July 22, 2004
Geographer puts gays, lesbians on the map
Ask the average Seattleite where the “gay/lesbian district” is, and he or she is likely to point to Capitol Hill. But according to geographer Michael Brown, that’s only partially true.
“If you look at where gays and lesbians live, what you notice is there are a lot on Capitol Hill, but there are also a lot in Madison Valley, down in the Central District, Madrona, Leschi, Mt. Baker, as well as Bryant, Holman Road, Ballard and West Seattle,” Brown says. “In one sense Capitol Hill remains the ‘gay ghetto’; on the other hand, we are everywhere.”
Brown, a UW associate professor of geography, teamed with Larry Knopp, of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, to produce “Claiming Space: Seattle’s Lesbian and Gay Historical Geography,” a map that was sponsored by the Northwest Lesbian & Gay History Museum Project and released last month for Pride Week.
Brown and Knopp were able to determine where gays and lesbians live because the 2000 census identified same-sex partnerships — something that had not been done in the past. However, the map really wasn’t about pinpointing where people live. It was about determining “sites of significance” to the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgendered (GBLT) community.
What makes a site of significance?
“That was constantly open for discussion and debate and ultimately the group decided,” Brown says.
By the group, he means the numerous members of the GBLT community who were consulted. The Northwest Lesbian & Gay History Museum Project is a group that has primarily created oral histories by interviewing older members of that community, and the map is an extension of their work. In fact, Brown and Knopp worked from the project’s hand-drawn map, done in 1996.
Their research was two-pronged. On the one hand they worked with documents such as old publications with gay, lesbian or transgender themes to verify the locations of places on the 1996 map or mentioned by interviewees. And on the other, they continued to interview people to ask them what sites were important. The answers varied a lot by time period, Brown says.
“For example, an apartment building where everybody was gay and lesbian was considered very significant in the 1950s and 60s, but by the 1980s, it wasn’t such a big deal,” Brown says.
And sometimes unlikely places made the map — such as a certain hardware store on Capitol Hill in the 1970s. “There was this very ardent lesbian woman who argued for it because it was gay-owned and it was a place where women such as herself were made to feel comfortable,” Brown says.
The University gets special mention as being important to lesbians during the 1970s. A note on the map says, “The University of Washington provided a supportive environment, which included a women’s center, women’s studies program and women’s commission on campus. The Gay Students Association, a mixed gay and lesbian group, was founded at the U in 1971.”
The map itself is color-coded by time period and covers every decade from the 1940s to the present, although Brown says the earliest decades are emphasized the most. The map concentrates on Capitol Hill, the U-District, Wallingford, Fremont, Pioneer Square and Downtown, with brief mention of some other areas.
Although the map is currently on paper, Brown says he would like to eventually create an electronic form that would be interactive. For now, tours are planned using the map as a guide.
“Strategically, what the project uses the map for is to get people to tell their story,” Brown says. “One of the challenges of a map like this is that it’s never perfect. People look at it and say, ‘I don’t remember that being there; I thought it was over here.’ So then you can turn around and ask them what they remember.”
Work on the map dovetails nicely with Brown’s academic research, which is on sexuality and space. He says that in urban geography, the two classic models of that are the ghetto — a concentrated group of gay-lesbian establishments — and the closet — the hidden passages and doorways.
“What the map shows is that throughout history in the city, there’s always been a simultaneity, a bothness, to these things,” Brown says. “And if we only look at the ghetto, we miss seeing important sites across the city that were rather closeted.”
He and Knopp are writing a paper, tentatively titled “Closets and Ghettos,” that uses the Seattle work to make that point.
Meanwhile, for those who would like to obtain a copy of the map, it’s available from the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project, PO Box 797, 1122 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122. The project is asking for a $7 donation. Or visit online at http://home.earthlink.net/~ruthpett/lgbthistorynw/.
