New York gets America’s first LGBTIQ interactive map

“The LGBT community deserves to have its history recognised and preserved."

Julius' - one of the oldest Gay Bars in New York. Source: Getty

The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has created the first interactive map in the United States, focusing entirely on providing information on important LGBTIQ sites.

The initiative was created to document historic sites that have played a role in the LGBTIQ community.

In a video posted on the project’s website, the group describes how the project came about and what inspired its development, more than 20 years after founders Andrew Dolkart, Ken Lustbader and Jay Shockley helped create the first physical map for LGBTIQ sites in 1994.

“The LGBT community deserves to have its history recognised and preserved,” text featured in the video reads against a backdrop of images of the gay rights movement in America's most populous city.

“The project shows the richness of the city’s LGBT history and the community’s contributions to American Culture.”

Currently available online, the website groups locations based on a number of different categories, including ‘Arts & Architecture’, ‘Influential Black New Yorkers’ and ‘The AIDS Crisis’.

One of the categories available to users. Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

The LGBTIQ significance is described for each category before listing a number of historic sites.

Users are asked to send through any locations they feel are worthy of inclusion and can help fund the project by offering donations.

The NYC LGBT Historic Sites project is also overseeing efforts to nominate locations to the vastly underrepresented National Register of Historic Places which currently consists of only 13 venues significant to the LGBTIQ community.