Henry Gerber House

The three-storey brick rowhouse at 1710 North Crilly Court in Chicago's Old Town neighbourhood is where postal worker Henry Gerber (1892-1972) founded the Society for Human Rights on 10 December 1924 — the first documented gay rights organisation in the United States. Gerber had encountered Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft while stationed in Germany with the US Army in 1920-23, and returned to Chicago determined to build something equivalent. The Society was small — perhaps a dozen members — and short-lived. Gerber published two issues of *Friendship and Freedom* newsletter (the earliest surviving US gay publication) from the Crilly Court address before the July 1925 raid: Chicago police arrested Gerber, his mother and his fiancée (a shared address made her a co-defendant); charges were eventually dropped but Gerber lost his postal job and the Society collapsed. Its records survived because Gerber kept them, and after his death they passed to the Chicago History Museum. The rowhouse itself is an 1885 Frederick Baumann-designed row of six identical units, of which 1710 is the third from the corner. It has been continuously occupied as private residential since 1885 and remains so; the building was designated a National Historic Landmark by the US National Park Service on 19 June 2015 — one of the earliest such designations for an LGBTQ+ site (after Julius' Bar in NYC and the Cherry Grove Community House on Fire Island). The building is private residential and there is no interior tour; a small bronze marker on the façade (installed 2016 by the Legacy Project) identifies the site. The exterior is visible from Crilly Court's sidewalk. Free, 24/7 sidewalk viewing. Sedgwick Brown Line and Clark/Division Red Line are both 15 minutes' walk. Combine with Old Town's Second City comedy theatre for a broader neighbourhood visit.