The Bronx
overview
This collection of sites in the Bronx highlights the borough’s diverse LGBT history through residences, public spaces, and cultural institutions associated with people of color, the childhood residence of a pioneering individual in transgender history, and the final resting place of many notable LGBT New Yorkers.
While much of New York City’s known LGBT history and life centers on Manhattan, we are currently working on adding more Bronx sites to our website. If you have a suggestion, please fill out our online form.
This theme was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and a grant from Con Edison.
Historic Sites in The Bronx
The award-winning Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) was founded by dancer/choreographer Arthur Avilés and writer/activist Charles Rice-González, Bronx residents of Puerto Rican descent. Home to the Arthur Avilés... Learn More
Orchard Beach, located in Pelham Bay Park and sometimes referred to as “the Bronx Riviera,” has long been a meeting and cruising location for LGBT people of color, in particular.... Learn More
Trans woman and Bronx native Christine Jorgensen lived in this house with her family from her birth in 1926 until the early 1950s. After her overseas gender reassignment surgery made... Learn More
The Prospect Theater is significant in the LGBT history of the Bronx as the venue for the Yiddish play The God of Vengeance, which played here immediately after the Broadway cast... Learn More
Mabel Hampton was an African-American performer during the Harlem Renaissance and, in the 1970s and 1980s, a key member of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. An icon of the New York... Learn More
Woodlawn Cemetery in the northern Bronx is not only a magnificent park-like landscape, but is the final resting place of many notable figures in the history of the United States.... Learn More
Gay rights activist Ron Jacobowitz, who lived in this apartment building from 1986 to 1994, co-founded Gay Men of the Bronx as well as Bronx Lesbian and Gay Men United... Learn More
In 1927, Ted Shawn, one of the founders of modern dance in America, and his wife Ruth St. Denis established Denishawn House in the Bronx as a training school for... Learn More
Since 1869, Hart Island has been the site of the city’s public cemetery for burials of people who died indigent or whose bodies went unclaimed. Beginning in the mid-1980s and... Learn More
Bronx United Gays, the Bronx chapter of the Gay Activists Alliance, held a zap at the residence of Councilman Michael DeMarco on February 19, 1972, in response to his homophobic... Learn More
The first annual Bronx Pride Parade and Multicultural Festival was held on July 11, 1998, in the Concourse neighborhood of the Bronx. Chaired by Gloria Diaz, Matt Hinojosa, and later... Learn More
Prompted by the silence of Senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Edmund Muskie on gay civil rights, the Gay Activists Alliance coordinated a zap on November 14, 1971, at Gould... Learn More
