Queer people have always flocked to New Yorkseeking freedom, forging close-knit groups forsupport and inspiration. Gay Gothambrings to life thecountercultural artistic communities that sprang upover the last hundred years, a creative class whoseradical ideas would determine much of modernculture. More than 200 images both works of art,such as paintings and photographs, as well as letters,snapshots, and ephemera illuminate their personalbonds, scandal-provoking secrets at the time and manylargely unknown to the public since.Starting with the bohemian era of the 1910s and1920s, when the pansy craze drew voyeurs of all typesto Greenwich Village and Harlem, the book windsthrough midcentury Broadway as well as Fire Islandas it emerged as a hotbed, turns to the post-Stonewall,decade-long wild party that revolved around clubs likethe Mineshaft and Studio 54, and continues all theway through the activist mobilization spurred by theAIDS crisis and the move toward acceptance at thecentury's close. Throughout, readers encounterfamous figures, from James Baldwin and Mae West toLeonard Bernstein, and discover lesser-known ones,such as Harmony Hammond, Greer Lankton, andRichard Bruce Nugent. Surprising relationshipsemerge: Andy Warhol and Mercedes de Acosta,Robert Mapplethorpe and Cecil Beaton, George PlattLynes and Gertrude Stein. By peeling back the overlappinglayers of this cultural network that thriveddespite its illicitness, this groundbreaking publicationreveals a whole new side of the history of New Yorkand celebrates the power of artistic collaboration totranscend oppression.