Long-vacant storefront that once housed part of the Stonewall Inn reclaims place in LGBTQ+ history

NEW YORK (AP) — It was half of the Stonewall Inn, the gay dive bar where a 1969 police raid became a landmark moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Yet for much of the 55 years since, there has been little outward indication that 51 Christopher St. was part of that history.

It had housed the Stonewall's biggest bar and one of the two dance floors that drew its young, diverse crowd. But after raid sparked an uprising and the Stonewall shut down, 51 Christopher St. became a bagel shop, a gay bar briefly again, a clothing store, a nail salon, then vacant space. Its big “STONEWALL INN” sign came down in 1989, a few years before a new version of the tavern opened next door.

Now the community is reclaiming the building and its place in history. It opens as the Stonewall National Monument 's visitor center on Friday, the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States in the ensuing decades.

“Today, if you look around the world, there are millions of people who are celebrating Pride. And it all started in this building,” visitor center senior adviser Mark Segal said recently while showing it to guests.

The gay activist and publisher stood in front of a discovery made during construction: a bricked-up doorway that once connected the two sections of the original Stonewall Inn.

The very doorway Segal himself had walked through early on the morning of June 28, 1969, as an 18-year-old who'd just moved to New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood from Philadelphia and found the LGBTQ+ community for which he'd longed.

What happened in the ensuing hours would anger him, and many others — and also give them a new sense of purpose.

“It told me we had to be out, loud and proud,” he recalled.

The visitor center aims to tell the Stonewall story in more depth than the monument itself, which centers on a tiny park that features historical photographs but limited interpretive information. Overseen by the National Park Service and the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Pride Live, the $3.2 million visitor center was financed chiefly with private donations, except for $450,000 from the park service’s charitable arm, which gets private and federal money.

“When people think of the National Park Service, they don’t usually think ‘queer and urban,’” said visitor center co-founder Diana Rodriguez. “So we’re a very different type of visitor center.”

Where other such facilities might have plaques about wildlife and geology, this one has photographs of protests and a line on the floor marking where the timeworn bar once stood. A 1967 jukebox, the same model that was playing on the night of the Stonewall Rebellion, is loaded with songs from the era and beyond.

Spanning two former horse stables at 51 and 53 Christopher St., the Stonewall Inn was a speakeasy-like establishment with blacked-out windows, steel doors, a doorman who screened patrons, no liquor license and notoriously overpriced drinks.

At the time, LGBTQ+ social life in New York City was an open secret, but a risky and repressed one nonetheless. From the 1950s until 1973, the U.S. psychiatric establishment classified homosexuality as a mental illness. Law enforcement in New York and elsewhere often viewed expressions of LGBTQ+ identity — from dancing or displaying affection with a same-sex partner to wearing gender-fluid attire — as illegal.

Police often raided gay bars. Patrons usually left quietly, rather than risk an arrest that could expose their sexual orientation and cost them jobs and family relationships.

But when officers showed up at the Stonewall that day, patrons and their friends suddenly and spontaneously decided they had enough.

“If the police can do this to us, anybody can do this to us," Segal remembers thinking as he stood by the dance floor at 51 Christopher St. — his preferred side of the Stonewall — and watched what he recalls as officers harshly handling customers. News and other accounts describe police checking or threatening to check the sex of some people based on their clothing, and arresting some (the police department apologized in 2019 for its actions).

Some patrons resisted arrest as they were taken out to police vehicles. Officers responded roughly. A growing crowd began throwing coins, bottles and more at the police.

The officers then retreated and barricaded themselves inside the bar. Some in the throng outside tried to break in. Riot police showed up to clear the demonstrators away, but they kept regrouping and returning until about 4:30 a.m.

Protests and clashes with police continued the next several nights.

LGBTQ+ Americans had sometimes demonstrated and even fought with police before. But at the end of a decade of civil rights, women’s liberation and anti-Vietnam War protests, the Stonewall rebellion touched off a broader and more confrontational phase of LGBTQ+ rights activism.

Many new groups formed and pushed for anti-discrimination laws, held demonstrations and social events in the open and otherwise demanded rights and recognition.

What became annual Pride marches began on the first Stonewall anniversary. The site of the rebellion, including both parts of the original Stonewall Inn, became a National Historic Landmark in 2000 — and, in 2016, the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.

Meanwhile, the current Stonewall Inn has served as something of an unofficial welcome and education site for the monument.

“I'm here for the history,” co-owner Kurt Kelly explained in a recent interview in the still-denlike bar, bedecked with photos and documents. The original Stonewall Inn closed soon after the uprising, but the 53 Christopher St. portion reopened as a gay bar in the 1990s. Kelly and co-owner Stacy Lentz acquired it in 2006.

They see the visitor center as a fitting neighbor and hope it will draw more people to the site and the bar. Recent years have been rough, they said, because of pandemic shutdowns, inflation, rising insurance costs and other challenges.

“It's really hard to keep this place open,” said Lentz, but she feels a responsibility that goes beyond the bar business. She also works as CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, a charity that she and Kelly launched in 2017.

“The fight that started here on Christopher Street in 1969, it’s not done,” Lentz said.

For Segal, that fight would lead him to a lifetime of advocacy, including founding a gay youth group, disrupting 1970s TV news and talk shows to press for coverage of LGBTQ+ rights issues, lobbying officials, establishing the Philadelphia Gay News and developing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ seniors.

And one day last year, it led him back inside 51 Christopher St., with the Fifth Dimension's 1969 "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” queued up on his cellphone.

“I went to the back of the bar, played that, and I danced in Stonewall for the first time in 50-some years,” he said. “And it brought back memories, and it brought back tears.”

This rendering shows the proposed interior of the Stonewall National Monument Visitors Center in New York. The visitor center aims to tell the Stonewall story in more depth than the monument itself, which centers on a tiny park that features historical photographs but limited interpretive information. Overseen by the National Park Service and the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Pride Live, the $3.2 million visitor center was financed chiefly with private donations. (Courtesy of EDG Architecture and Engineering)

Pride flags flutter in the wind at the Stonewall National Monument, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Stonewall Inn co-owners Kurt Kelly, left, and Stacy Lentz pose for a portrait inside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. The space next door to the bar will open as the new visitor center for the Stonewall National Monument on Friday, June 28, the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States.The pair see the visitor center as a fitting neighbor and hope it will draw more people to the site and the bar. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Festive lights and flags adorn the bar inside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. The space next door to the bar will open as the new visitor center for the Stonewall National Monument on the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Social activist Mark Segal poses for a photograph inside the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, Friday, June 21, 2024, in New York. Segal, who was arrested during the 1969 Stonewall riot, was 18 years old and had just moved to New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood in 1969 from Philadelphia, where he found the LGBTQ+ community for which he'd longed. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

During an interview inside the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, Friday, June 21, 2024, in New York, social activist Mark Segal poses for a photograph while holding a picture that shows his arrest during the 1969 Stonewall Inn riot. The Stonewall National Monument's visitor center opens on Friday, June 28, the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States in the ensuing decades. (AP Photo/ Andres Kudacki)

FILE - An NYPD officer grabs a youth by the hair as another officer clubs a young man during a confrontation in Greenwich Village after a Gay Power march, Aug. 31, 1970, in New York. A year earlier, the June 1969 uprising by young gays, lesbians and transgender people in New York City, clashing with police near a bar called the Stonewall Inn, was a vital catalyst in expanding LGBTQ+ activism nationwide and abroad. (AP Photo/File)

People sit outside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. The community is reclaiming the building and its place in history as it opens it as the Stonewall National Monument's visitor center on Friday, June 28, the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States in the ensuing decade. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Decorations hang from the ceiling inside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024 in New York. In 1969 Stonewall had the biggest bar and one of the two dance floors that drew its young, diverse crowd. But after a raid sparked an uprising and the Stonewall shut down, 51 Christopher St. became a bagel shop, a gay bar briefly again, a clothing store, a nail salon, then a vacant space. Its big “STONEWALL INN” sign came down in 1989, a few years before a new version of the tavern opened. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

A National Park Service sign marks the Stonewall National Monument outside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. The building will open as the new visitor center for the Stonewall National Monument on Friday, June 28, the anniversary of the 1969 rebellion that helped reshape LGBTQ+ life in the United States. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV announced Sunday he will undergo surgery “in the coming days” to remove a nodule on his lung, in the first major health event of his 17-month pontificate.

The 71-year-old Leo said the nodule was found at an early stage and was “circumscribed” or well-localized. The Vatican said Leo's expected recovery time from surgery would be a week.

The American pope made the announcement during his Sunday noon blessing. He thanked the crowd for their closeness and entrusted himself to their prayers.

The Vatican didn’t say exactly when the surgery would take place, other than in the early days of this week. Leo has one upcoming main event: the closing Mass on Wednesday of a weeklong conference on family ministry, but Vatican officials suggested he might miss it.

A lung nodule is a small abnormal area measuring less than 3 centimeters (1 inch) that sometimes appears on a CT scan of the chest or abdomen, according to the American Cancer Society. Often, the scans are done to investigate trauma or a lung infection, unrelated to a lung cancer screening.

“Lung nodules are fairly common and are often benign, but benign and cancerous nodules can have a similar appearance on imaging," said Dr. Stephen Liu, a lung cancer expert at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"When there is sufficient concern, and when it is safe to do so based on the location of the nodule and the overall health of the patient, surgical removal can provide a definitive diagnosis,” he said.

If the nodule turns out to be cancerous, the prognosis is “excellent” since it will have been removed at an early stage and surgery alone might be all Leo needs in terms of treatment, he said in an interview.

"It often can be a blessing in disguise to remove that cancer before it has a chance to grow or to spread,” he said.

Leo has no previously known health problems and is physically active, with weekly tennis matches and swimming at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo.

The pope has a major trip planned Nov. 6-17 to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. It's unclear how or whether the planned surgery and recovery might affect the itinerary, but Leo said earlier in his remarks Sunday that he still planned to go.

In his remarks, delivered in Italian, Leo said that during a recent medical check, “doctors found a small, localized nodule in my lung. It was detected at a very early stage and is circumscribed. The doctors believe it’s best to take action, so, following their advice, I have decided to have surgery to remove it."

He thanked the faithful "for your spiritual support, and I entrust myself to your prayers.”

Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, died April 21, 2025, of a stroke following a long hospitalization brought on by a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. Francis suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man.

Leo is expected to undergo surgery at Rome's Gemelli hospital, where Francis and popes before him were treated and where there is a special apartment for pontiffs. On Sunday, there was no obvious sign that the pope had already been admitted.

Dr. Dionysis Papadatos-Pastos, an oncologist and lung cancer specialist at The London Clinic, stressed that an incidental finding of a lung nodule doesn't mean lung cancer. And in fact “a well-circumscribed nodule does suggest that this is less likely to be cancer."

But he said cancer was possible and the main imperative is to investigate. "The worst thing you can do is ignore a lung nodule,” he said in an interview.

Liu, the Georgetown oncologist, said surgical removal in such a case was standard, especially for someone in otherwise good health and if the nodule is in an easily accessible location. A needle biopsy on a lung nodule can be difficult and may not provide doctors with enough information, he said.

"In these cases, surgery itself, while it may seem dramatic, is often very safe, very straightforward with a rapid recovery,” he said, adding that Leo should be in good shape to travel to Latin America barring any complications.

Dr. Massimo Di Maio, president of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology, said it will be important to determine if the nodule is benign or malignant, and if it is malignant, whether it has spread. When the disease is detected at an early stage “the aim … is curative,” he added.

Depending on what is found, possible treatments can include chemotherapy and radiation therapy, Di Maio told Italy’s private Sky TG24.

“When we talk about something being localized, that can also refer to the need to establish whether the disease is confined to that one site or whether scans show signs of disease elsewhere,” he said, adding that he has not treated the pope and was speaking about the disease in general.

“Being physically fit and healthy is certainly an important starting point for coping as well as possible with treatment, including surgery,” he added.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, among the few outsiders to visit Francis during his long final hospitalization, expressed her support, and that of the Italian government, for Leo “as he faces this challenge in the coming days.” In a statement, she added that “the serenity and calm with which he spoke about it” were reassuring.

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Barry reported from Milan; AP reporter Danica Kirka contributed from London.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The statue of late Pope John Paul II, center, is pictured at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV delivers the Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV leaves at the end the Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV delivers the Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV delivers the Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)