 All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to LGBTQIA and preservation. Before we begin, we have a few housekeeping reminders for attendees. This session is being recorded and the chat is also being recorded. Please abide by the conference code of conduct during the conference session. If you're unfamiliar with the code of conduct, you can find it on savingplaces.org. All participants will be muted during presentations, but if you are called upon by the presenters or if you have a question, you can raise your hand and I can unmute you. The chat function is enabled for specific questions or comments you might have for the presenters. You can find help to all of your questions in the FAQ section of the SOFIO app or website or use the attendee customer service room accessible in the virtual platform schedule. Close captioning is available and can be accessed by enabling it in your Zoom screen settings. And now I'd like to turn it over to our panelists, starting with my colleague Ross Bradford. Thank you, Reina. Welcome. My name is Ross Bradford. I'm Deputy General Counsel of the National Trust. I'm standing in today this afternoon for Jeffrey Harris or some of you know him better as free Harris who was able to join us today as the moderator for our session. Jeffrey has a long history with the National Trust and preservation communities on researching issues related to lack history, LGBTQ historic sites and the need to diversify this preservation. We'll miss perspective today during our discussion and most importantly his presence on the panel. We've got a great set of folks that are here to talk with you all today and create a good conversation. And before I introduce the panelists, I wanted to welcome everyone attending and we look forward to receiving your questions and including your voice in the discussion. So our first panelist is Frank Venone. He's a public historian who leads the cultural consulting firm Twisted Preservation. He was also the director of the Historic House Trust of the City of New York and the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks. The director is a historic preservation consultant based in New York City. And for over 25 years he has been a national leader in issues related to LGBTQ plus history documentation and preservation. During that time he co founded the New York City LGBT history historic sites project, and also serve as the historic preservation program officer at the JM Kaplan Fund. And finally we have Rebecca Ballo, who has been a preservation planner with local governments in the Washington DC Metro region for over 17 years, and currently serves as the supervisor of the Montgomery County historic preservation program in Maryland. Over the past five years she's been working to document LGBTQ plus historic resources, and it's currently completing architectural survey and archival research of sites associated with LGBTQ plus communities and leaders in Montgomery County. So with those introductions, I'm going to turn it over to the panelists and here we probably have a wide variety of people on the call some of you may know each other some of you may not know each other. So I thought we'd start out with a pretty basic question and, and hopefully you all can jump in and give your, your thoughts but you wonder what's one of them are most common challenges to documenting LGBTQ plus history and landmarks and I'll turn it over to Rebecca to start. Thank you Ross and thank you everybody for joining us this afternoon and thank you to my fellow panelists I'm really delighted to be here and to talk with everybody today. For for us at the local government level which is where most of you know my experience comes from with listing sites to, well, to recommend sites be listed to the National Register, and also to document sites for local historic district or site nominations in Maryland and also previously in northern Virginia. The context around LGBTQ resources is challenging. Right Montgomery County for those who don't know Montgomery County Maryland is just to the north of Washington DC we're part of the Washington DC metropolitan area and we're also south of Baltimore. We have a number of older like turn of the 19th century street car suburbs, and you know huge swaths of land that were built out in the 20th century so a lot of really rich post war history. But creating the right kind of context like what, what are the what are the universe of resources, particular to Montgomery County specific to our history in the suburban region. It's a different context for example then then New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco. So trying to figure out what is unique and important to our history and then also putting together an outreach program to the local LGBTQ community to start collecting people stories, oral histories trying to map those kinds of resources, and then trying to create a connection between stories and place you know places don't exist anymore businesses have changed or turned over but really setting the table you know engaging the community, and then trying to figure out you know what is the universe of resources that are out there for us to document is architectural historians. So we are starting point with some of our work. I'm interested to hear you know from from Ken and from Frank as well. Go ahead, Ken you you're in the middle of all of that. All right, I'll jump in and let me just thank everyone for being here there are over 300 people on this affinity group session, which is remarkable. The reason that LGBT place based history is a really new field of inquiry only dating from, you know, in the 90s, early 90s. And I also want to acknowledge, making spring dates on the zoom call here who is the editor of the United States the National Park Service study, Jay Shockley who's my co director at the project is here as well. And Graves who's done amazing work in San Francisco. So there are a number of people if I'm missing anyone it's because I'm not seeing you on the grid so I hope everybody can take advantage of this call, and have questions answered. So I'm in New York City we're doing this project we started it. And basically we're a mini not for profit the NYC LGBT historic sites project. We do advocacy work we document sites we've got 300 plus fully researched entries on our website with a map you can sort them by building type by significance, and so on we've also nominated sites to the National Register about seven, you know I do my spiel of the right now it's over 100,000. sites on the National Register, the way you can slice it or dice it there are 22 to 40 something you know related to LGBT history. And I know Megan and we have different ways to count that. But that said, it's a nothing it's a drop in the bucket. And I think the hardest part initially starting this project was really conveying the importance of what LGBT place based history was. And there was a little limited concept that we were talking about buildings. Yes, extant sites, but they didn't need to be architecturally significant. They were cultural sites for his, you know, known and recognized for historic reasons. And that is a really high bench to sort of achieve in preservation we all know that so much of what we do is based on an architectural model and cultural sites are sort of the sticky wicket and are a little more challenging to deal with So we had a one convinced people that bars beyond Stonewall were important that theaters were important that places of protest were important that places of medical discovery were important so we're trying to look at New York City through an LGBT lens. You know, in that I'll leave that at not at that and toss it over to Frank is this, I can go on and on about the challenges and the benefits. So I think my experience is certainly unique from my perspective and my colleagues and that is that for a while I was in large cities Philadelphia and New York City dealing with LGBTQ issues. And now I'm in North Carolina. And so most of my work has been at historic sites, both being a CEO and president as well as being a consultant through twisted preservation. And so for me, I've really had to deal with these kind of basic fundamental questions. Well there's no documentation we can't tell this story. I know they live together for 50 years, but there's no way that we can say that they were lesbian. They never called themselves gay or lesbian that the nomenclature is different. That was just Victorian friendships or Boston marriages and I won't go on and on but, but all of these obstacles keep getting thrown in the way of executive directors of historic sites as reasons to not pursue this kind of information. And so for me the biggest challenge as somebody both consulting and running sites is just pushing past all of those obstacles and saying that as an out queer person. I know that this cultural information exists. It just doesn't exist the way traditional preservationists have required it to exist. And I think that's where everything that's happening with the two speakers before. That's really where it's so important. We're not just trying to landmark sites and tell narratives of our queer community. We really have to fundamentally change the criteria. And that we use to define what is worthy of us, citing as LGBTQ sites so for me, that's the biggest challenge it is, it is codes, it's regulations, it's all that kind of policy making that someone at my level is just constantly dealing with. I think on the I just want to add one thing to this because for those who've seen me heard me before, you know, we're not just documenting tangible heritage for the sake of documenting tangible heritage. The work that our project is doing or that anyone's doing and acknowledging LGBTQ plus history is really creating intangible benefits. And that's where I really get moved about what the possibilities are of this work. You're creating identity connections to the past, breaking isolation breaking shame by letting people know that there's this history before them. That is really important and creates a, you know, recognition of a kid who's growing up somewhere but you know without access to a library or is embarrassed to look something up can go online and find our project or someone else's project. And particularly for example he just did all this research on the gay liberation front and the gay liberal gay activist alliance about early zaps. So how important is that now to connect people to a past of all those sites to understand resistance and to understand what the power is of organizing against oppression and I find it really important now to connect all this and to really use preservation as a tool for social change and social justice. I agree. And I would just add that when I first moved to New York City and took on the, his historic house trust for New York City. Within a month that young man from Rutgers jumped off the George Washington Bridge, because his roommate filmed him in a same sex intimate situation. And it was from that point that I realized that that we weren't just doing history out of a history book. You know, we potentially are saving someone's life and understanding that that it is always been here and that by validating these situations and the work that you all are doing that this truly can help some 12 year old or 17 year old, not themselves because they realize that the rest of the world is more like them than not it is, it is at our core, something that is really meaningful beyond even just kind of landmarking a building so I agree completely can with what you're talking about. So, so for those of us that are on the call that maybe don't have as much experience as you guys do. Are there are places in particular that local governments can look to as models that have done it right or places where they've done it wrong or are there other resources that you guys see out there that would be helpful to others that maybe just kind of this conversation new for the first time because I know that there are a lot of people that know each other on this call but they're out. We have over almost 350 people at this point. I'm guessing there are a lot of new people to this conversation and I think people are interested in knowing that what kind of resources are out there, and how do we sort of merge that that social justice component of this with documenting history and broadening this conversation so that yes it is about queer history but it's it's about social justice and more people I think the people sometimes. So this, this, you know just jump in because I saw Susan Farentinos his name pop up in the chat Susan is doing a lot of work on this topic. She's a consultant she's done a lot of inventories national register related to queer history, Megan spring gate is on the call, as I mentioned earlier she's the editor of the theme study that's an incredible resource. Susan's book on interpreting museums and house museums with LGBT history is another source. There are a number of historic, you know, now I'm forgetting the name. What did we do Jay, the, you know, San Francisco has one Los Angeles has one Louisville, Kentucky, context statements. Thanks. They're not they're not much used on the East Coast. There are some statements that are incredibly valuable tools that sort of tell you, you know, how to look at history this way. So, in some ways it's changing people's understanding on how to look at the history. If you go to the our website, which we can post up here, we have a resource section that lists all these resources that you could, you know, directly link to. And it's important to look at national register nominations that are existing that interpret LGBT history, so you understand the nuances of that. There are also, you know, countless other, instead of, you know, this is a whole nother topic that is coming down the pike on Thursday about national register nominations but there are so many sites that could be reinterpreted that are on the national register already for LGBT history. So, there are, I don't want to call them low hanging fruit but there are low hanging fruit for people in communities that want to insert LGBT lives and history into it. I would like to build on that to add as well I added some links here into the chat for everybody. So, Taylor, the link to the National Park Services really wonderful study about LGBTQ, the theme their heritage theme, and Megan spring gate who is a part of that project is also here in the chat on the call with us today. And then at the state level and then at the local level to, we look to our leadership in the park service to create you know they've they've created this very broad framework for us. And then here in Maryland we're also very fortunate to be working with Sue on our own context survey for Maryland. And I, what I'd want to add to that too is it's not just on the coastal states or the places where you might think you would find me LGBTQ history is is everywhere wherever there are people there's LGBTQ history, Kentucky in 2019 and I can add the link to that as well. The state of Kentucky has also done a really wonderful survey, you know for their, their statewide, their statewide history and I'm going to put this here in the chat for everybody. So what we look to in order to see you know what what kind of sites might be up there again it's about, what is the context for us at the local level and the state level. So in Maryland it had to do a lot with maritime history with industrial history with places where people may not, you know, places where there could be more gender fluidity crossroads communities even you know truck stops out in Hager's you know highway crossroads industrial crossroads canal crossroads. We also looked you know what was particular to Montgomery County and Washington DC. There's a lot of lawyers here, you know, the legal and political history of the movement is actually critically important here in Montgomery County. Because you know some of the social and other aspects of it might not be so important for us here, you know in terms of having a lot of resources to document. There's also a lot of history here in terms of publishing houses and newspapers also in terms of public health, looking at the federal facilities that might be in your states or in your communities. There's a lot of protests in Montgomery County in the 1980s at the National Institutes of Health about discrimination in AIDS research and treatment. So that was also, you know critically important history for us to document. I know for us to. There's so much happening right now in in the world like history is happening right now around us every day all the time. And as historians we're we're we're trained to to really take a step back from that. But I don't always think that I don't think that that always serves us so well in trying to document communities and what's you know and what's happening again today. I mean just in the past couple of years even religious history, the schism within the United Methodist is very much dealing with LGBTQ rights and with human rights I think that those are things that as you know historians should be documenting that now, talking with religious leaders in our communities talking with medical professionals talking with politicians, and even though that might not result in you know sites that we we designate or we write up now. We're collecting the information and creating the documentation to maybe lead to nominations down the line, but also that's information that is we pull it together, you know we host that on our website. The state of Maryland has a story map that talks about LGBTQ history and sites that's been crowdsourced in Montgomery County we are looking to do the same thing, you know not just for sites 4050 60 years ago. But for history that is happening right right now and encouraging people to get in touch with us right now, so that we can start documenting all of that in real time, we think that for us at the local level that's also critically important. Great that's a lot of information and there's a lot of what happening in the chat right now. A lot of people are asking about transcripts for this, and I think we'll part of this as you all know their their sessions being recorded, and I think the chat also recorded so that will be available in case you want to take a look at the links. I wanted to shift just a little bit, probably kind of an odd topic, not it's not a topic but just in terms of popular culture and you know shows like legendary that featured the ball culture or Paris is burning. I mean do you all find that that those types of things appearing more broadly in mainstream media do you guys look to those things to increase awareness but also increase interest in these types of things and have you use those in your work. And not just for the panelists for anyone else out there on the chat that wants to talk a little bit about that. And knowing that those types of things ball culture in particular focuses on underrepresented communities, as well as the LGBT communities. I just think it's interesting to see how that's kind of risen to the, to the top on major platforms like HBO and other ones and that I would just throw that out there. One of the challenges for us in New York City is looking at extant sites. So, while we, you know, have a record of what sites were demolished but in one instance, not one instance, an example in New York is that many of the sites in Harlem that are significant to LGBT plus history have been demolished whereas those sites in Greenwich Village are we're not because they were protected by an early designation of a historic district in 1969 but in Harlem there was development so many of the sites are gone. So as preservationists, how do we grapple with telling those narratives of sites that were demolished. That said, there are other sites of underrepresented communities within the LGBT umbrella that are very difficult to document. So talking on, as I mentioned yesterday on our pre call, you know, grant applications to address that. But how does one, you know, how does one in preservation with, you know, again, not National Register listing but a site of pop luck dinners that took place of cruising that were really important or rent parties that happened from place to place for gay people of African descent, you know, get, you know, so people of color sites are really been difficult because of the limited record of archival record keeping limited oral histories or limited police records people were more covert or transient, you know, in trans community, many of the restaurants that were sort of taken over one night a month by trans individuals, you know, how do we how do we document that which one's most where where's the record where's the photographs and so forth so I'm just throwing out sort of this huge on, you know, set of issues that we're grappling with in New York trying to figure out what how does one has one deal with it as is a preservation project. But it's certainly something that, you know, what we're trying to do in New York is create a cultural heritage landscape. That landscape is not going to be really accurate if we don't include the full range. So what we're trying to do is tease out these histories. I had something that I feel in my time in trying to tease out these narratives is the dominant culture is comfortable with LGBTQ history, as long as we are not fully human and by that I mean that sexuality and sex is not a part of the story. So in many cases, for instance, come back in Philadelphia alleyways that take you to bathhouses places where cruising occurred, things that have very strong sexual connotations to them are very uncomfortable for dominant culture to see as as landmarking. And because the queer community has been forced into having these kinds of interactions in the shadows and in hidden places that it is a very valuable thing for us to acknowledge however that acknowledgement is being resisted by the establishment with policies and procedures and all that. So I just add that as as something to what Ken has just said because he mentions about that. But I think for me, you know, I think that our landmarking process needs to allow for the queer community to be fully human in all the ways that that has an effect on the physical environment in the way we see the physical environment and that I'm not hearing a lot of conversation about. You know, I agree and I think, you know, that's in those markets like New York or LA you're not hearing a lot about it and just think about, you know, the middle of the country and you're hearing even less about it and so, you know, I, if folks have thoughts about that conversation, we would love to hear about that. You know, there's just some, there's so much out there that people are uncomfortable about talking about they also don't understand the rationale or the background for why they existed and so, you know, part of it I think is on our part is education. And that's sort of the next topic I want to kind of move to which is, you know, how do we as preservationists as public historians, you know, continue to educate ourselves about our own movement because, you know, in the 15 years that I've had the trust, you know, this, this was the LGBT session or this was the now it's LGBTQ, QIA and it's evolving and sexual expression, identity and presentation have really kind of bubbled up more to the mainstream and I think a lot of us have a lot of comfort in interpreting lesbian and gay history but maybe not so much comfort in transgender issues or other types of things that are just not as familiar to us. And so, do you guys, are there things out there that you have seen that are interesting, are new, that different places are doing, are there ways to become, what types of things do you use to educate yourself about, you know, sort of the next wave or trend in terms of documenting LGBTQIA history? Rebecca? Well, for my part and I really do appreciate the question because we got at this a little bit, you know, with the panelists we were talking amongst ourselves. I'm trained as an urban historian, you know, environmental history, land use and urban history purely from the land use perspective. And I think that we should all be educating ourselves on a continual basis. You know, I had never taken, for example, a gender studies course. I think, you know, as historians it's incumbent upon us to start talking with our, you know, with the college campuses, you know, who, where are people teaching the courses on gender studies on sexuality, reach out to those professors and their graduate students, you know, just for us to be educated as historians and to educate our staff as well, you know, to be able to learn about, you know, different ways to conduct interviews, for example, you know, that all has to do with the engagement process, you know, we've been talking about that for decades, you know, engaging with, you know, different than we are, you know, how do we engage with the African American community with the Hispanic community with the Latino community, you know, for me as a white woman how do I learn, you know, cultural sensitivity how do I learn other people's stories so that I then approach that dialogue with the kind of education that I need to build trust with people, you know, who don't know me or haven't met me and my staff before. So I think working with the universities I know in Maryland as well, you know, college, it was a lot of the college students who worked with Preservation Maryland to, you know, host their own educational sessions on campus to reach out to other college students here in Maryland and in Montgomery County. It's now mandatory for example that there will be social studies curriculum based around teaching LGBTQ history to high schoolers. So I think that we need to as preservationists or architectural historians kind of break down those those silos in our own academic understanding of what the issues are and be willing to learn, you know, to learn to learn more about your your own preconceptions to learn about what's happening out there in the field and to listen to other people who have been studying this, you know, decades, you know, and have been living this history in a way that I that I have not and making yourself vulnerable and open to that. I just want to add that I think, you know, I wrote my graduate thesis on this topic or I tried to in 1993 frustrated in a documentation interpretation class at Columbia University grad school at an amazing professor Dan Bluestone, who I kept on complaining to about you know why can't if we could tell all these social histories why can't we tell gay and lesbian history is what I called it at the time. That said, you know, Jay Shockley at the same time was inserting LGBT history and designation reports while he was working at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. What took what started out as a concept and sort of a covert exercise by Jay and me as an academic exercise is now morphed into this project 25 years later so I think that we have this ability that we're really talking about impact now these this isn't just conceptual what you know documenting using preservation as a tool to tell these narratives. It's really a powerful tool to help people learn about American history. So I think if we all collectively with them looking at the 376 people on this call, understand that and go back to our worlds. It will have a powerful impact and if there's a way for us to sort of continue these kind of dialogues. It's really helpful there are so many challenges with the National Register that I'll be talking about on Thursday. Jay will talk about them on Thursday at his session in the positive aspects of what we're doing but there's so much possibility here. So if I don't want to look at the limitations, because I really do think you know I've done tours for kids and classroom presentations, and it's not just about LGBT history it's about human history and human contributions. So when you talk about James Baldwin being gay or Lorraine Hansberry or Langston use these kids that have studied them in school and read their work, their jaws drop. So my question. What does it matter who cares that Lorraine Hansberry was lesbian. Well it matters a lot. It matters about her life in the 1950s and early 60s it matters about what she was writing it matters that she was writing under a pseudonym for daughters of this. So all of that matters in terms of filling out one's life, not just one sexuality and who she socialized socialized with so I feel like I'm speaking to the converted here but it is more of a passion play to understand that this isn't just, you know, sort of a silo of the gay and lesbian queer bisexual transgender preservation community. This is about American history and that's I'll put a period on the end of that. Right. And so I agree completely with the two speakers have said, but for a moment I want to place myself squarely in North Carolina, which is at the moment probably becoming less of a swing state than it was two elections ago. I mean, I think, because I lived in New York City in Philadelphia have an understanding and an experience of the acceptability of LGBTQ landmarking and an understanding of the concepts of these sites as important. But for a large segment of the United States and it's not just the United States I mean there's a lot internationally that's that's occurring as well. I'm very basic acknowledgement that this history is important. Is not even there. There are, there are places there are more places in the United States that do not think of LGBTQ history as worthy of documenting let alone landmarking. So my my pushback to your question is that while we're also doing these incredibly important fabulous things in the larger cities. We need to collectively be doing really basic fundamental education for preservationists in most of the United States and, and so I kind of throw that out with everybody that that I see it. I mean it's, it's, it's part of, it's part of where I am it's also part of the consulting that I've done. And, and it's not going to help us if certain parts of the country are decades and decades and decades ahead of this type of landmarking, while some small town is refusing to acknowledge that the museum is housed in a building in the collection was owned and purchased by a gay man. I mean as an insignificant as that sounds in this conversation, it is primary for a small town to appreciate that so I just, I just kind of throw that back out in the conversation and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on that that we really do need to maybe think more basically at the same time that we're doing these incredibly wonderful things that you're talking about. But it makes me. No Ken, you go. I just want to add that New York City is not as progressive as one would think with LG. I was told on two occasions one occasion for the Manfred houses where P flag was established in Queens. I finally got the official no because you need owner consent from the homeowner to say I don't, I don't want to be known as the gay house, and the owner of the building where take the atrium was written. Never got back to me after going back and forth. And the New York City landmarks preservation Commission doesn't want to landmark the last surviving house where Walt Whitman lived when Leaves of Grass was published because it has it doesn't fit in the integrity issue because it was added on a very narrow building which, you know, would he recognize if he went back to the street. Yes, does it matter at that point. Look, I'm a preservationist with a lower case P, not to me. So these are those are, you know, just a, you know, other towns I really recognize other communities outside of New York City have steeper challenges but New York City ain't a walk in the park. And others other towns are the same issue, you know, yeah, the same. Thank you. It is very much. It's very much the same here in Montgomery County, Maryland as well I mean we are the, you know, one of the bright blue beacons within the blue state of Maryland this is a very progressive community. And, and yet we have we have the Rachel Carson house you know we have the National Historic House here in Montgomery County, and the private organization the foundation and managers the Rachel Carson house is, you know the Rachel Carson and her documented relationship with Dorothy Friedman is entirely absent from the interpretation of that site or from the presentation of that site and while we have approached them, you know, numerous times about broadening that history because you know as Frank so well put it's an integral part of who Rachel Carson is you know her work her life everything about her. But it is totally absent from the interpretation of that site, and Ken to your to your point Dan Bluson was also my professor at UVA. And it makes me think as well you know and a lot of these survey courses that we get at the graduate level, you know, nationwide where, you know as architectural historians and planners were, you know taught the periods of architecture and we're taught you know examining cultural history and the theme studies from the National Park Service, but I think to the longer work about having this this theme but you know I mean this aspect of human history as a fundamental part of the curriculum that is being taught nationwide and maybe that's a role for you know Nick P to to take on or the other you know nationwide groups that you know I know all the professors talk amongst themselves or you know at the, the national level for, you know the museum studies or for historic preservation but to make sure you know to be continuously advocating that you know this is fundamental you know as you said to our understanding of human history and American history and just, you know, rolling it into the curriculum and every year these new studies context surveys are coming out and there are new tour tours being given and mapping resources and new resources coming online in the National Register, just always having that as a fundamental part of the curriculum and asking that of our communities that are teaching historic preservation at the undergraduate undergraduate and graduate level and just continuously having it being integrated. Great, well we've got a lot of, go ahead Kim. I know I was wondering if Jay Shockley I thought he was going to add something to. I wanted to jump in to reinforce, particularly what Frank was just saying that when we founded our project we may have been the first project in the United States to have what I call two fold. It's not just, we're not just looking at sites that are of importance to the LGBTQ community. We've received it as our impact on American history and culture and I just really want to reinforce that, because a lot of people still are not looking at that and the broader context of that is is the interpretation of house museums and and when we founded the project, five or six years ago, I used to always quote friend Lebowitz which is still one of my favorite quotes of all time in the culture wars back in the 80s and so on Jesse Helms was claiming that our community was destroying American culture. She famously said that if you take away the, the LGBTQ contribution to American culture you'd be left with, let's make a deal. I'll have to explain what that TV show is to younger people but that's still one of my favorite folks all time. So, one of the thing going way back to the beginning of this I want to reinforce to everybody out there. There's so many people that still do not understand that the National Register is now allowing cultural overlays on pre existing nominations. Our project has successfully completed seven national register nominations two of them were cultural overlays one Alice Austin House, which was originally a city landmark in New York and on the National Register because it was a cute old house on Staten Island. But she was a pioneer and transgressive photographer for decades, and in the house she lived with her partner for 50 years so that now is a cultural overlay. Last year we completed the Church of the Holy Apostles which was done as an early church by an important architect in New York but now it's documented as the first important LGBT community center in New York. Both pre and post stonewall so please. When we founded our project even when the genesis of our project was from 25 years ago. Andrew Delcart and I were the co authors of the Stonewall nomination which was the first ever get property on the National Register it remained the only one for 12 years after that. And even now as can said they're only two dozen or Megan has almost 50. But some of those are are really tangential some of them are primary connections, but So, so I think there's one that this is appearing in the chat a good bit and I think some people might have questions about it. Could one of you talk really quickly about how a cultural overlay works for the guard to nominate a nomination and existing nomination and how they're different and, and that sort of just generally so that folks out there have a sense of what that really means in that process. I think when Jay says a cultural overlay we are talking about amending a nomination and we did it for Alice Austin as well as as he said, Holy Apostles so basically those were rewriting the entire nomination because they were done very early on and the architectural description wasn't up to standards that would be, you know, of today. It doesn't require so we had it, our State Historic Preservation Office reviewed it as an amendment it didn't have to get voted on by the state but it was sent to DC afterwards and successfully listed with with that overlay but it's an amendment. So it's not as it didn't have to go through a vote for the state historic preservation so forth and so on. And that said, because we were specifically amending it for LGBTQ history, even with the state of New York being very very amenable to that and to the topic we had to bend over backwards to document document document. Every time the draft went through, they had more questions you had to put more context in. You had to do all sorts of comparisons to other things on the National Register. And I strongly urge everybody I'm hoping the integrity section section, which is tomorrow. The standards of integrity for minority communities and everything that said here obviously is duplicated by every single minority community in the United States. You know, when the National Trust and the National Register only in the last decade broadened it to represent underrepresented communities, which is how we got we've our projects gotten four grants from the National Trust, from their underrepresented communities for our service. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. The standards of integrity for all minority communities work as Ken said at the very beginning of this. They're ugly buildings. They're not architecturally important they've been altered. There are so many thresholds that are almost impossible for listing. You need owner consent for the National Register. Most of the properties are not owned within the LGBTQ community on and on and on and there's still lots of existing stigmas against the community and any properties associated with them. So I'm really hoping the integrity section tomorrow has a very strong discussion about all the, all the, all these problems. So one thing that you guys have touched on a little bit and I think some people want to be curious about funding for these types of things, and what's out there what's your experience been. And what some approaches might be that that are more successful than others. So I'll just jump in Jay mentioned it, the National Park Service underrepresented community grant program has been really instrumental in launching our project and sustaining it. We got an initial grant and then we realized that, oh my God, now what do we do $50,000 with a roster of things it was a survey was a historic context statement it was a map and so forth. But, so that's, that's a really important tool for so many communities around the country to get it in New York City we're a little bit of an anomaly, because we're lucky we have a concentration of LGBT historic sites we also have a concentration of funder potential funders and having worked as a program officer at a foundation, I was lucky enough to have a relationship with some funders and we were able to cobble together money. And New York City also has corporations that have been sort of supportive, but that does translate down to other communities there may be community banks there may be community foundations, there may be individuals. We don't get a lot of support from individuals to sustain our project. However, there are individuals who have approached us indirectly. To help us out but I would say the root would really be to look at that, you know, banks, you know, or other corporations and con Ed supports us in New York. It's a very interesting thing, we're present we're preservation project. So many of the organizations or corporations that support LGBTQ plus issues are doing it for social services mental health, homelessness, so forth. We fit into a category of cultural sites or cultural heritage or arts. That's really good for a funder because it's a different ball of funding that they can put LGBT attached to. So I don't want to sound so cynical or dismissive, but funders do like that ability to say, Oh, we're supporting this, this is in New York, I don't know what the, you know, flavor is outside of New York City or how uncomfortable people are at that level, it's an, it's an, it's a, that's the way we've been sort of doing this. We have a few minutes before we wrap up Frank or Rebecca, do you guys want to talk a little bit about that before we close out. We're just add on for the funding piece, you know, in Maryland we also went for the underrepresented communities grant but to, you know, to Jay's point as well then you have to be producing national register level documentation and dealing with, you know, the integrity issues that some of these sites present, you know, for our part in Montgomery County, there's a great deal of political leadership around human rights and equity. And for us over the last few years in the planning department, we have successfully incorporated this into the regular part of our work program. So I don't necessarily have to go out and seek grants to have my staff start to document this, this history we can kind of do it in I saw a comment in the chat to about has anybody tried to go for any age national endowment for humanities funding for any of this research and I think that's a timely question my office is going to be pursuing that in the next year to see if we see if we're successful. And I would add, in my present situation, basic corporations very leery of funding anything LGBTQ. And it's really unfortunate and in my experience at working at historic sites and doing consulting that most of most of this work at the grassroots level is done on a very small budget, and it's usually operational money, and you do it because of equity issues within the organization. So I think you are looking at a very different funding stream I mean I'm used to New York City and Ken there's things that you're talking about are really wonderful. Quite frankly they don't exist. In a lot of other places so you have to, you have to get around the system to do that. And it's, and I should say it's slim pickings in New York. Well many times. Oh, it's not easy. It's not. I hate to stop the conversation on a funding topic because that's not the best way to stop a conversation but we are at the time. I was going to go through a list of sessions that are coming up that are LGBTQ focused or related to updating or changing the standards for the natural register but I think you guys have seen a lot of that in the chat history, Raina and pre and a couple other folks have listed sessions that you might be interested in or similar to this session, but I want to thank our panelists for the lively discussion today. And for everyone that came out we had a almost 375 people attend the session and that's, we've, I've never been to a session at the conference in person where we've had that many people so for it for it to be LGBT focused is amazing and a lot of people want to continue the conversation and there are lots of online forums and lots of Facebook groups so I encourage you guys to reach out to each other and network. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. Thank you. I think it's that LGBT listserv that's very good too, but we should send all this out. Thanks everybody. Thank you everyone.