The site where a transgender uprising against police harassment took place in San Francisco 59 years ago has become the first property granted federal landmark status specifically for its connection to the transgender movement in the U.S. It is also now on the California Register of Historical Resources.
On January 27 the building at 101 Taylor Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Tenderloin District building was listed without fanfare last month, with the news of the national recognition reaching local advocates earlier this week.
The address was where one night in August 1966 an angry drag queen patronizing Gene Compton's Cafeteria housed in a ground floor commercial space reportedly threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of a police officer as he tried to arrest her without a warrant. The exact date of the altercation has been lost to time. But the incident 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.
"As far as I know, it's the first landmark on the national registry listed specifically for its connection to transgender community history," said Stryker. "There is Stonewall and sites connected to individual people like Pauli Murray, who was nonbinary. But this is the first thing put on the register specifically because of its connection to the history of the transgender movement."
Coming amid the Trump White House's assault on the rights of trans youth and adults in recent weeks, the Compton's listing is "something to celebrate," said Shayne Watson, a lesbian Bay Area-based historian and historic preservation planner who had highlighted the property's trans historical significance in a city-commissioned report she co-wrote over a decade ago.
"It is a relief, though, as we didn't think nominations were still going to be accepted by the keeper," said Watson.
She was referring to 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. As the B.A.R. had noted in 2023, Frear determined the initial application for the Compton's site listing was too limited in scope. In addition to the building, she requested the application be revised to also include the immediate outdoor areas where the protest 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, the history of which is now preserved via the National Park Service's Stonewall National Monument.
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 U.S. parks agency.
In October 2022, the California State Historical Resources Commission recommended the Compton's site be recognized on the federal register. Subsequently, Levesque, who is queer and uses they/them pronouns, took a job as an architectural historian with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.
Two years ago, Levesque had told the Bay Area Reporter they would resubmit their listing request for Compton's to address the additions Frear had requested. Last summer and fall they did not respond to the B.A.R.'s inquiries on when they would do so, and the state's Office of Historic Preservation had told the B.A.R. it was not in receipt of a revised application.
In early December, Stryker said she had reached out to Levesque after being asked herself by several architectural historians about the status of the Compton's listing on the national register. Levesque, who had used Stryker's extensive research into the uprising for their initial submittal, responded that they had sent in the paperwork and were waiting to hear word from the federal office.
"It did come as a surprise. It had kind of languished," said Stryker, who learned earlier this week that Compton's listing had been finalized.
Declaring "finally, geez!" via a social media post, Levesque announced they had "received word from Keeper staff that your revised nomination was approved." Screenshots of their post then began circling among advocates in San Francisco.
Stryker called Levesque the "driving force" to seeing the listing come to fruition. She also credited Chandra Laborde with the TurkxTaylor Initiative and Jupiter Peraza, formerly with the city's Transgender District, for also championing having the Compton's site receive federal recognition.
"Maddie did all of the heavy lifting," noted Stryker, adding, "I am thrilled this is finally happening. I am gratified my work was useful but my hats are off to the people who did the actual work of shepherding it through the process."
California State Historical Resources Commission spokesperson Jorge Moreno told the B.A.R. February 7 that Levesque sent the revised nomination to the State Historic Preservation Officer on November 22 last year. It was then returned to the keeper of the register in D.C. on December 10.
"As there was no change in boundary or criteria, the nomination was not reheard by the Commission," Moreno explained, referring to the state oversight body, in an emailed reply.
Last Friday, January 31, Compton's Cafeteria at 101-102 Taylor St. was among two sites in California included on the weekly list of actions taken by the National Register of Historic Places. While the listing affords more public significance on the building, it does not protect it from being demolished or significantly altered.
The private company GEO Group is the current owner of the property. It operates a residential reentry facility there for people recently released from prison.
There is talk of having the city landmark the entire building, which would provide it a modicum of protection, as any proposals for the site would trigger greater scrutiny of the plans by city planning staff. In 2022, San Francisco officials landmarked the intersection of Turk and Taylor in front of the building in recognition of the uprising by the LGBTQ Compton's patrons.
The city's 307th landmark also included portions of the structure's exterior walls containing the commercial space that had housed the Compton's eatery, 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.
To learn more about the history of the Compton's Cafeteria site, see Stryker's "At the Crossroads of Turk and Taylor: Resisting carceral power in San Francisco's Tenderloin District" that appeared in the October 2021 issue of Places Journal.
Updated 2/7/25 with comment from the state parks department.
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