Your visit brings you to the birthplace of the modern movement for LGBTQ equality. The Stonewall Inn was a bar in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when New York City police conducted a routine raid, as they often did on gay bars, arresting patrons for violating laws against same-sex dancing and gathering. But on this night the patrons, many of them transgender women and people of color, fought back.
The crowd outside the bar swelled to hundreds, then thousands, and the uprising lasted for days. Activist Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both transgender women, were among the leaders. The Stonewall Riots became the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement, directly inspiring the first Pride marches held in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago the following year on the riot's anniversary.
President Obama designated this block a national monument in 2016. Look at the unassuming bar facade; the most ordinary-looking places sometimes contain the most extraordinary moments.