The Living City
Behind the Bushes: The Gay History of the High Line by Friends Of The High Line
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n a lovely elegy for the “queer building” of 2 Columbus Circle, former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote about the role gay audiences play in historic preservation and reuse, and in the collective memory of a city: The gay audience, excluded by society, has an organic relationship to artifacts that have been rejected by society’s taste-makers. Pluck a discarded ornament out of the town dump, take it home, polish it up and put it on a pedestal: It’s a way of refusing to abide by rules designed to shut you out. Somebody once loved that old lamp, that old building, that old street, that old neighborhood, that city that progress left behind.
We love that quote—because it describes the High Line exactly. If the High Line is a landmark today, much of the credit goes to the LGBTQ+ community, who encountered the structure during the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when it was hidden in plain sight. In those decades of disuse, the High Line was often the backdrop (and sometimes the stage) for gay countercultural social life, and the birth of the LGBTQ+ activist movement, in New York City. That’s why Friends of the High Line wants to celebrate Pride Month with a look at “The Gay History of the High Line”—the history that helped save and shape the park.
The 70s and 80s To most New Yorkers, coming upon the High Line before it was transformed into a park was a surprise—but to many LGBTQ+ people, it was known for decades, says our Cofounder and Executive Director, Robert Hammond. That’s because it was next to clubs like the Tunnel, the Roxy, and Sound Factory, which were staples on the West Side of Manhattan. Hammond likes to joke about how many people say they discovered the High Line on their way to art galleries when they were really headed to gay clubs. Hammond tells the story of one supporter: “When I asked him when he realized the High Line was even there, he said, When I leaned on it to vomit, coming out of the Roxy.” From south to north, the High Line follows the path that the shifting hubs of gay social life in New York followed, starting in the West Village. In the 1970s, gay men priced out of that neighborhood started moving into Chelsea, where many opened shops along Eighth Avenue. Michael Shernoff, writing in LGNY, called these residents “pivotal in helping Chelsea become the vibrant and exciting neighborhood it is today.” Farther west, a different kind of neighborhood vibrancy and excitement quickly developed—a zone of gay sex clubs, offering sanctuary spaces and sexual freedom to gay men and transgender people. The High Line was a kind of informal gateway to this neighborhood, writes Friends of the High Line Cofounder Joshua David: “To cross beneath it was to cross a line from the genteel blocks of the Chelsea Historic District to the raunchy, rough, industrial blocks of the Spike, the Eagle, Zone DK, the Mineshaft, and the Anvil.” These shrouded establishments were notoriously illicit; the Mineshaft, for example, located at 835 Washington Street (near the current Friends of the High Line office), was one of the most extreme. New York magazine published an eye-opening oral history of the club, and longtime gay nightlife chronicler Michael Musto described the scene in Paper magazine: “The ‘private membership club’… encouraged all manner of nudity and wild sex acts. I went once and remember that as you walked, the carpet squished.” In this raunchy neighborhood, the High Line was itself a kind of secret club—an even more illicit and lawless space, where people often snuck up to have sex or do drugs.
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