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The LGBT Community Center National History Archive is a community-based archive that collects, preserves, and makes available to the public the documentation of LGBTQ+ lives and organizations centered in and around New York. Through our collections, we enable the stories and experiences of New York’s LGBTQ+ people to be told with historical depth and understanding.
Materials in the collections run from as early as 1878 to the present day, and are made up of a variety of media, including paper, scrapbooks, photographs, audio and video recordings, pamphlets and printed materials, posters and born-digital records. Holdings consist of personal papers created by individuals and records of organizations; periodicals (newspapers and magazines); organization files (printed matter created by organizations for their membership bases) and the organizational records of The Center.
The Center Archive is open to all researchers, by appointment. Please search our collections to focus your research needs. Appointments are currently scheduled Thursdays 12-5:45 p.m. To make an appointment, or for more information about archive resources and donating materials, email archive@gaycenter.org.
The Center Archive is able to fulfill reproduction and licensing requests, depending on the collection and intended use. Click below to review policies and fee schedules, and to submit a request. If you’re not able to conduct onsite research to make selections, we recommend browsing digitized material on view at Google Arts & Culture.
The Center has played a tremendous role in the nurturing and growth of the LGBTQ+ community in NYC. View our interactive timeline to get a glimpse of how we have supported the happiness and health of our community since 1983.
View Interactive Timeline