See upcoming events at Center Calendar

The Center Story

In December 1983, the New York City Board of Estimates approved the sale of the former Food and Maritime Trades High School, located at 208 West 13th Street, to the Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center, Inc., for $1.5 million. In its first year, 60 groups met regularly at the Center. Today more than 300 groups call the Center home. From the beginning, the Center has served to fortify and enrich the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Since the historic 1969 Stonewall Riots, our community has grown and changed dramatically. We have built an infrastructure where none existed before — institutions that serve those in crisis: the young, the elderly, people living with HIV and AIDS, survivors of anti-gay or anti-lesbian violence, people struggling with substance abuse, and gay people and their friends and families overwhelmed by the devastating toll of the AIDS epidemic.

Our community is infused with an activist spirit that other progressive communities envy, and, as a result, we continue to build many political and legal organizations and cultural institutions. Our community continues to endure a barrage of attacks from the religious right that prays and organizes for our annihilation and exploits our lives as political scapegoats for its gain, while we mourn the unyielding, terrifying decimation of our community from AIDS. There is still deadly silence surrounding the epidemic of LGBT substance abuse and other health issues, and there is abundant evidence of increasing anti-gay violence. The Center provides a secure place to come together and plan, advocate, ACT UP, share our knowledge and expertise, and shape our future.

The Center itself produces many health-related, civic, and cultural programs. In the next several pages you will read in detail about these programs; each was conceived to meet a need that was not already being met elsewhere. Each Center program, in some way, seeks to allow us to become more fully aware of ourselves.

Programs produced by the Center include Youth Enrichment Services (YES), an activities-based program for LGBT youth; Center Orientation, produced in-house and in all the boroughs of New York City; Center Kids, the Center's family project; the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library, New York City's largest LGBT lending library; the National Museum and the National Archive of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History; and Promote the Vote, one of the largest LGBT voter registration and mobilization projects in the United States, created in 1992.

In addition, one of the Center's prime functions is to provide affordable meeting space for LGBT organizations, many of which would otherwise have no place to go. The lack of affordable, safe space in this city has pushed several organizations to the brink of extinction. Stepping forward more than once, the Center has kept doors open and ensured the delivery of much needed services and programs. In 1985, the Center became temporary home to the Harvey Milk High School, a program of the Hetrick-Martin Institute. The Lesbian Switchboard became a permanent tenant after it was evicted from its former home, and Dignity, a Catholic gay and lesbian religious organization, sought refuge when it was expelled from Catholic churches.

The availability of meeting space has been a major organizing tool for our community. Since we opened our doors, the number of LGBT organizations in New York City has multiplied many times. Groups that have expanded throughout the nation, such as the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), were born at the Center. Our monthly calendar of events is mailed to 50,000 housholds, and an additional 10,000 copies are distributed in the Center's lobby each month. In this way, organizations reach out to individuals, and individuals — more than five thousand of who come through our doors each week — reach back.

Center Challenge would not have been possible without the volunteer and donor-supported renovations completed during the Center's first years. Our physical space has been expanded and improved through the renovation of many individual meeting rooms, the renovation and construction of the theater in the third floor Network Room, the restoration of the facade, and the construction of a ramp entrance for wheelchair accessibility. All of these changes have made the Center more livable, more workable, and more accessible to everyone.

We have the opportunity to leave the next LGBT generation a legacy on which to build. The Center is certain to play a part in our community's future: to give shelter to our struggle and to participate in the shaping of our destiny, while memorializing and honoring our past. We look forward to completing the renovations to the Center and providing a heart and home deserving of New York's LGBT community, as well as confronting the political challenges presented to our communities in this and coming years.