Pink Triangle Park & Memorial

On the triangle of land where Market Street meets 17th, fifteen white granite pylons stand in memory of the thousands of men and women imprisoned and killed by the Nazi regime for being homosexual. Dedicated on Human Rights Day, December 10, 2001, Pink Triangle Park is the first permanent, freestanding memorial in the United States to the LGBTQ victims of Nazism. Each of the fifteen pylons — one for every thousand of the estimated 15,000 people deported to concentration camps under Paragraph 175 — is topped with an inlaid pink triangle, the badge those prisoners were forced to wear, later reclaimed as a symbol of resistance. At the memorial's center, a triangle filled with rose quartz stones invites a quiet ritual: visitors may take a stone with them as an act of remembrance. The park was created by neighborhood volunteers of the Eureka Valley Promotion Association, designed by artists Susan Martin and Robert Bruce, and is still maintained by neighborhood hands rather than city budgets. What you see today: a small, contemplative pocket park, free and always open, directly across from Harvey Milk Plaza and the giant rainbow flag. It asks only a few minutes — enough to read the inscription, hold a stone, and register that the neighborhood built its brightest symbol within sight of its darkest memory.