Gay Street is one of the most charmg and picturque streets Greenwich Village, an in of the historic neighborhood’s anachronistic character. But the origs of s name are hotly bated, wh the LGBT rights movement and abolnism often ced as the source of s unual nomenclature. And while the street certaly has strong nnectns to
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GAY STREET COMMONS - 117 W GAY ST, WT CHTER, PA 19380
6 Office, Retail spac for lease or rent at 117 W Gay St, Wt Chter, PA 19380. View photos and ntact a broker." name="scriptn * gay street commons *
Gay Street Commons: 117 W Gay St, Wt Chter, PA 19380. Southward view of Gay Street via Wiki Commons. Gay Street is one of the most charmg and picturque streets Greenwich Village, an in of the historic neighborhood’s anachronistic character.
And while the street certaly has strong nnectns to gay liberatn and the Ain-Amerin stggle for eedom, the history behd the name is a ltle murkier, and a ltle more plited to unravel, than one might expect.
Northward view of Gay Street via Wiki Commons. Gay street is unique several rpects. The three- and four-story Feral and Greek Revival-style ho which le much of s length give Gay Street a remarkably timate feel.
WHAT’S A NAME? GAY STREET
In the later 19th century, when the Village was the center of New York’s Ain-Amerin muny, many of the rints of Gay Street were black, and many of them were also micians. Historic Bromley map of Manhattan showg Gay Street lower right (urty of David Jarrett — historic maps available on Village Prervatn’s webse; see “Maps” unr Rourc). But long before Ruth McKenna ma Gay Street famo, the street and s Greenwich Village surroundgs had already e to be associated wh the word “gay.
In morn parlance, “gay” means attracted to the same sex.
But this was not always so, and the word’s evolutn, tertgly, mirrors that of Gay Street and s environs. Gay origally meant reee, happy, exuberant. However, by the late 19th and pecially the early 20th century, the nnotatns of the word gay me to be creasgly associated wh a liftyle unfettered by the nventns of the day.