When Brooklyn Was Queer

4.5 | 231 ratings

Price: 13.62

Last update: 01-07-2025

About this item

The never-before-told story of Brooklyn's vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day

Hugh Ryan's When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history - a great forgetting.

Ryan is here to unearth that history for the first time. In intimate, evocative, moving prose, he discusses in new light the fundamental questions of what history is, who tells it, and how we can only make sense of ourselves through its retelling; and reveals how the formation of the Brooklyn we know today is inextricably linked to the stories of the incredible people who created its diverse neighborhoods and cultures. Through them, When Brooklyn Was Queer brings Brooklyn's queer past to life, and claims its place as a modern classic.

JD Doyle

An engaging history of an evolving time and place

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2019

This is a thoroughly researched, well-written and highly enjoyable book. I kind of didn't want it to end, as that would imply Brooklyn is no longer queer, compared to what I learned, a relative reality. While I knew of so many of the high profile people described, I certainly didn't know this history...of the connection to Brooklyn of people like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Carson McCullers, W.H. Aden, Gypsy Rose Lee and many others of whose names I had barely heard, but now know their significance.
Ryan's approach is a mastery of telling a story of how a queer community was impacted by forces around it over time, including war, local and Federal government laws, and city planners. For example, I never gave much thought to the impact of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge on enabling communities to form, on the built up, and then destruction of Coney Island, of how the expansion of highways actually meant the vast removal of affordable housing. And Robert Moses, a city czar of sorts who remade New York his way, which limited opportunities for the poor, non-white, single and queer.
Not left out was a thorough recounting of the artist communities, the poets, the performers (drag and otherwise), and the ever-present Brooklyn Navy Yards and all those sailors.
This is an incredibly complex story and I was struck by how well Ryan lets his story flow from topic to topic, he weaves the elements and people so well you barely know the focus has shifted. In fact that was sort of a complaint of mine. When reading in bed I kept looking for the next breaking point to place my bookmark there and stop for the night. But it was difficult to find those places within a chapter, I kept reading for what happened next.

H. Williams

A new more inclusive queer history discovered in the archives by a very smart and clever researcher

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2019

George Chauncey published the book "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890 – 1940" about 25 years ago. It was a ground-breaking book. By definition, his was a narrow topic.

But Hugh Ryan blows “Gay New York” out of the bath-house. “When Brooklyn Was Queer” is also a narrow topic covering much of the same period and general location but it’s much more inclusive of lesbian, trans, and especially people of color than Chauncey’s book. (I love Chauncey’s book, by the way, and hugely respect his putting this history together. He’s still the source to go to for solid gay academic history.)

Ryan’s history jumps backward to cover Brooklyn from 1850 when Whitman was cruising the waterfront to the 1940s when lesbians were working on at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The stories are interesting and informative. While a number of the stories that Ryan tells are of moderately well-known queers (Hart Crane, Sergei Eisenstein, Christopher Isherwood, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams), the heroes and heroines of this book are also much more likely to be entertainers in burlesque and vaudeville shows (Madame Tirza and her Coney Island Wine Bath!), sailors, bar owners, low-level criminals, and sex researchers. The book even has a villain in the dreaded Robert Moses. Hugh’s work in the archives is astounding. The photos are major fun.

The stories are eye-opening in a number of ways, pointing out the lives that our brothers and sisters lived before us. The book is inspiring and confirms the fact that we are still writing gay history. I can’t help but feel that this is a major step out of the past and into a more inclusive future that’s still being uncovered, such as the Free Black Weeksville community that Ryan quickly covers that’s currently undergoing a major re-discovery. Ryan backs up his research with unobtrusive footnotes in the back, a solid index, and brief but helpful notes on the population and ethnic makeup of Brooklyn at various times. "When Brooklyn Was Queer" makes our past real. And fabulous.

Stephanie De Pue Murphy

Good Accounting of Brooklyn's Gay History

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2019

When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan, a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, the founder of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, whose writing has appeared in the New York Times and the LA Review of Books.

His book may be considered a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this story, for not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been something of a systematic erasure of its queer history.

Ryan sits on the Boards of QED: A Journal in LGBTQ Worldmaking, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art.. He is the recipient of the 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, and a 2018 residency at The Watermill Center.
I myself was a longtime, longtime resident of Brooklyn, located in Brooklyn Heights. The author makes frequent mention of “February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, “by Sherill Tippins , a 2005 book. This was surely a ground –breaking book about a group of famous authors, editors, musicians, some of them gay– and Gypsy Rose Lee--playing house in Brooklyn Heights. I found the subject fascinating, went to the Brooklyn Heights Library to see the author read, bought my copy, got it autographed, reviewed it on its site here.

As a journalist, I began writing about Brooklyn in the late 1960’s, early 70s, for New York’s then famed powerful [Greenwich Village] Village Voice. I was a strong booster of the borough, like to think I had some part in its renaissance. For instance, I wrote an article attacking the proposed fish market scheduled to be built on the waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Won that crusade, which is lucky, as that area, with its spectacular views, is now known as Dumbo. And lofts there go for astronomical prices.

Brooklyn Heights was pretty gay/queer when I lived there. I used to notice a swarthy guy, heavy eyebrows, smoked cigarillos, in mufti, around and about. And every once in a while, when one of the Heights’ several gay discos had a trans night, I might see him in his favorite low-cut blue evening dress, hairy chest on display. And I had a very gay -- in both senses of the word-- friend who used to spend most of his waking/nonworking hours at Monteiro’s, a shabby, rough-hewn bar about a half block from Brooklyn’s waterfront. It is Ryan’s thesis that gay activity in Brooklyn began at its waterfront, and died as the waterfront died. That’s as may be, but there were always internationally-sourced sailors at Monteiro’s, ripe for the picking and boy, did my friend pick them. My friend also lived in an apartment owned by Monteiro; I used to joke with him that he ought to give the man his paycheck every week, get back his lunch money. Well, the Heights was very gay, again in both senses of the word, before rising rents priced a lot of people out. So now here I am in Wilmington, North Carolina.

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