Stonewall National Monument

You are walking toward a site that began as two unremarkable horse stables built in the eighteen forties. These two structures at fifty-one and fifty-three Christopher Street were eventually joined by a single facade in nineteen thirty, hiding their humble origins behind a modest brick and stucco exterior. By the nineteen sixties, the space had been transformed into a gathering place for those who were otherwise forced to live their lives in the shadows. It is this site that became the unlikely birthplace of a movement that would eventually transform civil rights across the United States.