Mattachine Steps

On November 11, 1950, at his home at the top of this hillside above the Silver Lake Reservoir, Harry Hay convened the first meeting of what became the Mattachine Society — one of the first sustained gay-rights organizations in the United States, born a full nineteen years before Stonewall. At a time when homosexuality meant firing, arrest or worse, the Mattachine founders met in secret, borrowed their name from masked medieval performers who could speak truth anonymously, and built the 'homophile' movement: discussion groups, legal defense, and the radical idea that homosexuals were a legitimate minority rather than deviants. Chapters spread across the country and laid the organizational groundwork everything later stood on. In 2012, on what would have been Hay's 100th birthday, the city dedicated the public stairway on Cove Avenue below his former home as the Mattachine Steps. What you see today: 163 steps climbing a green hillside — one of Silver Lake's beloved historic public stairways — with views over the reservoir toward the Hollywood Hills. A street sign names the steps; the interpretive plaque that once credited Hay directly has reportedly gone missing, so come knowing the story. Free, always open, and a natural pairing with the Black Cat Tavern ten minutes away: together they bookend Silver Lake's role as the neighborhood where the movement first organized and first marched.