Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places

This sprawling, unique visual history of New York City’s queer spaces documents the evolution of Manhattan’s dynamic landscape over the course of a century, spanning from 1920 to 2020.

New York’s LGBTQ+ history is everywhere, but rarely is it visibly documented. Aside from current venues and a handful of landmark plaques, important queer spaces from the city’s past have otherwise been forgotten about, or remain entirely hidden. This multifaceted book joyfully and poignantly explores a century of LGBTQ+ gathering spaces across Manhattan through hundreds of historic photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, magazine spreads, and more.  Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places (Prestel, April 29, 2025), is a dazzling illustrated history of the city’s most fabled queer locales as chronicled by author and native New Yorker Marc Zinaman. Zinaman’s carefully researched, engaging text includes first-person accounts and little-known facts that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking. From 1920s bathhouses, drag balls, and the ascent of homophobia during World War II, to the protests and parades of the 1960s and 1970s to the horror of AIDS; from the vibrant nightlife scene of the 1990s, to the rise of geosocial dating apps, every major milestone of LGBTQ+ social history is thoughtfully documented. The result is a testament to the endurance of queer culture, and an important contribution to its preservation and celebration.

The Stonewall Inn. Studio 54. The Continental Baths. Paradise Garage. Lucky Cheng’s: The names alone evoke intoxicating images of New York’s legendary LGBTQ+ culture, activism, and community long after many of these legendary spaces have closed. But few have been landmarked, while many have gone lost or forgotten — until now. With Queer Happened Here, Zinaman crafts a fascinating look at the evolution of queer culture in Manhattan between 1920–2020, seamlessly weaving photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, and magazine spreads with first person stories and compelling research into a richly layered living history.

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Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places by Marc Zinaman

With a foreword from Miss Peppermint

Hardcover, 304 pages, 21,0 x 27,0 cm, 8.3 x 10.6 in, 400 color illustrations

Publishing Date: April 29, 2025

Pre-Order a Copy Here

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