Gay activists alliance firehouse
Gay Activist Alliance Headquarters Bombed
On October 15, 1974, the Gay Activist Alliance Firehouse, located in SoHo at 99 Wooster Street, was bombed.
One of the most highly influential LGBT groups of the post-Stonewall era, the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) was founded in 1969 by Marty Robinson, Jim Owles, and Arthur Evans. The group was an offshoot of the Gay Liberation Front. Their location in an abandoned city firehouse became the first gay and womxn loving womxn organizational and social center in New York Town. Their “zaps” and face-to-face confrontations were highly authoritative to other activist and political groups.
In the evening hours of October 15th, 1974, the GAA headquarters was targeted by an arson fire. As recounted in a New York Times article about it, the fire was “set in at least six places.” When questioned about it, then-president Morty Manford charged that the blaze had been set as part of a wave of harassment against gays, citing a number of fire‐bombings of homosexual churches and centers around the nation as well as “considerable animosity” aroused by a homosexual rights measure that was set before a City Council committee. Subsequentl
The Former Gay Activists Alliance Headquarters at 99 Wooster Street Has At Last Become a Landmark
On June 18, 2019, Village Preservation scored a big victory five years in the making — persuading the City to landmark two more LGBT historic sites: the LGBT Community Center at 208 W. 13th Street and the former Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street. Until now, there has only been ONE site in all of New York City landmarked for its connection to LGBT history: the Stonewall Inn. In 2015, after a year and a half campaign led by Village Preservation, the Metropolis landmarked Stonewall, making it the city’s first landmark designation based upon LGBT history. At the age Village Preservation also proposed the LGBT Community Center and the former GAA Firehouse for landmark designation, but at the period the City refused to consider the other sites.
Designation of new landmarks means new designation reports for those landmarks, written by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which are chock entire of great research and historic information about the buildings. Today we will take a deep dive into the former GAA Firehouse’s designation report, which li
Gay Activists Alliance
overview
The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was formed in December 1969 by Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, Arthur Evans, Arthur Bell, and others, who became disaffected by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the first LGBT group formed right after Stonewall. Focused exclusively on “the liberation of gay people,” GAA became the most influential American gay liberation activist group in the early 1970s. While the pickets and actions by earlier homophile groups in the 1960s, like the Mattachine Society’s Sip-In at Julius’, had been peaceful, the post-Stonewall groups, including GAA, GLF, and Radicalesbians, were more confrontational.
The success of the Snake Pit protest on March 8, 1970, organized by GAA and GLF, inspired GAA’s most renowned, effective, and imaginative approach. This was the “zap,” a direct, surprise common confrontation with political figures and corporate and governmental entities regarding gay rights and discrimination, designed to gain gay and linear media attention. Morty Manford and Evans called it “a hybrid of media theatre and political demonstration.” Robinson is g
History
This former firehouse in SoHo served as the headquarters of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) from 1971 to 1974. GAA was formed in December 1969 when a number of members, led by Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, and Arthur Evans, broke away from the more radical Gay Liberation Front.
The exclusive purpose of GAA, the principal and largest American same-sex attracted liberation political activist entity of the early 1970s, was to advance LGBT civil and social rights. It lobbied for the passage of local civil rights laws, banning police entrapment and harassment, the creation of fair employment and housing legislation, and the repeal of sodomy and solicitation laws. Many of the group’s activities were planned at the Firehouse after it opened in May 1971, including sit-ins and picket lines. Perhaps GAA’s most legendary tactic was the “zap,” a direct, public confrontation with a political figure regarding LGBT rights, constructed to gain media attention (see a list of GAA actions, in chronological order, in our curated theme). GAA was the first group to adopt the lambda as a homosexual symbol in 1970.
The Firehouse was New York’s most important LGBT political and cultural com
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