How New York’s LGBTQ+ Center Became a Home for Community Groups

At 208 West 13th Street in the West Village, a former school building has become one of New York City’s most recognizable LGBTQ+ community institutions. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center—widely known as The Center—provides services to LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and people in nearby communities.

The organization’s headquarters occupy a historic building in Lower Manhattan that previously housed an elementary school and the High School for Food Trades. Before The Center moved in, the property was associated with the Food and Maritime Trades High School. In December 1983, New York City’s Board of Estimate approved selling the building to Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center, Inc. for $1.5 million.

The purchase created a permanent base for groups working across several areas of community life. According to the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, the building’s first tenants included Partnership for The Homeless, Community Health Project, Friends of the Earth, S.A.G.E., Metropolitan Community Church and the Media Network. These early occupants reflected the range of organizations that used the facility—not only LGBTQ+ groups, but also projects focused on health, housing, faith, advocacy and communications.

During its first year, 60 groups met regularly at the Center. By 2007, that number had grown to more than 300 groups calling the building home. The change illustrates how the site developed from a newly established community facility into a major shared gathering place for New York’s LGBTQ+ network.

The Center also served as a temporary home for Harvey Milk High School in 1985. That chapter connected the building’s community role with LGBTQ+-focused education, alongside the organization’s broader function as a place where groups could meet and organize.

Today, The Center remains a nonprofit serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population of New York City and surrounding communities. It is also a member of the Equality Federation. Its West Village address places the organization within a neighborhood long associated with LGBTQ+ life, while the building’s institutional history reflects a more specific story: a former school repurposed as shared infrastructure for community organizations.

The Center’s history is therefore not only the story of one nonprofit. It is also a record of how community space can support many kinds of work at once. From its earliest tenants to the hundreds of groups using the building by 2007, the organization has provided a physical address for connection, services and organizing in New York City.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian,_Gay,_Bisexual_%26_Transgender_Community_Center The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://web.archive.org/web/20110727235152/http://daily.gay.com/hot_topics/2011/02/michael-lucas-calls-for-boycott-of-lgbt-center.html - https://web.archive.org/web/20110529065421/http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/26/3087900/gay-community-center-criticized-for-renting-space-to-anti-israel-group - https://gaycenter.org/community/library - https://gaycenter.org/ - https://gaycenter.org/family-youth/ - https://archive.org/details/urbanactionnetwo00lune Image rights Original illustrative artwork created from story keywords. It is not a documentary photograph.