The Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis project was made by a team of historians and students at Washington University in St. Louis. The main goal of this project is to show where LGBTQ people lived, worked, and socialized between 1945 and 1992. By putting these locations on a map, the researchers want to prove that queer history is a part of the city’s regular history and not something separate. The project is meant for students, local residents, and anyone interested in how St. Louis grew over time.
The researchers used a technology called ArcGIS to create an interactive map with over 800 locations. They found these places by looking through old newspapers, police records of bar raids, and underground travel guides from the past. The project concludes that the location of LGBTQ spaces was not random. Instead, these spaces were shaped by the border between Missouri and Illinois. Because Missouri had strict laws, the Illinois East Side became a very important place for nightlife and drag shows.
One major strength of the project is that it shows how race and segregation affected the community. It clearly explains that Black and white LGBTQ people often had to stay in separate neighborhoods because of the city’s racial divides. A weakness is that the project mostly shows public businesses like bars, so it misses out on private house parties or people who kept their lives hidden. This project shows that the Metro-East was a place of freedom for people who could not be themselves in Missouri. It adds a lot of context to how the St. Louis region was divided by laws and race, making the local history feel much more complete.