Welcome to Gay Places with Dr. Jeffry Iovannone. PBN’s newest blog series is dedicated to celebrating and learning more about the historic LGBTQ landmarks of Western New York. With this space we will highlight the work of Dr. Iovannone and other guest writers to provide insight to the LGBTQ history associated with our existing historic built environment- narratives which are frequently forgotten, ignored, or purposely left out.

 

140 North Street, Buffalo, New York
By Dr. Jeffry Iovannone

140 North Street, located in the historic Allentown neighborhood, just west of Delaware Avenue, is the site of the Lenox Hotel. The Lenox, originally known as the Lenox Apartment House, was designed by architects Loverin & Whelan and constructed in 1896 as a 24-apartment building. In 1901, the property was transformed into a 48-room luxury hotel for women and men of economic means who came to visit Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition. The exposition coincided with Buffalo’s economic height, and the style and function of the Lenox reflected this with its elaborate and ornamental detailing.

At the time, Loverin & Whelan described the Lenox Apartment House as “Venetian Gothic.” From a twenty-first-century architectural perspective, the building contains elements of what we now call Chateauesque style. Chateauesque was briefly popular in the United States between 1880 and 1910. The style is based on the grand sixteenth-century chateaus of France and contain a mixture of both Gothic and Renaissance details. Chateauesque was popularized in the United States by Richard Morris Hunt, the first American architect to study at France’s prestigious Ėcole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts). Hunt was influenced by the nineteenth-century revival of Chateauesque architecture and, upon returning to the United States, created similar buildings for his wealthy clients. Chateauesque has several identifying features, including steeply pitched hipped roofs; busy roof lines that contain elements such as spires, turrets, or gables; dormer windows; metal cresting on the roof ridges; and arched windows and doors.

The first two stories of the Lenox are constructed of washed brick and terra cotta and the upper stories of buff brick and terra cotta. The building is divided into two wings with a recessed courtyard in between. In its original condition, the Lenox featured an entrance portico with terra cotta ogee arches (an arch with two serpentine curves that meet at an apex), Renaissance detailing, and a balustrade with finials. The building also featured arched windows and doors with ogee hoods and Renaissance detailing, molded cornices, and metal cresting along the roof line. Many of these character-defining features were removed upon subsequent remodelings of the Lenox, particularly during the 1940s and in 2005 when the building was sold to new ownership.

Robert Uplinger, who went by “Bob” or “Bobby,” moved to Allentown in the early 1970s to be near his own kind: Buffalo’s gay community. He took up residence in the Somerset apartment building located at 228 Summer Street, one block north of the Lenox. Bob, an out gay man, grew up on Buffalo’s West Side and was secure in his sexuality from a young age. “I didn’t see anything wrong since it was my natural orientation,” he later explained. “It was a fact, and I couldn’t help it if others were unable to understand it.” Beginning in the late 1960s, Allentown became associated with Buffalo’s gay commuity, in addition to artists, musicians, and other bohemians. Racial tensions on the East Side caused white-owned gay bars to relocate west of Main Street, and anti-vice campaigns centered around Chippewa and Washington streets forced gays and sex workers to move their nightly operations northward. 

Standing at five feet three inches tall, Bobby Uplinger was short in stature but had personality in abundance. After receiving his M.A. in Elementary Education, Uplinger took a Civil Service job teaching troubled youth within the Buffalo schools. He was out to his family, friends, and co-workers and was highly respected by gay and straight memebers of the community. Uplinger also participated in the local gay organizations Gay Professionals and the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier and was a practitioner of Eastern philosophy and meditation. 

Bob was a popular and well-known fixture of the gay Allentown crowd. On the hot, muggy night of August 7th of 1981, the then 30-year-old Uplinger, clad in a tank top to both stave off the mid-summer humidity and increase his chances of finding a companion, went to a local gay bar (most likely Mean Alice’s/City Lights or the Villa Capri). Later, as he walked home along North Street around 3 A.M., Uplinger noticed a handsome young man sitting on the steps of the Lenox Hotel (the steps have now been replaced by a semi-circular driveway). The section of North Street between Delaware Avenue and Irving Street, where the hotel was located, was a popular “cruising” area for gay men and male and female sex workers.

“Hi, how are you?” the ever-personable Uplinger asked as he walked over to the young man. The two struck up a conversation, and Bob even introduced the young man to a few of his friends who passed by. Their casual banter continued until a police car drove up and the officer told the group to “move on.” As Uplinger and the young man walked toward the corner of North and Irving Street, Uplinger asked if he wanted to go back to his apartment. “Why?” the young man asked, to which Uplinger countered, “Well, do you just want to come over?” “No, I’m scared with the police. I’m going to leave,” the young man responded. Uplinger, growing impatient, made the following offer: “If you drive me over to my place,” he said, “I’ll blow you.” 

These were the exact words the young man wanted to hear—but not because he was hoping to make a sexual connection with Uplinger. The young man was, in fact, Buffalo Police Department undercover vice officer Steven Nicosia. Nicosia was part of an undercover campaign to scare gay men away from cruising in the residential areas of Allentown. The campaign was initiated by Erie County District Attorney Richard J. Arcara, who claimed that police received frequent complaints about the sexual cruising activities of gay men in Allentown. Given the neighborhood’s historic status, Arcara worried gay men were sullying Allentown’s reputation and terrorizing its heterosexual residents by flaunting their homosexuality in public. 

Chosen for his boyish good looks, Nicosia, as a rookie vice cop, was eager to prove himself. He arrested Uplinger on the spot at the corner of North and Irving streets. Uplinger hadn’t recognized Nicosia as an Allentown regular and had, earlier in their conversation, asked if he was a police officer, which Nicosia denied. As he was taken to the police car—the same one that drove by earlier—Uplinger realized the design of the BPD’s undercover campaign. He was booked for violating a section of the New York Penal Code, which prohibited “loitering in a public place for the purpose to engage in deviate sexual intercourse or other sexual behavior of a deviate nature.” Uplinger remained calm and collected as he was put into the police car, asking Nicosia and his superior officer what the charges against him were, and why. Uplinger felt they acted fairly towards him, but when they arrived at headquarters, the officer who took his mugshot said, “Because of people like you, we have to make extra fingerprints and send them to the FBI.” He presumably meant “deviates,” like Uplinger and his kind, forced the BPD to do extra work.

The night of August 7th of 1981 was not Bob Uplinger’s first run-in with an undercover police officer, however. When he was 18, Uplinger had been kicked out of a private Catholic high school in Buffalo after the principal discovered he had been picked up by an undercover officer downtown in a former gay cruising area. This was in 1969 when gay bars in Buffalo were few and far between, so gays would meet on Washington Street. Uplinger, who had been “out” since age 15, was senior class president, a four year letterman in track, and a member of the debate, drama, and glee clubs. Despite being an upstanding and engaged student, Uplinger’s principal called him “sick and depraved.” A priest at the school, whom Uplinger had confided in about his arrest, broke his code of ethics and informed the principal. Uplinger was forced out four months prior to his graduation, but received his diploma anyway. The judge placed a gag order on the case due to Uplinger’s age, and his attorney, who had him plead to a lesser charge, assured him he wouldn’t have a record. This was actually untrue, and following his second arrest, Uplinger learned that he did, indeed, have a criminal record.  

A friend of Uplinger’s came down to the station and paid his $100 bail. He had already decided he would fight the charges. “What really angered me,” Uplinger later explained in an interview, “was the fact that here I was, a tax-paying citizen who has a responsible job, walking home from a nearby gay bar in a predominantly gay neighboorhood I’d moved into 10 years ago, and because I asked an attractive man to go home with me in a casual, non-threatening conversation, I was arrested… I wasn’t being obnoxious or pushy, just talking in a normal way.”

Uplinger called Buffalo attorney William H. Gardner. Bill, as Gardner was more colloquially known, had made a reputation for himself representing gay men who were targeted by the BPD for sodomy or loitering charges. He had, in fact, helped a friend of Uplinger’s who was arrested previously. Gardner graduated from the University at Buffalo School of Law with his Juris Doctorate degree in 1959 and was a senior partner at the law firm Hodgson Russ. As a young lawyer, he observed how gays and lesbians were routinely harassed by the Buffalo police. The instruments used to carry out their campaign of persecution were sections of the New York Penal Code that outlawed consensual sodomy and loitering. As Gardner explains:

“Given my responsive horror to the attitudes of the authorities against the gay population in Buffalo, the only way I figured we could overcome that was to mount a crusade to overrule the laws that they were enforcing so vigorously.

I let various folks and gay organizations know that if they brought me people, I would represent them for free. If they wanted to make a case and fight the system, I was ready to do that. I was confident that sooner or later someone would show up who wanted to fight and not be a victim.”

Gardner received permission from his firm to take some of these cases pro bono, and throughout the 1960s, he routinely represented those charged under the consensual sodomy and loitering statutes. In 1970, Gardner also represented Buffalo restaurant-owner James F. Garrow when his attempts to open a gay bar and community center on Delaware Avenue were thwarted by the BPD. 

Gardner’s willingness to challenge the police stemmed from more than a personal commitment to those in need of defense and his belief that the statutes used to target gays were unconstitutional. Bill Gardner was struggling with his own sexuality. He had lived the life he thought he was supposed to. After serving in the United States Army and attending law school in the 1950s, Gardner got married and had children. It was not until the 1980s that he acknowledged his own homosexuality. By then, he had become the bane of the Buffalo Vice Squad. Gardner himself had been arrested for “cruising” in LaSalle Park, but was spared from the media and further maltreatment because of his reputation.

“Do you want to fight this?” Gardner asked Uplinger. “We can go as far as we have to take it.” Bob was certainly ready to brawl, though he was not the first to take Bill Gardner up on his offer. One of the first successful attempts to overturn a state sodomy statute was People v. Onofre, a 1980 case in which a consensual relationship between two adult males became the subject of a criminal prosecution in Syracuse, New York. Ronald Onofre initiated a consensual sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male, unnamed in the court records. The relationship deteriorated and the young man, in anger, went to the police seeking revenge, alleging he had been coerced into the relationship. Onofre and his attorney provided evidence the relationship was, in fact, consensual, but the District Attorney proceeded to charge him under New York’s misdemeanor consensual sodomy statute. First adopted in New York State in 1965, the statute made it a misdemeanor for anyone to engage in “deviate sexual intercourse.”

As Onofre’s case worked its way to the court of appeals, Bill Gardner was busy defending one of several sodomy prosecutions in the Buffalo city courts. Gardner’s clients were found guilty in the city courts, and their convictions were upheld in the Erie County Court. He thus saw the Onofre case as a vehicle for getting his clients’ convictions, and the consensual sodomy statute, overturned. Gardner filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National Committee for Sexual Civil Liberties to lend his expertise to the court of appeals consideration of Onofre’s case. 

The opinion in Onofre’s appeal, issued on January 24th of 1980, found that the consensual sodomy law violated due process and equal protection under both the federal and New York State constitutions. Thus, the statute was struck down. The court of appeals’ decision in Onofre was a landmark in sodomy litigation for several reasons. First, the court equated heterosexual and homosexual sodomy and examined the issue through the concept of sexual privacy. Second, the ruling extended the concept of privacy to behavior formerly criminalized. Finally, in striking down the sodomy statute of one of the largest states in the country, hope was given to those struggling to decriminalize gay sexuality throughout the United States. Bill Gardner had issued his first major blow to the Buffalo police.

Guided by the momentum of this victory, Gardner moved to dismiss the charges against Uplinger on the grounds that New York’s anti-loitering statute was rendered unconstitutional as a result of the Onofre ruling. His rationale was that if it was now legal to have oral sex with a consenting adult in the privacy of one’s own home, then it was surely legal to inoffensively ask one to come to one’s home for that very purpose. Straight men, furthermore, often sexually propositioned women in an aggressive manner, yet were rarely, if ever, arrested for doing so. 

Uplinger’s first trial was held on November 9th of 1981 in the city courts. Of those called to testify during the proceedings, Uplinger thought only Kenneth P. Kennedy, Captain of the Bureau of Vice Enforcement, was outwardly anti-gay. In his testimony, Kennedy asserted that connections between gay sexuality and child molestation were part of the reason for the crackdown in Allentown. The vice captain further claimed to be in possession of an informal book in which he logged complaints made to police regarding gay “cruising.” The BPD received at least four complaints per week, alleged Kennedy. However, when Gardner asked him to produce the book, Kennedy was unable to do so. Gardner’s questioning revealed what he long knew to be true: an atmosphere of systemic homophobia within the Buffalo Police Department. In the end, Judge Timothy Drury, who expressed fears the Allentown neighborhood was deteriorating, found Uplinger guilty. The case then went to the Erie County Court where Judge Joseph P. McCarthy upheld Judge Drury’s decision. 

People v. Uplinger next made its way to the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany where a panel of seven judges voted 6-to-1 in Uplinger’s favor. “I argued that you couldn’t have a situation where consensual sodomy was OK, but inviting someone home to have consensual sodomy was illegal,” Gardner later recounted. The judges ruled that the loitering statute was both unconstitutional and improperly used. Gardner landed yet another blow, but District Attorney Arcara filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, who agreed to review the case. When it became known that Bob Uplinger was headed to Washington, he was fired from his job within the Buffalo school system. Unemployed from mid-June of 1982 until October, he was forced to rely on support from his two sisters and brother. But Gardner, again, went to bat for Uplinger, and the impassioned educator was reinstated with seniority and back pay. 

As Uplinger waited for the Supreme Court to hear his case, now restyled as New York v. Uplinger, he received a series of harassing phone calls from people he perceived as unhappy and maladjusted gays. “Why are you rocking the boat? You deserve to be arrested for being out at that time in the morning. Everything was fine until you upset the apple cart,” they would say before hanging up. Uplinger was further distressed that the leaders of Buffalo’s various gay organizations (approximately 12 at the time) were slow to reach out and hear his story. He attributed this to the prevailing notion that gays living in mid-sized, blue-collar cities such as Buffalo should remain closeted. Uplinger began to observe a change within the community, however, and saw his case as a way to buck Buffalo’s status quo. 

As Gardner prepared for the Supreme Court, his nerves were rattled by a phone called he received from a representative of a national gay-rights group. “You’re out of your league,” the rep told him. “You should give up the case to a nationally-known constitutional lawyer.” Gardner felt he had just been chided by his high school principal. He presented this option to his client, but Uplinger remained unwavering in his support of Gardner. On January 18th of 1984, Gardner made his arguments before the nation’s highest court. He worried he would make a major blunder due to a combination of inexperience, tension, and fear—but he didn’t. The court, who issued their ruling on May 30th of 1984, ultimately dismissed the case. While the justices declined to rule on the merits in Uplinger, they did leave intact the ruling by New York’s Supreme Court that people could not be prosecuted for asking others to have “deviate sex” in the privacy of their own homes. While a landmark case, it is important to note that this Supreme Court decision, however, was not necessarily an affirmation of gay rights on the federal level. Just two years later, in  Bowers v. Hardwick, the court, in a 5-to-4 ruling, upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law, which criminalized private consenting sexualconduct involving same-sex copules. 

Gardner had, from a legal perspective, solved the problems of sodomy and loitering within New York State. The BPD’s publicity-grabbing arrests ceased, and he turned his focus to his regular caseload. He also became more publicly involved in the gay community as a member of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier and the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus. “When you came out, you came out with a bang,” Gardner’s friend Jim Haynes told him, reflecting on the gravity of his legal victories.

Uplinger, too, re-immersed himself in his work with troubled youth, and helped to found Gay & Lesbian Youth of Buffalo (now Gay & Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York). Bob had a knack with young people, and despite being “an adult,” he easily earned their trust. Kate Gallivan, today the Senior Director of Grants Management at Evergreen Health Services, met Bob in 1984 when she started volunteering for GLYB. Volunteers would often co-facilitate Saturday discussion groups, and Kate often found herself paired with Bob, whom she liked immediately:

“He was firm but compassionate and a very good listener. He was down to earth and very empathetic. I remember him often taking one of our youth aside who was going through a hard time so that they could talk privately. It was a different time being gay then, and most of our youth lived in fear of someone finding out. Many were homeless and many were living double lives–“straight” during the week and gay when they were at GLYB. Bob spent a lot of time reassuring and empowering them, and letting them know they were ‘normal.’ They looked up to him, and I think he gave them hope because he was such a positive adult role model.”

In 1986, GLYB’s director, Mark Boser, informed the volunteers that Bob was moving to sunnier climes in Florida. It wasn’t long after that they learned he was sick, and just as quickly, GLYB received news that Bob had died from an AIDS-related illness. He was just 35 years old. Kate Gallivan, and many other members of the GLYB family, never had the chance to say goodbye. By then, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was ravaging gay communities across the country, Buffalo included. 

To honor Bob’s memory, several members of GLYB came together to create a quilt panel for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Envisioned by San Francisco gay activist Cleve Jones, the Quilt drew upon the medium of folk art to commemorate the lives of those who had died of AIDS. The idea was born in 1985 during a candlelight march to commemorate the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Jones asked marchers to write the names of deceased loved ones on squares of cardboard that were then taped to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. Jones and his friends began making 4-by-6-foot quilt panels in their backyards with the intention to unveil their creation on the National Mall at the October 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The march that year drew around 500,000 people, and the NAMES Project unfolded a 1,920-panel quilt that represented more than 20,000 Americans who had lost their lives to AIDS or related causes.

While Jones and his comrades labored in San Francisco, in December of 1988, Bob Uplinger’s friends gathered at the home of Jim Haynes and Don Licht on 69 Johnson Park to create their panel. The design was a tree with multi-colored, heart-shaped leaves set against a pale blue background. Bill Gardner, of course, made a heart with the scales of justice. Jim Haynes’s heart included the initialism “MSNF” to symbolize Bob’s involvement in the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier. Don Licht, Jim’s partner, made a heart that read “Love Grandma”—Bob’s nickname for him. Mark Boser contributed a heart with the GLYB logo. Kate Gallivan’s heart, finally, depicted Bob with the young people from GLYB gathered around him. He was the first friend she lost to AIDS. When the group assessed their work, they noticed the “n” in “Uplinger” was sewn on backwards. The imperfection lent character to the otherwise impeccable composition. “That was just Bob having the last word,” Jim Haynes commented.

Because of Bobby Uplinger, gay people could walk the early-morning streets of Allentown unharassed, though most did not know the story of the man upon whose shoulders they now stood. Bob, however, never really saw himself as a hero. He knew there was still much work to do:

“I’ve learned that you can lull yourself into a sense of false security, thinking that something like this only happens to somebody else. I did. I thought I lived in a pretty liberal neighborhood, never realizing that a few public officials could have such legal power to adversely affect people’s lives. I’ve matured no doubt… Fortunately, I’ve always had a gay consciousness that never needed raising.”

 

* * *

Dr. Jeff Iovannone is an historian, writer, educator, and third-generation Buffalonian who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, specializing in gender and LGBTQ studies. He is currently at work on a book about Buffalo’s gay liberation movement from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and is an avid collector of LGBTQ historical materials. He is the coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at SUNY Fredonia and a board member of the Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project. You can find more of his writing on Medium and other platforms at https://linktr.ee/drjeffgenderprof. 

* * *

 

Bibliography

Ball, Carlos A. From the Closet to the Courtroom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2011.

Birman, David. “Supreme Court Lets Pro-Gay Ruling Stand.” New York Native, Jun. 18, 1984.

“Court Upholds Sodomy Ruling.” The Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY), May 21, 1981.

Eskridge Jr., William N. Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003. New York, NY: Viking, 2008.

Faderman, Lillian. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Gardner, William H. “Living the Gay Life Style… Staying Out of Jail.” 5th Freedom (Buffalo, NY), Mar. 1983.

“Gays Challenge Law On Loitering.” Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY), Aug. 14, 1981.

“Historic Lenox Hotel.” Lenox Hotel, 2020. https://lenoxhotelandsuites.com/history/

“Homosexuals Challenge State Loitering Law.” The Ithaca Journal (Ithaca, NY), Aug. 15, 1981.

Jackman, Frank. “N.Y. Sex Law Splits Top Court.” Daily News (New York, NY), May 31, 1984.

Jarzab, Sally. “Fighting the Good Fight: This gay-rights champion took his struggle all the way to the Supreme Court.” AtBuffalo, Fall 2018. http://www.buffalo.edu/atbuffalo/article-page-spring-2017.host.html/content/shared/www/atbuffalo/articles/Spring-2017/class-notes/fighting-the-good-fight.detail.html

Jones, Cleve. When We Rise: My Life in the Movement. New York, NY: Hachette Books, 2017.

Kaufman, Sarah. “Remember Our Names: Piece by piece, an AIDS memorial comes together.” Buffalo Magazine, May 4, 1989.

“Lenox Hotel, 140 North Street.” Western New York Heritage. https://www.wnyheritage.org/content/lenox_hotel_140_north_street/index.html

Leonard, Arthur S. Sexuality and the Law: An Encyclopedia of Major Legal Cases. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, 1993.

Loliger, Samuel E. “Discriminatory State Law Struck Down.” 5th Freedom (Buffalo, NY), Mar. 1983.

“Loitering Statute To Be Challenged Again.” 5th Freedom (Buffalo, NY), Dec. 1981.

“MacArthur Out; Mean Alice’s Makes Changes.” 5th Freedom (Buffalo, NY), May 1981.

“Mattachine Challenges NY Loitering Law.” The Advocate, Oct. 29, 1981.

McAlester, Virginia Savage. A Field Guide to American Houses. New York, NY: Knopf, 1984, 2013.

“Meet the Press.” The Advocate, Feb. 21, 1984.

“A Model Building: The Lenox Apartment House for North Street.” Buffalo Courier (Buffalo, NY), May 10, 1986.

Monaghan, Nancy. “High Court Rejects N.Y. Sodomy Case.” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), May 19, 1981.

Murdoch, Joyce and Deb Price. Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002.

“OUTLaw Dinner Honors a Fighter for Gay Dignity.” The Buffalo Law Experience, Apr. 2016. https://www.law.buffalo.edu/features/experience/outlaw-apr16.html

Robert Uplinger Collection, Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York, Archives & Special Collections Department, E. H. Butler Library, SUNY Buffalo State.

Sax, George. “CS People: Robert Uplinger.” Christopher Street, Vol. 8 Issue 1, Feb. 1984.

Searl Jr., Hanford. “The People vs. Uplinger: The First National Test of a Gay Issue.” Connection, Vol. 3 Number 1, Nov. 9-30, 1983.

Vaid, Urvashi. “U.S. Supreme Court Reviews Gay Case.” Gay Community News (Boston, MA), Jan. 1984.

Williams, Deborah. “S-E-X… and the Law.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Dec. 26, 1980.

Interviews

“Interview with Bill Gardner.” The Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York. Archives & Special Collections Department, E. H. Butler Library, SUNY Buffalo State. https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/lgbtq_interviews/14

Jesse Strash, personal correspondence with author, May 15-16, 2019.

Kate Gallivan, personal correspondence with author, July 10, 2020.

 

Welcome to Gay Places with Dr. Jeffry Iovannone. PBN’s newest blog series is dedicated to celebrating and learning more about the historic LGBTQ landmarks of Western New York. With this space we will highlight the work of Dr. Iovannone and other guest writers to provide insight to the LGBTQ history associated with our existing historic built environment- narratives which are frequently forgotten, ignored, or purposely left out.

 

510 Tacoma Avenue, Buffalo, New York
By Dr. Jeffry Iovannone

510 Tacoma Avenue is located in North Buffalo between Norwalk and Sterling Avenues. Built in 1922 by Benjamin B. Lee, a prominent Buffalo contractor, the house is an example of a traditional “Buffalo double,” or two-flat residence,
with Prairie style influences. 510 Tacoma was also briefly home to one of Buffalo’s most well-known LGBTQ writers and activists: Leslie Feinberg. 

Buffalo double houses are examples of vernacular style: a standard type of housing used by middle-class workers. Most two floor, or two flat, Buffalo homes were built during the city’s industrial prime between approximately 1890 and 1929. The double house represented a step up from apartment buildings or boarding houses for workers, as families often lived in one flat and used the rent from the second to pay their mortgages. Many of the double houses in North Buffalo, particularly in the Hertel Avenue and North Park areas, were constructed by Jewish builders and realtors beginning in the 1920s. 

The vernacular double house was a common feature in architectural pattern books of the early-twentieth century, and the style was popular throughout the industrialized Great Lakes region. Representative of a double with Prairie influences, 510 Tacoma Avenue features a low-pitched, hipped roof, a hipped roof dormer, and an asymmetrical door. Prairie style originated in Chicago’s suburbs during the early-twentieth century. Most Prairie-style suburban homes were built between 1905 and 1915, and the style declined in popularity following World War I. 

A building permit for 510 Tacoma Avenue was issued to Benjamin B. Lee on March 8th of 1922 by the Buffalo Common Council. While Lee may have constructed the house based on a pattern, it is also possible that 510 Tacoma Avenue was designed by his daughter, Ethel Lee McBain, a noted Buffalo architect. Lee McBain is best known for designing the Paul Revere House, located at 46 Woodley Road in the Cleveland Hill neighborhood. Built in 1929, Lee McBain’s design was inspired by Revere’s 1768 home in old Boston and was constructed of Arkansas soft pine. The Buffalo Courier-Express reported that, on October 27th of 1929, nearly 10,000 people visited the opening and dedication of the house.

Irving D. Feinberg and his wife, Vance Hyde, purchased 510 Tacoma Avenue on September 25th of 1962. The couple’s acquisition of the property is representative of the upward mobility of Jewish Buffalonians. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Hertel Avenue and North Park areas developed rapidly and became the locus of Buffalo’s working-class Jewish community. Indeed, the Feinbergs bought this classic Buffalo double so they could live in the downstairs flat while renting the upstairs to help pay down their mortgage.

Hyde, originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, attended the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in Pittsburgh where she studied child psychology and creative writing. Originally founded in 1869 as the Pennsylvania Female College, the PCW educated women such as noted biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson, who graduated magna cum laude in 1929. 

Hyde moved to Washington, D.C., after graduation to work as a fashion coordinator for a store. There she met Buffalo native Irving D. Feinberg, who was completing his undergraduate education at George Washington University. They married in August of 1948 and relocated to Lockport, New York, where Irving worked for radio station WUSJ. Leslie, their first child, was born in 1949. Christine followed in 1951 and Linda in 1955. As the family expanded, Irving took a position as an external expeditor with the Sylvania Electric Company, and the Feinbergs moved to 203 Lovering Avenue in North Buffalo, just streets away from their eventual Tacoma residence. 

The Feinbergs were an especially artistic family. Irving was a musician and had a band that played music on the weekends. Though Vance studied creative writing at the PCW, she gave up her literary ambitions to be a wife and mother. In 1957, however, the bug to begin writing again bit her. Her first book, And Everything Nice, named after the popular nursery rhyme stating little girls should be “sugar and spice and everything nice,” was published in October of 1959 by the David McKay Company. The book, a guide to raising daughters, was based on Hyde’s own experiences coupled with her background in child psychology. Especially For Mother followed in 1960 and was published by the Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Hyde’s second publication was, according to Rita Smith of the Buffalo Courier-Express, “an affectionate anthology of poems, thoughts, bits of verse and short pieces about babies, home, husbands and rearing a family.” The inspiration for Especially For Mother came from Hyde’s personal scrapbooks, which she kept since high school.

Hyde credited her confidence as an author in part to her 1958 crowning as “Mrs. Buffalo,” a local division of the national Mrs. America contest. A pageant for Buffalonian housewives, Mrs. Buffalo judged contestants on their cooking and homemaking abilities, poise, and personality. Contestants were also required to give a three-minute talk on the topic of “Why I Want to Be Mrs. America.” “I want to be Mrs. America because I’m angry,” the 35-year-old Hyde said in an interview with the Buffalo Courier-Express published on April 2nd of 1958. If victorious, Hyde said she would use the national crown “to rebuff all those people who say that being a housewife is an easy job, an unimportant, boring or unrewarding one… I love homemaking and I represent millions of women who think homemaking is the most exciting career a woman can choose.”

Despite her professed love of homemaking, Hyde was not the typical Buffalo housewife. She was college educated and a published author, which afforded her the opportunity to speak publicly, host book signings, and be written about in the press. In a July 1959 author profile published in the Buffalo Courier-Express, Hyde explained how her husband bought her a used dictating machine because she perpetually scorched shirts and burnt kettles when she abandoned her household chores to jot down a sudden idea or flow of words. 

“I’m probably the only housewife in Buffalo who has one of those gadgets on her kitchen table or cupboard,” Hyde said of her dictating machine. “Since I spend most of my time in the kitchen, we decided to plug the machine in there. Now, while I wash the dishes or prepare the dinner I can write at the same time. When an idea comes to me I just start talking as if I were writing it and the machine records it.” When Hyde did have time to sit down at her typewriter, usually when her children were asleep, she used a Turkish towel to muffle the busy clacking of the keys. In 1976, after her children were grown, she returned to the workforce as a manager for Adam, Meldrum & Anderson’s (AM&As) department store at the Olean Center Mall. Though she struggled to understand and accept Leslie’s gender nonconformity, Vance Hyde was not the most gender-conventional woman herself. 

The Feinberg siblings attended Bennett High School, a racially-diverse school located at 2885 Main Street in the University Heights section of Buffalo. Christine, the middle sibling, became involved in theater, sang in a folk group, and wrote poetry. In 1967, she starred in Bennett’s production of Antigone and aspired to study drama in college. Linda wanted to become a writer like her mother. 

But Leslie, despite artistic inclinations of her* own, did not thrive like her sisters. Growing up differently gendered in blue-collar Buffalo of the 1950s was not easy. As a butch lesbian, she was harassed simply for walking down the street. The Feinbergs were not particularly accepting of Leslie’s difference either. As a result, she dropped out of school at the age of fourteen and worked various low-wage jobs to support herself. Her first position was in the display sign shop of a local department store.

Around this time, Feinberg entered Buffalo’s gay social scene which, like many other mid-twentieth-century American cities, centered around bars. Buffalo’s gay bars were both a space of community and a source of fear. The harassment and physical violence gay and gender nonconforming Buffalonians faced at the hands of the Buffalo Police Department was little different from the conditions that precipitated the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco or the much-mythologized Stonewall Uprising of 1969.

Feinberg later described this period of her life, and her relationship with her biological family, as follows:

I had to ask my parents to sign working papers, so that I could get a job after high school and not have to come home until it was time to go to bed.

Outside my parents’ home, and beyond high school corridors and classrooms, I was able to find wage work during the Vietnam War, and loving relationships. I found communities, struggle, my voice and pride…

I later moved out of my parents’ home before the legal age of consent, despite the fact that I was still their legal ward. After years of living independently, I had to return shortly before my 21st birthday, in order to ask my parents to sign permission for me to begin taking hormones. I did not self-identify as transgender at that time.

Several years later, when I told my parents that I was going to stop taking hormones, my biological father ridiculed me and my biological mother sat silently in another room, her back towards me as I left…

My biological parents reportedly debated, for the second time in my young life, whether they should sign legal papers that would forcibly confine me to a psychiatric institution. I did not self-identify as transgender at that time in my life, either.

These early experiences shaped Feinberg’s first, and most celebrated, book, the novel Stone Butch Blues, published in 1993 by Firebrand Books. Stone Butch Blues recounts the story of Jess Goldberg, a so-called “he-she” from a working-class background who, like Feinberg herself, comes of age in Buffalo. Despite similarities to Feinberg’s own biography, she insisted the novel was a “work of fiction, written by an author who has lived the non-fiction.” In reality, Stone Butch Blues is a composite of queer experience, spanning the decades between 1950 and the early 1990s. Feinberg combined elements of her own biography, stories told to her by older butches and drag queens, and research into the history of gender nonconformity to create the narrative of her protagonist. 

In her cover letter to Firebrand founder Nancy K. Bereano, Feinberg described the inspiration and intentions behind her novel:

I grew up in Buffalo. As a working class Jewish lesbian I came of age in and worked at the factories until they closed. Like the other butch women Liz Kennedy’s oral histories document, I had few options. We were unwelcome in the post-Stonewall gay and lesbian movement and beaten, harassed and murdered on the streets. For some of us, the only alternative was to try and pass… 

My novel is the first to be written by a self-identified passing woman and because of that, I think it will make room for other lesbians who are also struggling to understand and represent their own gender struggles. And these experiences offer rich insight for all women into the ways race, sex and class impact on gender. 

Jess, who initially identifies as a butch, faces hostility from straight society and within the gay community. After uncomfortably straddling the gender binary for most of her life, she transitions to live full time as a man, Jesse, and takes testosterone. Some lesbian feminists, however, accuse Jess of masculinizing herself as a way to escape the oppression of living as a woman. Jess feels that although “passing” as a man allows her to be seen as a person and not a “freak,” it also erases the complexity of her history. “Believe me… you’re not alone in feeling that you’re not a man or a woman,” Edna, one of Jess’s femme lovers, tells her. “You’re more than just neither, honey. There’s other ways to be than either-or. It’s not so simple. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people who don’t fit.”

After Jess moves to New York City, she becomes involved in political activism and realizes she can live outside conventional boundaries of gender with legitimacy. Feinberg, like her character, also left Buffalo to live in New York City for a time. And like Jess, she came back to Buffalo to make peace with her community and her past. 

In April of 1992, Feinberg returned to Buffalo as a featured speaker at “Passing Fancy,” a tribute to women who have “passed” as men throughout history. The event, held at M.C. Compton’s bar on Niagara Street, featured an introduction and talk by Feinberg and a drag king performance staged by a diverse cast of Buffalo lesbians. Buffalo was also the logical place to launch Stone Butch Blues. The book’s release party was held at the Ascension Church Hall, located at 16 Linwood Avenue, on February 20th of 1993 and was sponsored by noted Buffalo activists such as Madeline Davis, Bernadette Hoppe, Marge Maloney, Dottie McGavern, and Carol Speser and organizations like ACT UP WNY, the Buffalo Gay and Lesbian Community Network, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, and Workers World.

In addition to Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg wrote several works of non-fiction that brought knowledge of transgender people, issues, and language to mainstream awareness. In Transgender Warriors, an historical study of gender nonconformity, she expansively defined “transgender” as: “all people who cross the cultural boundaries of gender.” Feinberg came to describe herself as transgender as well. “I am transgendered,” she explained. “I was born female, but my masculine gender expression is seen as male. It’s not my sex that defines me, and it’s not my gender expression. It’s the fact that my gender expression appears to be at odds with my sex.”

Feinberg was also a leader of the Workers World Party (WWP), an independent Marxist-Leninist political party, and served as the managing editor of its newsletter. An avowed anti-racist, she was always attentive to the ways gay and trans liberation intersected with the liberation struggles of other oppressed peoples. As part of her work with the WWP, Feinberg took on America’s racist criminal justice system by co-founding Rainbow Flags for Mumia, a coalition of LGBTQ organizers who, on April 19th of 1999, marched in support of a new trial for death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1981, Jamal had been wrongfully sentenced to death for his alleged shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Jamal maintained his innocence, and in 2011, his sentence was commuted to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Beginning around 2007, Feinberg discovered the health issues she struggled with since the 1990s were the result of Lyme disease. The illness had long gone undiagnosed due to the discrimination she faced from the medical community. Despite being critically ill, she continued her revolutionary work. Feinberg agitated for the release of CeCe McDonald, a black transgender woman from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who stabbed and killed Dean Schmitz, a white man, in self defense after he attacked her at a bar in 2012. McDonald was the only person arrested following the altercation.

Feinberg passed away on November 15th of 2014 from complications related to late-stage Lyme disease. However, as transgender activist Camille S. Hopkins concisely explains: “Lyme disease did not kill Leslie Feinberg; transphobia killed Leslie Feinberg.”

510 Tacoma Avenue was not a happy place for young Leslie Feinberg—but it was a formative one, as were the corridors and classrooms of Bennett High and Buffalo’s factories and bars. The history of 510 Tacoma reveals the Buffalo Feinberg came of age in: the place of her becoming. A place—because of the marks it made and the community she found there—she never fully left behind, but returned to time and again. It was here she found, and regained, in her own words, “communities, struggle, my voice and pride.”

 

*Though Feinberg used the pronouns “she” and “her,” as well as the gender-expansive pronouns “zie” and “hir,” I intentionally use she/her throughout this piece for purposes of readability. Additionally, in interviews I have conducted with persons who knew Leslie during her lifetime, all interviewees referred to her using “she” and “her.” As I, regretfully, never knew Leslie in person, I defer to the perspectives of those who did. 

 

 

* * *

Dr. Jeff Iovannone is an historian, writer, educator, and third-generation Buffalonian who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, specializing in gender and LGBTQ studies. He is currently at work on a book about Buffalo’s gay liberation movement from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and is an avid collector of LGBTQ historical materials. He is the coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at SUNY Fredonia and a board member of the Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project. You can find more of his writing on Medium and other platforms at https://linktr.ee/drjeffgenderprof. 

 

* * *

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Building Permits.” Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, NY), Mar. 10, 1922. 

Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues, 1st ed. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Press, 1993.

Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues, 20th anniversary ed. Self-published by author, 2014. https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/

Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.

Feinberg, Leslie. “While a Hostile Relative Re-writes My Life.” Lambda Literary, Jan. 19, 2011. https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2011/01/leslie-feinberg-catherine-hyde/

Feinberg, Leslie and Minnie Bruce Pratt. “Self.” https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/self/

Firebrand Books Records, 1984-2001. Human Sexuality Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

“Home Beautiful Exhibits Win Praise of 50,000 Buffalonians.” Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, NY), May 22, 1928.

Iovannone, Jeffry J. “Leslie Feinberg: Transgender Warrior.” Queer History For the People, Jun. 23, 2018. https://medium.com/queer-history-for-the-people/leslie-feinberg-transgender-warrior-fcb1bcaf15b2

Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky and Madeline D. Davis. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Leslie Feinberg ephemera. Personal collection of Carol Speser, Buffalo, NY.

LGBTQ Collection. The Buffalo History Museum Research Library. 

“Local ‘Mrs.’ Winners Named.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Mar. 30, 1958.

“New AM&A Head Named.” Olean Times Herald (Olean, NY), Jan. 29, 1979.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. “Transgender Pioneer and Stone Butch Blues Author Leslie Feinberg Has Died.” The Advocate, Nov. 17, 2014. https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2014/11/17/transgender-pioneer-leslie-feinberg-stone-butch-blues-has-died

Smith, Rita. “‘58 Mrs. Buffalo Writes Two Books.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Jul. 19, 1959.

Smith, Rita. “Buffalo Housewife Author 2nd Time.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), May 1, 1960.

Smith, Rita. “Contest Entries to Speak Out.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Apr. 2, 1958.

Stein, Gregory P. “‘Buffalo Doubles’: Industrial Vernacular Style.” Buffalo as an Architectural Museum. https://buffaloah.com/a/archsty/indver/stein/

Taussig, Ellen. “Young Mother Starts Writing Career.” Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, NY), Mar. 12, 1957.

“Thousands at Dedication of Revere Model.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Oct. 28, 1929.

Vanderhorst, Roger. “Olean Center Mall Merchants Elect Officers.” Olean Times Herald (Olean, NY), Jul. 20, 1977.

Wartenberg, Carol. “Bennett Student Aims At Career in Theater.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Apr. 15, 1967.

“Weddings and Engagements: Feinberg-Hyde.” Buffalo Courier-Express (Buffalo, NY), Sat. May 29, 1948.

 

Interviews

Camille S. Hopkins with author, September 14, 2018. 

Marilyn Kern with author, December 17, 2019.

Nancy K. Bereano with author, September 27, 2019.