From 1929 to 1971, at the very heart of New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, a 12-story, maximum-security prison once stood. Built to hold 400 prisoners yet typically occupied by up to 800 people, the building was also a queer landmark and cultural hub, fostering queer community in ways that were almost unimaginable anywhere else.

This prison’s history, largely unknown to the hordes that descend upon the Village each June, is now the subject of award-winning historian Hugh Ryan’s latest book: The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison.