Oscar Wilde Bookshop (site)

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop opened on Mercer Street on 24 November 1967 as the world's first gay bookstore. Its founder, Craig Rodwell — a Mattachine Society activist who had been one of the four Sip-In participants at Julius' the year before — wanted a shop where gay literature could be sold in daylight, un-plainbrown-wrapped, by proprietors who wouldn't flinch. He moved the shop to 15 Christopher Street, half a block from Stonewall, in 1973. Rodwell was also the shop's political engine. He proposed the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March in 1969 at a Mattachine meeting, and the shop's window served as the first march's ad hoc headquarters. Its shelves stocked international queer press, movement pamphlets, poetry chapbooks, and imported copies of books banned in the US — Isherwood, Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, everything the mainstream stores skipped. Rodwell sold the shop in 1993; it changed hands again in 2003. Rising West Village rents finally killed it, and the Oscar Wilde Bookshop closed on 29 March 2009. The 15 Christopher Street storefront has since housed a series of shops; the current tenant is a florist. There is no municipal plaque as of writing, though the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has been lobbying for one since 2018. What's here now: a photo of the original storefront, mounted inside the door of the current tenant, and a small brass sidewalk marker installed by the community in 2019. Worth ten minutes on your way between Stonewall and Julius'.