An effort to obtain federal landmarking for the site where a transgender uprising against police harassment took place in San Francisco 58 years ago remains pending two years after state preservationists had supported doing so. Revisions to the initial application requested last year by federal officials have yet to be submitted by the applicant.
While the exact date has been lost to time, one night in August 1966 an angry drag queen patronizing Gene Compton's Cafeteria at 101 Taylor Street reportedly threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of a police officer as he tried to arrest her without a warrant. It sparked a riot between trans and queer patrons of the 24-hour diner and cops, as detailed in the 2005 documentary "Screaming Queens" by transgender scholar and historian Susan Stryker, Ph.D.
In 2022, San Francisco officials landmarked the intersection of Turk and Taylor in front of the building that had housed the eatery. The city's 307th landmark also included portions of the structure's exterior walls containing the commercial space, specifically the lower 11 feet of the facade extending north 52 feet from the corner of Turk Street and 40 feet west from the corner of Taylor Street.
Local leaders were also supportive of seeing 101 Taylor Street be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In October 2022, the California State Historical Resources Commission recommended the Compton's site be recognized on the federal register.
Yet Sherry A. Frear, the chief and deputy keeper of the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program for cultural resources, partnerships, and science, determined the application for the Compton's site was too limited in scope. She requested it be revised to include both the building and the immediate outdoor areas where the protest also took place.
Frear also wanted to see more information about how the incident that took place at Compton's tied into the fight for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. in order to designate it as having a national level of significance. It occurred three years prior to the more famous riots at New York gay bar the Stonewall Inn considered to have kick-started the modern fight for LGBTQ equality.
Madison Levesque had written the national registry request for Compton's as part of their thesis project for the master's in public history they earned in 2022 from California State University, Sacramento. At the time of the submission Levesque had been working as a cultural landscape inventory steward for the National Park Service.
But since last year Levesque, who is queer and uses they/them pronouns, has worked as an architectural historian with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. As they had told the Bay Area Reporter last year, Levesque agreed with the suggested changes and had hoped to resubmit the listing request for Compton's last October.
"I was very happy to see it wasn't fully rejected," Levesque had told the B.A.R. "I wasn't familiar with returned nominations."
A year later, however, Levesque has yet to send a revised listing request to the state preservation office, as the statewide commission needs to review it and possibly revote on it before sending it back to Frear for final approval. Levesque hasn't responded to the B.A.R.'s interview requests in recent months about what their timeframe is for submitting the amended application for listing 101 Taylor Street on the federal register.
The state's Office of Historic Preservation has told the B.A.R. it is not in receipt of a revised application. Nor does it list the Compton's site among the pending nominations currently before the statewide commission, which meets quarterly and will hold its last meeting of 2024 on November 7.
District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the Tenderloin and its Transgender District where Compton's had operated, had sponsored the legislation securing the city landmark for the site. He told the B.A.R. this week he remains hopeful of seeing it also receive national recognition as an historic site.
"Although it is disappointing that the Turk and Taylor intersection has not yet been federally recognized, I will continue to support the community in advocating for its inclusion on the National Register," said Preston, a straight ally. "The events at Compton's Cafeteria are more than a reflection of the resilience of San Francisco's queer and trans communities — they are a decisive milestone in the broader LGBTQ rights movement."
Shayne Watson, a lesbian Bay Area-based historian and historic preservation planner, recently told the B.A.R. she had reached out to Levesque over the summer to check in about the Compton's federal listing and had heard back they'd been swamped with work and hadn't much time to tackle it. This month, Watson told the B.A.R. if Levesque needs assistance with it, she or someone else locally would be willing to help them, but she hadn't made a formal request to Levesque about doing so.
Jorge Moreno, a spokesperson for the state's Office of Historic Preservation, told the B.A.R. anyone other than the original nominator can seek to amend a nomination. If that were to happen with the Compton's federal listing request, then the agency would ask the original nominator, Levesque, if they are willing to accept the amendments.
"Additionally, at any time, anyone can submit a new nomination for the property, under the same criteria or a new one," noted Moreno.
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