Ahead of a new exhibn at Kapp Kapp gallery, photographer Stanley Stellar remisc about gay life at the much-mythologised New York piers the 70s and 80s
Contents:
- A LOST UTOPIA: STANLEY STELLAR’S PORTRAS AT NEW YORK’S “GAY PIERS”
- HE CAPTURED A CLANSTE GAY CULTURE AMID THE DERELICT PIERS
A LOST UTOPIA: STANLEY STELLAR’S PORTRAS AT NEW YORK’S “GAY PIERS”
* gay piers *
By the 1960s, the massive piers along Manhattan’s Hudson River wateront that projected to the water stood largely abandoned and easily accsible om Greenwich Village, which gay men were begng to take over. In the ’70s and ’80s, the piers beme a popular spot for gay men to sunbathe naked beneath huge murals by artists like Gtav “Tava” Von Will. What this space lacked fort and ameni for timate liaisons, ma up for by providg the anonymy gay men required at the time to survive.
For over a century, the Greenwich Village wateront along the Hudson River, cludg the Christopher Street Pier at Wt 10th and Wt Streets, has been a statn for the LGBT muny that has evolved om a place for cisg and sex for gay men to an important safe haven for a margalized queer muny – mostly queer homels youth of lor.
HE CAPTURED A CLANSTE GAY CULTURE AMID THE DERELICT PIERS
By World War I, the area had bee a popular cisg area for gay men, and by the 1930s the openg of the elevated Miller (Wt Si) Highway (now molished) cut through the area makg more of a backwater. The ncentratn of men, numero bars and wareho, and nighttime isolatn tablished the wateront as one of the ma centers for gay life that thrived well after World War II. This enabled the area to reta s populary for gay men to cise and have sex at night.
Around the time of the June 1969 Stonewall uprisg, Christopher Street beme an important gay thoroughfare and, th, the ma rridor to the wateront. The dilapidated stctur – cludg Pier 45 (known as the Christopher Street Pier) oppose Wt 10th Street, and piers 46, 48, and 51 – were reappropriated as a statn for gay men to sunbathe naked, cise, and have public sex by the early 1970s. Gay bars replaced former wateront taverns on the wtern end of Christopher Street and adjacent blocks.
Six of the 14 buildgs the adjacent New York Cy Weehawken Street Historic District hoed gay bars om the early 1970s to the prent, cludg the lotn of the former Ramrod. The ground floor of the former Keller Hotel (Barrow and Wt Streets) hoed the Keller Bar, which was reputed to be the olst gay “leather bar” the cy om 1956 to 1998. Many of those plac that were seamen’s bars and longshoremen’s bars beme gay bars.