June is Pride month and Broadway Stages is shining the Spotlight on some of our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors. This week, we honor Staten Island’s LGBTQ+ pioneer and photographer Alice Austen and the people at the Alice Austen House Museum who carry her memory and work forward.

Alice Austen (1866 – 1952) was a pioneer. She was a landscape designer, a master tennis player, and the first woman on Staten Island to own a car. But, most of all, she was a distinguished and prolific artist in the early days of photography.

In the late 1860s, Alice and her mother moved into the family home, known as Clear Comfort, after they had been abandoned by Alice’s father. She was introduced to photography as a child and had a darkroom installed in a second-floor closet. This home studio gave birth to over 8,000 photographs of a rapidly changing New York City. Austen’s historic photographs documented New York’s immigrant populations, Victorian women’s social activities, and the natural and architectural world of her travels.

In 1899, Austen met Gertrude Tate, a kindergarten teacher and professional dancing instructor from Brooklyn. Tate moved into Clear Comfort in 1917 despite her mother and sister’s disapproval of her “wrong devotion” to Austen. In 1929, Austen lost her money in the stock market crash. But Austen and Tate were able to hold onto the house with money Tate made teaching dance classes. The two lived together at Clear Comfort until financial problems forced them to leave the home in 1945.

For a time, the two lived together in a small apartment paid for by the dance lessons Tate taught. However, a fall forced Gertrude to move in with her family in Queens, and her family would not let Austen join her. Austen eventually moved to the hospital ward of Staten Island Farm Colony, a local poorhouse. Despite the distance, Tate visited Austen every week.

Alice would spend 53 years in a devoted, loving relationship with Gertrude. They lived together for 30 years at Clear Comfort, today the site of the Alice Austen House Museum.

Since the 1960s, the Alice Austen House, a nationally designated site of LGBTQ history, has kept her bold and talented spirit alive. Because of its historic significance, the Alice Austen House was also included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1971, and a National Historic Landmark in 1993.  The Friends of Alice Austen House, Inc., begun in the 1960s and incorporated in 1979, continue to promote Clear Comfort and the accomplishments of Alice Austen. In agreement with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, they operate the house and garden as a historic house museum. They not only preserve and continue to restore the home, but also showcase her life and work, and offer educational and cultural programs. Opened in May 2019, the exhibition “New Eyes on Alice Austen” represents a multi-year project to update the presentation of Austen’s core story.

The permanent exhibition places her relationship with Gertrude Tate, her non-traditional lifestyle, and that of her friends in its proper context. The installation presents and interprets Austen’s life and work for visitors, students, and scholars to understand and access.

Today, you can honor LGBTQ+ pioneers by visiting the Alice Austen House Museum on Staten Island in person or virtually. And as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Alice Austen House Museum welcomes donations, volunteers, and interns.  Be sure to plan a visit and when you get there, tell them that Braodway Stages sent you.