Photographs of Fire Island’s Cherry Grove Show Its History as a Gay Sanctuary | Vogue

Contents:

• THE VERY GAY HISTORY OF FIRE ISLAND
• SWEET ESPE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF FIRE ISLAND’S CHERRY GROVE SHOW ITS HISTORY AS A GAY SANCTUARY
• WATCH: ALL THE TEA ON THE HISTORY OF GAY MEC FIRE ISLAND, AS TOLD BY THE QUEER INS WHO’VE LIVED
• GAY HISTORY: WATCH FOOTAGE OF FIRE ISLAND THE 1980’S – VIDEO

THE VERY GAY HISTORY OF FIRE ISLAND

How did one particular summer settlement on Fire Island bee a ‘safe haven’ for gay men and lbians almost nety years ago, s before the uprisg at Stonewall Inn? It is the se of one of the olst gay and lbian muni the Uned Stat, suated wh two neighborg hamlets — Cherry Grove and the Fire Island P. Durg the 1930s actors, wrers and craftspeople om the New York theatril world began headg to Cherry Grove, s remote and stic quali allowg for gay and lbians to exprs themselv eely — far away om a world that rejected and persecuted them.

SWEET ESPE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF FIRE ISLAND’S CHERRY GROVE SHOW ITS HISTORY AS A GAY SANCTUARY

And they are joed by Parker Sargent, a documentary filmmaker and one of the curators of Safe Haven: Gay Life 1950s Cherry Grove, a new exhibn at the New-York Historil Society, highlightg photography om the llectn of the Cherry Grove Archiv Collectn. Listen Now: The Very Gay History of Fire Island.

Go see the show Safe/Haven: Gay Life 1950s Cherry Grove at the New-York Historil Society. From Osr Wil’s vis to the island 1882, to the steady velopment of Cherry Grove as “Ameri's First Gay and Lbian Town, ” Fire Island has long been a home and haven to LGBTQ visors and rints alike. Long before the Stonewall Rts set the movement for Gay Liberatn to motn, Fire Island provid an important enclave to rints and visors at a time when almost everythg about livg openly as a lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, or queer (LGBTQ) person was illegal the Uned Stat.

The Cherry Grove Communy Hoe is exceptnally signifint for the enormo role played shapg what gradually evolved to Ameri's First Gay and Lbian Town. As anizatns, the Cherry Grove Property Owners Associatn and Cherry Grove Arts Projects profoundly fluenced the muny's velopment, facilatg the gradual social acceptance, self-affirmatn, and tegratn of s gay and lbian rints to Cherry Grove's erng affairs and civic life. This tegratn of LGBTQ rints to daily life and events at s muny hoe afford Cherry Grove a sgular stat; beme the one of the first and, for many years, the only gay and lbian fluenced geography the Uned Stat.

WATCH: ALL THE TEA ON THE HISTORY OF GAY MEC FIRE ISLAND, AS TOLD BY THE QUEER INS WHO’VE LIVED

Its metamorphosis played out agast turbulent social and polil upheavals -- our natn's rponse to the pre- and early days of the homosexual liberatn movement. The 1969 uprisg at the Stonewall Inn, which is largely creded as the turng pot the gay civil rights movement, has been documented by numero scholars.

) It feels ftg, if not historilly felico, to image Wil as the patron sat of the island’s later eratns, cuttg a flamboyant figure on s gay beach avant la lettre. Many years later, the perd jt prr to Stonewall, the Mattache Society activist Craig Rodwell worked a summer bartendg on Fire Island to raise money for New York’s first gay and lbian bookstore, which opened 1967 and was ftgly named the Osr Wil Memorial Bookshop. For Aun, the problem wh this burgeong gay beach culture was not only that was a distractn.

But the were still the years before the rabow was an explicly polil symbol for gay liberatn. Some of the bt-known gay novelists of the 1970s, cludg Edmund Whe, Andrew Holleran and Felice Pino, wrers who later formed the Vlet Quill llective 1980-81, ed as a settg.

GAY HISTORY: WATCH FOOTAGE OF FIRE ISLAND THE 1980’S – VIDEO

The readily available arc of Fire Island’s lerary history follows an all too faiar pattern, prised as is of whe gay male thors. But more than this, the readily available arc of Fire Island’s lerary history follows an all too faiar pattern, prised as is of whe gay male thors. In her semal study Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years Ameri’s First Gay and Lbian Town, anthropologist Esther Newton intifi the troublg stratifitns wh the island’s muny.

Even though, Newton wr, there was a growg sense the 1960s that “sexual orientatn nstuted a broad and pellg mon inty more important than the tegori of class, race, ethnicy, and genr, ” many of the whe gay and lbian gatekeepers of Cherry Grove were “spic and often disdaful” of other social groups and “did not value diversy for s own sake—que the oppose.