riotous Past and Uncertain Future (Slate Magazine, 2011); Patrick
Sisson, “How Gay Bars Have Been a Building Block of the LGBTQ Community,” Curbed (blog), June 17, 2016,
https://www.curbed.com/2016/6/17/11963066/gay-bar-history-stonewall-pulse-lgbtq.
89

whatever its motivations, is still present.
306
While unintentional, gay bars continue to hold
residual dangers for many LGBTQ people who, in trying to cope with a hostile society, often
resort to using alcohol as a means of self-medicating. Those who didn’t drink, or queer people
who didn’t want to cruise for sex in public places, were left with precious few options in the pre-
gay liberation period. Homophile organizations, and even more radical youth-driven groups such
as PRIDE, earnestly sought to provide “healthy” alternatives to the bar scene, and sober options
for the queer community are numerous in major urban areas today.
307

By landmarking The Black Cat, preservationists such as Wes Joe were engaging
community attitudes towards this resource as a powerful cultural touchstone and symbol for the
LGBTQ struggle for civil rights. While its significance is established by the 1967 LAPD raid and
the aftermath (PRIDE’s response to it), the HCM application doesn’t account for the ongoing
queer life that the space hosted in the half century following. Interest on behalf of the Friends of
the Black Cat, as their name suggests, did not extend to the space’s subsequent queer iterations
as Basgo’s Disco (the 1970s), Club FUCK! (the 1980s), and Le Barcito (the 1990s and 2000s).
To an extent this not only reflects the limitations of available research at the time, but also the
scope of normative preservationist priorities. In The Black Cat’s case, these priorities were
driven by a need to tell a succinct story that would resonate with the CHC, generating
community interest and support in this effort.
308
This is reflected in the support letters received
by the CHC (most prominently from neighbors and the council office), which emphasize The
Black Cat’s role as indicative of the “diversity and tolerance” that defines Silver Lake. While the
Edendale-era history supports this in terms of progressive activism, the implication that other
L.A. neighborhoods are uniformly less tolerant–or don’t value diversity or progressive values to
the same extent–reads as somewhat myopic a decade later.

306
The importance of gay bar’s communal status was reinforced in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting,
prompting increased speculation of the status of bars in the LGBTQ community and what the future holds for
their status as a socio-cultural resource. Zachary Shane Kalish Blair, “The Pulse Nightclub Shooting: Connecting
Militarism, Neoliberalism, and Multiculturalism to Understand Violence,” North American Dialogue 19, no. 2
(2016): 102–16, https://doi.org/10.1111/nad.12049.
307
In L.A. the Los Angeles LGBT Center is the most prominent institution offering community resources regionally.
“Home - Los Angeles LGBT Center,” accessed December 19, 2019, https://lalgbtcenter.org/.
308
While Wes Joe wasn’t an archivist or professional researcher, he worked extensively with the ONE Archives,
verifying primary sources to counter Brevoort’s objections to the material significance of the site’s various
features. Subsequent interest in Club FUCK!, which was radically inclusive of queer people of all identities and
races, would occur much later. Henkes, “A Party for the ‘Freaks’”; Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
90

The language of The Black Cat’s HCM application also strikes a somewhat sententious
tone, and its expressed concern for the LGBTQ struggle did not, as a matter of scope and
appropriateness, extend to present day social issues with respect to queer spaces and the threat of
gentrification. While gay bars have historically been marginalized, their ability to serve alcohol–
by extension turning a profit and allowing them to justify their existence economically–was
historically regulated at various levels.
309
Though the property is privately owned, The Black Cat
is not a wholly private resource in that its purpose is to engage a public clientele and customer
base. There is no evidence that The Black Cat excluded straight people during its period of
significance, and it doesn’t exclude LGBTQ people today. However, while the lines between a
gay and straight bar can be inexact or impossible to measure objectively, the current space can
no longer be considered one of the former.
310
The fact that the space was a Latino-oriented gay
bar during the nomination process was essentially ignored, and the subsequent remodel and
“revival” of The Black Cat leaves much to be desired from the vantage point of rapidly vanishing
social and community resources.
Contemporary anxiety over these changes reflects not necessarily the loss of historic
resources in the architectural sense, but the loss of cultural resources generally. In other words, it
speaks to shrinking opportunities for queer people to hold space collectively and enjoy each
other’s company in an affirming environment, as opposed to one that simply tolerates LGBTQ
presence.
311
The HCM plaque and interpretive program, no matter how progressive or
enthusiastically maintained, is simply no substitute for a living, queer-oriented space. While the
current bar is not unwelcoming to LGBTQ folk, its aestheticized interior (and relatively pricey
menu) is evident of the type of sanitized and exclusive spaces of consumption that simply

309
By the late 1950s, the state of California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board was confronting legal challenges
with respect to the rights of gay bars to serve alcohol. At the local level, it’s common today for city planning
departments to issue conditional use permits in order to monitor specific uses (and potential nuisances), such as
businesses where alcohol is either sold and/or consumed. Nan Alamilla Boyd, “San Francisco Was a Wide Open
Town: Charting the Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Communities Through the Mid-Twentieth Century”
(Providence, RI, Brown, 1995), 174–81.
310
The interpretive program, though unique, would perhaps be more meaningful if it came with a commitment to
hire LGBTQ bartenders and waitstaff, but there is no evidence that this was ever considered. Moreover, the
interpretive materials consist mainly of a few framed historic photos, a visual footnote within a highly curated
“pub-style” interior. Though not scientific by any means, various self-identified LGBTQ friends and
acquaintances questioned by the author outside of the preservation profession have admitted, upon discussion,
that they’ve visited The Black Cat Tavern multiple times without ever knowing that it was a gay bar, or even
historically significant.
311
While this may be difficult to assert in fact, the perception is an evident factor nonetheless. Gallegos, “Le Barcito
Closes in Silver Lake — And There Goes the Gayborhood.”
91

weren’t available to visibly out queer people during the resource’s period of significance. In
some ways this illustrates that political progress for the LGBTQ community has been very real,
but also very uneven depending on who you happen to be in terms of ethnic/racial identity,
gender identity, and economic status. While this is no reflection on the admirable and necessary
effort to landmark The Black Cat itself, the bar in its current iteration stands as a monument to
the commoditization (and to varying degrees the gentrification of) LGBTQ identity and history.
The Black Cat’s ability to engage living LGBTQ communities, while diminished in the
quotidian sense, has not been entirely erased in terms of heritage and commemoration. Though
the interior bar, sign, and building stand as epitaphs to a longtime (if marginalized) queer
presence, the effort to preserve exterior features is notable in that it has allowed for expressions
of commemoration and public engagement to happen. This occurred not only when aggrieved
activists began to lay flowers on the sidewalk following the passing of Prop 8, but also for the
2012 and 2017 reenactments.
312
Taking place on the same corner lot that held the original protest
fifty years earlier, the latter event would not have been able to host as large a crowd of people in
the bar’s interior. Staging it on the same street corner as the 1967 protest made its impact more
meaningful, befitting a politically driven act of public defiance and constituting a heritage-
centered instance of place-claiming.
313

This event likely would not have happened on the site at all if the property owner
followed through with his expressed desire to develop another building on that corner lot. Highly
self-conscious, and cunningly staged for media exposure, the 2017 commemoration helped to
highlight ongoing issues regarding the status of LGBTQ history (and the living communities
who embody it) in L.A. While the LAPD may not be the institutionalized homophobic oppressor
it was a half-century earlier, its participation in the reenactment doubtless did not sit easily in
many queer-progressive and leftist circles.
314
The recent opening of a pizza place in the space
next to The Black Cat (in the building portion that had been a laundromat) has brought with it the

312
Lin, “Bar Still Symbolic in Gay Community”; “Revisiting the Black Cat”; Potts, 50th Anniversary of the Black
Cat Demonstration.
313
While this event was a coordinated effort between the owners of The Black Cat Tavern and the city of L.A. (the
LAPD, Mayor’s Office, and CD 13 specifically), public interest was enhanced as a reaction to the beginning of
the Trump administration.
314
No matter how many women, queer folk and/or people of color become police officers themselves, the legacy of
over-policing and police brutality in L.A. (as in the U.S. generally) is too long to be considered resolved in any
honest sense. Any real change in this regard will have to start by confronting assumptions about the role of
policing itself, especially in diverse urban contexts. Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing (Brooklyn: Verso, 2017).
92

encroachment of outdoor seating and furniture on the side lot.
315
While this may make such
commemorative events difficult to hold again in the future, the plethora of issues still being faced
by the LGBTQ community may yet give The Black Cat more roles to play.
316

Engaging struggles for social and political advancement are critical to any informed
understanding of LGBTQ history, but they do not give a fully accurate or complete rendering of
queer life. Political issues alone–subject to rapid shifts, changes, and realigning interests over
time–cannot support and sustain a community over generations. The Tom of Finland house
demonstrates this by conveying a deeper set of values that are not easily monopolized as part of
any political policy or activist agenda. Radical in a socio-cultural sense, the house’s queer legacy
as a safe haven for erotic art is more enduring because it speaks to the freedom to express
oneself, not only artistically but sexually as well. Its period of significance, being the most recent
of the three resources discussed (1980-1991), marks the start of the house’s open–and still very
active–queer life.
When comparing the Tom of Finland house to the Hay Residence–both single family
homes associated with significant gay figures–it’s evident that the framing of their respective
legacies was also key to their different outcomes. Initial efforts to landmark the Hay residence in
2000 mainly had one biography and a book of selected writings to demonstrate focused interest
and land credible support to a preservation effort.
317
While Timmons’ biography of Hay is well
written and detailed, admiring descriptions of his subject only served to reinforce a hagiographic
“great man” approach.
318
Samudio’s decision to prioritize landmarking this resource before any
of the others called out in the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map unwittingly contributed to this

315
Stephanie Breijo, “Take a Peek Inside California Sun, Silver Lake’s New Pizza Parlor and Beer Shop,” Time Out
Los Angeles, February 9, 2019, https://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/news/take-a-peek-inside-california-sun-
silver-lakes-new-pizza-parlor-and-beer-shop-020919.
316
Per the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, this furniture has been designed in such a way that
it can be disassembled and removed in the future. Oversight from OHR, and vigorous input from Wes Joe, has
helped to ensure this. Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
317
John D’Emilio’s book, Sexual Politics Sexual Communities, was arguably the most objective academic source
available, but Harry Hay’s efforts constitute a minor/introductory part of its focus. Inconsistencies resulting from
information that was still hidden at the time of its writing (such as the names of the original founding members of
the Mattachine) also would’ve made it difficult to use as a dependable means of support for any potential
applications.
318
This tone, arguably taken to please the still living Hay, diminishes the work’s objectivity. The introduction to
Radically Gay also acknowledges that “Hay’s influence on [the editor’s] life and work has been profound,”
reiterating that much of this scholarly analysis is coming either from gay men who Hay mentored himself, or
members of the Radical Faerie movement that still revere Hay as a founding figure. Timmons, The Trouble with
Harry Hay, xiv; Hay, Radically Gay, 11.
93

tired preservationist trope.
319
Hay’s own “founder of the movement” complex was also a major
issue for queer activists and historians during the 1980s and ’90s, who had little time or patience
for Hay’s tendency to chide them for being less educated than he was.
320
His enthusiastic
advocacy of pederasty was also a huge political liability during the height of the AIDS crisis and
culture wars of the 1990s, and arguably still is today.
321

By contrast, the Tom of Finland house exists not to celebrate Touko Laaksonen as a
“great man” so much as the work he created under the assumed artistic persona of Tom. Beyond
the controversial references to fascist aesthetics via military and authority figures, there is little
in the way of overt references to contemporaneous queer politics in his images. For his part,
Laaksonen did not prominently involve himself in the contentious LGBTQ protest movements
and political struggles of the late 1970’s and ’80s (his depiction/promotion of safe sex practices
being the most obvious exception). This likely reflected his precarious status as a Finnish citizen
residing in L.A. on a semi-permanent basis, but likewise does not preclude political readings of
his work. Though the HCM application consciously attempts to highlight his inclusion of African
American men as part of his increasing exposure to L.A. in the 1980s, these works are still a

319
Samudio, whose exposure to preservation began from a young age, was working with many of the scholars who
made these very same critiques. Given this, his stated desire to pursue landmarking appears to have been a self-
promotional effort undertaken with a lack of sufficient feedback from–or perhaps an unwillingness to listen to–
his colleagues. This is evident in his interview as part of Will Fellows’ book, A Passion to Preserve, where he
describes having to defend his efforts to other gay preservationists, misogynistically characterizing them as
“debutantes from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.” Fellows, A Passion to Preserve,
154.
320
Eric Marcus, the author of Making Gay History, admitted in a retrospective podcast that his interview with Hay
was so frustrating and unproductive that he left it out of the first edition of his book. Marcus, “Harry Hay.”
321
While Timmons’ biography downplays this nearly to the point of omission, it doesn’t change the fact that it
happened. Whatever motivations Hay himself may have had, the fallout from his association with NAMBLA
continued to affect resources associated with his legacy years after his death, in large part because the conflation
of homosexuality and pedophilia is used by social conservatives to attack LGBTQ-focused scholarship and
research (as a corollary to attacking LGBTQ people). A recent instance came from the arrest of Walter L.
Williams. A respected LGBTQ professor of anthropology, history, and gender studies at the University of
Southern California, Williams wrote The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture,
which extended Harry Hay’s interest in the “berdache” tradition among indigenous societies (LGBTQ Native
Americans in the U.S. prefer to use the term “two-spirit” to identify themselves today). Williams not only
advised on and critiqued the L.A. Gay and Lesbian History Map, but also served as the director of the ONE
Archives’ Institute for Advanced studies. After quitting his post in 2011, Williams was arrested, extradited to the
U.S. from Mexico, and convicted by the FBI on charges of sexual exploitation of children. He plead guilty and
was sentenced to jail time, earning himself a page on the (anti-LGBTQ) fundamentalist Christian website
Conservapedia.com. Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age”; Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and
the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 203–4; Richard Winton
and Kate Mather, “Ex-USC Prof Pleads Guilty to Child Sex,” Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif., September
7, 2014, sec. Main News; Part A; Metro Desk; “Walter Lee Williams - Conservapedia,” accessed January 13,
2020, https://www.conservapedia.com/Walter_Lee_Williams.
94

footnote for an oeuvre that largely glorifies exaggerated-muscular versions of white, male
bodies. Women are less carefully rendered and appear rarely in his work (mostly as plot-related
or framing devices), which is also notable for the near total absence of men from Latino, Middle-
Eastern, and Asian-Pacific Islander backgrounds.
322
Tom’s work nonetheless resonates in this
respect because it prompts engagement with racial politics in matters of representation. To its
credit, the Tom of Finland Foundation hasn’t shied away from engaging these conversations,
supporting and attracting promising artists of all ethnic backgrounds and gender identities to
contribute and respond to Tom’s legacy in their own ways.
323

Understanding the Tom of Finland house as a conduit for heritage conservation is
perhaps a bit more nebulous, since factors that typically frame debates over what is saved and
why are often overlooked in the rush to preserve now and ask questions later. While the effort to
landmark the Harry Hay residence didn’t have the benefit of being able to explore those
questions fully, the process for landmarking the Tom of Finland house was comparatively
blessed in that it didn’t necessarily need to.
324
As property owners, Durk Dehner and the Tom of
Finland Foundation not only knew why the house was significant to them–and a broader
spectrum of queer and leather subcultures generally–but were the premier experts in the history
being discussed. They’d already been recognized in the city’s LGBT Historic Context Statement,
consciously choosing to avoid hiring any preservation consultants.
325
Instead, they marshalled
their following’s prodigious talents in order to submit an informed and well-researched HCM to
OHR.
326

The cultural importance of the Tom of Finland house also went undisputed during the
landmarking process. Despite this, the architecture-centric criticism voiced during the second
CHC hearing speaks to how differing priorities can sometimes muddle or confuse preservation

322
While these ethnic groups may not have been as culturally predominant during the period of Tom’s residency,
they were undeniably present in L.A. by the 1980s. Cho, “Tom Cho,” May 2, 2014.
323
In the interest of fairness, it must be stated that an artist’s oeuvre shouldn’t be understood solely in terms of
diversity. Meanings and expectations concerning equal representation as a concept are not fixed, shifting
constantly within a given social context. Consciously or not, most artists choose to pursue subjects that are
interesting and/or familiar to them personally.
324
As understood within the context of this work, a full exploration of a resource’s significance involves
successfully engaging the landmarking process at any level. The fact that the Harry Hay Residence remains
unlisted doesn’t negate its potential to convey meaning. While the house’s significance can also be engaged via
interpretation, the absence of any listing makes establishing the legitimacy of any interpretive efforts (which at
present are non-existent) a slightly more difficult feat.
325
Fontes, Interview with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger.
326
This is the author’s judgement, based largely on the length, breadth, and depth of documentation.
95

intent. The resource in question, which is indeed a handsome example of a craftsman style house,
is not really significant because of its architecture. While this feedback was offered more as a
helpful suggestion, it nonetheless rang as tone deaf.
327
This perhaps stems from the inability to
recognize that resources like the Tom of Finland house more closely embody Kenney’s
definition of queer place-claiming, as the house itself was already “a thing constructed, upon
which activists and communities layer[ed] new meanings.”
328

The place-claiming that occurred at Tom of Finland House was pursued primarily for
artistic and interpersonal reasons, as opposed to the political-strategic framework that constitutes
Kenney’s focus. The house provides the ideal amount of flexibility to frame the type of queer
communal lifestyle that is so rarely encountered today, and it does this precisely because it’s not
a perfectly intact architectural specimen. The Foundation also knew that their real legacy–Tom’s
legacy–was contingent upon supporting a continuing artistic impulse by hosting living queer
artists in residence. This effort speaks to the need to express oneself in an affirming environment;
a near universal one for every LGBTQ person trying to understand themselves in a world that
often provides little guidance or empathy. More than any other case study discussed, The Tom of
Finland house comes the closest to engaging a consistently vital and enduring LGBTQ heritage.

Cast out of Edendale:
While the case studies chosen were part of the process of circumscribing this study
geographically and temporally, the fact that they are the first three sites (in L.A.) to be subject to
LGBTQ-focused landmarking interest reflects persistent biases in and of itself. The
predominance of straight, white male histories as the subject of preservation focus is called out
by Hayden, Dubrow, and Adair, but the development of queer historiography by subsequent
generations has itself been plagued by an outsized focus on (mainly) white, cisgender,
homosexual men. In many ways, this demonstrates who is able to wield privilege, not only in the
form of social and cultural capital, but also in terms of securing their legacies within a queer-
historical narrative framework. While gay men of all backgrounds still have to contend with
homophobic and oppressive cultural forces, the very state of being oppressed does not make one

327
Part of what made the house resonate with Tom of Finland himself (in the creative sense) was its perceived
resemblance to Finnish Jugend buildings, more commonly known as Art Nouveau in the U.S. Fontes, Interview
with S.R. Sharp, Durk Dehner and Marc Bellenger.
328
Kenney, “Strategic Visibility,” 23.
96

inherently sympathetic–or willing to empathize with–the oppression(s) that others face. This is
not only evident in visible tensions between the “letters” themselves but also between LGBTQ
people coming from different ethno-cultural backgrounds and racial identities.
The problems of viewing LGBTQ people as a monolithic (or singular) community are
numerous, being addressed at length in Kenney’s dissertation.
329
The unified community rhetoric
she analyzes can ring especially hollow in L.A., a multi-ethnic metropolis which was–despite
U.S.-Anglo desires to revise its early history–founded on indigenous land by a group of
predominantly mixed-race colonists.
330
With respect to the recent past, the gay liberation period
is replete with instances of misogyny and racism perpetuated largely by gay men. While the early
L.A. homophile groups were relatively open to collaborations between people of all
backgrounds, the increasingly evident misogyny of gay male leadership often forced lesbians to
seek community elsewhere.
331
Gay L.A. makes clear that institutions and spaces resulting from
these fissures were not sustainable in the long-term since women of all orientations (who would
in theory act as donors) had less disposable income due to the gender pay gap.
332
The transition
towards lesbians being able to occupy major LGBTQ leadership roles came about, in large part,
due to a combination of shifting attitudes towards women in the workplace along with the
decimation of male leadership (and gay men generally) during the height of the AIDS crisis.
333

329
Kenney critiques the “ideal of community” as a value that LGBTQ people are expected to aspire to as opposed to
a more honest “politics of difference.” She connects this to place, calling out notions of community as an effort
to erase differences within any group of individuals that are defined as such. Kenney, 25–28.
330
The “rediscovery” of the original pobladores’ African and Indigenous roots is attributed to William M. Mason, a
prominent historian and curator specializing in Southern California. Mason wrote an op-ed in the LA Times in
1975 that brought the city’s multi-ethnic origins to a broader public at a time when translated versions of the first
census of L.A. were receiving renewed scholarly attention. It’s likely that the original colonists would’ve likely
preferred to diminish their own backgrounds within the (hierarchically racialized) colonial framework of their
own time. Despite this, revealing their roots was an invaluable means of countering historical erasure, helping to
lend weight to the contemporaneous needs of L.A.’s Black and Chicano communities. William M. Mason,
“L.A’s Founders Should Be Honored for What They Were: A Racial Mix,” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los
Angeles, Calif., September 4, 1975; Myrna Oliver, “William Mason; California Historian, Author,” Los Angeles
Times (1996-Current); Los Angeles, Calif, November 25, 2000, sec. Ventura County; David J. Weber, New
Spain’s Far Northern Frontier: Essays on Spain in the American West, 1540-1821 (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1979), 33–35; Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle Toward
Liberation (San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1972).
331
In L.A. These conflicts reached a breaking point during the mid-1970s, when the Gay Community Services
Center (which would become the L.A. LGBT Center) began to institutionalize, expand, and solicit funds from
major donors via leadership connections. Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 198–210.
332
The most significant example was an organization called Connexxus, which in addition to funding was also
hindered by disagreements between white, middle class lesbians and working-class lesbians of color. Faderman
and Timmons, 212; Ch. 5: Separate Space and Separatism Kenney, “Strategic Visibility,” 163–95.
333
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 213–14.
97

The most recent instance of these tensions affecting a preservation issue surfaced with the
effort to save The Factory building in West Hollywood, the longtime site of the Studio One
disco. While its omission from the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map constituted a valid
critique, it underscores a justifiable trepidation around preserving a prominent building whose
significance for LGBTQ history is complicated by being both a place for unfettered gay (male)
hedonism and also one of exclusion.
334
This latter aspect stems from the fact that Studio One
employed an entrance policy that limited the number of women allowed in the space, while
subjecting men of color to additional ID requirements in order to limit their presence as well.
335

Debates over whether to preserve the building for this history were polarizing, prompting many
older gay men to nostalgically reminisce about the possibility of commemorating their own
youthful experiences and memories of Studio One.
336
Conversely, some prominent LGBTQ
elders maligned the site as an example of queer racism undeserving of any landmark status, even
going against the efforts of younger generations who fought to save it.
337
The site’s location has
also raised jurisdictional issues because West Hollywood, which was incorporated as its own city
in 1984, is free to define its own community needs and planning agendas at the local level.
338

The ultimate outcome has been to preserve most of the existing structure and reorient its siting as

334
In social terms, the ability of gay men to openly dance together and perform “liberation” at Studio One–beyond
being a character defining feature of the 1970s disco scene–was an expression of progress in its own right. The
omission of Studio One from the Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map was pointed out by Walter L. Williams.
Gordon, “A Guide to Where L.A.’s Gays Came of Age.”
335
When questioned about the entrance policy during the height of Studio One’s popularity, Scott Forbes (the club’s
founder and owner) essentially admitted that it was designed to rid the space of a “bad element.” As a donor to
the (then) new Gay Community Services Center, he could afford to pursue the policy for years. Faderman and
Timmons, Gay L.A., 237.
336
During the final city council meeting to determine whether or not to allow the Robertson Lane redevelopment
project to go forward, all but one of the City of West Hollywood councilmembers brought up their own personal
experiences of fun, love, and loss related to the site. Personal recollection of the author.
337
While any attempt to rectify injustices by repudiating the wrongs of the past may stem from a well-intentioned
place, it’s reductive to assume that buildings and sites aren’t capable of speaking to multiple, and discordant,
histories and experiences. As a married lesbian couple committed to saving LGBTQ history, Krisy Gosney and
Kate Eggert (of Gosney-Eggert Historic Preservation Consultants) understood this and led an effort to save
Studio One for potential nomination to the Nationl Register. The anti-landmarking attitude, promulgated by the
still-living Don Kilhefner (a principal L.A. GLF organizer from the 1970s on) proved both socially helpful–by
expanding the conversation about the site’s history–and a hinderance to preservationist aims simultaneously. Don
Kilhefner, “Jim Crow Visits West Hollywood: Studio One and Gay Liberation,” WEHOville (blog), August 5,
2016, https://www.wehoville.com/2016/08/05/jim-crow-visits-west-hollywood-studio-one-gay-liberation/; Jonny
Coleman, “‘White Men Only’: The Troubled Past Of Studio One, A Historic Gay Disco,” LAist, March 14,
2017, https://laist.com/2017/03/14/studio_one_history.php.
338
Beyond being subject to a different preservation ordinance, the main effect of this stems from the city of West
Hollywood’s lack of an LGBTQ context statement, the writing of which could go a long way towards
establishing priorities regarding what’s historically significant and why.
98

part of a pedestrian-centered “paseo” (walkway). While this will likely preclude the possibility of
any landmarking owing to loss of integrity, the site could still allow for instances of heritage and
commemoration to occur.
339

As discussed in LGBTQ America, unpacking the challenges facing these resources begins
not only by looking at how queer history is interpreted by its inheritors, but also by who is left
out of (or has had their presence diminished within) the historical record altogether. While
internecine tensions are evident in sites like Studio One, absences and losses are even more
difficult to address since–with respect to physical sites and historic resources–there is often little
left materially to help tell a story. The most obvious evidence of this can be seen from the map
component of a microsite titled Curating the City: LGBTQ Historic Places in L.A.
340
Made
possible by an internship-grant from the Getty Research Institute in 2015, and prompted by the
completion of the city’s LGBT Historic Context Statement in 2014, the microsite constitutes the
LA Conservancy’s central effort to definitively track and coordinate efforts to save LGBTQ
places in greater L.A. County.
341
While the map is an invaluable means of helping to establish
significance for these sites, the fact that only two of its listed resources have been landmarked
primarily because of their LGBTQ significance reads as less than encouraging.
342

339
Faring (the developer) has proved amenable to incorporating the site’s history as part of their redevelopment
plans. This will take the form of permanent interpretation panels, and could potentially include a Power of Place-
type installation in the vein of Folsom’s Leather Memoir. Wes Joe, “Opinion: History Disappearing on La Peer,”
WEHOville (blog), June 1, 2018, https://www.wehoville.com/2018/06/01/opinion-history-disappearing-la-peer/;
Coleman Lloyd, “Opinion: Faring’s Plan to Save the Factory Would Have Made Scott Forbes Proud,”
WEHOville (blog), July 9, 2018, https://www.wehoville.com/2018/07/09/opinion-farings-plan-save-factory-
made-scott-forbes-proud/.
340
In many ways, this is the digital inheritor of the first Gay and Lesbian L.A. History Map. “Curating the City:
LGBTQ Historic Places in L.A. | Los Angeles Conservancy,” accessed January 13, 2020,
https://www.laconservancy.org/lgbtq.
341
Three short animation-videos commissioned for the microsite detail specific preservation efforts–interviewing
significant preservationists and individuals involved with a given resource’s history–and focus on the Women’s
Building, Plummer Park, and The Black Cat Tavern. The last of these includes an interview with Wes Joe.
Fontes, Interview with Adrian Scott Fine.
342
These are The Black Cat Tavern and the Tom of Finland House (see chapters three and four). Additional
landmarks have either been saved predominantly for their architectural value (such as the Harry and Margaret
Hay house, the Biltmore Hotel, and the Van Luit Complex) or for their connections to broader socio-historical
movements. The latter association is typified by the Women’s (Standard Oil Co.) Building, which benefitted
from its association with Myron Hunt (a prominent L.A. architect) and for its critical role as a locus for L.A.’s
(then nascent) feminist art scene. Han, “Recommendation Report”; “Millennium Biltmore Hotel Los Angeles |
Los Angeles Conservancy,” accessed January 14, 2020, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/millennium-
biltmore-hotel-los-angeles; “Albert Van Luit Complex | Los Angeles Conservancy,” accessed January 14, 2020,
https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/albert-van-luit-complex.
99

By the LA Conservancy’s own admission, the microsite is “is just the beginning of an
ongoing initiative…” emphasizing that their map “is not an exhaustive list of places that are
important in the history of the LGBTQ community.”
343
Of the thirty-eight resources listed on
microsite, only five can be reasonably described as centering the experiences of LGBTQ people
of color. Two of these, the Hattie McDaniel Residence and the Samuel-Novarro Residence, are
architecturally significant but, like the Harry Hay Residence, are privately owned homes and not
open to the public.
344
Of the remaining three, the most prominent resource for Black LGBTQ
history is Jewel’s Catch One which–while not yet landmarked–was the oldest Black-owned disco
in the country at the time the proprietress (Jewel Thais Williams) herself closed it in 2015.
345

The history of Jewel’s has been extensively covered in a Netflix documentary, and the site
continues to function much as it has historically, re-opening in 2016 as “a live music venue,
nightclub & arts space [working] to celebrate creativity and instigate multi-disciplinary
experimentation.”
346

The remaining two resources consist of Redz and Circus Disco. Despite their significance
deriving primarily from the experiences of LGBTQ Latinos in L.A., they have simply not
benefitted from a sustained level of community support. At present Latino communities make up
a plurality of the Southern California region’s ethnic groups, underscoring the need to save

343
“Curating the City: LGBTQ Historic Places in L.A. | Los Angeles Conservancy.”
344
While this may hinder their ability to convey meaning in a heritage conservation sense, the landmarking of
single-family homes that include (or better yet center) LGBTQ history is valid and should absolutely be pursued
for the sake of claiming space in the built historical record. At present, neither house is at risk of demolition or
significant alteration. Owing to its association with Lloyd Wright (the eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright and a
significant L.A. architect in his own right), the Samuel-Novarro Residence was declared HCM #130 in 1974.
“Hattie McDaniel Residence | Los Angeles Conservancy,” accessed January 14, 2020,
https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/hattie-mcdaniel-residence; “Samuel-Novarro Residence | Los Angeles
Conservancy,” accessed January 14, 2020, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/samuel-novarro-residence.
345
While the building dates to earlier, Jewel opened her disco in 1972, and though there is interest in declaring the
property an HCM, efforts to do so have been hindered by Jewel’s own statement that “[She] felt, and others have
said, it's an institution. It was ours, but it's time to move on." Tre’vell Anderson, “Jewel’s Catch One Disco’s
Demise Marks Era’s End for L.A.’s Gay Blacks,” Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif., March 16, 2015, sec.
Main News; Part A; Entertainment Desk; Lina Lecaro, “After 42 Years, Jewel’s Catch One Says Goodbye,” LA
Weekly, July 20, 2015, https://www.laweekly.com/after-42-years-jewels-catch-one-says-goodbye/; Fontes,
Interview with Lambert Giessinger and Melissa Jones.
346
While the current business is very much accepting of all identities, its fate is similar to The Black Cat Tavern in
that it no longer operates as a specifically LGBTQ-oriented space. Dennis Romero, “Los Globos’ Mitch Edelson
Buys Legendary Mid-City Club Jewel’s Catch One,” LA Weekly, November 18, 2015,
https://www.laweekly.com/los-globos-mitch-edelson-buys-legendary-mid-city-club-jewels-catch-one/; “Catch
One – Los Angeles’ Hottest Disco,” accessed January 14, 2020, https://www.catch.one/.
100

spaces centering the experiences of their constituent LGBTQ individuals.
347
Redz (originally
Redheads) which had operated as a Latina-oriented lesbian bar in East L.A. since the 1950s,
closed its doors in 2015. There is currently no significant effort to revive or commemorate it.
348

The more indicative–and prominent–example is the Circus Disco founded by Gene La Pietra,
who purposefully eschewed the racist/misogynist entrance policies of West Hollywood clubs
such as Studio One. As a result, it became a gathering place for LGBTQ Latinos beginning in the
mid-1970s, a period when the lack of welcoming places for them to go (even in established
ethnic enclaves) often spurred nightly pilgrimages to Hollywood.
349

Initial threats to Circus Disco, which had been operating continuously since 1975,
became apparent in a 2008 draft Environment Impact Report (EIR) for a proposed development
project called The Lexington, which asserted that the warehouse structure housing the club was
not worth preserving:

In summary, the building has been extensively remodeled and does not possess any
outstanding characteristics or unique architectural or historical significance. It has no
unique or distinctive architectural characteristics or historical associations and has not
achieved significance within the past fifty years. Therefore, it appears ineligible for the
National Register, the California Register, and designation under a local ordinance.
350

As the financial crash of 2008 likely delayed The Lexington from being built, the site continued
its historic use for the next seven years, ultimately being added to SurveyLA. This delay gave the

347
In recent years the role of gender in romance languages has become a point of contention for LGBTQ
communities in the U.S. While the masculine ending “os” is used here for the sake of readability and (Spanish)
grammatical correctness, language is continuing to evolve in this aspect. The twelfth chapter of LGBTQ America
stresses that, for the purposes of “sexuality and sexually-fluid identities the terms used are expressly significant.
The same is the case in ethnic identity where a recent trend is to use Latinx to be inclusive of Latino/a, or of all
self-identified people of Latin American origins.” Deena J. González and Ellie D. Hernández, “Chapter 12:
Latina/o Gender and Sexuality” (National Park Foundation, October 31, 2016), 23.
348
The quiet demise of this community resource speaks to the increasing loss of lesbian and womyn’s space
generally. As of this writing Redz is still vacant, with the building having undergone some minor alterations.
Anonymous, “Lost Womyn’s Space: Redz,” Lost Womyn’s Space (blog), July 11, 2018,
http://lostwomynsspace.blogspot.com/2018/07/redz.html; Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 285.
349
Per James Rojas, “in order to find our [queer] identity, we had to leave the Eastside,” which he characterizes as a
“macho landscape.” Rojas, an LGBTQ planner and activist known for his focus on Latino Urbanism, describes
joining groups of friends to take transit to Hollywood clubs in the 1970s, where welcoming places like Circus
Disco allowed them to engage “gay life on [their] terms… [as] a group of Chicanos and other minority youth
who… were discovering their sexual identities.” James Rojas, “From the Eastside to Hollywood: Chicano Queer
Trailblazers in 1970s L.A.,” KCET, September 2, 2016, https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/from-the-eastside-to-
hollywood-chicano-queer-trailblazers-in-1970s-la; “PLACE IT! - JAMES ROJAS - BIO,” accessed January 15,
2020, http://www.placeit.org/bio_james_rojas.html.
350
CAJA Environmental Services LLC, “Environmental Impact Analysis for The Lexington: Section C Historic
Resources,” June 1, 2008, 18.
101

city’s LGBT Historic Context Statement a chance to disagree with the draft EIR, describing
Circus Disco as “reflect[ing] not only the geographic dispersion of the LGBT[Q] community, but
also an increasing segregation of patrons along gender, ethnic/racial, and class lines.”
351
Two
years later, the twelfth chapter of LGBTQ America would concur, adding that Circus Disco was
“not just a social venue… [since it] played an important role as a place of community
development and political organizing.”
352
Though helpful, this prominent call out proved to be
too late, as Circus Disco was already slated for demolition following a zoning change that
allowed for residential uses on the parcel.
353

Triggered by the new development possibilities allowed by rezoning, Gene La Pietra
himself sold the property for redevelopment, leading preservationists to submit an HCM
application for Circus Disco upon its closing.
354
As a locally-based non-profit engaged in
preservation advocacy, Hollywood Heritage prepared and assembled a detailed nomination,
which would have initiated the HCM process and put the site under temporary (deliberation-
related) protections against demolition.
355
Before a presentation could be made to the CHC, the
developers (AvalonBay Communities LLC) agreed to a compromise, “promis[ing] to spare many
of the remaining features of the old disco… and incorporate them into the project.”
356
The new
complex, AVA Hollywood at La Pietra Place, will bring nearly seven hundred apartments and
twenty-five thousand square feet of street-level commercial space to the site. Similar to the

351
Grimes, “LGBT Historic Context Statement,” 62.
352
Per LGBTQ America, “in 1983, César Chávez addressed approximately one hundred members of the Project Just
Business LGBTQ coalition at the bar. In his address, he discussed strategies for coalition fundraising and
organizing boycotts.” González and Hernández, “Chapter 12: Latina/o Gender and Sexuality,” 25; Dubrow,
“Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage,” 55–56; Doug Smith, “UFW Leader Addresses 100 at Buffet-
Dance: Cesar Chavez Tells Gays How to Woo Corporate Funds: Boycott,” Los Angeles Times (1996-Current);
Los Angeles, Calif, March 23, 1983.
353
Phillip Zonkel, “Can Circus Disco Be Saved From Demolition?,” Out in the 562 (blog), April 1, 2015,
http://blogs.presstelegram.com/outinthe562/2015/04/01/circus-disco-saved-demolition/.
354
Dennis Romero, “The Founder of One of L.A.’s Earliest Gay Discos Isn’t Crying Over Its Destruction,” LA
Weekly, December 4, 2015, https://www.laweekly.com/the-founder-of-one-of-l-a-s-earliest-gay-discos-isnt-
crying-over-its-destruction/; Emily Alpert Reyes, “Gay Nightclub Nears Its End, At Crossroads,” Los Angeles
Times; Los Angeles, Calif., December 4, 2015, sec. California; Part B; Metro Desk.
355
Hollywood Heritage, “Recommendation Report: Circus Disco” (Los Angeles, Calif., United States: Los Angeles
Department of City Planning, December 3, 2015).
356
Emily Alpert Reyes, “Hollywood Heritage Strikes a Deal to Save Artifacts of Circus Disco and Enshrine Them in
a New Development,” Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif., January 22, 2016, sec. California; Part B; Metro
Desk.
102

Studio One redevelopment project, the design is oriented around a pedestrian paseo that includes
(and interprets) salvaged elements of the site’s LGBTQ history.
357

Characterized by many to be a creative preservation solution, the loss of an active Latino-
oriented LGBTQ space continued to be a sticking point within a growing discourse of
gentrification anxiety.
358
For undocumented queer folks especially, the demolition of Circus
Disco spoke to the ongoing marginalization of their needs–via the loss of safe spaces for them to
congregate–within an LGBTQ institutional framework.
359
The unwillingness of the LA LGBT
Center to engage the Circus Disco debate seemed to reinforce this assumption, as it was
concurrently developing its new Anita May Rosenstein Campus directly across the street.
360
The
decision to present La Pietra with a “community hero” award added insult to injury, exposing
fissures amongst L.A.’s queer Latinos. Defended by Richard Zaldivar, executive director of the
Latino LGBTQ-focused non-profit The Wall Las Memorias Project, the choice to present the
award was in no small part due to La Pietra’s role as a major donor. Responding to Zaldivar’s
admonition to move on from the loss of Circus Disco and “go with the flow,” younger activists
like Jorge Gutierrez made it clear that past legacies–no matter how progressive they may have
been in the context of their time–shouldn’t supersede current needs:

The last thing we need are awards. We need spaces and resources. The closing of Circus
Disco is representative of what’s been happening the past few years with LGBTQ
spaces… For our community, clubs are so much more than that. They’re places where

357
Steven Sharp, “Renderings Revealed for AVA Hollywood,” Urbanize LA, May 15, 2018,
https://urbanize.la/post/renderings-revealed-ava-hollywood.
358
In her contribution to LGBTQ America, Dubrow acknowledges that “while [Circus Disco] wasn’t a total victory
from the perspective of preservation, it signaled a new level of activism to protect the tangible
remains of LGBTQ heritage Dubrow, “Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage,” 56.
359
Alessandro Negrete, “Where Are Los Angeles Clubs for Queer, Transgender People of Color?,” Q Voice News,
November 9, 2016, https://qvoicenews.com/2016/11/08/where-are-los-angeles-gay-clubs-for-queer-transgender-
people-of-color/.
360
Overly hopeful as it may be, it’s not unreasonable to see the lack of connection between the two projects as a lost
opportunity on both developers’ parts. Constituting only a portion of the AVA Hollywood site, the LGBT Center
could easily have rehabilitated and/or occupied the Circus Disco building, which was essentially a large, open
warehouse. Phillip Zonkel, “Los Angeles LGBT Center: We Don’t Care About Gay Latino History,” Out in the
562 (blog), January 20, 2016, http://blogs.presstelegram.com/outinthe562/2016/01/20/los-angeles-lgbt-center-
care-gay-latino-history/; Steven Sharp, “Steel Frame Rises for LA LGBT Center Expansion,” Urbanize LA, April
24, 2018, https://urbanize.la/post/steel-frame-rises-la-lgbt-center-expansion.
103

people can be themselves, hang out with friends. It wasn’t just another club closing. It
had a huge impact on the community.
361

Torn between competing urban interests, there’s no one answer to understand how
exactly preservationists can contribute positively. Despite the best efforts of advocacy groups
like Hollywood Heritage to preserve for altruistic reasons, constructively engaging urban issues
as part of ever-shifting development coalitions merits constant consideration and re-evaluation
on a case-by-case basis. Even regionally prominent organizations like the LA Conservancy must
ultimately produce workable compromises in order to maintain a viable negotiating position, and
by definition these outcomes cannot satisfy everyone. Given the nature of work that consists
largely of tackling one preservation crisis after another, it’s no surprise that LGBTQ history–
defined largely in terms of intangible cultural heritage–often falls by the wayside. At the local
level, the LA Conservancy’s microsite effort is a good start towards remedying this because it
has marked the forging of productive connections between preservation advocates and scholar-
archivists at the nearby ONE Archives.
362

If faithfully developed and pursued, strengthening these connections between scholars,
advocates, activists, and artists may yet reveal, save, and perhaps even landmark new LGBTQ
resources, but it cannot alone remedy certain historical realities.
363
The fact that L.A. queer
activism during the gay liberation and AIDS/ACT UP eras “was largely white… [and] seen as
operating within largely white areas of [L.A.]” is addressed extensively in Kenney’s
dissertation.
364
Crediting the marginalization of queer people of color as a factor, oral interviews

361
Jorge Gutierrez is the founder of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, an advocacy organization for trans,
queer, and gender nonconforming Latinxs. Phillip Zonkel, “Circus Disco Owner Gene La Pietra - Who Tore
Down Club for a Luxury Condo Development - To Receive Community Hero Award,” Q Voice News,
November 16, 2016, https://qvoicenews.com/2016/11/15/circus-disco-owner-gene-la-pietra-who-tore-down-club-
for-a-luxury-condo-development-to-get-community-hero-award/; “Mission & Vision,” Familia: Trans Queer
Liberation Movement, accessed January 15, 2020, https://familiatqlm.org/mission-3/.
362
Fontes, Interview with Adrian Scott Fine.
363
A new resource called Queer Maps, conceived by artist Chris Cruse, combines archival and GIS data to produce
a graphically compelling story map that surpasses the LA Conservancy’s equivalent in terms of entry numbers
and historical detail. While it doesn’t focus on preservation efforts per se, the resource will work to expand the
engagement of L.A.’s LGBTQ heritage in the realm of digital storytelling. The website was inaugurated with a
launch party on November 15, 2019. Held at NAVEL, a downtown L.A. art gallery that describes itself as “test
site for collectivity and kinship,” the launch party consisted of a series of installations that physically recreated
vanished LGBTQ L.A. spaces with the help of performers and reenactors. Fulcrum Arts, “Queer Maps,” Queer
Maps, accessed January 15, 2020, http://queermaps.org/about; “NAVEL: Queer Maps Launch,” NAVEL,
accessed January 15, 2020, https://navel.la/events/queermaps/.
364
Kenney, “Strategic Visibility,” 219, 204–21.
104

conducted by Kenney also reveal a focus on the Silver Lake/Hollywood/West Hollywood areas
to be a conscious spatial strategy, pursued “out of respect for the more pressing concerns facing
ethnic neighborhoods and communities.”
365
This goes a long way towards understanding why
the LA Conservancy’s map looks the way it does, but does little to actively engage broader
concerns in ethnically diverse LGBTQ communities. Preservation’s ability to be part of these
discussions depends not only on the willingness of preservationists to question the implications
of their professional role(s), but also to connect with other fields of expertise with respect to the
growth and governance of the urban realm.
366

A Communal Imperative:
The Edendale case studies not only illustrate how LGBTQ heritage is (or isn’t) conserved
and interpreted, but also raise a host of additional questions concerning how queer memory
relates to queer life in L.A. If the landmarking of significant bars like the Black Cat was only
successful because the property owner was caught off guard, what are the implications for future
resources now that L.A. developers are fully aware that this history is significant enough to merit
preservation? If successful instances of landmarking sites like the Tom of Finland house can only
happen in situations where a resource is already in queer hands, what does that mean for a wide
array of resources not under LGBTQ (or even sympathetic) ownership? Does this mean that the
only secure LGBTQ landmarks moving forward will be private (or at best semi-public) single-
family homes? Are these types of resources alone an accurate representation of LGBTQ life in
L.A.?
Many of these questions center on interpretation and advocacy strategy, but the role that
preservation plays within an urban revitalization context necessitates a more forceful and urgent

365
Kenney, 219.
366
The geographic breadth of historic LGBTQ communities is also being explored through a mapping of the
Damron guides, founded in 1964 and managed by Bob Damron until his death from AIDS in 1985. While
national in scope, guides from the pre-1985 period largely reflect the white, gay male perspective of San
Francisco-based Damron and his immediate friends. Entries in the guides nonetheless manage to give glimpses
into thriving LGBTQ subcultures nationwide and are currently being developed by a project titled Mapping the
Gay Guides. Though invaluable from a historiographic standpoint, the project makes clear that the vast majority
of listings are no longer physically extant or in operation. Meilan Solly, “This Interactive Map Visualizes the
Queer Geography of 20th-Century America,” Smithsonian Magazine, accessed June 15, 2020,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/interactive-map-visualizes-queer-geography-20th-century-america-
180974306/; Amanda Regan and Eric Gonzaba, “Mapping the Gay Guides: About This Project,” December 14,
2019, https://www.mappingthegayguides.org/about/.
105

response. Specifically, how can preservationists avoid falling into the trap of being complicit
while LGBTQ places are (at best) being replaced with inanimate monuments, memorials, or
distorted/gentrified versions of themselves? Is this an inevitable process to which there is no
remedy? Though these issues affect various LGBTQ people differently, a general anxiety over
the future of urban places not only concerns specific queer spaces, but the areas and
neighborhoods that host and support them. Historic districts–which have been used as a
preservation tool for nearly a century–may seem promising, but in their current form are not
enough. This is because preserving historic urban fabric alone doesn’t inherently extend to those
inhabiting it, who can easily be priced out if they are renters and tenants. It’s in response to these
issues that planners and activists have begun to engage preservation as part of a broader strategy
towards mitigating urban displacement and addressing communities’ (justified) tendencies to
fear these partnerships.
367

If L.A. has any advantage in this regard, it comes from sharing a state with San
Francisco, one of the few cities worldwide that has begun to implement policies designed to
conserve and mitigate cultural erasure in specific neighborhoods. The centerpiece of this effort
consists of the Cultural District, which has been defined not only in terms of addressing
gentrification-related displacement, but also historical injustice:

[A] Cultural District shall mean a geographic area or location within the City and County
of San Francisco that embodies a unique cultural heritage because it contains a
concentration of cultural and historic assets and culturally significant enterprises, arts,
services, or businesses, and because a significant portion of its residents or people who
spend time in the area or location are members of a specific cultural, community, or
ethnic group that historically has been discriminated against, displaced, and oppressed.
368

Of the Cultural Districts declared thus far, three of them (Transgender, LEATHER and LGBTQ,
and the Castro LGBTQ) directly center queer heritage.
369
Once declared and drawn, planning
reports identifying the districts’ cultural attributes are submitted to the Board of Supervisors and

367
This fear stems from the use of preservation as part of redevelopment and gentrification schemes generally.
James Michael Buckley and Donna Graves, “Tangible Benefits From Intangible Resources: Using Social and
Cultural History to Plan Neighborhood Futures,” Journal of the American Planning Association 82, no. 2 (April
2, 2016): 152.
368
“Process for Establishment of Cultural Districts,” Pub. L. No. 126–18, § 107.1, San Francisco Administrative
Code 15 (2018), 2.
369
Additional districts include Japantown, Calle 24 (veinticuatro) Latino Cultural District, SoMa Pilipinas - Filipino
Cultural Heritage District, and the African American Arts and Cultural District. “Cultural Heritage | SF
Planning,” accessed January 16, 2020, https://sfplanning.org/cultural-heritage.
106

the Mayor’s office. Made with community input, these reports must include strategies to
acknowledge, preserve, and advance the cultural legacy of the district in question.
370

Using the preservation of tangible historic resources as a jumping off point, these
strategies focus explicitly on the district’s intangible cultural heritage. A core aspect of this
strategy is the city’s Legacy Business Registry, which “works to save longstanding, community-
serving businesses that so often serve as valuable cultural assets.”
371
Initial resistance to
implementing this policy from within the city planning department concerned the overextension
of authority. Specifically, the emphasis on regulation of land use and architecture has rarely
extended to favoring specific tenants.
372
Valid concerns over political favoritism aside, mounting
pressure to counter the effects of displacement is acute in California, helping to lend popular
support as these tools continue to be developed. San Francisco’s Citywide LGBTQ+ Cultural
Heritage strategy adds a third component, serving as a guide to investigate and prioritize
methods for meeting the living needs of the city’s queer communities.
373

These policy ideas should be extended to L.A. Despite vast differences, Southern
California cities–and their constituent queer places–are undergoing many of the same pressures
currently driving cultural and community displacement in the Bay Area. Intelligently responding
to these pressures entails more than a rote replication of these cultural preservation tools, since
even the San Francisco policies are still too new to understand what their effects will be in the
long run. Doing so would mean engaging L.A.’s urban development landscape within the
Southern California region’s heavily racialized urban discourse. By contrast the city of San
Francisco benefits not only jurisdictionally by being geographically discrete (the city is
contiguous with the county) but also more uniformly managed. With over four times the
population spread out over ten times the area, L.A. is more de-centered in almost every physical,

370
Process for Establishment of Cultural Districts, 1.
371
Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of this program is that it allows for a legacy business to move to other
locations within the district by “target[ing] the specific cultural activity, allowing it to grow and develop rather
than freezing it in time and place.” Consultants helping to draft this policy are continuing to finesse this, studying
ways to link built resources and usage to prevent business re-location from becoming a go-to mitigation measure.
Donna Graves, James Michael Buckley, and Gail Dubrow, “Emerging Strategies for Sustaining San Francisco’s
Diverse Heritage,” Change Over Time 8, no. 2 (2018): 170, https://doi.org/10.1353/cot.2018.0010; “Cultural
Heritage | SF Planning.”
372
Buckley and Graves, “Tangible Benefits From Intangible Resources,” 160.
373
“LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy | SF Planning,” accessed September 3, 2020,
https://sfplanning.org/project/lgbtq-cultural-heritage-strategy; Graves, Buckley, and Dubrow, “Emerging
Strategies for Sustaining San Francisco’s Diverse Heritage,” 170–73.
107

economic, and social sense.
374
An L.A.-focused LGBTQ heritage strategy will have to factor in
the city’s unique economic and political climate, but these questions can only be explored if
there is sufficient interest, support, and a clear idea of where to begin.
Having been referred to by an array of shifting academic terms, attempts to reach a
common understanding of what an LGBTQ neighborhood is have not only been plagued by
disagreements over definition, but also professional disdain on behalf of mainstream
preservationists and planners.
375
In L.A., the area that circumscribes the case studies discussed
illustrates that current urban anxieties are anything but new:

Straddling Sunset Boulevard between Hollywood and downtown, Silver Lake had long
served as a small, quiet gay enclave; but in the late 1970s, its cheap rents, Craftsman
architecture, and bohemian ambiance drew large numbers of gays into the district. Gay
realtors encouraged the trend, appealing especially to affluent homosexuals with the
marketing slogan ‘West Hollywood is Moving East.’ Silver Lake’s gay population was
soon more than 20 percent. The [Latino] working-class community did not appear to
welcome them… [and] a series of muggings and several murders, as well as the
firebombing of … [a] gay restaurant, created serious tensions. Some were certain that
local street youth were attacking gay people out of homophobic contempt. Others,
however, pointed out that the attacks might be less hate crimes than the acts of poor
residents who worried about the effects of gentrification.
376

Rejecting the idea of a demonstration as too aggressive, local LGBTQ activists responded
to these tensions by forming partnerships with working-class youth, collaborating on a
neighborhood celebration that evolved into the Sunset Junction Street Festival.
377
As an
intangible cultural resource, the success of the festival not only diminished the need for police
presence, but fostered vibrant social situations and community cohesion. By the early 2000s,
signs of progress in this respect led to a social scene that “include[ed] gay cholos and yuppies,

374
The city of L.A. also comprises one of eighty-eight municipalities in L.A. Country. Brittany Martin, “How Does
Los Angeles Size Up to Other Cities?,” Time Out Los Angeles, August 24, 2016, https://www.timeout.com/los-
angeles/blog/how-does-los-angeles-size-up-to-other-cities-082316.
375
This disdain has significantly abated in the past decade. Largely coined in the latter half of the twentieth century,
other names included “gay enclaves,” “gay ghettoes,” “gay villages,” and “gayborhoods.” The privileging of Gay
males (centering the “G” and erasing the contributions of LBTQ people) is implicit in all of these labels, which
perhaps explains why San Francisco has avoided re-using any of them. The earliest scholarly records of LGBTQ
urban areas–and by extension some of the most thorough analyses of them–tend to come from sociologists and
anthropologists. Amin Ghaziani, There Goes the Gayborhood?, Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014), 6–8.
376
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 298.
377
For more information on the street festival, see Chapter 3.
108

families and the elderly” in addition to “Mexican restaurants with the gay flag as part of their
décor [and] gay salsa dancing at Rudolfo’s [restaurant in] Sunset Junction.”
378

None of these latter events dealt with historic preservation outright, but they help to
demonstrate that the Edendale legacy of progressive communion was (and perhaps still is) alive
and well, deserving to be reassessed for its potential as a cultural district. From the vantage point
of historical interpretation alone, some of the major themes and challenges of twentieth century
queer experience are tied to this local history. However, this heritage is not fully apparent from
the LGBTQ historical resources that have been landmarked thus far. When viewing the case
studies as evidence, it doesn’t seem that the various preservationists involved were operating
with a conscious intent to connect to (or revive) the Edendale scene of the immediate postwar
period, though they were to varying degrees cognizant of it.
379
Connecting these resources under
a specific theme at the neighborhood level would not only underscore the fact that queer spaces
don’t achieve significance in a vacuum, but may potentially uncover and recognize LGBTQ
people who have yet to be fully acknowledged as part of this legacy. The most glaring absence
from the Edendale case studies is that of lesbian and queer women, who have historically
constituted a significant presence in Silver Lake and Echo Park up to the present day.
380

While the Silver Lake/Echo Park area’s potential as a cultural heritage district would be
contingent on many factors, work needs to be done undoing misconceptions within popular

378
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 299.
379
Wes Joe had long viewed the area (Silverlake) as friendly towards gay people, and while the reasons behind the
creation of the Sunset Junction festival seem to belie that assumption, Hurewitz’s research leaves little doubt that
Edendale’s “bohemian” heritage helped prime the area for the evolution of an active queer community by the late
twentieth century. Fontes, Interview with Wes Joe.
380
For instance, Lillian Faderman details psychologist Evelyn Hooker’s first attempts to find research subjects for
her early psychological studies in the early 1950s, which would later lead to removing homosexuality from the
official list of mental illnesses. To help find subjects, a gay male co-worker introduced Hooker to “two lesbians
who threw gay parties in a big ramshackle house in the bohemian Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, not far
from where Harry Hay would hold the first meeting of the group that became the Mattachine. [Hooker] thought
that these homosexuals were an impressive bunch.” Though not itself in Silver Lake, Hooker’s residence is called
out on the LA Conservancy’s map and microsite. Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 98; “Evelyn Hooker Residence
| Los Angeles Conservancy,” accessed January 17, 2020, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/evelyn-
hooker-residence.
109

narratives concerning queer neighborhoods.
381
Countering these assumptions can be done by
reexamining how LGBTQ people are understood within preservation and the revitalization of
cities themselves. Whether acting as preservationists or within an array of allied creative
endeavors, blanket stereotypes that cast queer people as uniform gentrification agents need to be
interrogated and disrupted.
382
An especially problematic trope is the idea that gay men
specifically, by virtue of being “different,” are somehow innately attuned to matters of beauty,
aesthetics, and design. This often leads many to view homosexuality itself as somehow a
qualification for discursive authority in this respect, and only serves to reinforce caricatures of
gay men as a superficial and materialistic cadre of gentrifiers.
383
While such assumptions may be

381
The demographic reality is that most major cities host a series of multiple, interconnected, and shifting
gayborhoods and “sub-gayborhoods.” In the case of San Francisco this can be discerned with the three LGBTQ-
centered Cultural Districts declared thus far. Variation in the character and focus of these areas can be attributed
to differing priorities. Per Ghaziani, “when gayborhoods first formed in the [gay liberation] era, they were
defined mostly by gay men. Distinct lesbian settlements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and they were
influenced by feminist politics, rather than the sexual marketplaces that more often typified the places where gay
men congregated.” Ghaziani, There Goes the Gayborhood?, 234–35.
382
These assumptions, having been formed largely during the gay liberation and AIDS crisis eras, are addressed in
many discussions concerning gayborhoods and urban change. During these periods, neighborhoods such as San
Francisco’s Castro and New York’s Greenwich Village achieved national renown as “meccas” and “free zones”
for LGBTQ liberation. Since urban centers in the U.S. have experienced renewed reinvestment in the twenty-first
century, these areas are no longer economically marginalized in terms of real estate values. This has led to the
popular perception that attracting gay men and lesbians (i.e. “gaying” up a neighborhood) as a valid revitalization
strategy in and of itself. Ghaziani, 21–22; Peter Moskowitz, “When It Comes to Gentrification, LGBTQ People
Are Both Victim and Perpetrator,” Vice (blog), March 16, 2017,
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nz5qwb/when-it-comes-to-gentrification-lgbtq-people-are-both-victim-and-
perpetrator; P. E. Moskowitz, How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood
(PublicAffairs, 2017), 33, 56; Scott Harris, “HILLCREST: Homosexuals Provide Vital Force Behind
Community’s Renaissance,” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif., April 3, 1983, sec. SAN
DIEGO COUNTY; Tony Perry, “Gays Recruited to Help Save Neighborhood: Residents Hand out Flyers at San
Diego’s Annual Pride Parade. "The Gays Rescued Hillcrest, and We Hope They Can Help Do the Same for
Azalea Park,’,” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif., July 26, 1993, sec. West Ventura County;
John Paul LoCascio, “A Different Kind of Eden: Gay Men, Modernism, and the Rebirth of Palm Springs”
(University of Southern California Digital Library USCDL, 2013).
383
This caricature is not entirely without some basis in fact. In a recently completed dissertation, anthropologist
Zachary Blair charts the racialized overtones of gay neighborhood development, focusing specficially on
Chicago’s Boystown. This analysis asserts that the gay neighborhood is “fundamentally a machine of racial
violence,” being defined in terms of consumption-based exclusion. While relatively emergent, more of these
studies are needed to “shed light on gay neighborhoods as contested and contradictory sites of struggle.”
Zachary Shane Kalish Blair, “Machine of Desire: Race, Space, and Contingencies of Violence in Chicago’s
Boystown” (Dissertation, Chicago, Ill, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2018), 55.
110

intended to flatter or compliment, they continue to be problematic as they’re really only applied
to gay men of means, and often exclude gay men of color.
384

Queering Integrity:
Advancing efforts to landmark LGBTQ resources not only involves interrogating
preservation’s role, but the professional standards to which preservationists themselves adhere
to. In L.A., as in many other metropolitan communities, the desire to save and recognize this
history is earnest and sincere, with opposition to it being driven by attempts to secure realty and
investment interests as opposed to any (openly stated) anti-LGBTQ animus. This is borne out in
the Edendale case studies, which were all affected by debates over whether the tangible remains
in question was capable of conveying their story. Intellectually engaging and necessary as these
conversations may be, they don’t change the fact that historically and culturally significant
events occurred at each case study site. Moreover, the formally utilitarian nature of each resource
(as opposed to large and more monumental structures) underscores the sense of urgency needed
to landmark places that are far more vulnerable to casual damage and destruction.
These challenges are not only confronting LGBTQ resources, but any site or structure
that speaks to the history of underserved communities generally. In terms of preservation
practice, the most promising shift has been the recognition that marginalization is not only
political and social, but also economic and material, and that the historic built environment is by
extension reflective of this. How then, are preservationists to go about securing built histories
that are lost or close to being obscured? L.A.’s northern neighbors continue to provide guidance
for how to respond in this regard:

We assert that loss of integrity should not affect determination of a property’s historical
significance if that significance is rooted in cultural or social, rather than architectural,

384
Per Will Fellows, “gay men are a prominent and highly talented presence in many female-dominated fields that
revolve around creating, restoring, and preserving beauty, order and continuity. It’s a phenomenon that seems to
grow out of an essential gay difference.” Fellows’ brand of queer essentialism, inspired by Harry Hay’s
teachings, is impossible to prove given the subjectivity of what constitutes “beauty” and “prominence” in a
professional sense. Fellows neglects to interrogate why these types of professions are gendered to begin with.
While this narrative may feel good, building self-esteem for gay men in the face of homophobia encountered in
professional spheres, it rests on deeply flawed assumptions. The “prominence” that Fellows refers to is more
likely attributed to male privilege, of which the gender pay gap is the most obvious example. The fact that only
two (Jeffrey Samudio and Gerry Takano) of the twenty-nine gay men interviewed for this book were men of
color further de-legitimizes these assertions as intellectually lazy, culturally myopic, and racially exclusive.
Fellows, A Passion to Preserve, x.
111

histories. The San Francisco LGBTQ Historic Context Statement presents a strong
argument and suggestions for recognizing properties that have poor integrity but
significant histories. Properties no longer extant or that have undergone physical change
can still retain powerful meaning for communities and remain important cultural sites.
385

While San Francisco’s LGBTQ context statement acknowledges that integrity still matters as a
basis for professional judgement, it questions the relevance of specific aspects. A significant
conceptual critique concerns the assumption of alignment, the “premise that resources can and
should always convey their significance through their physical fabric,” as untenable for LGBTQ
resources.
386

Per the Secretary of Interior Standards, integrity is measured in seven aspects dealing
with materials, association, design, feeling, location, workmanship, and setting. These are to
varying degrees subjective, and their respective relevance also varies depending on the reasons
for significance in question.
387
In order to focus on what truly matters for historically significant
LGBTQ resources, San Francisco’s Context Statement states that only three aspects (location,
feeling, and association) should be considered when evaluating integrity for LGBTQ
resources.
388
This change of focus, if adopted in more places like L.A., could go a long way
towards circumventing some of the landmarking issues encountered by sites like the Harry Hay
residence but, as the Black Cat case study shows, preservation victories do not necessarily
guarantee social relevance in a heritage conservation sense. While addressing this may be
beyond the professional scope of normative preservation practice, securing places that continue
to resonate for living communities (especially those whose history is ostensibly being
commemorated) is a critical means of ensuring that they’ll be cared for, maintained and
monitored over generations.

385
Graves and Watson, “Chapter 25: San Francisco: Placing LGBTQ Histories in the City by the Bay,” 7.
386
The context statement also notes that state standards for listing landmarks “provide more flexibility” than those at
this federal level, which helps to partially explain why there are only three resources from California listed
explicitly for their LGBTQ history on the NRHP, and why the only L.A. resource of these three is a mural.
Shayne Elizabeth Watson and Donna J. Graves, “Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in
San Francisco” (City & County of San Francisco, March 1, 2016), 353.
387
Joeckel, “Integrity.”
388
Watson and Graves, “Context Statement for LGBTQ San Francisco,” 354.
112

Pursuing a Stable Heritage:
Understanding the role meaning plays within LGBTQ-centered landmarking efforts
demands a recognition of–and better yet an engagement with–issues that are typically regarded
as relevant only to community planning. If the case studies raise any central question in this
regard, it’s that while communities like L.A. are more than capable of preserving places for
cultural reasons, then why is this rarely and so infrequently done? If L.A.’s outsized role in the
development of U.S. LGBTQ history is as undeniable as many prominent scholars claim, why
don’t resources related to these themes receive the same amount of attention that more
architecturally significant resources do? Aside from the obvious fact that architectural resources
are more easily quantifiable and categorizable, perhaps one of the central issues here lies with the
rapidly evolving–and until recently quite fragile–nature of LGBTQ historiography itself.
Historical narratives and themes matter because they provide guidance for acts of public
history that include–but are certainly not limited to–historic preservation. LGBTQ history, which
is ever shifting and has always escaped clear-cut definitions, is only now perceived by many as a
reliable foundation for establishing significance.
389
In 2020, it can no longer be said that this
history is minor or inconsequential. As marginal as they may have been within the context of
their own time, multiple generations of twentieth century activists have created one of the most
vibrant, visible, and effective vehicles for social reform today. While efforts to interpret this
legacy often frame this as parallel to other prominent civil rights movements, the reality is far
more complex and in need of further exploration.
390
By the time many of these twentieth century
developments were beginning to be understood and contextualized, its success is evidenced by
the attitudes of younger generations, currently evolving new ways of understanding gender and
sexuality.
The LGBTQ label itself may also be seen as an indicator of these shifts. While it’s the
most increasingly accepted term to date, it doesn’t represent “an identity in and of itself, but

389
Depending on which era one chooses to highlight, areas relevant to LGBTQ history may straddle any field,
including art, politics, law, religion, sociology, anthropology, medicine and psychology, just to name a few.
Despite previously discussed gaps in the historical record, the sheer diversity of materials alone would seem to
indicate the reality that LGBTQ people are almost everywhere one chooses to look.
390
As research and understanding continues to advance, LGBTQ history and communal development begins to
resemble a type of overlay with respect to civil rights. Specifically, significant LGBTQ figures often influenced
via direct participation–and were themselves influenced by–the civils rights movements for African Americans,
Mexican-Americans, and Native Americans. These relationships have only continued to strengthen up to the
present day.
113

rather a contemporary political alliance that can conceal as much as it reveals about the
individuals and communities designated by the acronym.”
391
This alliance–itself a legacy of the
twentieth century–was always a tenuous one, and is now being subject to ever more forceful
critique. Given this, it’s likely that efforts to landmark queer sites in L.A. will continue to be
hampered by conflicts over the meaning of community and solidarity. Recent suggestions for
rectifying these tensions stress the need to emphasize the intersectional nature of place-based
histories, by extension countering the preservationist tendency to narrowly highlight one
theme.
392
While this is necessary for including all perspectives from an interpretation standpoint,
it also highlights challenges for sites where histories of conflict and exclusion (among and
between LGBTQ people) can reignite unaddressed grievances and exacerbate divisions, further
stymieing preservation efforts.
If preservation-related conflicts over the meaning of LGBTQ places seem hyperbolic or
especially fraught to outsiders, it perhaps stems from the fact that queer people do not inherit
their history in a linear fashion, rediscovering and responding to it in ways that vary wildly from
one generation to the next. While every human being may be born equally ignorant, individuals
born into a socially (or ethnically) defined group often begin to develop their identity from an
early age. For most, collective memory plays a major role, and is usually experienced within a
pre-existing biological or socio-familial structure. The imparting of knowledge–which helps to
create a sense of self early on–is often passed down through generations via oral history and
other forms of intangible heritage. While some families may openly recognize and be tolerant (or
in rare cases affirming) of their LGBTQ members, most youth who feel themselves to be
different are given few resources to understand what queer life could mean for them personally.
By extension, acquiring any sort of queer identity entails a journey of self-discovery unique to
every individual.
In nearly every case, access to knowledge about queer existence is critical for breaking
the early sense of isolation that nearly all LGBTQ people feel at some point. Today this often
comes via media depictions, where LGBTQ representation is more prominent than ever. This has

391
Donna Graves and Gail Dubrow, “Taking Intersectionality Seriously: Learning from LGBTQ Heritage Initiatives
for Historic Preservation,” The Public Historian 41, no. 2 (May 1, 2019): 291.
392
This is also referred to as “polyvocality” which, if not included, can result in “important aspects of experience are
silenced [being] erased, even in projects with the best intention of fostering diversity and inclusion within
historic preservation.” Graves and Dubrow, 294.
114

worked to diminish feelings of absolute isolation for many, but it has done very little to address
widespread ignorance of LGBTQ history itself. While younger generations of LGBTQ people
may not always see this history as relevant, it is more likely the failure to transmit knowledge
generationally that keeps them from connecting it to their own experiences. Early historian-
activists like Jim Kepner recognized that access to LGBTQ history is critical for anyone seeking
to “get beyond the street understanding of who [queer people] are … and to begin to define
[themselves]; to use that history in the search for self-definition.”
393
With respect to LGBTQ
heritage, meaning and significance cannot be maintained without the successful transmission of
knowledge itself. The consequences of this, if left unchecked, will continue to have a deleterious
effect on efforts to preserve LGBTQ historic resources everywhere.
Recent attempts to directly secure the transmission of LGBTQ knowledge have been
sporadic, uneven, and controversial. In 2011, California became the first state to mandate that
LGBTQ history be included in public school curricula via the FAIR Education Act (SB 48).
394

The law faced immediate backlash in the form of a failed repeal effort the following year, with
only four more states having adopted similar measures.
395
Incorporating LGBTQ historical
material into the public school system, which involves training educators on how to
appropriately contextualize the subject matter, has also taken years to implement in the few
states that have bothered to do it. Well-intentioned and necessary as this is, the challenge of
adding educational requirements for cash-strapped public schools is compounded by the fact that
many teachers–who themselves were never taught this history–are having to learn it alongside
their pupils.
396
The uneven nature of resource allocation in public education, whereby individual
district funding is largely based off of local property taxes, will also continue to cause problems.

393
Kepner’s personal collections and efforts would lead to the creation of the ONE Archives itself. Jim Kepner,
quoted in “National Gay Archives,” Lifestyle Update (Los Angeles, Calif, United States, Los Angeles, Calif:
Public Access Television, February 1, 1986), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMvKDegxzzE.
394
Katy Steinmetz, “The Story Behind California’s Unprecedented Textbooks,” Time, November 14, 2017,
https://time.com/5022698/california-history-lgbt-textbooks-curriculum/.
395
The repeal effort likely lost steam owing to the (then) recent overturning of Proposition 8 in 2010. Colorado and
New Jersey implemented their own LGBTQ history mandates in 2019, with Illinois and Oregon following them
in 2020. Ken Williams, “‘Stop SB 48’ Coalition Admits Failure in Bid to Overturn California FAIR Education
Act,” LGBTQ Nation, July 16, 2012, https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/07/stop-sb-48-coalition-admits-failure-
in-bid-to-overturn-california-fair-education-act/; Casey Leins, “These States Require Schools to Teach LGBT
History,” US News & World Report, August 14, 2019, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2019-
08-14/states-that-require-schools-to-teach-lgbt-history.
396
Olivia B. Waxman, “As More States Require Schools to Teach LGBTQ History, Resources for Teachers
Expand,” Time, December 13, 2019, https://time.com/5747670/lgbtq-history-resources/.
115

Many districts already diminish history and social studies requirements in the face of frequent
(and all too inevitable) budget cuts, with some states forbidding the teaching of LGBTQ subject
matter outright.
397
Given this, efforts to transmit LGBTQ history to those who need it the most
are–as far as broad swathes of our public education system is concerned–still so politically
fraught as to seem unproductive.
Access to the internet and other forms of digital storytelling now provide a primary
means for LGBTQ people of all ages to access vital information about themselves. That said, the
veracity of what can be found online continues to present a major challenge, undercutting efforts
to assert the legitimacy of LGBTQ history in the eyes of outsiders. In L.A., the stabilization and
growth of the ONE Archives exemplifies one of the most significant responses yet, which is the
increasing institutionalization of LGBTQ history itself. The ONE Archives Foundation today
manages a broad array of engagement programs beyond the role of a traditionally passive
repository. Acquiring a stable physical location however, necessitated partnering with an existing
institution large enough to provide real estate.
398
If developed further, these partnerships can
enable more preservation-minded activists to meaningfully devote time, effort, and capital
towards preserving significant LGBTQ sites.
These initiatives may not seem radical in light of contemporary activist tactics, but the
alternative–doing nothing and simply interpreting the resources that are already landmarked–will
only hurt LGBTQ communities in the long run. A lack of advancement where recognized (but
unlisted) and potential resources are concerned serves to further a history of heteronormative
erasure, consigning valuable voices, records, and places to marginalization and loss. When
discussing the demise of the feminist and radical lesbian neighborhoods of the 1970s, Gayle
Rubin has acknowledged that stability required to accomplish this has too often been unavailable
for LGBTQ people communally:

397
While the language in each individual law varies, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
and South Carolina employ some form of prohibition on teaching LGBTQ history, often going as far as to
demand it be portrayed in a negative light if the issue is raised. These measures are often referred to as “no
promo homo” laws. “Laws That Prohibit the ‘Promotion of Homosexuality’: Impacts and Implications,” GLSEN,
January 30, 2018, https://www.glsen.org/research/laws-prohibit-promotion-homosexuality-impacts-and-
implicatio.
398
This came through the University of Southern California’s donation (to what was then called the One
Institute/International Gay and Lesbian Archives), in 2000, of a building at 909 West Adams Boulevard, Los
Angeles, CA 90007. The archives themselves were folded into the USC Library system in 2010. “History | ONE
Archives,” accessed June 9, 2020, https://one.usc.edu/about/history.
116

There are complicated reasons for the collapse of these [historical] communities, but one
of them was their infrastructural fragility… the built environment is expensive to obtain
and challenging to maintain. Stability is resource intensive. Queer populations have an
overabundance of marginality and an insufficiency of stability… we [LGBTQ people]
could use some of that stability, and the resources required to sustain it.
399

While there is much truth here, how can this “overabundance of marginality” Rubin describes be
practically overcome when so much of it is due to centuries of ongoing heteronormative bias and
oppression?
If most LGBTQ intuitions today are still too occupied by the struggle to meet the basic
needs of their constituent communities, then how can they justify allocating their (often scarce)
resources to putting in the time and effort to claiming more space in the historic built
environment? Since local institutions such as the ONE Archives and the L.A. LGBT Center
nominally help by providing research and writing letters of support, campaigning to raise
preservation on the list of priorities will not be easy.
400
This is because it puts preservationists
(be they queer self-identified or sympathetic allies) in the position of advocating for historic
fabric over the pressing needs of living communities. The appropriateness of such a strategy, if
pursued, will vary depending on the specific geographic community in question. In L.A.,
preservationists must work to increase pressure on powerful LGBTQ institutions to not only
engage in preservation efforts, but reconsider how those efforts may complement or augment
their core missions.
401
A well-funded landmarking campaign, in conjunction with the same
integrity reforms now being considered in San Francisco, could go a long way towards
safeguarding significant sites.

399
Rubin’s comments here were made pertaining to Queer Studies infrastructure in the academe, but they are more
than relevant for securing significant sites in the historic built environment. Rubin, Deviations a Gayle Rubin
Reader, 356.
400
The GLBT Historical Society, specficially its Historic Place Working Group, has increased its involvement in
San Francisco-based LGBTQ preservation efforts substantially in the past decade. Founded by Shayne Watson,
the working group was instrumental in getting the Historical Society to act as a fiscal sponsor for San Francisco’s
LGBTQ Citywide Context Statement. “Overview & Mission,” GLBT Historical Society, accessed September 3,
2020, https://www.glbthistory.org/overview-mission.
401
Though the L.A. LGBT Center considers itself to be “a lean, fiscally disciplined organization,” its own website is
not shy in describing itself as “provid[ing] services for more LGBT people than any other organization in the
world, offering programs, services, and global advocacy that span four broad categories: Health, Social Services
and Housing, Culture and Education, Leadership and Advocacy.” It currently manages nine facilities throughout
the greater L.A. metro area. In addition to the new Anita May Rosenstein Campus, this includes Center South (in
Leimert Park) and Mi Centro (in Boyle Heights), catering to L.A.’s historic Black and Latino enclaves
respectively. “About the Center,” Los Angeles LGBT Center, accessed June 14, 2020,
https://lalgbtcenter.org/about-the-center.
117

As seen in the case studies, instances of historical commemoration not only prompt
reflection on the past but work to address ongoing issues in the present. A recent instance of this
came with the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, providing the impetus for New
York City to coordinate and host relevant events throughout the month of June 2019. Billed as
“Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019,” the resulting series of marches, parades, protests and
gatherings are considered to be the largest LGBTQ gathering in recorded history.
402
Though
arguably overshadowed amidst the euphoric celebrations, the New York Police Department’s
issuing of an official apology to the LGBTQ community for their conduct at Stonewall was
recognized for its historic significance.
403
This “reconciliation,” largely symbolic and long
overdue, prompted an op-ed seeking to make the case for “Gay Reparation” less than a week
later. Written by Omar G. Encarnación, the article admits that, while the push for reparations has
been relatively unexplored in the U.S., similar efforts have begun to yield fruit in other
countries.
404
Encarnación argues that reparations should be seen as “a logical progression in the
maturation of the gay rights movement,” with activists in many countries “turning their attention
to addressing the historical legacies of homosexual repression.”
405

Encarnación highlights Spain and Britain as case studies, illustrating that sincere policy-
based responses to reparations campaigns have largely taken place in Western Europe. Despite
the relatively limited number of precedents, potential patterns and goals for implementing
reparations are evident:

Although there is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to gay reparation, countries
have taken three distinct approaches. The most common is “moral rehabilitation,” which

402
ABC. News, “About 5 Million People Attended WorldPride in NYC, Mayor Says,” ABC News, accessed June
14, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/US/million-people-crowed-nyc-worldpride-mayor/story?id=64090338;
“Photos: Massive Turnout For Euphoric NYC Pride March - Gothamist,” accessed June 14, 2020,
https://champ.gothamist.com/champ/gothamist/arts-entertainment/photos-massive-turnout-for-euphoric-nyc-
pride-march.
403
Michael Gold and Derek M. Norman, “Stonewall Riot Apology: Police Actions Were ‘Wrong,’ Commissioner
Admits,” The New York Times, June 6, 2019, sec. New York,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/nyregion/stonewall-riots-nypd.html.
404
As a professor and Program Chair of Political Studies at Bard College, Encarnación’s perspective is informed by
his extensive research into the transition from dictatorship in Spain, as well as hispanophone countries
throughout Latin America. Four months after publishing his initial op-ed, Encarnación penned a follow up article
detailing the U.S. government’s homosexual purges during the Cold War-era “lavender scare.” Bard College,
“Omar Encarnación,” accessed June 14, 2020, https://www.bard.edu/faculty/details/?id=296; Omar G.
Encarnación, “Why Gay Reparation’s Time Has Come,” The New York Review of Books (blog), October 30,
2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/10/30/why-gay-reparations-time-has-come/.
405
Omar G. Encarnación, “Opinion | The Case for Gay Reparation,” The New York Times, June 14, 2019, sec.
Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/gay-reparation-stonewall.html.
118

entails a formal apology by the state and the expunging of criminal records of those
convicted of a homosexual offense. There’s also financial compensation for loss of
income and pensions. Finally, there’s “truth-telling,” or an official report on past wrongs
that incorporates steps for reparation. These are not mutually exclusive approaches; in
fact, as recent experiences show, they are often pursued simultaneously or
sequentially.
406

Heritage conservation’s greatest potential impact as part of any reparations program in the U.S.
will largely pertain to the final, “truth telling” (next steps) approach detailed above. To a certain
extent, LGBTQ America embodies the most significant feature of this effort to date. Despite this,
it should only be seen as a first–and relatively timid–step because its scope doesn’t meaningfully
extend towards any sort of concrete recommendations for collective justice beyond increasing
representation in the historical record.
407
Despite this, preservation advocates should make the
argument that no reparations program is complete without significant investment in the ongoing
effort to landmark and recognize LGBTQ resources themselves. Such a program should insist on
implementing the integrity-based reforms from San Francisco nationwide, in addition to funding
the creation of an LGBTQ cultural heritage action fund (which could begin at the state level but
would preferably be national in scope), the latter of which is not entirely without precedent.
408

A robust heritage conservation strategy, if framed as an overdue campaign for
reparations, could make up for the lost time that LGBTQ people have spent trying to legitimize
their history. It may also serve to galvanize the preservation profession itself, which too often
retreats into the comfortably neutral spheres of materials science and aesthetic assessment devoid
of social implications. For nearly half a century, this “unbiased” professional stance has been
employed for the preservation movement’s entrenchment in a country fraught with racial
tensions and uncomfortable historical truths. While this role is useful in certain situations, an
over-emphasis on neutrality for the sake of avoiding difficult history is itself a form of

406
Encarnación.
407
For instance, the commemorations of summer 2019 also inspired the notion that reparations could take the form
of a museum, sited on the national mall, to honor LGBTQ contributions to U.S. history. James Driscoll, “Opinion
| It’s Time for Reparations for LGBT Americans,” Washington Blade: Gay News, Politics, LGBT Rights (blog),
July 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonblade.com/2019/07/02/its-time-for-reparations-for-lgbt-americans/.
408
Established in 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage
Action Fund has invested over $2.7 million in preservation projects nationwide. It currently stands as
the most prominent example of a heritage-oriented reparative program in the U.S., though it doesn’t
identify itself as an expression of reparations. This is because its funding is mainly derived from
prominent philanthropic donations and non-profits such as the Ford Foundation. “African American
Cultural Heritage Action Fund | #PreservationForum,” accessed June 15, 2020,
http://forum.savingplaces.org/build/funding/grant-seekers/specialprograms/aachactionfund.
119

complicity, obfuscating the stories that preservationists claim to honor. If backed by secure
public funding, a truly engaged reparations program can work to help counter the increasingly
corporatized nature of preservation advocacy, giving a coalition of conservationists, artists, and
activists the means to pursue this work in communities that are willing to embrace it. This policy
could not only help to ensure that important resources are acquired and interpreted, but that
meaningful programs and lasting institutions can be devised. While this cannot be thought of as a
complete solution, it will go a long way towards ensuring that significant sites continue to
engage LGBTQ communities now and in the future.

120

Conclusion

This thesis has sought to critically assess the efficacy of landmarking as a tool for
conserving LGBTQ heritage in L.A. The intention to save places is often assumed to be an
altruistic one, but understanding why these places matter–and how they can continue to convey
their significance–is complicated by an ever-shifting social, political, and economic context.
409

Until recently the most significant factor has been the role of active LGBTQ communities,
whether defined by a small cadre of activist-scholars, a committed activist allied with
sympathetic neighbors, or a chosen family of creative enthusiasts. As the meaning and definition
of community has become ever more fraught, the ongoing effort to secure LGBTQ history will
involve institutions that claim to represent or serve their interests. The increasing influence of
these institutions was made clear at a recent CHC meeting, which took place on June 18,
2020.
410
As the last of the ten issues being discussed, the property in question concerned a
ramshackle bungalow in L.A.’s Westlake neighborhood. To a trained professional eye, the house
at 1822 West 4th Street was clearly not significant for its architecture. No analysis of integrity
could change the fact that it was, for a period of seven years, the primary home and residence of
Morris Kight.
Often referred to by historians as the “godfather” of gay pride in L.A., Kight’s
significance as an activist is related to his role as a co-founder of the L.A. wing of the Gay
Liberation Front, Christopher Street West, and the Gay Community Services Center (GCSC),
which would later evolve into the L.A. LGBT Center of today.
411
Kate Eggert, of Gosney-Eggert
Preservation Consultants, introduced the project to the commission, explaining that Kight’s
lifelong devotion to LGBTQ political progress was an extension of his earlier work advocating
for civil rights (by protesting oppressive “racial mixing” laws) and organizing health services for

409
L.A. is not unlike many other major U.S. cities in this regard, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that
investigations elsewhere would reveal similar stories of competing interests and aims behind every plaque,
designation, and demolition.
410
Richard Barron, Gail Kennard, Pilar Buelna, et al., “Cultural Heritage Comission Agenda,” § Cultural Heritage
Commission (2020).
411
This resource is similar to the Hay Residence in that the primary subject’s prominence continued to increase
primarily after they left the property. By the time Kight was being honored and venerated as an elder activist in
the mid-1990s, most of the community was familiar with him residing at 1428 North McCadden Place. This
property still exists at the time of writing, though it has yet to be subject to landmarking interest and doesn’t have
the architectural significance of the Margaret Hay house.
121

indigenous communities in his native Texas. When Kight moved to L.A. in the 1960s, he was put
off by the existing (post-Harry Hay) homophile movement which he considered too elitist and
bourgeois. In addition to getting involved with the (then) new Gay Liberation movement, Kight
also established himself as a “one-man gay community services center.”
412
Exhaustively
researched, the nomination form conclusively established that this site was the primary
geographic locus of Kight’s activism, functioning as an underground LGBTQ community center
years before the official founding of the GCSC would take place.
Mary Ann Cherry, a friend of Kight’s and the author of a recently completed biography
on him, was the first to speak in support of taking up the property for consideration as an
HCM.
413
She emphasized how important Kight’s work was at a time when everything about the
LGBTQ community took place underground by necessity, and that Kight worked indefatigably
to create systems that would “restore lives in peril.” Cherry was followed by Bill Delvac,
representing an investor who had recently purchased the property hoping to build a 20-unit TOC
project.
414
Delvac began by stating that the nomination had caused a change in his client’s plans,
as they had no preservation experience generally, and even less so with respect to LGBTQ
historic resources. Delvac then stated that he was working with his client to put together a
request for proposal for a fitting re-use of the site that would conserve the house.
By this time the developer’s team had already begun reaching out to the AIDS Healthcare
Foundation (AHF) and the LA LGBT Center, with Delvac acknowledging that while the client is
happy to facilitate this effort, they aren’t seeking an HCM designation outright. Delvac ended his
testimony by saying that “we need an LGBT organization to step forward and join with us,” and
that if such a partnership could not be worked out, the owner would seek to demolish the home
and redevelop the site. Remaining testimony given was all in support of the nomination, with one
speaker stating that they were “shocked to know somebody [wouldn’t be] aware” of the site’s

412
Kate Eggert and Krisy Gosney, “Recommendation Report: The Morris Kight Residence” (Los Angeles, Calif.,
United States: Los Angeles Department of City Planning, May 10, 2020), 13.
413
The following testimony is paraphrased from the CHC meeting, held virtually. Author’s recollection.
414
TOC stands for Transit Oriented Communities, which in this case refers specifically to an ordinance that
incentivizes denser construction for sites closer to fixed transit stops/hubs in L.A. In exchange for including
affordable housing as part of the project, developers are given the option to choose from a variety of incentives
(structured like a menu), allowing them to build more densely than what the current zoning would otherwise
allow. This program effectively works as a form of upzoning without actually changing the zone of the land in
question. It allows the city of L.A. to address an ongoing housing crisis while circumventing the otherwise
onerous and controversial process of a zone change.
122

significance “given its online presence.”
415
While the house itself had not been active outside of
residential uses, it was clearly listed as part of L.A.’s LGBT Historic Context Statement and the
LGBTQ America theme study. This, in addition to the exhaustively researched recommendation
report, led Richard Barron (still the CHC president from when the Tom of Finland House was
listed) to characterize the house’s significance as “unquestionable.” The motion to take the
resource up for consideration carried unanimously.
What went unsaid at the meeting was the fact that AHF, a non-profit founded in 1987 by
Michael Weinstein, had actually initiated this HCM nomination to begin with. While the
historical significance of the site may no longer be seen as contentious in socially progressive
L.A., the nomination itself was clearly a politically motivated one. In recent years AHF has
begun to engage anti-gentrification activism by opposing new development projects outright.
The threat (or in this case initiation) of a nomination often serves as a way to force a negotiation
with developers, and while the site is clearly significant and resonates with AHF’s history, the
question of motive is a difficult one to put aside. Is the Kight residence meaningful enough that
AHF is willing to oppose affordable housing for the sake of LGBTQ heritage? If the Kight
residence is listed as an HCM (initial reactions from the CHC indicate that it very well may be)
to merely prove a point, then who wins if it merely sits empty for a couple of years while the
owner waits to make good on their intent to demolish the house, prepping the site for
redevelopment?
When such a prominent non-profit decides to engage in preservation advocacy, it’s
usually looked at as a convenient bonus by preservationists. That said, it’s necessary to question
whether or not AHF is serious about rehabilitating resources like the Kight Residence in a way
that’s relevant to LGBTQ Angeleños today. Is this dip into preservation advocacy a sincere
extension of its mission to care for individuals dealing with HIV/AIDS, or is it simply being
done out of a sense of personal obligation and safeguarding a legacy?
416
While there are no clear
answers yet, these questions must be pursued if queer people are to strengthen meaningful
geographic connections between their past and present struggles. History like this may indeed be

415
The remaining speakers were Miki Jackson, a longtime friend of Kight’s and executrix of his will; Erik Van
Breene, representing the LA Conservancy; and the third (quoted) speaker, whose given name was not
audible/intelligible over the phone. Author’s recollection.
416
Michel Weinstein, still the CEO of AHF, was described by Mary Ann Cherry as Morris Kight’s “protégé.”
Cherry, Morris Kight, 4.
123

plagued by material marginality, but its importance will only increase as a response to rapid
social, political and environmental changes.
Given this importance, the author believes that no effort should be spared, and no idea
discounted–no matter how strange, impractical, or compromised it may seem–when it comes to
conserving historic resources of this nature. The web of tensions and struggles that have
characterized LGBTQ history is not new, and preservationists can only gain by acknowledging,
accepting, and working with this. Understanding and conserving places that speak to this
complexity can–if thoughtfully done–provide critical guidance and inspiration for communal
struggles today. Despite all the challenges so often stacked against it, heritage remains a vibrant
and restorative force for those that choose to value and act on it.

124

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract The present-day neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park, historically known as Edendale, contain a significant concentration of historic resources associated with Los Angeles’ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities from the early to late-twentieth century. This thesis begins by illuminating the earliest efforts to preserve historic resources specifically for their associations with Los Angeles’ LGBTQ history. It traces the origins of local interest in doing so, then focuses on three case studies to explore the complexities of landmarking at the local level. These case studies, the Harry Hay Residence and Mattachine Steps, The Black Cat Tavern, and the Tom of Finland House, are linked both in terms of their socio-spatial context and their exposure to Los Angeles’ framework for recognizing and listing sites as Historic-Cultural Monuments. These crucial efforts to center LGBTQ history within the framework of Los Angeles’ landmarking process yielded results that merit increased understanding within a vast, multi-centric metropolis where the pressure for change and redevelopment continues to increase. ❧ This thesis highlights the unique challenges and advantages that LGBTQ historic resources face, lending perspective that can guide professionals, advocates, and the communities they serve. It also stresses the need to move beyond standard measures of integrity that privilege tangible history, since traditional forms of interpretation are not alone enough. Forward movement here depends on a critical engagement with emerging planning tools, combined with an honest acknowledgment of the web of struggles and tensions facing LGBTQ communities today. These steps, while only a starting point, should be taken to ensure that historically queer places continue to resonate for the living communities whose stories they represent.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Fontes, Rafael Francisco (author)

Core Title Gaining a foothold: conserving Los Angeles' queer Eden(dale)

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Heritage Conservation / Master of Urban Planning

Degree Program Heritage Conservation / Planning

Publication Date 10/30/2020

Defense Date 10/13/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag activism,Architecture,Black Cat,conservation,diversity,Echo Park,Edendale,Gay,Gay Liberation,Harry Hay,heritage,Heritage Conservation,homophile,intangible heritage,intersectionality,LA,Land Use Planning,landmarking,lesbian,LGBT,LGBTQ,LGBTQ history,Los Angeles,Mattachine,OAI-PMH Harvest,Planning,preservation,Pride,public history,Rehabilitation,Silver Lake,Tom of Finland,urban development,urban landscapes,Wes Joe

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi G. (committee chair), Sloane, David Charles (committee member), Watson, Shayne E. (committee member)

Creator Email rafaelffontes7@gmail.com,rfontes@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-387711

Unique identifier UC11666328

Identifier etd-FontesRafa-9079.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-387711 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-FontesRafa-9079.pdf

Dmrecord 387711

Document Type Thesis

Rights Fontes, Rafael Francisco

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA