The Chicago City Council has unanimously approved landmark designation for the former home of gay-rights pioneer Henry Gerber, who founded the country's first gay civil-rights organization in 1924.
The two-story Queen Anne house, at 1710 N. Crilly Ct., is in the Old Town Triangle District, just off of North and Wells. The neighborhood already has landmark protection status, but the designation for Gerber's home "confers that there's significance beyond the landmark," said Brian Goekin, deputy commissioner for landmarks.
The council voted on the proposal at its meeting June 6. Any further action on the designation, such as the placement of a plaque, is probably more than a year away, Goekin said, and will be in next year's budget.
The city's Committee on Historical Landmark Preservation approved the designation by a voice vote at its meeting June 5.
Some aldermen at the meeting questioned the need to designate Gerber's home, noting that its neighborhood is already a landmark district.
In response, Larry Parkman, vice chair of the commission on Chicago landmarks, said, "We're recognizing the contributions of the individual who lived there."
Ald. Vi Daley ( 43rd Ward ) and Bernard Stone ( 50th Ward ) moved to pass the proposal. Gerber's home is in Daley's ward, and both she and the home's current owners have been supporters of landmark status.
City staffers credited Mayor Daley with setting the wheels in motion for recognition of the home.
"The mayor took an active role in getting this noticed," said Pete Scales, spokesman for the city's Planning Department. "He had a personal hand in this," noting that Daley sent a newspaper article on the Stonewall Inn's national landmark status to the commission, asking if Chicago had any similar sites. Goekin then sent back information about the Gerber house, and Daley urged him to seek landmark designation for it.
"The mayor is concerned with every aspect of these projects that occur in the neighborhoods," Goekin said.
From the home, Gerber founded the short-lived Society for Human Rights and published the newsletter Friendship and Freedom, the first gay-rights publication in the U.S. The Society for Human Rights disbanded after about six months when police raided a meeting and arrested its officers. Gerber was among those arrested, though the charges against him were dismissed after three trials. He left Chicago shortly afterward and never returned.
He was active with gay causes until his death in 1972. He has one namesake in the city—the GLBT library and archives, whose full name is the Henry Gerber/Pearl M. Hart Library: The Midwest Lesbian and Gay Resource Center.