The Women's Building

3543 18th St #8

"Although not an exclusively lesbian organization, The Women’s Building in the Mission District is one of the anchors of the history of women, feminists, lesbians, and queer and progressive groups more generally in San Francisco. In 1978, a core group of women from the San Francisco Women’s Centers, an incubator for women’s rights organizations, began looking into purchasing a building. A sympathetic realtor pointed them towards the Sons of Norway’s Dovre Hall, built in 1910, which was no longer active except for a ground-floor bar. Negotiations moved forward, and The Women’s Building opened in the fall of 1979. Within a year, the building held a memorial service for assassinated leader Harvey Milk, meetings of Lesbians Against Police Violence, a slide lecture by Allan Bérubé that benefited the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, and “Becoming Visible” a conference of African American lesbians. Since then, a remarkable number and range of events and meetings important to LGBTQ history have been held at The Women’s Building, which continues to function as a community space." (excerpted from p. 32-33, Chapter 25: "San Francisco: Placing LGBTQ Histories in the City by the Bay" by Donna J. Graves and Shayne E. Watson LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History)