Even with its Pride flag restored, New York City’s iconic Stonewall National Monument has been put on an endangered list of historic national places.
Not even its designation as the first U.S. national monument — and the only unit of the National Park Service — dedicated to LGBTQ history is enough to spare it from the list, dubbed the “11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2026.”
“Fifty-seven years ago it took incredible bravery for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers to stand up to the harassment from authorities that they had grown accustomed to,” said Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group that compiles the annual at-risk roster.
“Today, bravery is again required to ensure the full story of the Stonewall Uprising is told at the National Monument, including the roles of transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the events of 1969.”
The threat to the Greenwich Village site, according to the national preservation trust, comes largely from federal actions aimed at censoring and rewriting the history of the site, including the recent removal of the rainbow Pride flag by the Trump administration in its ongoing crackdown against diversity initiatives.
The order was reversed amid backlash from gay, lesbian and transgender groups, but the damage in many circles was already done.
After the Department of the Interior issued federal guidelines on displaying “non-agency” flags, the Pride flag was quietly removed from the Stonewall National Monument in early February.
Days later, hundreds of protesters and elected officials rallied at the site, and hoisted the Pride flag back up in defiance of the Trump administration.
Federal officials soon reversed the policy.
“Censorship in our national parks is wrong,” Kristen Sykes, northeast regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. “It goes against the very values of our democracy and ideals our parks represent. We will continue to make sure the Stonewall story is known, its significance celebrated and its legacy carries on.”
The Stonewall site is widely recognized as the birthplace of the LGBTQ rights movement.
It was there, in 1969, that a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar sparked an uprising that went on to ignite the movement.
Former President Barack Obama created the Stonewall monument in 2016.
Other sites on the endangered list include the Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery, Ala., a Black-owned fixture of the civil rights movement, and the Swansea Friends Meeting Houser in Somerset, Mass., a monument to early Quaker settlers and their struggle for religious freedom and safety.
