My Archive Spring 2019 "An old abandoned Pier in Manhattan, which connects with both West 10th Street and back then, the old elevated West Side Highway. Looking south at the then-new World Trade Center. The couple had just learned of a tragedy in the family. June 21, 1978." —Michael Castellano

Christopher Street Pier In the 1970's and 1980's, LGBTQ culture was much less mainstream than it is today, and young men and women relied on the kinship and mutual aid of their community for support. The late 1980s film 'Paris is Burning' offers an intimate look into New York's LGBTQ culture of the time. The "family" structure explored in the documentary served as a replacement to the subjects' biological families, whom they were often rejected by because of their gender and sexual identities. They also created a community at the Christopher Street Pier. The piers at the western edge of Greenwich Village have been a haven for gay youth since the 1970s. Today, the pier remains a popular place to socialize for black and Latino LGBTQ youth.

Decaying structures on the Christopher Street Pier, ca. 1974. Photographer Jack Dowling is standing somewhere on the pier itself, facing the headhouse structures on the shoreline. The pier structures west of the elevated Miller (West Side) Highway, itself in a state of disrepair, had become an ad hoc gathering place for the city's queer youth, with the Christopher Street pier notable for its cruising scene. In the background at right, the uppermost story of the massive, full-block structure today known as "The Archive" is visible. Erected in the 1890s, the Appraisers' Warehouse as a holding depot for goods awaiting customs inspection downtown. It later passed into city ownership, and in the mid-1970s became a preservation cause for the nascent Landmarks Conservancy.