Bughouse Square (Washington Square Park)

Washington Square Park, better known as Bughouse Square, sits opposite the Newberry Library in Chicago's Near North Side. For decades it was the city's open-air soapbox forum, where speakers of every stripe held forth. It was also one of Chicago's early gay meeting places, noted as such in the press by the 1960s. On June 27, 1970, marchers set off from here toward the Civic Center in Chicago's first gay liberation march, one of the first Pride marches in the US. Today it is a quiet, well-kept park. The Newberry hosts a Bughouse Square debates event each summer that revives the soapbox tradition.