How a lost N.Y.C. women's prison tells the story of forgotten LGBTQ history

ProfileSectionstvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC NewsIt is a loathsome truth about incarceration in America that uncovering LGBTQ history means searching through the prison records of forgotten queer people.Historian Hugh Ryan undertook such a mission, focusing on the Women’s House of Detention, a prison that stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood from 1929 to 1974. In his newly released book, “The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison,” Ryan argues that the history of the “House of D,” as it was commonly called, is inextricably linked to the history of LGBTQ people in the U.S. Over the years, Ryan writes, inmates would describe the House of D as “a snake pit and hell hole,” and it would become known as the “Skyscraper Alcatraz” and “the shame of the city.” Throughout the decades, queer women were arrested for things like homelessness, smoking and forgery, but also for wearing pants, sending the word “lesbian” through the mail, being “incorrigible” and for being out at night alone.For the long-gone prison to emerge on the page, Ryan brought together oral histories and public records, as well as documents left behind by social workers and prison administrators. The House of D, given its central location, shows the ways in which that is not true,” he said, adding that the prison’s inmates “were changing the world through what they were doing inside the prison.” By imprisoning so many LGBTQ people, Ryan said, a queer community was inadvertently created. The House of D would close two years later.Ryan’s journey into the House of D asks the reader to consider not only the queer history of the prison, but the broader system of incarceration and its subjugation of LGBTQ people.