Manhattan phrase

New York City, New York, US, 2013.

14th Street in Manhattan, New York City, can be seen as a border between worlds. It’s been referred to by some as a border between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan or the northern boundary of Downtown. It was also home to many queer spaces over time including gay clubs, queer theatre, and meeting points for gay rights groups. Manhattan Phrase illuminates the heritage of twelve sites along 14th Street using virtual forms accessed through augmented reality.

 

LOCATION

Manhattan Phrase was a sequence of twelve augmented reality works extending along twelve sites on 14th Street including:

  1. 500 West 14th Street

  2. 210 West 14th Street

  3. 148 West 14th Street

  4. 105-109 West 14th Street

  5. 69 West 14th Street

  6. 71-73 East 14th Street

  7. 56 East 14th Street

  8. 110 East 14th Street

  9. 114 East 14th Street

  10. Corner of 14th Street and Irving Place

  11. 140 East 14th Street

  12. Corner of 14th Street and 3rd Avenue

 

LUMEN I (40.742258, -74.008509)

This work was sited at 500 West 14th Street where The Anvil operated from 1974-1985, a gay BDSM after-hours sex club.

 

LUMEN II (40.738795, -74.000688)

This work was sited at 210 West 14th Street.

 

LUMEN III (40.738177, -73.999164)

This work was sited at 148 West 14th Street.

 

LUMEN IV (40.737755, -73.997383)

This work was sited at 105-109 West 14th Street.

 

LUMEN V (40.737714, -73.996632)

This work was sited at 69 West 14th Street where Alternate U (also known as Alternate University) operated, described as an "anti-establishment university sponsored by the city's more radical forces" (Los Angeles Advocate, October 1969). The first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was held at Alternate U in 1969 as were subsequent GLF social and political gatherings. The GLF mobilised in 1969 after a police raid and subsequent riot at the Stonewall Inn.

 

LUMEN VI (40.735682, -73.992351)

This work was sited at 71-73 East 14th Street where Victoria Woodhull delivered her speech on "free love" in 1871. It was a concept considered a "historical predecessor of the radical critique of sexuality notably carried on by feminist and gay liberation movements" (Public Broadcasting Service, 2017). She stated "Yes, I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere" (Time Magazine, 2019).

 

LUMEN VII (40.734885, -73.990581)

This work was sited at 56 East 14th Street where Oscar Wilde's first play, "Vera; or, The Nihilists", was performed for the first time in 1883. "The political plot of Oscar Wilde’s first play Vera, or the Nihilists (1880), on the other hand, makes no explicit reference to homosexuality. Yet the relevance of the topic is suggested not simply by the theoretically weak but probably inescapable biographical association to be found in the fact of Wilde’s authorship, but more importantly by the play’s constant interrogation of the themes of secrecy, mask-wearing, and the double life - all indissociable from male homosexuality to the late-nineteenth-century imagination" (Counter, A., 2011).

 

LUMEN VIII (40.73421, -73.989004)

This work was sited at 110 East 14th Street where SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) held their birthday party in 1983. Later that year it turned into The Union Club, advertised as "New York's first gay entertainment complex". This then changed to The College Bar, a gay bar active in 1984.

 

LUMEN IX (40.734202, -73.988972)

This work was sited at 114 East 14th Street where an adult store called "14th Street DVD Center" opened in 2005 (and is now permanently closed). It was a gay sex on site venue with "buddy booths" upstairs.

 

LUMEN X (40.734039, -73.988854)

This work was sited on the corner of 14th Street and Irving Place.

 

LUMEN XI (40.738193, -73.998767)

This work was sited at 140 East 14th Street where The Palladium opened as a nightclub in 1985, converted by Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Every Sunday it catered to an almost all gay audience with an invitation poster saying "Everyday is gay pride day". The club featured a commissioned work by Keith Haring, a mural behind the dancefloor. Haring also celebrated his birthday at the venue. Later it was billed as "The Gay Man's Pleasure Dome".

 

LUMEN XII (40.733405, -73.987191)

This work was sited on the corner of 14th Street and 3rd Avenue where Carmelita's Reception House was on the second floor (above the former Disco Donut). It was a bar that held parties for lesbians and operated from the late 70's to the early 90's when it closed.

 

REFERENCES

  1. Lige, & Jack. (1969, October). New York Notes. Los Angeles Advocate, p. 6.

  2. Goldman, E. (2017, December 22). Free love. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-free-love/

  3. Bronski, M. (2019, June 27). The radical woman whose 19th century ideas still undergird the LGBTQ-rights movement. Time. https://time.com/5612564/free-love-victoria-woodhull/

  4. Counter, A. (2011). One of Them: Homosexuality and Anarchism in Wilde and Zola. Comparative Literature, 64(4), 345–365.

  5. The Union Club. (1983, June 15). The Connection, p. 4.

  6. Von Rittern, H. (2013, June 3). Mondays on Memory Lane: The Palladium Disco 1986 "Every Day is Gay Pride Day". https://newyorkcityinthewitofaneye.com/tag/palladium-disco/