Places of Pride: Recognizing Gayborhoods as Traditional Cultural Places

Guest speaker Matthew Bonin, MAHP ‘25, will speak about how recent trends in historic preservation to identify and preserve the heritage of underrepresented communities focus on the preservation of history through landmarking of individual buildings, creating public art installations, establishing grassroots memory projects, and activities such as walking tours aren’t enough. While valuable, these efforts fail to capture the living cultural heritage of the various underrepresented communities, including those under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. By exploring the historic preservation concept of Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs), research into sense of place theory, the concepts of secular ritual and civil religion, and America’s ethnic and minority enclaves, Matt argues that there needs to be a paradigm change within the preservation field; now is time that the places to which the various LGBTQ+ communities ascribe cultural value are recognized for what they are: TCPs.

Matt resides in Wilmington, DE with his husband, Eric. He works as an Architectural Historian for cultural resources management firm Gray & Pape where he serves on the Underrepresented Communities Task Force.