Starting the Celebration
Some thoughts about the beginning

By Robert Woodworth
Director of Meeting & Conference Services and Capital Projects
Secretary of the Corporation

Many people experienced the years and efforts leading up to the creation of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in 1983 and the purchase of 208 West 13th Street in 1984. Each has her or his own story. I offer mine as we enter the Center's 25th year.

"Community center" was not a new concept in 1983. It had been around at least since the 19th century settlement house movement. Not surprisingly, calls to find a community center appeared in the fledgling lesbian and gay newspapers that were published after the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Two centers were created in the early 1970's, the old firehouse on Wooster Street where the Gay Activists Alliance held meetings and dances, and the short-lived headquarters of Gay Liberation Front above a folk club on West 4th Street. The first was claimed by arson, the second by unaffordable rent. But the dream had been dreamed in earnest.

Why did it come true in 1983?

As with most historical "moments," establishing the Center and purchasing an old school building in Greenwich Village were products of social, cultural and political forces at work both within the community and throughout New York City.

By the early 1980s, Metropolitan Community Church of New York (MCC) and Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE) had secured affordable quarters in an old school on West 13th Street. Along with Partnership for the Homeless, Friends of the Earth, US Out of Central America, and Media Network, they were subtenants of Caring Community, which had leased the former Food and Maritime Trades High School from the City. The school had been closed in the mid-1970s. The oldest parts of the building dated from the 1840s and the last significant improvements had been made through a WPA project in the mid-1930s. The furnace burned coal to produce steam heat. There were no building services except a City employee to stoke the furnace. To get into the building, visitors summoned people from upstairs offices by ringing one of the doorbells tacked up beside the front doors. No air-conditioning. No hot water. No elevator. No lights in some of the rooms. Abandoned commercial stoves, ventilation hoods and sinks everywhere. And a once beautiful façade of crumbling brownstone and brick, coated with peeling red paint.

Hardscrabble quarters, but the tenants were happy to have them. In a city with scores of lesbian and gay organizations, only a handful had permanent, business addresses. Among that fortunate few were the tenants at 208 West 13th Street and two volunteer-run health organizations: Gay Men's Health Project (an STD clinic above the bank at Sheridan Square), and St. Mark's Clinic on St. Mark's Place in the East Village. They figure prominently in the Center story a bit later on.

Then word came that the City intended to put 208 West 13th Street back on the tax rolls by auctioning it to a developer. To sell a piece of prime Greenwich Village real estate was a smart move for the cash-strapped City, but very bad news for the tenants. How could they afford over-heated commercial rents?

Faced with being put out on the street, the tenants and their allies from other organizations strategized about how to get the auction postponed and how to convince the City that the building should become a community center. In surprisingly short order the call went out for groups to start using the building for meetings; the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center Inc. was incorporated in Washington, DC, on July 6, 1983; community members who had been working in politics for years used their knowledge and influence to convince City officials to make the right decision; and on New Year's Eve, the Board of Estimate - comprised of the Mayor, the Comptroller and the five Borough Presidents - held a public hearing and voted unanimously to approve a contract of sale for $1.5 million.

NAMING THE CENTER

Naming the Center was serious business. The name had to set the tone for what the founders envisioned the Center to be: inclusive, welcoming and a source of direct services to people who needed them. Using the word "lesbian" was progressive for the time and putting it before "gay" was a bold move. Including "services" was a reminder that the Center would exist above all else to serve the community. Missing from those deliberations were the words "bisexual" and "transgender." Not until 2001, after years of advocacy and education by the bisexual and transgender communities, were they incorporated into the Center's name.

One wonders if the Center's initial success would have been possible had the community not been confronted with a horrifying epidemic. By 1983, the Centers for Disease Control had put a name to it and Gay Men's Health Crisis had been formed to battle it. But the government and the general public paid little attention because of who was dying. Notoriously factional and cantankerous, gay and lesbian New Yorkers had to face a harsh reality. The community - not the government - would have to take the lead in combating AIDS. Fear, anger and urgency mobilized the community in new ways. And that included raising a lot of money.

GMHC solicited short term loans at no interest so they could buy out Madison Square Garden for a fundraiser at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in April 1983. The City witnessed the largest contemporary gay gathering in a prominent venue. Leonard Bernstein spoke. Divas sang. All the traditional acts performed. And thousands of gay and lesbian people brought their faces, their dollars and their friends to a common cause. That fall, borrowing directly on GMHC's experience and advice, the Community Center appealed for gifts and loans to raise the $150,000 down-payment for 208 West 13th Street.

AN UNPRECEDENTED DEGREE OF COMMUNITY

In a complementary move, Gay Men's Health Project and St. Mark's Clinic took a calculated risk. With rent increases threatening their survival and with encouragement from the Community Center organizers, they merged to create the Community Health Project (CHP) and moved into 208 West 13th Street as a month-to-month tenant of the City even before the sale to the Center was assured. Volunteers renovated space on the second floor and CHP joined the fight against AIDS, in the process bolstering the Center's argument that the community was prepared to take care of its own and needed 208 West 13th Street to do it.

The Center story is a classic tale of seizing opportunity out of difficult circumstances. Two crises - the AIDS epidemic and the threat that skyrocketing rents would bankrupt fledgling gay organizations - rallied gay and lesbian people to an unprecedented degree of community organizing and philanthropy.

The Center had the added advantage of occupying its home even before owning it. Early board meetings took place in the MCC Office and, by the end of 1983, the Center had cleaned out an unused teachers' locker room on the third floor, made it the Center Office, and staffed it with a part-time consultant. It remains the Center's main office to this day.

1983 was a remarkable year for The Center, so it is fitting that we use our 25th year to reflect on our history and envision our future.

Welcome to another beginning.

Robert Woodworth began his association with the Center as a consultant in December 1983, just as the Center was negotiating to purchase 208 West 13th Street from the City. He became the Center's first Building Manager in May 1985, Deputy Director in 1989, and Director of Institutional Services in 1998. In 1984 he was elected by the Board of Directors as the Secretary of the Corporation, a position he has held ever since.

Return to The Center Celebrates 25 Years.

Lesbian artists exhibit as part of the popular Women's Coffee House.

Executive Director Richard Burns greets then Mayor Edward I. Koch as his liaison, Lee Hudson, looks on.

Workshop manager Wes Cronk, then board President David Nimmons, Candida Piel, and Harvey Fierstein at the AIDS Memorial Quilt workshop.