Pride in Chicago: Gerber/Hart Library preserves LGBTQ+ culture and history
CHICAGO (CBS) -- During this Pride Month, we have shown you how people celebrate and honor the LGBTQ+ community.
This is the story of how a collection of written material started in a basement – but soon outgrew the space. After 42 years, it has become the largest collection of LGBTQ+ materials in the Midwest – and it fills a library in Rogers Park.
The Gerber/Hart Library and Archives is located on the second floor at 6500 N. Clark St. – above Howard Brown Health Clark. The library grows by the book.
"A lot of the materials we have don't exist anywhere else," said operations director Erin Bell.
The library also grows by the volunteer. CBS 2's Noel Brennan visited as Bell gave a tour to prospective volunteers at Gerber/Hart.
In the library, there are no banned books – just ones that belong. There is both fiction and nonfiction – but the entire inventory is composed all of literature documenting LGBTQ+ culture and history and the work of LGBTQ+ authors.
"The gay academics of Chicago wanted to make sure that at a time when the major universities were not keen on accepting and retaining materials related to queer history and queer studies – they wanted to make sure that there was a place, and that our history didn't get erased, and it didn't get ignored," Bell said.
Gerber/Hart holds onto history – and not just in the form of literature. Mounted on the wall is a big mouth with a tongue sticking out – which Bell said used to hang in Carol's Speakeasy – a drag and disco bar formerly located at 1355 N. Wells St. in Old Town.
Carol's Speakeasy operated from 1978 until 1992.
"And when it closed, they gave it to us - and it is incredibly heavy," Bell said of the big tongue.
Also in the inventory are an assortment of comics, and three sets of Gay Monopoly – an unofficial adaptation of the iconic board game first released 40 years ago.
In Gay Monopoly, players build bars and bathhouses rather than houses and hotels. The properties include famous gayborhood thoroughfares such as Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in New York, Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Folsom Street and Castro Street in San Francisco – and in Chicago, Clark Street in New Town, a vintage name for the Northalsted District and the surrounding area of East Lakeview.
Pre-Stonewall erotica is also found in boxes on the shelves of the library.
The colorful collection takes up the entirety of two temperature-controlled archive rooms.
"There's a richness to queer history in Chicago - and there's still so much more to be learned and explored," Bell said, "and we have but a fraction of it here - and we have a lot of that small fraction."
Since 1981, the library has moved seven times because it keeps running out of room on the shelves.
"Our library is bursting at the seams," Bell said.
The original location for Gerber/Hart was at 3255 N. Sheffield Ave. in the offices of Gay Horizons. The library made four moves before settling for several years in a space at 3255 N. Paulina St., and then at 1127 W. Granville Ave. in Edgewater. Gerber/Hart has been in its current space since 2014.
The Rogers Park space will not be the last stop.
"We don't want to rent anymore," Bell said. "We want to own our next place."
Until the next move, history will be preserved with pride at Gerber/Hart.
The name of the library honors Henry Gerber, a German immigrant who founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in 1924. The group served a goal to teach others about the gay community and attempting to change laws that made homosexuality illegal, but it was quickly shut down by authorities.
The name also honors Pearl M. Hart, a Chicago civil liberties attorney who became the first woman to be appointed public defender in Morals Court. She was known as a strong supporter of gay rights and immigrant rights.
Gerber/Hart has one full-time staff member, but more than 30 volunteers.
Anyone is welcome to come browse the stacks of books. There are more than 24,000 in the library.
