LGBTQ History Tour

80 Fifth Avenue housed from its founding in 1973 until 1986 the headquarters of what was then known as the National Gay Task Force (which became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1985, and is now the National LGBTQ Task Force). The Task Force was the very first national LGBT rights organization in the United States, accomplishing groundbreaking changes in those first dozen or so years and laying the foundation for many more in the years which followed, as well as initiating battles for civil rights which are still being fought today. This was the Task Force’s very first headquarters and its only in New York, and it remained here for more than a dozen years until it moved to the nation’s capital in 1986.
The Task Force’s accomplishments during the time they were located here represented several giant leaps forward for LGBTQ Americans. After employing tactics like staffing booths at the American Psychiatric Association’s Convention to challenge the group’s official categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, in 1973 the Task Force secured the removal of homosexuality from the APA’s official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reducing a significant stigma attached to LGBT people and paving the way for further legal reforms. In 1975 the Task Force advocated for the successful ruling by the U.S. Civil Service Commission eliminating the longtime ban upon gay people serving in federal government employment, ending decades of witch hunts against government workers suspected of being gay which dated back to the McCarthy era and before. In 1977, the Task Force brokered another historic first – the very first meeting of any LGBT group with the White House. The meeting directly resulted in changes in policies at the Bureau of Prisons and the Public Health Service, while also initiating policy discussions that would continue for decades and contributed to the incorporation of support for gay rights within the Democratic Party platform. In 1978, the Task Force got the U.S. Public Health Service to stop certifying gay immigrants as

Several key individuals, organizations, and meeting spaces connected to LGBTQ history were located here, including the headquarters of the country's first national LGBTQ rights organization, and prominent writers, artists, musicians, and performers. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.