Moving into the Gay and Lesbian Center
In December 1987, an article appeared in The Center Voice, published by the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, announcing: “Lesbian Switchboard is Sixth Tenant.” After fifteen years operating out of the Firehouse, the LSWB collective moved to a new location, following the disbanding of the Women’s Liberation Center that same year.[1] Many of the Switchboard’s fellow tenants from the Firehouse joined the exodus to the Center, which was incorporated in 1983 and took over the space at 208 West 13th Street in 1984.[2] In many ways, the dissolution of the Women’s Liberation Center represented the end of an era for lesbian feminism in New York. Whereas lesbian groups had been substantially, if not always amicably, imbricated in feminist networks throughout the 1970s and 1980s, by the end of the decade lesbian activists were increasingly forging new or renewed alliances with gay activists, especially with the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The year the Lesbian Switchboard moved to The Center, ACT UP New York (The AIDS Coalition to Unlock Power) was founded in the very same building. The space at 208 West 13th Street was becoming a hub of activism and community building at the same time as cooperation between gay and lesbian groups was on the rise. Indeed, lesbians were integral to the early organizing efforts of ACT UP and brought much of their hard-won knowledge from the women’s liberation movement work to their fight against AIDS.[3] The change in organizing tactics and priorities was evident in the work of the Switchboard, which did its part to spread public health information and resources related to HIV/AIDS.
Information and resources for lesbian women with HIV/AIDS were sparse, at best, throughout the 1980s. One worried woman who called the Switchboard in October 1984 was described by the staff member on duty as “♀ concerned about getting AIDS from other lesbians. New to scene. Referred to GMHC AIDS Hotline 807-6655.”[4] It is telling that the resource offered to the caller was for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, not a feminist or lesbian resource, despite the caller’s self-professed lesbian identity. While GMHC had been founded in 1981 at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, the organization only launched its Lesbian AIDS Project in 1992—eight years after the woman’s call.[5]
The move to the Center had its drawbacks for LSWB. Among them was the cost of moving and the new expenses that came along with the new space. A short article in Womanews from February 1988 described the difficulties of the new situation: “Our rent is much higher and we had to install a phone, paint, etc. We have also lost several of our volunteers over the past few months for various reasons.”[6] Despite these difficulties, LSWB continued operating out of the Center throughout the next decade.
After LSWB moved to the Center, it finally applied for non-profit status, having run independently on a shoestring budget for sixteen years. As the secretary mentioned in the meeting minutes from December 1985: “Monthly phone bill high, Naomi to find out if we can get nonprofit status to reduce bill.”[7] It took a few years, as the organization searched for a pro bono lawyer to help them with the paperwork and navigated the Women’s Liberation Center’s eviction from the Firehouse. Once New York State granted LSWB non-profit status in 1988, the collective formalized the informal structure it had adopted in the mid-1980s: a president who chaired general meetings, a secretary who prepared agendas and took minutes for these meetings, and a treasurer responsible for all bank transactions and monthly financial reports. Informally, these positions had been filled for three-month terms in the past. Under the new formalized structure of the non-profit, however, there was a much clearer structure of leadership: a Board of Directors elected annually to manage the organization, an executive committee consisting of at least three directors who could make decisions on behalf of the Board, and officers appointed or elected annually by the Board, including a President, Vice-President, and Secretary/Treasurer. These By-Laws were approved by directors Naomi Goodhart, Karen Raphael, and Kathleen McGlone on April 25, 1988.[8]
In 1995, Elisa Stewart described the humble place where the reorganized Switchboard answered phones amidst a rapidly changing technological and political landscape: “Within the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center there is a very small room, about one quarter the size of the average New York studio apartment. It is an office and its contents are one desk, one file cabinet, one table, one answering machine, and one phone. The walls are plastered with leaflets covering topics such as: current events, happenings, parties, counseling, dentists, medical doctors, clinics, travel agencies, bars, theatres, and groups of all kinds. Standing along the top of the file cabinet and table are reference books and guides to finding nearly everything lesbian oriented anywhere in the country. The order for all this information is haphazard at best, and efficiency at finding specifics comes only with experience. Modern technology is long overdue here.”[9]
[1] “Women’s Liberation Center Designation Report,” NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, June 18, 2019, https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2633.pdf.
[2] “History,” The Center website, accessed October 1, 2025, https://gaycenter.org/about/history/.
[3] Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
[4] October 15, 1985 call log, Box 3, Lesbian Switchboard of New York City Records, LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
[5] “Fighting AIDS,” The New York Historical, accessed September 19, 2025, https://wams.nyhistory.org/end-of-the-twentieth-century/the-information-age/fighting-aids/#.
[6] “Who Do We Think We Are?” by Women of the Lesbian Switchboard, in Womanews, February 1988, Box 2, Lesbian Switchboard of New York City Records, LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
[7] December 3, 1985 meeting minutes, Box 1, Lesbian Switchboard of New York City Records, LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
[8] “The Lesbian Switchboard of New York City, Inc. By-Laws,” April 25, 1988, Box 1, Lesbian Switchboard of New York City Records, LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
[9] Elisa Stewart, untitled manuscript, January 17, 1995, Box 2, Lesbian Switchboard of New York City Records, LGBT Community Center National History Archive.