In celebration of Pride Month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has launched a new Web site and campaign to recognize what it sees as the “many contributions made by LGBT preservationists and pioneers.” It also aims to highlight the “sometimes-overlooked spaces and places that tell their fascinating stories.”
The group had reached out to NLGJA for help with their new site.
It has essays by writers Paula Martinac, who used to pen the syndicated Lesbian Notions column that ran in the Bay Area Reporter and in 1997 published The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites, and Will Fellows, author of Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest.
The section titled “11 Significant LGBT Sites You May Have Never Heard” includes the now-closed Compton’s Cafeteria, where transgender and gay San Franciscans protested police harassment three years prior to the Stonewall rebellion in 1969; the location of slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk’s home and camera shop; and the D.C. grave of Leonard Matlovich, the poster boy in the 1980s for gays in the military who used to live right in the heart of the Castro.
Among the homeowners being profiled is Tony Russomanno, a former reporter for local CBS affiliate KPIX 5 and NLGJA member who received an Excellence in Journalism award from the Nor Cal Chapter last year. He fixed up a classic A-Frame house in Tahoe City, California built 40 years ago and gives an interview about his home and the neighborhood.
Choice quote about the condition of the house when he purchased it in 2002: Inside “the furnishings were leftovers from the previous owner’s principal residence or his old thrift store purchases. One mattress was tagged ‘Salvation Army – San Francisco – 1955.”
For more about Russomanno’s dream mountain home, click here.