While enrolled in the UC Berkeley School of Law in the early 1990s, Roger Doughty spent countless hours studying at Cafe Flore, a beloved restaurant and gathering space at the corner of Noe and Market streets in San Francisco's LGBTQ Castro district. He was back there Friday morning at what is now seafood restaurant Fisch & Flore to celebrate city leaders finding a new site for the GLBT Historical Society's museum and archival center.
As the Bay Area Reporter was first to exclusively report September 26, the city is purchasing the adjacent Market & Noe Center at 2280 Market Street on behalf of the LGBTQ preservationist group. It brings to an end a 20-year-long effort by local elected leaders to find a location for what will become the country's first freestanding LGBTQ history museum.
Many had called for it to be somewhere in the Castro. Those in attendance at Friday's celebration to officially announce the location all told the B.A.R. they are ecstatic with where it will be located.
"I think the site is fantastic," said Doughty, a gay man who is now president of Horizons Foundation, the LGBTQ philanthropic organization that supports Bay Area nonprofits and service providers like the historical society. "This corner for so long has been a gathering place and crossroads for the community. To have the museum a forever thing situated right here is so symbolic and so fitting, it is marvelous."
He told the B.A.R. that "it would be really hard to find a better place than this."
Drag queen Juanita MORE! agreed. Her second apartment she lived in after moving to San Francisco was nearby at 64 Beaver Street, which she rented in 1983 at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
It would be another five years before the family that has owned the property where the LGBTQ museum is going would construct on the site the 30,000 square foot, two-story modernist shopping center once home to Tower Records. And it would 36 years later when MORE! made the historical society the beneficiary of her Pride 2019 fundraising party that netted the nonprofit $115,000.
"I am thrilled," MORE! told the B.A.R. about what will become the new home for the museum and the archival collection that she has donated to over the years.
She has given the historical society artwork, historic materials, and several of her dresses. With 5,000 outfits made for her over the years by Mr. David, MORE! suggested there would now be room for the historical society to accept additional gowns from her closet.
"This is perfect. It helps revitalize the neighborhood and makes the Castro more queer," she said.
Castro Merchants Association President Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally whose family has long owned Cliff's Variety on the 400 block of Castro Street (she is now co-owner), told the B.A.R. she is pleased to see the LGBTQ museum will remain a tourist draw in the neighborhood. For years the historical society has operated a small museum in the Castro, which is currently on 18th Street just up from Castro Street.
"It is absolutely huge," Asten Bennett said in regard to the impact the larger museum and archival center will have for the neighborhood and its businesses. "It creates another reason for people to come to the Castro, to explore, and to stay here. We all depend on tourists embracing our history and helping to preserve it."
On Tuesday, Mayor London Breed, who in 2021 had committed $12.5 million toward the LGBTQ museum project, and gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman will introduce the legislation to finalize the sale of the property to the city. The Board of Supervisors is expected to approve the $11.6 million deal before their Thanksgiving break, as the sale needs to be completed by November 30.
"The issue will be unanimously and happily unanimously approved by the full board to give the GLBT Historical Society the home they have long needed and deserved to interpret the incredible history this city needs to enshrine and celebrate," predicted Board President Aaron Peskin when asked Friday by the B.A.R. if he foresaw any issues in the 11 supervisors signing off on the deal. "It is an inextricable part of who we are."
(Peskin and Breed are running for mayor in November's election, as is District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí.)
Once the purchase is complete, then the city will hammer out a lease agreement with the historical society, and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, a real estate organization that works with local nonprofit arts and culture organizations. It should be finalized in early 2025.
A $5.5 million allocation from the state, secured by gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) who lives nearby the shopping center, will be used to help the historical society prepare the vacant second floor space that is a little over 11,000 square feet for use as a museum. Tom DeCaigny, a gay man who formerly led the San Francisco Arts Commission as its cultural affairs director, told the B.A.R. he hopes the financial support given to the project by the city and state becomes a model replicated elsewhere for similar cultural institutions.
"It is a beautiful day, just gorgeous, and this has been a long time coming," said DeCaigny, who is now a program officer in performing arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. "I couldn't imagine a better physical location for the GLBT Historical Society."
Long term, the historical society will need to launch a capital campaign to raise the money it will need to expand into the ground floor commercial spaces when the current tenants' leases expire. The plan is for the city to transfer ownership of the property at some point to the historical society. But first, it needs to move into the second floor of the building.
Ani Rivera, a member of the nonprofit's board who chairs its real estate committee, told the B.A.R. it will likely be 12 to 18 months before it activates the new space and opens the doors to the public.
"I think it is a strategic and well timed out project," said Rivera, a Chicanx lesbian who lives in the city and joined the board two years ago largely to work on finding the new museum site. "The space is already here. We want to make sure we are good neighbors and are being present here."
Rivera told the B.A.R. the organization has been "blessed" in securing the new site. It comes as it prepares to mark its 39th anniversary at its annual gala Reunion '24 October 19.
"We feel it is time for us to have a permanent home," said Rivera.
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