America's Only LGBTQ Historic District Is Falling Apart

One of North America’s first openly lesbian poets launched her career by pissing off H.P. Lovecraft.

In 1918, at the age of 19, Elsa Gidlow started publishing North America’s first known LGBTQ-themed magazine out of her home in Montreal. Combining queer poetry, one-act plays about young gay love, and progressive social commentary, Les mouches fantastiques quickly gained a cult following far beyond the city and even Canada—culminating in a back-and-forth literary journal spat with the noted horror writer (and racist), who decried the magazine’s promotion of an “ancient selfish hedonism.”

In 1920, Gidlow moved to New York City, bringing Les mouches to a close after a five-issue run. Three years later, while living in Manhattan, she published On a Grey Thread, making history once again as the author of what historians believe to be the first openly lesbian poetry book released in North America. By attaching her real name to the work, Gidlow risked the very real possibility of imprisonment on indecency charges—a common tactic the federal government used against other gay writers of the era. Somehow, she evaded repercussions.