A free, browser-based 3D model of the Stonewall Inn as it stood in 1969 goes live on Monday, October 26, letting anyone with a phone or computer walk through the Christopher Street bar on the eve of the uprising. The NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project and Making Gay History released the model together during LGBTQ History Month, and the two organizations describe it as the first digital 3D model of the historic bar.

The reconstruction covers the facade, the interior and the surrounding streetscape at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, the two buildings that held the original Stonewall Inn. Today those addresses are home to the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center and the present-day Stonewall bar, steps from the 1 train at Christopher St-Stonewall.

What you can see inside

The project team built the model from archival floor plans, photographs and oral histories, since almost nothing of the 1969 interior survives. The result is a room-by-room picture of a place most New Yorkers know only from the outside.

  • The entrance: visitors come in from the sidewalk through a main passageway, the same route patrons took off Christopher Street.
  • The bar: a long counter where, according to the project, watered-down drinks were poured.
  • The jukebox: stocked with the hit records of the day.
  • The dance floor: a large room reached through a second passageway.
  • 53 Christopher Street: a series of controlled entry points leading into private spaces with limited views from the street.

That last detail is one of the points the organizers want viewers to notice. The model shows how the Mafia, which ran the bar, managed who got in and shaped the layout of the rooms. Moving through the doors and sightlines in three dimensions shows how tightly the building controlled who saw what.

The model also places the Inn inside the boundaries of the Stonewall National Monument and shows its position across from Christopher Park, the small triangle where crowds gathered during the uprising in June 1969. For residents who pass the park every day, it is a chance to line up the present block with the one in the photographs.

Who made it

The NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project has been documenting places connected to LGBTQ history across the five boroughs since 2015, and it operates through the Partner Program of the Fund for the City of New York. Ken Lustbader, the project's co-director, called the model the most detailed resource so far for understanding the bar's 1969 interior, and said immersive tools give people a direct line into LGBTQ and American history.

Making Gay History is a nonprofit that shares LGBTQ history through first-person accounts, using a podcast, classroom resources and a book. Its founder and host, Eric Marcus, said the model pairs naturally with the podcast's oral histories: listeners can now see the room where many of those storytellers once stood. The model was built with ArcGIS mapping software.

More from the Historic Sites Project this week

The day after the launch, on Tuesday, October 27, from 6:30 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., the Historic Sites Project hosts a Zoom conversation marking ten years since the National Park Service published LGBTQ America, a 2016 theme study that the project calls the first national effort to document LGBTQ history through historic places. Megan Springate, who edited the study and is an assistant research professor in anthropology at the University of Maryland, joins Ken Lustbader to talk about what the study changed and where place-based LGBTQ history is headed. Registration is through Eventbrite, linked from the project's event page.

How to explore it

The model is free and runs in a web browser, with no download or account required. Open it from the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project's announcement page or directly through the ArcGIS link below, then use your mouse or fingers to move through the rooms. If you want to compare it with the real thing, the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center at 51 Christopher Street is a short walk from the 1 train at Christopher St-Stonewall, and Christopher Park sits directly across the street.

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