January 22, 2025 • 36 mins
Ken Lustbader is a historic preservationist and co-director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project — which has identified nearly 500 historically queer sites in New York. He reflects on how becoming a historian was motivated by living through the loss of the AIDS Crisis.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I was coming out and living through the worst period
of the AIDS epidemic, and then I happened to have
a boyfriend at the time who was diagnosed HIV positive
in eighty eight, and that was devastating. So I always
equated it to my dad being this World War II
veteran who got shot in the war and survived, and
(00:29):
I just remember thinking, this is my own war. In fact,
on my desk I have a little oh bit from
someone who died at ninety one, just as a reminder like, oh,
this is real, and that those memories and those people
(00:50):
their lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't
know that I was a historian. I didn't know that
I was interested in history, but those events were important
to me informing my understanding of memory being such a
powerful tool by understanding the past.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Ken LUs Vader, a historic
(01:37):
preservationist who co directs the groundbreaking NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
We'll learn how living through the AIDS crisis inspired him
to preserve queer history and how knowing our own history
can have a profound impact on erasing the shame that
many of us queer people carry. From My Heart Podcast,
I'm Jordan and Solve and this is about he Loved Back.
(02:25):
In our first episode, I interviewed a man named Martin
who was actually at the Stonewall riots in nineteen sixty nine.
He talked about how the night of the riot was
a build up of rage toward the cops, anger for
constantly being harassed. He recalled in vivid detail the queen
who ripped a parking meter out of the ground in fury,
(02:49):
and another who set the place on fire. I sort
of knew the history of Stonewall before interviewing him, but
not in this kind of detail. I'd been a stone
Wall before but never really thought much of it. But
I found myself there last fall for the first time
since Martin's episode, and this time felt different. As I
(03:11):
was leaving and walking to the subway, I looked back
for a moment, and I got a rush. I didn't
fully process the feeling in the moment, but looking back,
what I felt was connection, feeling as though I was
a part of something bigger than myself. I couldn't believe
(03:32):
that what I was staring at was the same little
two story RedBrick building with arches that Martin stared at
fifty five years ago the night of the riot. The
work of my next guest, Ken Lusbader aims to give
that feeling of connection to queer people all around the country.
He's the co director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project,
(03:56):
a website that has meticulously documented the play in New
York City where queer history happened, dating back to the
sixteen hundreds. He and his team have identified nearly five
hundred sites, and all of them have detailed information on
exactly what happened. But as a child, Ken had no
(04:17):
idea that preserving queer history would be part of his story.
So why don't we start at the beginning. I'm curious
to know what your aspirations were as a kid, and
what your personality was like when you were younger too.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well, my aspirations as a kid, and my personality sort
of were grounded in a nineteen sixties formation of the
nuclear family post World War Two with that's when you
grew up. Yeah, and my dad was a World War
Two veteran. My mom at that point was a homemaker
who had been a nurse. Both of them grew up
(05:02):
in Brooklyn, and it was classic Jewish upbringing where I
was like the best little boy. Every report card in
you know, elementary school was a plus for conduct and
you know, conscientiousness and things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Were you quiet as a child?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I was obedient. I was well behaved. Everybody knew. Like
the Lusbader boys, I have an older brother, where like
the nice kids, you follow the roles. Oh yeah, yeah right,
I mean, and if if I didn't, I would go
home and tell my father and mother, like, oh, I'd
tried a beer tonight for the first time. So I
was very compliant. I didn't really know what I wanted
(05:39):
to do because my father had this business that he
started in nineteen fifty three. It was a chain of
shoe stores in New York.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And I was sort of anointed as the second son,
not the first, the oldest, that the second to go
into that family business, and I wanted to be a
good kid.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So what was the moment that you knew you were gay?
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Under ten? I knew something was different that I was
very happy with the mail babysitter who came over to
babysit one night, And I remember specifically, at ten, my
mom took me to an off Broadway production of Mantle
of La Mancha in the East Village and I remember
tracking the course boys guys and picking one that was
(06:29):
to me the best looking and most handsome, and I
remember he had to cut off sort of top, and
just looking at him and being so excited every time
he came back on the stage.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What was the moment when you sort of pieced together
what it would mean to be gay in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
My parents had a subscription to the Public Theater as
well as many other theater companies in the city, and
my mom had heard about this play that was previewing
at the Public called I'll Never Forget her saying it's
called the line or the chorus. She didn't really have
the word or the title correctly. So we drove into
the city and we went to the show at the
(07:09):
Newman theater, and I remember my parents sitting probably five
or six rows behind me, and I was probably in
the fifth row alone, and I think this I was
fourteen at the time, and the show was exhilarating and
the show was remarkable, and in the show, I remember
(07:31):
specifically the character of Mark, who stood stage right wore
a tank top, and I could never forget like looking
at him and sort of tracking him through that show, saying, Oh,
my god, he's the most adorable guy in the world,
and how old were you? Fourteen? And I remembered him
as a character dealing with his homosexuality throughout the sort
(07:54):
of snippets of dialogue he has, and I remember his
monologue and where he talked about performing m Oh my god,
performing at the Jewel Box review and his parents I'm
going to pick him up or I should say, send
(08:15):
them off, and his father telling him, telling the manager
to like take care of my son, And realizing that,
you know, here's my dad and mom, you know, five
or six rows behind me, and knowing that I was
having a unique experience as a gay boy that was
(08:36):
very different from the experience of my parents seeing that show,
and then not knowing that I was having this experience
seeing this kid like struggling with his homosexuality and struggling
with his sort of performance in the Jewel Box review
and having a father say that, And I remember that
(08:58):
I individuated from my fan family in a sense, and
I separated from my family like physically yeah, and just
emotionally that I had like this is my story, this
is I'm going to have to deal with this growing up.
You know, what's my future conversation going to be with
my family when I come out?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So it was such a private personal moment, and it's
interesting to tell that story sort of verbalize it here
because I don't know where that emotion comes from, you know,
fifty years later.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
And that's what art, I think sometimes does, like kind
of brings out things in us that we're not even
sure are there. Sometimes I wonder what it was like
for you to come out in the nineteen seventies or
the eighties. When when did you end up coming out?
And what's that story?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
You know, my sort of coming out story bridge to
the nineteen seventies to nineteen eighties. I again knew I
was gay. I had a gay friend and we would
connect in you know, ninth grade, intimately. That continued through college.
(10:12):
So yeah, I mean, right, that would I don't even
know what we called it then, but I would say
come over, and vice versa. I was having a dream
of my high school friend and I was like, well,
I dreams tell the truth. I'm definitely gay. I have
to grapple with that. And I think I was so
(10:33):
concerned about disappointing people. And I also didn't have the
vocabulary of how to talk about my feelings. While we
were really close intimate family, talking about feelings was not
like the you know, the sort of focus of how
we communicated. You know, there was a there was a
(10:54):
sort of a thread that wove that was woven through
the family of like, don't disappoint anyone.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And so what was it like to come out.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I mean, I have an older brother who's also gay,
and it's just the two of us. So he well
had come out gay to my mom and dad early,
a couple of years earlier. And because I was working
in my family's business, I was in this conundrum, like
how do I deal with this? How do I disappoint them?
My dad asked me. I was driving to the bank
(11:25):
on Queen's Boulevard and my father said to me, like,
you know, your brother came out to me and I'm
putting two and two together, like, you haven't really dated anyone.
What's your story?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Are you gay?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And I thought I was driving him and I was like,
oh god, here it goes yep. So he was wonderful
and said, you know, I love you. Wow, And that's fine.
I'm glad you were honest with me. But he quickly
pivoted and said, how are we going to tell your
(11:58):
mother this? So we waited and then we went out
for dinner one night in a diner in Queen's Boulevard and.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It was like an ally, oh yeah, he was great.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
He was really wonderful. Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So you study economics in college and then when you
come home you join the family business. What is the
story of how you go from being in the family business?
So then sort of being interested in architectural preservation and history.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, I went right into the family business. It was
sort of what was on the roster for me to do.
I didn't have a voice or even sort of the
understanding of the expansiveness of my own mind to look
at who am I as an individual and what are
my interests to pursue. So I worked there for probably
(12:53):
just under eight years, with the longing of like doing
something else, but not knowing that I didn't know I
was interested in history per se, but I always love buildings.
I took an architectural history class in college. We were
opening up stores, and I was always going to these
buildings that were on downtown shopping streets in urban areas.
(13:16):
So this was in Patterson, New Jersey. Have we still
have the store there where I remember climbing around the
building and going up to one of the upper floors
that was only accessible through a roof hatch and finding
receipts from the early twentieth century in this building of
the Elbow Shop, and thinking, this is the wildest thing, Like,
(13:37):
there's these receipts here, like and it tells you what
was going on in that building. And I had no
idea that that was called documentation, archival research and primary
sources information in that there's a way to connect, you know,
my curiosity with historic preservation.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Around the time, can discover that spark of passion for preservation.
He was also getting more involved in the gay community
in New York City, making him anxious to explore a
world beyond his family business.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
In nineteen eighty seven, I met my now husband at
a gay men's health crisis Safer Sex seminar and I
went to volunteer. I think he went to meet up
boyfriend and we're still together. However, meeting him was sort
of a big eye opener and revelatory and that I
(14:36):
again went from sort of a more meshed family of
working in a family business to meeting this guy who
was in the world more and who was out and
clearly had an experience of more robust sexual experience than
I did, and also was much more politicized, and he
(14:58):
was my biggest booster of hearing who I was as
a person. And I would say, well, in this family business,
I don't know how to leave. I didn't even know
what to do. I'm too old. I was just on
the cusp of turning twenty six at the time, so
it took a bunch of years. But with his support,
I left the business, but without a plan.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And walk me through a little bit of that tension
between leaving the family business.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I came out to them probably and you know, I
can't remember I had my boyfriend at the time, so
you know, in the mid eighties probably, So that was
one chunk of not following the Jewish child rules no grandchildren.
And then when I was already established, just on the
(15:43):
cusp of being twenty nine and had talked to them
for a great deal of time saying I'm going to
be leaving, I have to leave, my father was quite
upset and you know, we represent one half of this
family business and what does that mean? And you're disappointing him,
you know, son of immigrants, as was my mom, and
(16:04):
I was leaving without a job, without a you know,
a vision, and to him it was just the you know,
the ultimate of you know, taking advantage of sort of
what he created and then abandoning him and leaving him
with this business that he was probably sixty five at
(16:25):
the time, Like what does he do now? How is
this going to work going forward? So it was it
was challenging, and I remember being told, you know, by
my mother how disappointed my father was in me, And
it was painful. And I never forget driving from Queenszelle
over the Williamsburg Bridge the day I left, like, wow,
I did this and I'm still in a whole person.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And so basically you realize that disappointing my parents isn't
going to be the end of the world exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I realized that the disappointment was so ingrained in me
and not other people, that it was really my hurdle
to get over.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In nineteen ninety one, Ken got into Columbia University's prestigious
master's program in historic preservation. By this point, he was
proudly out and even decided to write his master's thesis
on some of New York's gay history. At the time,
it was one of the first academic arguments to be
made for preserving gay history. It would go on to
(17:36):
win his department's award at Columbia for Outstanding Thesis that year.
But for Ken, there was something deeper that was driving
him to want to preserve queer history. He was living
through the AIDS crisis, an epidemic that threatened to wipe
out the very existence of the gay community, and with
that all the stories and memories of the community's vibrancy
(18:00):
and strength and power. Faced with this urgency, Ken understood
the importance of preserving queer history before it was gone.
And so you get to Colombia and you decide in
the early nineties to write your thesis on the preservation
(18:23):
of gay history, basically gay historical sites. At the time,
being gay is not very popular, and it's also at
the height of the AIDS epidemics, so there's stigma from
multiple different angles coming at the gay community. What was
it like to write a thesis about something like preservation
(18:46):
of gay history in those days?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I got to Colombia in the fall of ninety one,
and it was in this theory and practice class of
historic preservation where we would talk about Irish American history
and Irish history of the building of New York City
and who the laborers were that built the buildings, who
made the bricks, who worked in the buildings, the slave
you know, quarters or the maids quarters and row houses
(19:13):
and so forth. And it was blowing my mind open
that preservation could talk about cultural, social, and historic moments
in history. So that's what really prompted me to have
a voice saying, well, what about gay and lesbian history,
which was the terminology at that time. I didn't know
(19:34):
anyone writing about this and doing any of this, so
in some ways it was not fleek understood. When I
put my thesis proposal together in ninety two, like what
are you talking about most people think there was no
gay history. There's Stonewall, but there's a rich queer past,
(19:57):
you know, going back to in New York City, commented
in City Hall Park, where men were cruising for men
there up into Walt Whitman in the eighteen fifties through
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Pansy craze in
New York and so forth and so on. So people
(20:17):
discount gay history as more recent. But if it wasn't
for the people who were out and about living their lives,
that wouldn't have led up to post World War II
organizations such as the Managing Society the Data as a
belitist that paved the way for the post Stonewall explosion
of visibility and activism that caught fire across the country.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
What you're saying is you were one of the very
first generations to recognize the value in all of that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I feel fortunate to be part of those first people
that were saying historic preservation can be, for lack of
a better word, exploited to tell LGBTQ history, and by
looking at buildings, one can embed these stories and have
(21:08):
a visceral connection to the past. That's very different than
reading about history or reading about Walt Whitman living in Brooklyn.
You know, you can go to see his house where
he lived for a year. You can see places in
the early twentieth century in New York where there were
you know, tea houses operated by you know, women who
(21:30):
were in homosocial relationships, So that visceral connection is really important.
You had asked the question about, you know, what was
it like at Columbia, What was it like for me?
I mean, for me leaving a family business that you know,
was predicated on following all the rules. I go to
graduate school and have to tell my parents, yeah, I'm
(21:52):
leaving graduate school, graduating, but I'm going to write my
thesis on gay and lesbian history in Greenwich Village. And
I don't know what I'm going to do with that,
and I don't know if I'm putting my future career
in jeopardy by being so out and open about it.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So that was a risk, and I was just gonna
ask that. You know, this is the nineties, like I mentioned,
it's not popular to be gay, and in fact, it's
perfectly legal to fire someone for their job for being gay.
Were you nervous about putting your name on something that
was so obviously and visibly and intentionally queer.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I was nervous when I was writing it and when
I was researching it and feeling that I was in
this program that everybody knew I was gay. But I
had the full support of so many professors, you know,
at Columbia. And then I was also getting connected to
a group in New York called Old GAD, the organization
(22:56):
of Lesbian and Gay architects and Designers, and I connect
with them, and then we put a map together in
ninety four which is probably the first map of historic
LGBT sites documented for New York City ever. Looking back,
so I have to say being part of that community
and being connected and feeling belonging to all GAD and
(23:19):
these professionals who I'm still very connected with now having
their support and awareness gave me pause. I mean, it's
an interesting profession, historic preservation by happenstance. I don't know
why has a disproportionate number of gay men working in it.
So that was a shining moment of like, oh, okay,
(23:40):
you know I'm not alone here, and I have the
support of these people, whether they're doing LGBTQ history or not.
This is who I am. So I connected with those individuals,
which was great.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
It strikes me ken that from the time you come
out to the time that you focus your thesis on
gay preservation of history, to then putting together this very
groundbreaking map in ninety four of all these lgbt historic sites,
(24:11):
it's not that much time in between. It's actually pretty
short in the grand scheme of things, and you're moving
quite quickly to document all of these different sites. And
I wonder if there was an urgency of some kind
that was driving this.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So there was an urgency for me to leave the
family business and figure out my next steps for a
couple of reasons. One was, you know, I was twenty nine,
thirty was looming, and I didn't want to sort of
say I didn't make a move before my thirtieth birthday.
The other part was the AIDS epidemic and sort of
(24:51):
being very aware of it and having friends who were
passing away and dying or suffering, and knowing that life
fleeting and life is precious. My now husband was diagnosed
in eighty eight as HIV positive, so that put pressure
on us as a couple to realize, Wow, we've got
(25:15):
to make plans and we've got to make you know,
opportunities for each other. And it was a time eighty eight,
you know, the trajectory of people surviving was not really great.
So consciously or unconsciously, those were the ingredients that prompted
me to be sort of more political and understand that
(25:37):
I needed to sort of take actions.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You're basically saying that you would become aware, intimately aware
with the fact that life is fleeting and when people die,
oftentimes their history kind of dies with them, and here
you are in the middle of all of this death.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I was coming out through the worst period of the
AIDS epidemic, and that was devastating. So I always equated
it to my dad being this World War two veteran
who got shot in the war and survived and talked
about how awful war was and the loss of people
that he knew and sort of what that meant to him.
(26:22):
And I just remember thinking, you know, I didn't get
drafted into Vietnam. This is my own war. And the
loss of people. Reading the New York Times every day
and seeing who's paid obituaries were there and dying was
something I tracked. In fact, on my desk, I have
(26:43):
a little oh bit from someone who died at ninety one,
just as a reminder like, oh, this is real, this
is impacting me, and those memories and those people their
lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't know
that I was a historian. I didn't know that I
(27:06):
was interested in history, but those events were important to
me in forming my understanding of memory being such a
powerful tool by understanding the past.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
After Ken graduated from Columbia in nineteen ninety three, he
went on to serve in hugely important historic preservation projects,
including the National Nine to eleven Memorial Museum and New
York Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites program. But in twenty fifteen,
Ken returned to his passion of preserving queer history and
(27:49):
co founded the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Today, it
has almost five hundred sites identified, documenting the community's contributions
to the arts, nightlife, business, government, healthcare, activism, and much more.
Its purpose is to connect queer people with the sense
of their own history and their own heritage. So tell
(28:14):
me about the LGBT Historic Sites and your proudest accomplishment
with that.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
So the NYCLGBT Historic Sites Project is an effort of
myself and two other co founders that was launched officially
in twenty fifteen to document historic and cultural sites in
the Five Bars of New York City. So I would
say the proudest moment or the proudest achievement with the
(28:44):
project is sustaining it for ten years as an official project,
documenting almost five hundred sites to date, been making that
invisible history visible, but really having people react to it
and having people reduce their own isolation and shame by
(29:04):
knowing that there's this past and that it's really helping
people explore their own past and their own history. So
by having our cultural map and keeping it unerased and
making it visible, there's no way people can say you
weren't here. I think Another part is, obviously Stonewall is
(29:26):
so well recognized. So I was involved in the designation
of the Stonewall National Monument, working with groups and advocates
going down to DC. And why that was so important
is memorializing that for American history by the federal government
as a national park, as a national monument, and having
(29:48):
people stand in front of Stonewall and know that that's
what people saw. You're standing where other people stood on
the night of the uprising. You're time traveling backwards and
seeing what they saw as a building, as a street,
as a configuration of streetscape. So you can understand the
(30:08):
past better. It's not just ephemeral or nebulous. You're grounded
in concrete reality and can connect with those elders who
pushed back on police suppression, on entrapment, on societal construction
of a police state that created a world where you
(30:32):
could not live your full, rich life. And now you can,
hopefully to a certain degree better than you did in
nineteen sixty nine, and that that's going to inform how
you sort of react to what's going to be pushback now.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I wonder why you think it's important for young people
to know their history. Ever since I was in high school,
I mean, I always loved history, but I remember growing
up there was always and there still is a connotation
that it's boring, And I wonder why you think it's not.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So you grow up as an LGBTQ kid in various
forms with a level of shame because you're different. So
by having that past explored and interrogated and put on
view through buildings and resources and landscapes and street scapes.
You're allowing people to understand they're part of a connective tissue.
(31:31):
They're part of a community, they're part of a continuity,
and they're part of an identity. And I think the
word belonging comes up because you can look at our website,
you can research sites, and you could feel that you
belong to a history. You can belong to Stonewall, you
can belong to where Charlotte Charlock lived in Brooklyn Heights.
(31:57):
She came here in the nineteen forty issue, was one
of the first three documented people to have gender reassignment
surgery in nineteen twenty eight to nineteen thirty two in Berlin,
and you could say, oh wow, that's really early for
history of transistory, and not feel that you are paving
(32:18):
the way on your own. You could really feel connected.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
For so many of us that grow up queer, we
feel this sense of isolation and loneliness. And what you're
saying is that history and historical sites in particular, they
offer us the opposite of that, which is a grounding
(32:44):
to something bigger than us, a connection.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Again, knowing that there were people before you that live
their authentic lives that buck the system that were count
cultural counter to expectations of sexuality, gender expression, to employment.
(33:09):
That allows people today to say I am not alone.
So to me, it's not just about history, it's about
social justice. It's about making sure people are connected and authentic,
and also activists make sure people see what's going on
(33:32):
and see what happened in the past, to make sure
that their lives are reflected in the narrative.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
I want to end off our interview Ken talking about you.
At the beginning of our story, you presented yourself as
this kid who was really good at following rules, and
by the end of it, I sort of am able
to piece together that you couldn't possibly make any of
(34:03):
this happen without breaking a lot of the rules and
disappointing people along the way and shattering a lot of
the expectations that people had of you, which is a
journey I think so many queer people share, and I
wonder what that sort of means to you and how
history and historical preservation is kind of tied into that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Growing up I, as we discussed, you know, I was
a very obedient kid. I didn't really have a voice
to have an opinion, and I'm shocked today that I
have this voice that's so public and passionate. I mean,
I'm talking to you here, I can't shut up. I'm
(34:50):
pushing the boundaries of historic preservation and LGBTQ history, and wow,
we're really paving the way for a movement of looking
at LGBTQ history as a valuable asset and contribution to
American history.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gounsolves. New
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(35:34):
We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive
producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil. Original music
by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis.
If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and
(35:56):
follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you for listening,
I'll see you next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I was coming out and living through the worst period
of the AIDS epidemic, and then I happened to have
a boyfriend at the time who was diagnosed HIV positive
in eighty eight, and that was devastating. So I always
equated it to my dad being this World War II
veteran who got shot in the war and survived, and
(00:29):
I just remember thinking, this is my own war. In fact,
on my desk I have a little oh bit from
someone who died at ninety one, just as a reminder like, oh,
this is real, and that those memories and those people
(00:50):
their lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't
know that I was a historian. I didn't know that
I was interested in history, but those events were important
to me informing my understanding of memory being such a
powerful tool by understanding the past.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Ken LUs Vader, a historic
(01:37):
preservationist who co directs the groundbreaking NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
We'll learn how living through the AIDS crisis inspired him
to preserve queer history and how knowing our own history
can have a profound impact on erasing the shame that
many of us queer people carry. From My Heart Podcast,
I'm Jordan and Solve and this is about he Loved Back.
(02:25):
In our first episode, I interviewed a man named Martin
who was actually at the Stonewall riots in nineteen sixty nine.
He talked about how the night of the riot was
a build up of rage toward the cops, anger for
constantly being harassed. He recalled in vivid detail the queen
who ripped a parking meter out of the ground in fury,
(02:49):
and another who set the place on fire. I sort
of knew the history of Stonewall before interviewing him, but
not in this kind of detail. I'd been a stone
Wall before but never really thought much of it. But
I found myself there last fall for the first time
since Martin's episode, and this time felt different. As I
(03:11):
was leaving and walking to the subway, I looked back
for a moment, and I got a rush. I didn't
fully process the feeling in the moment, but looking back,
what I felt was connection, feeling as though I was
a part of something bigger than myself. I couldn't believe
(03:32):
that what I was staring at was the same little
two story RedBrick building with arches that Martin stared at
fifty five years ago the night of the riot. The
work of my next guest, Ken Lusbader aims to give
that feeling of connection to queer people all around the country.
He's the co director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project,
(03:56):
a website that has meticulously documented the play in New
York City where queer history happened, dating back to the
sixteen hundreds. He and his team have identified nearly five
hundred sites, and all of them have detailed information on
exactly what happened. But as a child, Ken had no
(04:17):
idea that preserving queer history would be part of his story.
So why don't we start at the beginning. I'm curious
to know what your aspirations were as a kid, and
what your personality was like when you were younger too.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well, my aspirations as a kid, and my personality sort
of were grounded in a nineteen sixties formation of the
nuclear family post World War Two with that's when you
grew up. Yeah, and my dad was a World War
Two veteran. My mom at that point was a homemaker
who had been a nurse. Both of them grew up
(05:02):
in Brooklyn, and it was classic Jewish upbringing where I
was like the best little boy. Every report card in
you know, elementary school was a plus for conduct and
you know, conscientiousness and things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Were you quiet as a child?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I was obedient. I was well behaved. Everybody knew. Like
the Lusbader boys, I have an older brother, where like
the nice kids, you follow the roles. Oh yeah, yeah right,
I mean, and if if I didn't, I would go
home and tell my father and mother, like, oh, I'd
tried a beer tonight for the first time. So I
was very compliant. I didn't really know what I wanted
(05:39):
to do because my father had this business that he
started in nineteen fifty three. It was a chain of
shoe stores in New York.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And I was sort of anointed as the second son,
not the first, the oldest, that the second to go
into that family business, and I wanted to be a
good kid.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So what was the moment that you knew you were gay?
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Under ten? I knew something was different that I was
very happy with the mail babysitter who came over to
babysit one night, And I remember specifically, at ten, my
mom took me to an off Broadway production of Mantle
of La Mancha in the East Village and I remember
tracking the course boys guys and picking one that was
(06:29):
to me the best looking and most handsome, and I
remember he had to cut off sort of top, and
just looking at him and being so excited every time
he came back on the stage.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What was the moment when you sort of pieced together
what it would mean to be gay in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
My parents had a subscription to the Public Theater as
well as many other theater companies in the city, and
my mom had heard about this play that was previewing
at the Public called I'll Never Forget her saying it's
called the line or the chorus. She didn't really have
the word or the title correctly. So we drove into
the city and we went to the show at the
(07:09):
Newman theater, and I remember my parents sitting probably five
or six rows behind me, and I was probably in
the fifth row alone, and I think this I was
fourteen at the time, and the show was exhilarating and
the show was remarkable, and in the show, I remember
(07:31):
specifically the character of Mark, who stood stage right wore
a tank top, and I could never forget like looking
at him and sort of tracking him through that show, saying, Oh,
my god, he's the most adorable guy in the world,
and how old were you? Fourteen? And I remembered him
as a character dealing with his homosexuality throughout the sort
(07:54):
of snippets of dialogue he has, and I remember his
monologue and where he talked about performing m Oh my god,
performing at the Jewel Box review and his parents I'm
going to pick him up or I should say, send
(08:15):
them off, and his father telling him, telling the manager
to like take care of my son, And realizing that,
you know, here's my dad and mom, you know, five
or six rows behind me, and knowing that I was
having a unique experience as a gay boy that was
(08:36):
very different from the experience of my parents seeing that show,
and then not knowing that I was having this experience
seeing this kid like struggling with his homosexuality and struggling
with his sort of performance in the Jewel Box review
and having a father say that, And I remember that
(08:58):
I individuated from my fan family in a sense, and
I separated from my family like physically yeah, and just
emotionally that I had like this is my story, this
is I'm going to have to deal with this growing up.
You know, what's my future conversation going to be with
my family when I come out?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So it was such a private personal moment, and it's
interesting to tell that story sort of verbalize it here
because I don't know where that emotion comes from, you know,
fifty years later.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
And that's what art, I think sometimes does, like kind
of brings out things in us that we're not even
sure are there. Sometimes I wonder what it was like
for you to come out in the nineteen seventies or
the eighties. When when did you end up coming out?
And what's that story?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
You know, my sort of coming out story bridge to
the nineteen seventies to nineteen eighties. I again knew I
was gay. I had a gay friend and we would
connect in you know, ninth grade, intimately. That continued through college.
(10:12):
So yeah, I mean, right, that would I don't even
know what we called it then, but I would say
come over, and vice versa. I was having a dream
of my high school friend and I was like, well,
I dreams tell the truth. I'm definitely gay. I have
to grapple with that. And I think I was so
(10:33):
concerned about disappointing people. And I also didn't have the
vocabulary of how to talk about my feelings. While we
were really close intimate family, talking about feelings was not
like the you know, the sort of focus of how
we communicated. You know, there was a there was a
(10:54):
sort of a thread that wove that was woven through
the family of like, don't disappoint anyone.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And so what was it like to come out.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I mean, I have an older brother who's also gay,
and it's just the two of us. So he well
had come out gay to my mom and dad early,
a couple of years earlier. And because I was working
in my family's business, I was in this conundrum, like
how do I deal with this? How do I disappoint them?
My dad asked me. I was driving to the bank
(11:25):
on Queen's Boulevard and my father said to me, like,
you know, your brother came out to me and I'm
putting two and two together, like, you haven't really dated anyone.
What's your story?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Are you gay?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And I thought I was driving him and I was like,
oh god, here it goes yep. So he was wonderful
and said, you know, I love you. Wow, And that's fine.
I'm glad you were honest with me. But he quickly
pivoted and said, how are we going to tell your
(11:58):
mother this? So we waited and then we went out
for dinner one night in a diner in Queen's Boulevard and.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It was like an ally, oh yeah, he was great.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
He was really wonderful. Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So you study economics in college and then when you
come home you join the family business. What is the
story of how you go from being in the family business?
So then sort of being interested in architectural preservation and history.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, I went right into the family business. It was
sort of what was on the roster for me to do.
I didn't have a voice or even sort of the
understanding of the expansiveness of my own mind to look
at who am I as an individual and what are
my interests to pursue. So I worked there for probably
(12:53):
just under eight years, with the longing of like doing
something else, but not knowing that I didn't know I
was interested in history per se, but I always love buildings.
I took an architectural history class in college. We were
opening up stores, and I was always going to these
buildings that were on downtown shopping streets in urban areas.
(13:16):
So this was in Patterson, New Jersey. Have we still
have the store there where I remember climbing around the
building and going up to one of the upper floors
that was only accessible through a roof hatch and finding
receipts from the early twentieth century in this building of
the Elbow Shop, and thinking, this is the wildest thing, Like,
(13:37):
there's these receipts here, like and it tells you what
was going on in that building. And I had no
idea that that was called documentation, archival research and primary
sources information in that there's a way to connect, you know,
my curiosity with historic preservation.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Around the time, can discover that spark of passion for preservation.
He was also getting more involved in the gay community
in New York City, making him anxious to explore a
world beyond his family business.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
In nineteen eighty seven, I met my now husband at
a gay men's health crisis Safer Sex seminar and I
went to volunteer. I think he went to meet up
boyfriend and we're still together. However, meeting him was sort
of a big eye opener and revelatory and that I
(14:36):
again went from sort of a more meshed family of
working in a family business to meeting this guy who
was in the world more and who was out and
clearly had an experience of more robust sexual experience than
I did, and also was much more politicized, and he
(14:58):
was my biggest booster of hearing who I was as
a person. And I would say, well, in this family business,
I don't know how to leave. I didn't even know
what to do. I'm too old. I was just on
the cusp of turning twenty six at the time, so
it took a bunch of years. But with his support,
I left the business, but without a plan.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And walk me through a little bit of that tension
between leaving the family business.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I came out to them probably and you know, I
can't remember I had my boyfriend at the time, so
you know, in the mid eighties probably, So that was
one chunk of not following the Jewish child rules no grandchildren.
And then when I was already established, just on the
(15:43):
cusp of being twenty nine and had talked to them
for a great deal of time saying I'm going to
be leaving, I have to leave, my father was quite
upset and you know, we represent one half of this
family business and what does that mean? And you're disappointing him,
you know, son of immigrants, as was my mom, and
(16:04):
I was leaving without a job, without a you know,
a vision, and to him it was just the you know,
the ultimate of you know, taking advantage of sort of
what he created and then abandoning him and leaving him
with this business that he was probably sixty five at
(16:25):
the time, Like what does he do now? How is
this going to work going forward? So it was it
was challenging, and I remember being told, you know, by
my mother how disappointed my father was in me, And
it was painful. And I never forget driving from Queenszelle
over the Williamsburg Bridge the day I left, like, wow,
I did this and I'm still in a whole person.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And so basically you realize that disappointing my parents isn't
going to be the end of the world exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I realized that the disappointment was so ingrained in me
and not other people, that it was really my hurdle
to get over.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In nineteen ninety one, Ken got into Columbia University's prestigious
master's program in historic preservation. By this point, he was
proudly out and even decided to write his master's thesis
on some of New York's gay history. At the time,
it was one of the first academic arguments to be
made for preserving gay history. It would go on to
(17:36):
win his department's award at Columbia for Outstanding Thesis that year.
But for Ken, there was something deeper that was driving
him to want to preserve queer history. He was living
through the AIDS crisis, an epidemic that threatened to wipe
out the very existence of the gay community, and with
that all the stories and memories of the community's vibrancy
(18:00):
and strength and power. Faced with this urgency, Ken understood
the importance of preserving queer history before it was gone.
And so you get to Colombia and you decide in
the early nineties to write your thesis on the preservation
(18:23):
of gay history, basically gay historical sites. At the time,
being gay is not very popular, and it's also at
the height of the AIDS epidemics, so there's stigma from
multiple different angles coming at the gay community. What was
it like to write a thesis about something like preservation
(18:46):
of gay history in those days?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I got to Colombia in the fall of ninety one,
and it was in this theory and practice class of
historic preservation where we would talk about Irish American history
and Irish history of the building of New York City
and who the laborers were that built the buildings, who
made the bricks, who worked in the buildings, the slave
you know, quarters or the maids quarters and row houses
(19:13):
and so forth. And it was blowing my mind open
that preservation could talk about cultural, social, and historic moments
in history. So that's what really prompted me to have
a voice saying, well, what about gay and lesbian history,
which was the terminology at that time. I didn't know
(19:34):
anyone writing about this and doing any of this, so
in some ways it was not fleek understood. When I
put my thesis proposal together in ninety two, like what
are you talking about most people think there was no
gay history. There's Stonewall, but there's a rich queer past,
(19:57):
you know, going back to in New York City, commented
in City Hall Park, where men were cruising for men
there up into Walt Whitman in the eighteen fifties through
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Pansy craze in
New York and so forth and so on. So people
(20:17):
discount gay history as more recent. But if it wasn't
for the people who were out and about living their lives,
that wouldn't have led up to post World War II
organizations such as the Managing Society the Data as a
belitist that paved the way for the post Stonewall explosion
of visibility and activism that caught fire across the country.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
What you're saying is you were one of the very
first generations to recognize the value in all of that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I feel fortunate to be part of those first people
that were saying historic preservation can be, for lack of
a better word, exploited to tell LGBTQ history, and by
looking at buildings, one can embed these stories and have
(21:08):
a visceral connection to the past. That's very different than
reading about history or reading about Walt Whitman living in Brooklyn.
You know, you can go to see his house where
he lived for a year. You can see places in
the early twentieth century in New York where there were
you know, tea houses operated by you know, women who
(21:30):
were in homosocial relationships, So that visceral connection is really important.
You had asked the question about, you know, what was
it like at Columbia, What was it like for me?
I mean, for me leaving a family business that you know,
was predicated on following all the rules. I go to
graduate school and have to tell my parents, yeah, I'm
(21:52):
leaving graduate school, graduating, but I'm going to write my
thesis on gay and lesbian history in Greenwich Village. And
I don't know what I'm going to do with that,
and I don't know if I'm putting my future career
in jeopardy by being so out and open about it.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
So that was a risk, and I was just gonna
ask that. You know, this is the nineties, like I mentioned,
it's not popular to be gay, and in fact, it's
perfectly legal to fire someone for their job for being gay.
Were you nervous about putting your name on something that
was so obviously and visibly and intentionally queer.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I was nervous when I was writing it and when
I was researching it and feeling that I was in
this program that everybody knew I was gay. But I
had the full support of so many professors, you know,
at Columbia. And then I was also getting connected to
a group in New York called Old GAD, the organization
(22:56):
of Lesbian and Gay architects and Designers, and I connect
with them, and then we put a map together in
ninety four which is probably the first map of historic
LGBT sites documented for New York City ever. Looking back,
so I have to say being part of that community
and being connected and feeling belonging to all GAD and
(23:19):
these professionals who I'm still very connected with now having
their support and awareness gave me pause. I mean, it's
an interesting profession, historic preservation by happenstance. I don't know
why has a disproportionate number of gay men working in it.
So that was a shining moment of like, oh, okay,
(23:40):
you know I'm not alone here, and I have the
support of these people, whether they're doing LGBTQ history or not.
This is who I am. So I connected with those individuals,
which was great.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
It strikes me ken that from the time you come
out to the time that you focus your thesis on
gay preservation of history, to then putting together this very
groundbreaking map in ninety four of all these lgbt historic sites,
(24:11):
it's not that much time in between. It's actually pretty
short in the grand scheme of things, and you're moving
quite quickly to document all of these different sites. And
I wonder if there was an urgency of some kind
that was driving this.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
So there was an urgency for me to leave the
family business and figure out my next steps for a
couple of reasons. One was, you know, I was twenty nine,
thirty was looming, and I didn't want to sort of
say I didn't make a move before my thirtieth birthday.
The other part was the AIDS epidemic and sort of
(24:51):
being very aware of it and having friends who were
passing away and dying or suffering, and knowing that life
fleeting and life is precious. My now husband was diagnosed
in eighty eight as HIV positive, so that put pressure
on us as a couple to realize, Wow, we've got
(25:15):
to make plans and we've got to make you know,
opportunities for each other. And it was a time eighty eight,
you know, the trajectory of people surviving was not really great.
So consciously or unconsciously, those were the ingredients that prompted
me to be sort of more political and understand that
(25:37):
I needed to sort of take actions.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You're basically saying that you would become aware, intimately aware
with the fact that life is fleeting and when people die,
oftentimes their history kind of dies with them, and here
you are in the middle of all of this death.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I was coming out through the worst period of the
AIDS epidemic, and that was devastating. So I always equated
it to my dad being this World War two veteran
who got shot in the war and survived and talked
about how awful war was and the loss of people
that he knew and sort of what that meant to him.
(26:22):
And I just remember thinking, you know, I didn't get
drafted into Vietnam. This is my own war. And the
loss of people. Reading the New York Times every day
and seeing who's paid obituaries were there and dying was
something I tracked. In fact, on my desk, I have
(26:43):
a little oh bit from someone who died at ninety one,
just as a reminder like, oh, this is real, this
is impacting me, and those memories and those people their
lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't know
that I was a historian. I didn't know that I
(27:06):
was interested in history, but those events were important to
me in forming my understanding of memory being such a
powerful tool by understanding the past.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
After Ken graduated from Columbia in nineteen ninety three, he
went on to serve in hugely important historic preservation projects,
including the National Nine to eleven Memorial Museum and New
York Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites program. But in twenty fifteen,
Ken returned to his passion of preserving queer history and
(27:49):
co founded the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Today, it
has almost five hundred sites identified, documenting the community's contributions
to the arts, nightlife, business, government, healthcare, activism, and much more.
Its purpose is to connect queer people with the sense
of their own history and their own heritage. So tell
(28:14):
me about the LGBT Historic Sites and your proudest accomplishment
with that.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
So the NYCLGBT Historic Sites Project is an effort of
myself and two other co founders that was launched officially
in twenty fifteen to document historic and cultural sites in
the Five Bars of New York City. So I would
say the proudest moment or the proudest achievement with the
(28:44):
project is sustaining it for ten years as an official project,
documenting almost five hundred sites to date, been making that
invisible history visible, but really having people react to it
and having people reduce their own isolation and shame by
(29:04):
knowing that there's this past and that it's really helping
people explore their own past and their own history. So
by having our cultural map and keeping it unerased and
making it visible, there's no way people can say you
weren't here. I think Another part is, obviously Stonewall is
(29:26):
so well recognized. So I was involved in the designation
of the Stonewall National Monument, working with groups and advocates
going down to DC. And why that was so important
is memorializing that for American history by the federal government
as a national park, as a national monument, and having
(29:48):
people stand in front of Stonewall and know that that's
what people saw. You're standing where other people stood on
the night of the uprising. You're time traveling backwards and
seeing what they saw as a building, as a street,
as a configuration of streetscape. So you can understand the
(30:08):
past better. It's not just ephemeral or nebulous. You're grounded
in concrete reality and can connect with those elders who
pushed back on police suppression, on entrapment, on societal construction
of a police state that created a world where you
(30:32):
could not live your full, rich life. And now you can,
hopefully to a certain degree better than you did in
nineteen sixty nine, and that that's going to inform how
you sort of react to what's going to be pushback now.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I wonder why you think it's important for young people
to know their history. Ever since I was in high school,
I mean, I always loved history, but I remember growing
up there was always and there still is a connotation
that it's boring, And I wonder why you think it's not.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So you grow up as an LGBTQ kid in various
forms with a level of shame because you're different. So
by having that past explored and interrogated and put on
view through buildings and resources and landscapes and street scapes.
You're allowing people to understand they're part of a connective tissue.
(31:31):
They're part of a community, they're part of a continuity,
and they're part of an identity. And I think the
word belonging comes up because you can look at our website,
you can research sites, and you could feel that you
belong to a history. You can belong to Stonewall, you
can belong to where Charlotte Charlock lived in Brooklyn Heights.
(31:57):
She came here in the nineteen forty issue, was one
of the first three documented people to have gender reassignment
surgery in nineteen twenty eight to nineteen thirty two in Berlin,
and you could say, oh wow, that's really early for
history of transistory, and not feel that you are paving
(32:18):
the way on your own. You could really feel connected.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
For so many of us that grow up queer, we
feel this sense of isolation and loneliness. And what you're
saying is that history and historical sites in particular, they
offer us the opposite of that, which is a grounding
(32:44):
to something bigger than us, a connection.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Again, knowing that there were people before you that live
their authentic lives that buck the system that were count
cultural counter to expectations of sexuality, gender expression, to employment.
(33:09):
That allows people today to say I am not alone.
So to me, it's not just about history, it's about
social justice. It's about making sure people are connected and authentic,
and also activists make sure people see what's going on
(33:32):
and see what happened in the past, to make sure
that their lives are reflected in the narrative.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
I want to end off our interview Ken talking about you.
At the beginning of our story, you presented yourself as
this kid who was really good at following rules, and
by the end of it, I sort of am able
to piece together that you couldn't possibly make any of
(34:03):
this happen without breaking a lot of the rules and
disappointing people along the way and shattering a lot of
the expectations that people had of you, which is a
journey I think so many queer people share, and I
wonder what that sort of means to you and how
history and historical preservation is kind of tied into that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Growing up I, as we discussed, you know, I was
a very obedient kid. I didn't really have a voice
to have an opinion, and I'm shocked today that I
have this voice that's so public and passionate. I mean,
I'm talking to you here, I can't shut up. I'm
(34:50):
pushing the boundaries of historic preservation and LGBTQ history, and wow,
we're really paving the way for a movement of looking
at LGBTQ history as a valuable asset and contribution to
American history.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gounsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
to tell your story, email us at Butweloved at gmail
dot com, or you can send me a message on
Instagram or TikTok at your underscore Gonsolvis. We are a
production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
(35:34):
We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive
producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil. Original music
by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis.
If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and
(35:56):
follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you for listening,
I'll see you next week.
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