This pieces centers around The Women’s House of Detention which  existed in Greenwich Village, New York City, from 1931 to 1971. I grew up one block from the HOD. Although I was born after its closure, as a third-generation villager, I grew up with stories of the prison, and the subsequent garden that replaced the building, along with the old courthouse that was my childhood library.

Greenwich Village became known as a bohemian neighborhood and epicenter of gay liberation. Preceding that narrative is the Italian immigrant neighborhood from which I descend. Parallel to these histories is the overlooked story of The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark of community and intersection of Black, queer, and women’s liberation. Many significant figures served time in the House of D, including, Ethel Rosenberg, Mae West, Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, and Afeni Shakur, amongst others.

The story of the contemporary Village centers on the Stonewall uprising of 1969, just a block from the prison. However, The Women’s House of D was long shaping the landscape of Greenwich Village and a queer presence. On the night of the uprising, women and transmasc men were setting fire to their belongings and throwing them out the prison windows, sending a signal of activism and rebellion as they had been for decades.