Originally constructed in 1831 to house the fledgling Greenwich Village Free Medical Clinic, the building was a philanthropic venture designed to provide care to the working-class neighbors and domestic servants of the wealthy in the area, and to reduce communicable illness in the interest of public health. The founders of the Dispensary saw it as a valuable contribution to both social welfare and scientific good—particularly well-positioned to study the diseases of the working poor otherwise not receiving medical care. It served more than three thousand patients and was busy enough by 1855 to require the installation of a third floor. By the middle of the 20th century, the Dispensary was primarily providing free dental care, but its operators’ reluctance to serve people with AIDS led to its shuttering in 1988. The Northern Dispensary’s “fall” is often recounted as a parable about the idiosyncratic mixture of government regulation and real estate capital investment that have shaped the built environment of New York City. The story typically begins with the lawsuit against the Dispensary brought by George Whitmore and David Whittacre, two gay men denied treatment due to their AIDS diagnoses. The lawsuit, settled by the New York City Human Rights Commission, awarded Whittacre and Whitmore $46,000 in damages; the Dispensary soon closed its doors, citing financial troubles.

The Roman Catholic Church stepped in to purchase the building with a plan to use it as an AIDS clinic, only to sell it to a real estate developer interested in preserving historic Village buildings a few years later. As various cyclical newspaper articles and blog posts probing the building’s history have lamented, the deed restrictions have prevented its development in the context of New York’s 21st century real estate market. And so it sits empty: a historic property, decaying from within. A closer examination of the fight over its future, however, reveals that the drama surrounding the closure of the Northern Dispensary is less an aberration than an exemplar of the particular politics of care work, homelessness, race, and neighborhood politics that have embroiled New York City since the 1980s. When George Whitmore and David Whittacre brought suit against the Northern Dispensary in 1986, New York City was an epicenter of the newly named AIDS epidemic. The city had the highest rate of seropositivity anywhere in the country, and had recorded over 6,978 deaths due to AIDS-related complications by 1985; the true number was likely higher due to undiagnosed cases.

In the absence of funding, grassroots organizers began to provide social services and resources for people with AIDS. Groups like the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) stepped up where the city fell short, creating extensive programs to ensure that people with the condition had help at home, emotional support, and assistance navigating the various welfare bureaucracies. By 1983, AIDS had entered the mainstream discourse in a new and profound way, through popular theater and prominent articles about the disease in national weekly magazines. Public officials in areas deeply affected by AIDS had also begun to mobilize the social service infrastructure of their respective cities to respond to the crisis. Unfortunately, increased public attention also often produced public hysteria stoked in the mainstream press. Although there was no evidence that HIV could be transmitted via casual contact, many carriers faced prejudice and discrimination from both the general public and intimate family members. Landlords were reported for evicting tenants whom they discovered were HIV+, and in the Fall of 1985 nearly 11,000 parents kept children home from school to protest the Department of Education’s policy allowing students with AIDS to continue attending public school.

The Roman Catholic Church’s proposal to convert the Northern Dispensary, not into a clinic, but rather a fifteen room SRO structure and a community kitchen for People with AIDS suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues, reflected a sincere engagement with the most pressing needs of vulnerable New Yorkers: housing services. The plan, which relied on a $1.5 million government grant to repurpose the space into a supportive residential facility, gained official approval in 1992. The new facility would be one of just a handful of supportive housing facilities for New Yorkers with HIV/AIDS, a victory for activists after years of agitation. Unfortunately for those potential residents, people in the neighborhood began registering their opposition. Organizing under the name “Committee for the Northern Dispensary,” several Greenwich Village locals opposed the conversion vociferously. Sensitive to claims that they were prejudiced or NIMBYs, the group protested the structure by turning to its original restrictive deed covenant. Their leader, a gay man named Kenneth Ranftle, argued that “turning a historic landmark for just 15 people” would be an irresponsible use of space. He took particular issue with the fact that occupants would be granted leases to their rooms, which he argued converted a “public mission into a private purpose.” \[10] In an effort to demonstrate that prejudice was not its motivation, the Coalition noted its preference for a “dental clinic for HIV positive people” or a “women’s health center” in that space.

The subtext of their protest was less innocent to some. As one ACT UP protest flier read: “How do you spell NIMBY? Coalition for the Northern Dispensary.” Another featured the caption: “You know they wouldn’t oppose AIDS housing here if it was for WHITE BOYS ONLY.” Both fliers speak to the complicated racial and class politics that had come to define rifts within AIDS activism. While the popular conception of AIDS as a “gay disease” still centered white, gay, men—the reality was that AIDS in New York City had become a largely black and brown condition. Questions about how best to serve people with AIDS emerged as a struggle within even the ranks of ACT UP—with some members splitting off into direct service work in community health and housing access, and others doubling down on the search for a pharmaceutical cure for AIDS. The tensions within this struggle were further underscored by the changing face of Greenwich Village by the early 1990s. As a New York Magazine article from August of 1993 entitled “The Village Under Siege” noted, some new Village residents felt resentful of the expectation that the historically gay, immigrant neighborhood would continue to allow disorder, noise, and activity on the streets. The article, which also details the struggles of a group called Concerned Citizens of Broadway to ban street peddlers from the area, quotes an anonymous member of the Coalition on the Northern Dispensary critiquing the local community board’s SRO plan as “serving a blueprint, an ideology—not their constituents,” before clarifying, “They have 1965 ideas in place in 1993.” In the words of the article’s author, the “very things that made the Village what it has now made it nearly unlivable” to them

This attitude also reflected a larger reality about the increasing centrality of gentrification, whiteness, and capital to late 20th century gay political organizing. Today, there is a tentative discussion among those entrusted with decision-making power about using the Dispensary as a public information center for the recently landmarked Stonewall National Memorial just across the street. Nearby, the site where St. Vincent’s Hospital once treated and housed thousands dying of AIDS has been converted into luxury condominiums. An information center is, admittedly, a relatively unobjectionable use for the building in a landscape now peppered by expensive clothing stores and well-reviewed eateries. It is, however, a purpose that belies the daily reality of the AIDS and homelessness crises that never ended for thousands in New York City. Instead, it speaks to the way AIDS is remembered—or not—in the presentation of the Village’s gay history to newcomers, tourists, and homeowners alike: a sad story that is preserved in amber, frozen in time rather than dynamic and evolving. In this telling of AIDS history, there are few villains, many forgotten names, and no calls to action for the present.