This Historic Gay Bar Became Ground Zero for LGBTQ+ Rights After a 1969 Police Raid Went Wrong

Stonewall National Monument (New York)

You can visit the birthplace of Pride Month in less than an hour, but understanding its impact takes much longer.

The Stonewall National Monument protects the site where fed up bar patrons turned a routine police raid into six days of uprising.

It’s where the gay rights movement found its voice.

This is the story of how a Greenwich Village bar became a symbol of resistance.

The Past Lives of Stonewall Inn

The Stonewall Inn was in two connected buildings at 51-53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

These buildings were originally built as horse stables in the 1840s.

In 1930, they were combined into one building for a bakery, then in 1934 became “Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn,” a popular bar and restaurant that ran until 1964 when a fire destroyed the inside.

In 1966, the Mafia bought the buildings, did cheap repairs, and reopened them in 1967 as a gay bar.

It was run by a mobster nicknamed “Fat Tony” as a “private” gay club – one of the few places in Greenwich Village where gay people could dance together.

What It Was Like Inside

When you entered through the front door at 53 Christopher Street, you walked into a small vestibule.

To the left was coat check, and to the right was a doorway into 51 Christopher Street – a long rectangular room with a bar on the right side and a dance floor with a jukebox beyond that.

People drank overpriced, watered-down, and often illegal alcohol. The sound system was terrible, and the toilets were always clogged.

The whole inside was painted black to hide the fire damage from 1964, as well as the front windows.

The Stonewall was basically a dump, but it was their dump, and it was a safe haven.

A Safe Place for the Unwelcome

The Stonewall attracted the poorest and most unwelcome people in the gay community: drag queens, transgender people, young feminine men, sex workers, and homeless kids.

Drag queens especially went to Stonewall because most other places wouldn’t let them in. It also drew people who couldn’t afford fancier bars.

As one regular put it: “The bar itself was a toilet, but it was a refuge, it was a temporary refuge from the street.”

It was one of the few places where LGBTQ+ people could be themselves, dance together, and feel somewhat safe, even though the conditions were kinda awful.

Police Raids Were Common

At the time, police raided gay bars all the time, and being gay was illegal in every state except Illinois.

The bar had already been raided just three days earlier on Tuesday, June 24th. Police arrested some employees and took all their liquor.

They planned to come back Friday night to shut the place down for good.

The Night Everything Changed

At 1:20 AM on Saturday, June 28, 1969, it was an unusually hot night and the Stonewall was packed with about 200 people.

Eight police officers – six men and two women – burst through the doors yelling “Police! We’re taking the place!”

They turned off the music, flipped on all the lights, and lined everyone up. They checked IDs and arrested anyone in drag (wearing clothes that didn’t match their birth gender was illegal).

They also arrested the employees for selling alcohol without a license. Thirteen people total were arrested.

But this time, something was different.

The Spark

Usually people just quietly left during the previous raids.

Instead, the crowd gathered outside and got angry watching their friends get roughly shoved into police cars.

The breaking point came when a police officer hit a lesbian woman over the head as he forced her into a police van.

She shouted to the crowd “Why don’t you guys do something!”

That’s when people started throwing things – first pennies, then bottles, then cobblestones from the street.

Someone even ripped up a parking meter and used it as a weapon.

The Fight

The outnumbered police officers panicked and locked themselves inside the bar, calling for backup.

But the angry crowd of 400 people broke down the doors, got into fistfights with cops, and even started a fire inside the club.

The riots went on for hours until 4 AM. It took the city’s riot police with tear gas to finally clear the streets.

The Fire Spreads

Word spread fast. The next night, thousands of people showed up at the Stonewall to confront police again. More fights broke out. The same thing happened for several more nights.

People chanted “Gay Power!” and “We Shall Overcome!” – borrowing from the civil rights movement.

The Immediate Aftermath

The Stonewall Inn was completely trashed during the first night.

Thirteen people were arrested, some people in the crowd went to the hospital, and four police officers got hurt.

Almost everything inside the bar was broken – pay phones, toilets, mirrors, jukeboxes, and cigarette machines were all destroyed.

The Stonewall tried to reopen as a juice bar (since they couldn’t get a liquor license), but nobody wanted to come anymore.

By October 1969 – just three months after the riots – the famous Stonewall Inn was empty and up for rent.

The Pride March is Born

Within just a few weeks after the riots, brand new gay rights groups formed – like the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance. They started newspapers and magazines that openly talked about gay rights for the first time.

The real genius move came a year later. An activist named Craig Rodwell organized the first-ever gay pride march on June 28, 1970 – exactly one year after the riots.

They called it “Christopher Street Liberation Day” and thousands of people marched from the Stonewall all the way to Central Park.

That march became the model for every Pride parade that happens around the world today.

A Long Road to Monument Status

In 1999, the Stonewall Inn became the first LGBTQ+ site ever added to the National Register of Historic Places. Then in 2000, it became National Historic Landmark.

In 2015, the Stonewall Inn became a New York City landmark – the first city landmark to honor an LGBTQ+ icon.

The biggest moment came in 2016 when President Barack Obama made it America’s first national monument honoring LGBTQ+ rights.

Obama announced it on June 24, 2016, just days before the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The timing was also significant because it came just two weeks after the horrific shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people (mostly gay Latino Americans) were killed.

Visiting Stonewall National Monument

The Stonewall National Monument sits in Greenwich Village at the intersection of Christopher Street, West 4th Street, and Grove Street.

It covers the Stonewall Inn itself, Christopher Park across the street, and the surrounding streets where the riots happened.

The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center operates at 51 Christopher Street. It opens daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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