House of Dr. Frank Kameny, 5020 Cathedral Avenue NW. (Photo from D.C. Historic Landmark application.)

Five years ago, the Rainbow History Project began work to grant historic landmark status to Dr. Frank Kameny’s home and office. That goal was realized yesterday when D.C.’s Historic Preservation Office granted that status.

The house, located at 5020 Cathedral Avenue NW, is the first LGBT historic landmark in the city. There are only a few others in the country that became historic landmarks for their significance to the LGBT movement, among them the Stonewall Inn in New York City and Harvey Milk’s camera shop in San Francisco. The application for historic landmark status indicates that the house’s significance spans the years 1962 to 1975, and lists a few events to support that. These include meetings to plan conferences; picket lines at various government offices; and the creation of the slogan “Gay is Good,” inspired by Stokely Carmichael’s phrase, “Black is Beautiful.” As the Washington Post put it, the house “was the epicenter of the gay rights movement in the nation’s capital.”

Kameny came to the District to work for the Army Map Service in the late 1950s, and was fired for being gay, sparking his career as an activist. He, along with Jack Nichols, founded the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1961 and worked to overturn sodomy laws. In 1971, he became the first openly gay man to run for Congress, and later founded the Gay Activist Alliance of Washington, now known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. Kameny is also credited with helping to eliminate homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the 1970s. The Library of Congress archived some of Kameny’s papers in late 2006, and the Smithsonian put some of his picket signs and buttons on display in 2007.

According to the DC Center’s blog, the house will be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places for listing this year. If selected, the Kameny house would be only the second LGBT landmark included, the first being the Stonewall Inn.