Gay Life in Brooklyn in the 1800s – New Exhibition Opening

COMMENTARY: When someone says gay community in NYC we think of Greenwich Village in the 70s and Chelsea in the 90s, but Brooklyn in the 1800s?

Nineteenth-century male impersonator Ella Wesner was one of the Brooklyn’s most popular vaudeville performers.

“On the (Queer) Waterfront: the Factories, Freaks, Sailors, and Sex Workers of Brooklyn,” which was curated by the Brooklyn Historical Society in March 2019, explored the Victorian queer culture of Brooklyn through relics that included a never-before-exhibited scrapbook of a lesbian living in 19th-century Brooklyn.